Trent Turns 40 and Buys a Van: Behind the Scenes with Joel Tsui ’16

*Note: Joel is exhibiting his work from this experience in Jesus, Take the Wheel: A Photo Exhibition of the Inscrutable United States through the eyes of Not-an-American. The exhibition is on view October 7 through November 4, 2016, in Artists at Work at MECA. Learn more information about the exhibition here.

Trent Bell, a husband, father, photographer, and surfer, is an architect-turned-photographer who runs Trent Bell Photography in Maine. He has been friends with Caleb Johnson, an architect and founder of Caleb Johnson Architects + Builders, since they were teenagers. Both were born and raised as conservative Christians but had slowly lost faith in their religion over the years, precipitating somewhat of a “midlife crisis.”

The obvious course of action was to embark on a road trip with the idea of creating a documentary film that came to include interviews with people from all walks of life, including old friends in Virginia, family members in Georgia, muslims in California, and alien believers in Nevada.

Joel Tsui ’16 majored in Digital Media and also has a Minor in Public Engagement from Maine College of Art. In the summer of 2016 he served as the photographer and director of social media for Trent Turns 40 and Buys a Van.

Joel Tsui ’16

What was your role?
My role was to photograph the entire journey, whether they were doing an interview, arguing with each other behind the camera, or just spending 14 hours driving through cornfields. When I wasn’t taking photos, I was editing and processing them to upload to various social media outlets, from Instagram to Facebook to Steller.

How were you selected? What were your thoughts going into the process?
Towards the end of my college education, Jessica Tomlinson [Director of Artists at Work at MECA] forwarded me an email about a film production needing a documentary photographer. She thought it would be an amazing opportunity for me and that I was a great fit for what they were looking for. Knowing my friends plan years for a road trip, and for a non-citizen like me to be given the invaluable possibility to see the entire country, I decided to give it a shot, so I responded to Trent’s email and we scheduled a meeting the following week.

Trent had a good understanding of me as an artist, and I had a good understanding of the film and what they were looking for. To me, the most important factor whenever I take a job is to make sure both my client (or partner) and I have the same creative vision. People have different preferences and that’s fine, but if you don’t like my work, I clearly wouldn’t be the right fit in the team. Fortunately, our creative visions aligned perfectly, and a few hours later he called me and said, ‘you’re in.’

Going into the project, I had to do a lot of research. Although I’ve done a good deal of travelling and documentary photography, I had never been on a road trip, nor had I really done any social media campaigning, so I spent most of my time before the trip preparing myself for the role. The crew had many ideas and wanted to cover every single social media platform under the sun, but I suggested focusing on a select few platforms for the right demographic: Facebook for the crew’s immediate social circles, Instagram to provide an accessible platform for photographers, and Steller as a daily diary of the road trip.

Joel Tsui ’16

What was the road trip like? What challenges and surprises did you face?
Calling it a ‘road trip’ makes the experience a lot more relaxing than it was, so I just tell people it was a film production. It wasn’t unenjoyable, but throughout the production, I was almost always occupied with something. If I wasn’t taking photographs, acting as a production assistant during formal interviews, processing my work, uploading things to social media, then I was sleeping, and that was really four to six hours a day. That said, I liked it, because I like keeping myself busy, and I wanted to maintain a good work ethic. I thought if these guys could handle the workload, I should also match their effort, and I did, which is a comforting thing to know as an emerging artist.

The biggest challenge was probably time management, because of the multitude of responsibilities I had. Thankfully, the crew respected my decisions and let me decide what I should be doing. For instance, if I had a particularly huge batch of photographs to sift through, I wouldn’t be doing production assisting, and instead would take advantage of the time to do editing work, or prepare content ahead of time to upload. It’s really nice to have teammates that treat you equally as a creative professional instead of just some unpaid intern.

Joel Tsui ’16

There were many surprises—both good and bad. My professor Gary Robinov once said that sometimes while doing documentary work you have to embrace the detours and the unexpected, and that certainly happened in the road trip. Our road trip vehicle of choice was a quaint, right-hand-drive Toyota van from the 80’s that was imported from Japan. A week into the road trip, the van started struggling and we didn’t know why. As we left Yosemite National Park, we found out that our alternator was faulty and would no longer charge the accumulator, and the nearest garage with a compatible part was in Las Vegas. We bought two extra accumulators and beelined to Las Vegas. It was also Independence Day so there were fireworks displays everywhere as we entered the city, seemingly celebrating our safe arrival.

I like to think I proved myself as a worthy component of the crew, a creative problem-solver with a range of skills that came in handy during the trip. I’ve always strived to be a creative individual with the ability to fit in multiple roles, if necessary. Although I was in charge of documenting the trip, I also filled in for various other roles such as being second camera operator during interviews, production assistant when time was precious and an extra hand was needed, or graphic designer to make flyers to hand out. The modularity of skills that the New Media Program at MECA celebrates indubitably shone in this production.

How did you feel after the trip? Anything you wished went differently?
My goals were definitely accomplished. My role in the trip was to generate photographic documentation of the production, as well as keeping the social media platforms populated with content, both of which were achieved and well-received. The Steller publications were the most popular among all the content. Our follower count increased sixfold, we were promoted on Steller’s Instagram feed, and we were chosen as one of their authors of the week.

I had a blast working with these people, so everything was as expected and desired. However, as a crew we collectively wished we didn’t plan over 20 interviews across the country. We had never done a documentary before, let alone one that hits 25 states in 21 days. One of our last interviews was with filmmaker, author, and public speaker Frank Schaeffer. When he found out we packed all that into such a short timeframe, he had one word for us: insanity.

Joel Tsui ’16

How has your education at MECA shaped you as an artist?
This project was undeniably the capstone of my entire college education at MECA. It combined the vast majority of elements I’d learned through Digital Media, Graphic Design, Photography, and Public Engagement. This experience put me to the test in a rigorous and professional environment with a community partner, and really enabled me to exercise all the skills I’ve acquired throughout the last four years. I wouldn’t even have worked with these people if Jessica had not kept me in mind as a candidate.

John Baldessari once gave three pieces of advice to young artists: “talent is cheap; you have to be possessed (which you cannot will); and be at the right place at the right time.” I think he’s onto something there.

Student Perspective: Kristen Savary (Ceramics ’16) from Maine College of Art.

To view more of Kristen’s work, please view her portfolio here.

Student Perspective: Justin Carey (Graphic Design ’16) from Maine College of Art.

View more of Justin’s work in his portfolio here.

Student Perspective: Joel Tsui (Digital Media ’16) from Maine College of Art

View more of Joel’s work in his portfolio here.

Student Perspective: Betsy Lewis (Metalsmithing & Jewelry Design ’16) from Maine College of Art.

To view more of Betsy’s work, view her portfolio online here.

JamraPatel has just published a calculator app for Google’s Android mobile device platform. The app, which uses the numerals of the N’ko-script typeface that Mark Jamra, Professor of Graphic Design at MECA, and Neil Patel designed for the Manding language and dialects of West Africa, quickly follows the release of their first app last month. That app, Nko Sebendenwala, installed a N’ko keyboard in Apple devices, thereby providing iPhone and iPad users with the ability to create emails, messages and tweets in their native language. It was enthusiastically received by the Manding communities in West Africa and its diaspora around the world.

The new app, called Nko Calculatrice, is a calculator which uses the numerals of the N’ko script. The numerals, like the letters of the script, read right-to-left.

JamraPatel LLC is a Portland, Maine based design studio that creates innovative type systems in non-Latin scripts for use in under-served language communities in the U.S. and abroad. They also design logos, wordmarks, and custom proprietary typefaces for the comprehensive branding strategies of businesses, organizations and publications.

• Link to N’ko Calculatrice on Google Play
• Link to Nko Sebendenwala on iTunes Preview page
• For more information: info@jamra-patel.com

When the Portland Museum of Art was looking for a way to allow visitors to create soundscapes in response to paintings in their O’Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York exhibition, for their PMA360 series, Digital Media Professor and Program Chair George LaRou ’88 recommended they get in touch with Sam Richardson ’15, which resulted in the Exploring Modernism Through Sound project.

Sam came up with some ideas for a reactive space that would generate sounds or a live performance, but eventually the concept of leading people through a creative process emerged as the central theme. The problem with programs like Pro Tools and Logic, software that professionals would use, was that they were much too complex for a casual untrained visitor. “Even GarageBand was too much for a situation where you want visitors to focus on the paintings and not get caught up in the interface,” Sam said. “My solution was to custom-build an app inspired by these programs, but streamlined to the point where no one would be too intimidated to pick it up and make their own composition.”

“My background is in things like computer coding, electronics, digital media — my BFA is in Digital Media — so making an app wasn’t totally new to me. It was my first time making what I’d consider a ‘functional’ app though, using standard developer tools and libraries that could work well enough to stand up to three hours of use. The process of actually building the app involved: collecting ambient sound recordings that evoked the time period and scenes depicted in the paintings; sketching out interface ideas; researching programming solutions; writing code; designing the text and graphics; and testing and tweaking the code and design many, many times.”

Sam had about three weeks to pull together the project, from conception to final product. Using Swift programming language and AudioKit, an open source audio toolkit for Apple platforms, he was able to create a grid of 10 or 16 sound loops that the user could tap to start or stop and which could be combined to make a composition. Tapping a menu icon below each sound opened a list of effects such as volume, pan, pitch, and reverb that could be edited to customize the sounds even further. The sessions could be saved and titled, as well as listened to or added to, by being accessed from any location. “This sort of took the place of a live performance by various sound artists,” Sam said. “Visitors’ own compositions became a part of the event that was displayed.”

Despite a few technical glitches during the test runs, the project was successful. “The museum staff who worked with me were really happy with the direction and how the whole thing turned out. It was a surprisingly well-running installation, by my standards,” said Sam. “I think the event went very well, better than I had hoped. I saw all sorts of people use the app in different ways — one visitor went to every iPad and spent minutes making intricate soundscapes, others played with it in passing, and a few picked up an iPad and carried it from painting to painting. Everyone seemed to get something different from the experience. My favorite was a little girl whose face lit up whenever she played a different sound. I had a few great conversations with like-minded people too.”

“I like being able to give people a new way to interact with art. There’s something about mixing new media and traditional media that appeals to me for whatever reason. Maybe I just want to be able to work in programming and art at the same time and not deal with some kind of ‘left brain vs. right brain,’ ‘science vs. art’ distinction. It all feels the same to me.”

Read more

• PMA: Exploring Modernism Through Sound
• PMA Spotlight: Sam Richardson

Printmaking alum Carter Shappy Printmaking ’15 is the Artist-in-Residence at Bigelow Lab. After graduation, Carter wanted to expand his practice to incorporate a science component; MECA connected him with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay. You can follow his blog at art.bigelow.org.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science’s mission is to investigate the microbial drivers of global ocean processes through basic and applied research, education, and enterprise. What is learned will be essential to the conservation and responsible use of the ocean and the many valuable services it provides.

Carter has worked with scientist Senior Research Scientist Dr. Steve Archer and Research Associate Carlton Rauschenberg who are researching the impacts of ocean acidification on microbiological producers of DMS (dimethyl sulfide), a gas involved in heat reflecting cloud formation. The three of them have spent the last four months investigating the relationships between scientific and artistic creativity and discovery, while trying to coalesce Carter’s art and Dr. Archer’s research into one engaging and immersive installation.

This influenced Carter to create a series of 6 suspended screen-printed plastic cylinders, each cylinder reflecting a color of the visible light spectrum hung in order in relation to each color’s absorption at varying depths of open ocean. The piece, Colorcosm, directly emulates the form of pelagic mesocosms, which are experimental water enclosures used in Dr. Archer’s research on ocean acidification and sea/atmosphere gas exchange.

The end result is a gorgeous installation, Fantastic Empiricism: The Science of Mesocosms and the Expression of Light which is on view in the the lab until September 2016.

Carter Shappy ’15, Fantastic Empiricism: The Science of Mesocosms and the Expression of Light

Carter Shappy ’15, Fantastic Empiricism: The Science of Mesocosms and the Expression of Light

Carter Shappy ’15, Fantastic Empiricism: The Science of Mesocosms and the Expression of Light

Trash Tank, Painted rope, netting, plastic bags and other plastics retrieved from the Back Cove of Portland, ME, acrylic tank, 35 gallons of Back Cove salt water, seaweed, florescent lighting, and wooden pedestal. 36″ x42 “x18”