Students

Humanities Grad Student Nova Smith Receives Diversity Leadership Award Tonight

Every year, the University of Chicago honors members of the UChicago community who demonstrate leadership and a sustained commitment to justice and equality. In addition to faculty, alumni and staff, this year’s Diversity Leadership Awards also recognize the contributions of UChicago students.

This year’s recipients are Prof. Anita Blanchard, MD’90; Rami Nashashibi, AM’98, PhD’11; Jessica Jaggers of Chicago Booth; and UChicago students Nova Smith (Cinema and Media Studies Department) and Demetrius Johnson Jr. They will be honored Jan. 12 during a virtual celebration of UChicago’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration.

With Augmented Reality, You Can Now Superimpose Publicly Exhibited Artworks in Your Home

YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020, LED Truck, Text: Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa, © 1987 by the author. Used with permission of Aunt Lute Books, www.auntlute.com; Sappho, fragment 1 from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson, first published by Alfred A. Knopf, © 2002 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the author and Aragi Inc. All rights reserved. Chicago, Illinois, USA (© 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Photo: Christopher Dilts)

For a week in October, LED trucks featuring animated, illuminated quotes from conceptual artist Jenny Holzer’s latest public art project, You Be My Ally, drove around downtown Chicago and the city’s South Side. Those walking on the University of Chicago’s campus can currently use their phones to project all 29 quotes from the project, selected from texts from the University’s Core Curriculum, onto seven university buildings using a free web-based augmented reality app.

But for the first time, using the same app, art enthusiasts can also superimpose a public exhibit of Holzer’s work—each of the quotes—in their own houses, or wherever they might be. Instead of seeing the words Suddenly incoherence feels violent, a quote from “Citizen,” Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem, rolling up the sleek Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed façade of the university’s School of Social Service Administration, users can experience this zooming towards them from a distant spot in their kitchen or bathroom.

Building Ideas: Students Help Reimagine Core Texts in Renowned Alum Jenny Holzer's Innovative Artwork

Photo by Christopher Dilts. YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020, Augmented reality app. Texts © 1998 by Anne Carson, © 1952 by Éditions du Seuil, © 2008 by Richard Philcox, © 1998 by Antjie Krog. Reprinted by permissions of the authors, Aragi Inc., Grove/Atlantic, Inc. and Penguin Random House South Africa. © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

For University of Chicago student Zahra Nasser, this October marks the culmination of months of hard work—and the chance to see it shared not only on campus, but around the world.

A fourth-year College undergraduate studying art history and philosophy, Nasser is one of 10 current and former students involved in YOU BE MY ALLY, a groundbreaking public art commission from acclaimed artist and alum Jenny Holzer, EX’74.

ECHO Game Brings Students Together--and Keeps Them Safe

Culminating in an Oct. 30 livestream, ECHO brought together students and other members of the UChicago community through weeks of collaborative play. Photo courtesy of the Fourcast Lab

A portal in the Regenstein Library. A rabbit hole to a mysterious alternate universe. Messages from the beyond—and the 1980s. This might seem like an alternate plot of Back to the Future, but you won’t find Marty McFly combing the library stacks. All of these elements were part of ECHO, the newest game launched by the University of Chicago’s Fourcast Lab.

“Purely educational games tend not to work well,” said Fourcast Lab member Patrick Jagoda, a professor of English Language and Literature and Cinema & Media Studies and director of the Weston Game Lab. “Instead, we wanted to embed safe and healthy behaviors within more engaging or creative quests.”

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