This week I have continued to design more Bar/Bat Mitzvah cards. Today Anna and I will be reviewing them as I will be making some changes to make them perfect. We discussed fixing the size to fit our invitation format along with playing around with the text and colors and keeping some invitations as simple as possible. I have attached some images of what they look like now. Next week when I finish updating them I will upload the new versions 🙂
For the first time this summer I feel like I have a lot of work to do, which is great. So far my bosses have been unsure of what to delegate to me, not because of what my abilities are, but because they have so many extraneous side projects they want to get done but don’t have the materials yet to do them. This has resulted in a lot of “hey Casey I’d really like to do this marketing idea with one of our products, could you look into the best way to do this and what we would need?”, so I look into it, send them a list of materials, and then wait two weeks to get them (I’m still waiting on cymbals in order to do drum recordings, which was planned a month ago). Of course there are also a lot of little projects here and there which keep me busy for the most part, but my current project has been super cool to work with and has kept me busy for the past several days.
Like I mentioned before, I’m creating impulse responses of guitar amplifiers. This has been an amazing skill to learn and I plan on using it on so many things when I get back to school. Unfortunately it has gotten a little tedious because of the repetitive nature of making so many of them at a time with different mic choices and placements. So far I have made over 50 different IRs with 5 different amps, using various mics, mic placements, and room situations. I even created an isolation chamber with materials I found around the office. They had a pile of 8’x4′ acoustic panels in a closet from their previous building, which I propped up in a rectangle against a wall with an acoustic quadratic diffuser. I put the amp inside, lined the sides of the chamber with leftover acoustic foam panels and corner pieces (more stuff that I found lying around their equipment closet) and it actually worked pretty well. I was able to get very clear IRs with zero extraneous room tone, which was the goal.
For the past week and a half I have been creating and finishing Bat/bar Mitzvah invitations. This week Anna and I will be reviewing my designs and making changes so they are perfect. I learned that research is important when it comes to designing, learning and creating. When I create my own designs when assigned a project I found it difficult to come up with just some of my own ideas. Researching helped me open my mind up to more ideas but at the same time research would limit my ideas and lead me back to things that already exist. I took the time to review a speech done by Natalie Portman. In her speech she talks much about ideas and how to run with them and that sometimes ignorance is a bliss. This short article had motivated me and had me thinking about how to be my own courageous designer. I feel that I have grown and learned much from this internship. I am excited to take what I learned from here and incorporate my knowledge and work into my fall/ spring semester projects. I believe that everyone should keep learning everyday and capture an idea and run with it. The small projects that I have worked on here at dme has helped me to grow into a stronger designer. I have three weeks left here and I will be continuing to make my work stronger along with being assigned with one more project! Pictures will be posted as soon as my work is up to date 🙂
July 3rd || What most people and even I, as an intern, never understood was the policies and regulations that go on during museum operations. By regulations it is not maintenance duty of the equipment but the legal transaction of maintaining both the museum collection and the purpose of the museum building itself which we call collections management policies.
The management policies was made by UNESCO which stands for the United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization in 1970 at Paris. UNESCO purpose of the management policies was to prevent illegal import, export and transport of the “cultural properties” (or object/specimen collection the museum preserves). The cultural properties in the museum are easily transferable–it has to go through some legal accession and documentation, especially verification by the curators, dealers and transporters that the object/specimen it of itself will not go anywhere else (or would at least prevent a theft). The three most important provisions established by UNESCO during 1970 convention was that there should be a cultural understanding/mutual respect between nations (and/or international) conventions, the cultural property should be authorized to be exported in/and out of the museum and it is prohibited to allow outsiders transport the cultural parties.
So I’ve finally been assigned another project that I’m very excited about. For the past week I’ve been unable to move forward with much of anything because I was lacking materials. I’ve been trying to get drum recordings and attempting to build  sound library, but there are signal routing issues in the studio and I don’t have cymbals for the kit. But, I talked to a ew people and all of those things are being purchased within the next week or so.
As for the new project, one of my bosses approached me on Monday and explained that they need impulse responses taken of guitar amplifier cabinets. DigiTech is designing a new product (I’m not allowed to talk about specifics) that will have amp modeling options, much like many of their previous pedals. But they need new impulse responses, which is what they asked me to do. I spent yesterday experimenting with Logic’s impulse response utility and a Marshall 4×12. I was able to get an IR of one of the equipment closets (which was actually super cool) and an IR of the amp head. I’m very excited for this because it means I’m playing an important part in the creation of this new product.
The start of another week of camp began today, and I’m becoming a professional at leading camp. Each week the dynamic of the group is different, and this week we even have kids from Costa Rica, China, and Russia. Managing the kids as well as the animals is always interesting, but also always very pure. It is easy to see the connection and benefits that friendships between children and animals have. The relationships are visibly therapeutic. While learning and growing to love each day at the PAWS camp, I decided to make a new Instagram account featuring the animals we meet and play with (as well as other pets around town). The account has become a great activity to share my experiences at the Humane Society! ( The account is titled: animal_amigos just for reference)
It’s always fun handling the variety of animals such as rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, dogs, and cats, but today was one of my favorite days so far. The in-shelter veterinarian requested my help in giving a heartworm injection in a female pit-bull. Being behind the scenes and helping out with some intense on-hand work was very exciting.
Tomorrow the K-9 unit officers and dogs come in as usual, and It is always interesting to see what kinds of questions the kids have for the officers. It is also incredible to see first hand the abilities of these very well trained dogs.
Fostering is an amazing gesture for families or people looking to care for animals without serious commitment. Every thursday the volunteers from My Angel With Paws come in to explain the service dogs and their trainers. Another type of short term care for a dog is training a service dog. I am considering this opportunity, and the more I learn about the amazing advantages to this volunteer program, the more likely I am to participate.
June 26th || “Art of Space is a social interaction installation that reflects society,” said Gerard Nadeau at the lecture in the Hand Art Center. In the lecture, Mr. Nadeau described both the philosophical and intellectual perspective of what the purpose of his installation was. In a way, the larger idea for Art of Space was how humans have the ability to control and manipulate space and time. “We create events out of construction. We locate in a particular place. We create community. We (as humans) know one another. (And like) art , (humans) has a role.” So, for the two weeks Gerard Nadeau was here, I took the opportunity to interact with Mr. Nadeau in his installation work and understand what his perspectives is as an artist.
For his installation, the question was: What is nature?  For Nadeau, he wanted participants to answer the question all on our own and if we asked him if our answer was right, he would say that it was up to us to decide that. Mostly, people have positive perspective of what nature was. Only a small faction of participants wrote the negative aspects of nature however; Nadeau said that they’re answer were legitimate too since Nature in a way, reflects Society (and vice versa).
Note:Â One of my wood slate answered, “[Like humans,] nature [also] endures [the obstacles thrown at them].”
For Mr. Nadeau, he wanted to make his installation to describe that a place is a possibility which builds the system of society; it drives the human unconsciousness question of “what is our role (in creating space, in being society)?”
As the internship nearly ends, I understand that it is not only a curator’s job to manage the records of the collection but, it is also to understand the artists passion and how the museum as a place can help build a system for the art collections we have either preserved or have borrowed from other museums/artists.
This week at DME I mainly created Bat/ Bar Mitzvah themed invitations. Last week I had to do a lot of research on the Jewish community along with figuring out the most popular party themes. I gathered my research and sent it in for approval. Once Anna my mentor approved I was able to start creating designs and themes. I tried to go off my research of what the most popular party themes are. I made one that was poker related for the guys. I stuck with the poker theme and came up with my own design and turned it into a party invitation. The most challenging part was incorporating the Jewish symbols along with keeping the hole party theme. I got the hang of if and before I knew it designing became simple. I also created two other girl invitations with keeping a tropical theme. I created one with the hand of god and one with an owl since owls and elephants are trending in girls fashion. As seen below I have created small samples of Party themes for Bat/bar Mitzvahs!!
Each week a new group of kids are registered for the camp. We usually have about 20 kids in each camp. Each group always has a different dynamic. This weeks group is quite rambunctious and talkative, but it’s inspiring to see so many young kids with plans of becoming veterenarians. Most of the other interns are not quite 18 yet, so I feel that tends to be a slight challenge simply because of their lack of real world, raw life experiences. Most of the activities are pre-planned and repeated each week, but it is left up to us to facilitate, instruct, and guide each activity. I’m becoming very good at recognizing which kids will need more one on one help during certain activities. I am also beginning to analyze the usually drastically different traits and characteristics of boys versus girls at this age group. Another interesting observation (although slightly off topic) is the commonality of majority of the boys in this age group that have, or claim to have either ADD or ADHD. On the animal side of things, I am happy to say I have witnessed many adoptions out of the Humane Society, and there is nothing better than seeing a pet go home with it’s new family for the first time.
I originally had been interested in the program at stetson: Educating for Social Justice. With recent advising meetings and guidance for my future plans I am also looking into the masters programs nearby about non-profit. Still my next steps remain uncertain, but each day I learn something or take a new step and hope to find a clear path.
In my last post I discussed a couple projects that I’d like to start, but I don’t have the materials yet. One of those projects is recording a drum kit using a dbx 676 mic preamp. Earlier this week Jason, the guy who asked me to do this project, was able to get a set of AKG drum mics for the studio. This is great because it was the main piece that was keeping me from starting on this. Last week we retrieved a drum kit from one of Harman’s warehouses and set it up in the studio, but unfortunately it was missing some pieces, including cymbals. Now that I had mics I decided to do a trial run of tracking the kit without the cymbals, just to make sure I knew all of the signal routing through the board, patch bay, and 676. What I discovered was only 2 of the 8 inputs into the board work. Apparently we have a faulty snake cable coming out of the wall panel into the board. This is a huge problem and has been another set back.
I contacted Jason about this and explained that we need a lot of new cables for the studio in order for this to be done. I explained that I could still make a recording with an external 4 input audio interface, but that the studio needs these new cables if they want to be able to use it for these applications. Apparently this is a result of the studio being set up in a hurry when the building was built last year. They didn’t give too much thought to multi track recording or recording in general, and just put a board and some rack effects in there without routing the signals properly. They don’t use the studio for much recording anyways so it hasn’t really been a problem.
Jason is going to talk to his superiors to see if the purchases can be made, and in the mean time I’ve been tweaking mic placements on the kit to get to know the mics that I have, and tuning and retuning the toms and snare to make sure I have the best tone when I finally have all the pieces I need to get this done. I’m a little frustrated because obstacles keep presenting themselves for this project, but at the same time I’m happy that the problems at work that I’m having are revolving around drums and audio recording, both things I greatly enjoy.
Also here are links to the DigiTech AMA thread, which I assisted in, and DigiTech’s soundcloud. 90% of the audio clips on the soundcloud are of me playing, and all of them were recorded and edited by me.
We are DigiTech, makers of guitar pedals and effects processors. AUA!
byu/DigiTechfx inIAmA
