skype

i signed up for skype today. u should too!

we can chat and stuff. [search: "stefi.lee"]

this may be the only way i get to talk to ppl, if at all, from Mongolia.

more later...
-steph!e


afterthot: tho i love the fact i can use it to talk/chat/video conference with ppl across the world, my only complaint so far is that in the less than 30 or so minutes since i've joined, i've gotten waaay too many invitations to chat or talk from strange lecherous men. that i don't enjoy. but if u're my friend, i'll talk to you. just explain how we know each other when you request to contact me. (i've been screening...) :-)

bird fLight

my video poem, in response to Stan Brakhage's MothLight:



one thing i noticed only after watching it is the mirroring of Brakhage's vertical movement within frames, giving it the feel of a reel spinning vertically over light.

also, one thing that the youtube doesn't do justice to is the mirroring in the window glass. you can see me twice in the footage, with camera in hand.

also, the spot on the window pane where the bird hit the glass.

-stephan!e

bike lexington 2007

...was fun!

i don't understand why lexington can't do this more often. once a year seems hardly enuf. do we think lexington might just be cool enuf to adopt the ways of the Mass?

this looks promising and familiar:

(Bike Lexington in the Courthouse Plaza, compare to Critical Mass in Chicago's Daley Plaza)

i guess we'll just have to see...
-stephan!e

all tomorrow's parties

i'm going to sleep early 2nite b/c i'm gettin up early for this:

BIKE LEXINGTON 2007!!

i'm really excited b/c if there's one thing i regret about my hometown it's that there's not enuf room for bike culture. i see more Hummers here than i see in Hummer dealerships (i kid u not - i see at least one every day! and trust me, i'm not lookin!)

i'm really excited to go on a ride on my bike thru the town i grew up in and see it anew. the world seems really different when u're on your bike. it seems more vibrant and fresh. must be all the wind blowing in your hair... aaaah i'm so excited already!

all day i've been thinking about how i miss the Critical Masses i rode in Chicago.

us in Daley Plaza every last Friday of the month. oh, what glorious days those were...

i miss having that to look forward to every month. i've been thinking of starting one in Oxford next school year, but i kinda wonder how successful it would be. i bet i could get a lot of ppl out, but the available routes are few and far between. but even just a monthly ride thru uptown and campus then to Hueston Woods would be something beautiful to see. hm, perhaps...

sweet dreams and an exciting 2moro!
-stephan!e

video poetry

sorry for the virtual absence, but after wrapping up one of the most trying academic years of my life, i needed to get away. i spent a lot of time in the woods in the back of my house, picked up the harmonica and tambourine, danced and jumped around, and said goodbye to many dear friends. i've crawled around in attics of lofty chapels, swung from vines, and howled at the moon from rooftops. i've passed whole evenings ensconced on windowsills drinking wine from bottles, and spent whole afternoons looking up thru sun-filtered leaves at the sky.


i haven't done any recreational reading, but i've found the act of sitting down to read a difficult one to commit to. i've been restless and noisy lately, a development my parents no doubt regret. since my fascination with the percussive arts has come to a recent boil, they've been trying to divert my energies toward the piano. but since i injured myself during finals week [oh yes, it has been a while: i ran into a concrete wall with my arm while rushing to class and probably fractured it. it swelled up to twice its natural size and then turned a dark purple. the bump has lessened, but a lump remains, and i've been a little worried about my inability - still! - to put pressure on it] piano has been kinda difficult. trills, for example, are inadvertently syncopated, since i can't seem to move the fingers fast enough [that was another thing that was injured in the collision: my knuckles!]

anyway, what i HAVE been up to is trying to find a place for all this stuf i've accumulated in the past year. and, i'm organizing my bookshelf in preparation for SENIOR PROJECT. yes, the huge 80-page thesis i must complete for my defunct degree is nigh. and eventhough i have been writing and preparing for it since basically my sophomore year, i am still worried about it. and so, i am gathering all the hard materials i've been collecting since my freshman year and organizing them into stacks in my room. virtually, i've been collecting research articles and pdf's that are filed away in folders on my mac. i'm working them into chapters soon, and it's exciting to see some form come from all this madness.

other various things: i'm going to Mongolia in less than a month! yippee and yikes at once! i have to find another sleeping bag soon, since the one i have is much too small now and not nearly as warm as i need for the below freezing Mongolian nights. i also have a paper and research to finish b4 i can leave the country, so whew! i am kinda exhausted just talking about it.

but anyway, the REAL point of this post is to share with you the project i have recently started. in the past year i've been taking media aesthetics classes, which was great, b/c i got to watch beautiful films and talk about them all the time. problem was, i never got to make any of my own. and this flies in the face of my own philosophy about being a producer rather than just a passive consumer of cultural products. and so, i have undertaken to make some movies [pardon, FILMS] this summer.

on my list of to-do's:
-video-document the Mongolia trip (i need to buy a new camcorder for this!)
-begin/finish(?) the Students for Staff documentary i started
-do something with all the dozens of video clips i have from the past year...

starting with an idea i had today for a video called Bird Flight, a response/rxn/derivation of Stan Brakhage's Moth Light.


whereas Moth evokes the life (and death) of a moth thru the cutting and pasting of pieces of its actual habitat, i will seek to evoke the life of a bird thru the documentation of its death, thru the cutting n pasting of images it encountered before the moment of its fall. and thusly, i hope to evoke something of a mirror on human life as well.

if i can just get my damned iMovie program to cooperate for a friggin second!!

so stay tuned, somethin's gonna come...
-stephan!e

stick a fork in me...

I'M DONE!

let's have a party now, ok?

p.s. and how's THIS for a mission accomplished?