2002-2003 ICE Project Grant
H. James McLaughlin
Professor
College of Education

A cross-cultural documentary chronicling the lives of three teachers in rural Mexico.

Somos Pobres Pero No Hay Pobreza Aqui (We Are Poor, But There Is No Poverty Here) is a digital video documentary that explores the educational system in rural Mexico through the lives of three sisters who are school-teachers in Xalapa, Mexico. The documentary was screened in June. The project strives to create a unique perspective on the issues of migration, language, culture and education in the United States and Mexico. H. James McLaughlin (Associate Professor of Education) was the project leader. The project includes videographer Kathryn Hammond (M.F.A. Drama), UGA students, faculty and recent graduates from Education, Drama and Art. McLaughlin and Jennifer McClung (graduate candidate, Foreign Language Education) are also supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, a Rotary International Teacher Grant and a Teaching and Learning Grant from UGA. The documentary is being distributed via Video CD to sensitize teachers, social workers, university faculty and students to the challenges faced in the educational process on both sides of the border.

 

Photography by John Bishop

2002-2003 ICE Project Grant
Kate Ross
MFA Candidate
Lamar Dodd School of Art

A collaborative arts project between artists and community members that explores local ecology and the impact of urban sprawl.

eco-log was developed through community workshops and culminated in a series of May performances at the Canopy Studio Movement Arts Center in Athens. Catherine Ross (M.F.A. candidate, Printmaking) was the Artistic Coordinator and Producer. This ambitious and intensely collaborative project synthesized aerial performance (trapeze), dance, spoken word poetry, projected digital video, sound, installation and fiber arts. Sculptural forms and instruments were created from non-recyclable materials during the workshops, which reinforced the non-hierarchical, participatory methodology of the project. In addition to UGA students and volunteers from the Athens community, the performances featured the Gemini Twins, a professional aerial arts team formerly of the Cirque du Soleil and the reading of an original poem contributed by Scottish author John Wallace. Eco-log was supported in part by a project grant from ICE and received additional support from R.E.M., the Canopy Studio Movement Arts Center and the Lyndon House Arts Center.

Photography by Tish Payton

 

ICE and the New Media Institute (NMI) supported the collaborative development of four projects for handheld wireless devices in the Wireless Athens Georgia (WAG) zone in downtown Athens. Mark Callahan and Zane Wilson created an experimental interface called Latitude in a remote collaboration between Athens and Longmont, Colorado. Christian Croft (B.F.A., Digital Media) created a net artwork and performance that parodies the US Department of Homeland Security web site entitled Afterready. Kit Hughes (B.F.A. candidate, Digital Media) developed a project called Tagging that allows participants to draw virtual graffiti on locations within the WAG zone and collects the images in an online image gallery. Tara Rebele created an interactive hypertext-narrative project called Athens Wireless Escorts that explores social space and the handheld computer as fetish and companion. The projects were realized with the assistance of NMI students and faculty and premiered during the Go Mobile or Go Home wireless technology conference held in April, 2003.  

2002-2003 ICE Project Grant
George Contini, Professor, Drama
David Volk, PhD. Candidate, Music

A chamber opera based on the story by Flannery OConnor.

This modern chamber opera, based on Flannery O’Connor’s short story masterpiece of the same name, is a collaborative effort that brings together talents and ideas from across the state of Georgia to participate in this unique theatrical experience. O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, is about a Georgia family, traveling to Florida on vacation, who come across a serial killer, the Misfit. Their confrontation raises questions about redemption, faith, grace and common humanity in this dark comic parable.

The opera, which is an adaptation of O’Connor’s short story, is composer David Volk’s doctoral dissertation at UGA.

“This project has been a twenty-year dream that started in my undergraduate and masters program at FSU,” Volk says. “I was in an electronic music class at UGA when the idea to revive the project suddenly struck me. We were listening to Stockhausen’s “Gesang der Jungerlinge” and I suddenly realized that an electronic score would be a very effective way to set “Good Man” operatically.”

The opera does not rely on electronic music alone. There will be a full chamber orchestra to accompany the cast that will be conducted by Dr. Mitch Turner, a music professor at LaGrange College.

Ellen Ritchey, a soprano who is playing the Grandmother, received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from UGA and is an adjunct instructor of music at Gainesville College in Gainesville, Georgia.

The opera is directed by George Contini, a professor in the Department of Drama and Theatre at UGA who last directed “The Laramie Project”. He says that the production is unique because every element from the design to the writing to the singing is a product of the southern American region.

“I think a college audience will really respond to O’Connor’s dark, grotesque humor,” Conini says. “Her skewed view of religion and ethics can be seen as a precursor to the warped work of Tarantino and Lynch. I applaud ICE funding such projects.”

Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925 and died from lupus in Milledgeville, Georgia in 1964. In those thirty-nine years, she contributed a brief, powerful canon (two novels, thirty-two short stories, plus reviews and commentaries) that continues to be studied. O’Connor is considered to be one of the most important voices in American literature.

The opera has been performed at the Seney-Stoval Chapel in Athens, Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, and was the featured event at the International Flannery O’Connor Conference at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia.

The cast and crew are made up of UGA students, as well as professors from UGA and other Georgia colleges. A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a collaboration of the Department of Drama and Theatre and the School of Music and is supported by an ICE Project Grant and the Mary Flannery OConnor Foundation.