Lauren Mandilian

My thesis has been published by VDM as a paperback! You can buy the book on amazon.com.

Posted in: Blog, Thesis

This weekend, Mark and I ventured to Vancouver, Canada. My thesis was accepted as a paper presentation in the one day SAME Workshop (Semantic Ambient Media Experience) a part of the ACM Multimedia Conference. The workshop was set up a little differently as the focus wasn’t on presentations of the papers, but more so discussion of ambient media – I found it to be a pretty interesting day. Once the workshop was over, Mark and I spent the rest of the weekend exploring Vancouver. Check out the pics on flickr!

Posted in: Blog, Personal, Thesis

This weekend, Information Overload was back for a second showing at Drexel University’s Mandell Theater for the 2008 Philly Fringe Festival. Philadelphia Inquirer’s Merilyn Jackson wrote a review about the piece for Monday, September 9, 2008 paper saying:
Lauren Mandilian choreographed “Information Overload” to first-rate music by John Avarese and Matthew Baker. She also created splendid animation with letters falling like rain down the screen and architecturally dissecting lines. Five dancers did their turns nicely until a fatal error message appeared on the screen. In this dance there were no errors.

Posted in: Blog, Philly, Thesis

Information Overload will be performed at Drexel University’s Mandell Theater for the 2008 Philly Fringe Festival! I will be partnering with Indigenous Pitch in the show we’ve name Manic Swell. Witness the perfect storm of Hip/Hop Theater, Motion Capture Animation, Multimedia Dance and Aerial Stuntwork. You can purchase tickets for Manic Swell on the Fringe website.

p.s. I am also designing visuals for one of the pieces in SHARP Dance Company’s Fringe performance. You can also purchase tickets for Four on 2 on the Fringe website.

Posted in: Blog, Philly, Thesis

I just got back from the 2008 SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, California. I attended this year’s conference as a Posters Contributor, presenting my thesis, Information Overload. I love my poster design- I used images from the performance to create something beautiful. I figured the other posters would be more technical looking so I wanted to design something that was ascetically pleasing to the eye and would stand out from the other posters. I think my plan succeeded because I got a lot of good feedback from conference attendees about my poster and work.
My favorite presenter at the conference was hands down Artistic Director for U23D, Catherine Owens. Her talk was not so much technical as it was artistic. She talked about what inspires her work, then showed some of her work, and concluded the presentation with U23D. It really allowed the audience to see where she was coming from when she was working on U23D. Overall her talk was really refreshing to hear at a SIGGRAPH conference just because of the fact that it wasn’t so ‘techy’.

Posted in: Blog, Thesis

My summer continues to get better and better as more and more opportunities keep popping up. I received notice today that my poster submission for the Student Research Competition at the 2008 SIGGRAPH Conference was accepted! Los Angeles, here I come (again).

Posted in: Blog, Thesis

Once again, I submitted my thesis to the ACM SIGGRAPH conference, which will be held in Los Angeles this summer. This time, however, I was able to submit the video of the performance along with my one-page abstract. I should hear back from the judges sometime in May so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Posted in: Blog, Thesis

Information Overload was mentioned during a presentation by Drexel’s Digital Media professor, Dr. Paul Diefenbach, at the iDMA conference in Philadelphia this past month.

Posted in: Blog, Philly, Thesis

Edward Tenner mentions Information Overload on his website. Edward’s book, Why Things Bite Back helped inspire the concept for Information Overload. After seeing the performance Edward responded with, One of the interesting positive unintended consequences of writing is how others interpret one’s ideas. Thanks for the kind words.

Posted in: Blog, Thesis, Web

My paper got approved by my committee and was submitted to the Drexel University Library to be bound and archived.

Posted in: Blog, School, Thesis