Monthly Archives: February 2018

Ernesto Cuevas, Artist, Graphic Designer and Community Advocate

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Written by:  joey lopez phd

This is the mural I met Ernesto at. He was one of the facilitators and I (and my wife) was a community participant.

It is always a pleasure to have new collaborators join us.  I have known Ernesto Cuevas for some time.  He has attended a couple of our meet ups.  But I met him initially through a community mural project I participated in and then further when I documented his Barrio Works project on our openEDSA.org blog.

Recently Ernesto and I began working out together at the gym (gotta stay healthy to Make Stuff).  Our work outs have basically turned into weekly platicas where we share our work and creative ideas together, many of which have trickled into the CMC realm.

An example of Ernesto’s ability to bring community into his art.

Ernesto’s experience as an Artist, Graphic Designer and Community Advocate has been a humbling yet amazing journey to hear about.  Ernesto’s ability to engage communities to develop their own identities and express them through intermodal art murals, canvas work and other mediums has been very inspiring.  His own journey of growing up as a son of migrant farm workers definitely gives a foundation to his own art work that transcends into the 21st century in a very beautiful way.  Working both on Canvas and digitally with a Wacom, amongst other mediums.  Ernesto’s ability to create unique works that tell stories of both personal and humanistic adversity gives patrons of his work a visual experience that leaves them wanting to see more.

Owning a Hi-Fi shop, I love this piece.

 

 

One project we have collectively been discussing is a series of children books that explore various experiences as a youth.

So Ernesto the Convergent Media Collective tips our hat at you.  Your Art work and Community Advocacy is inspiring.  And last but not least, Ernesto’s graphic design as you can imagine is very professional and on par with some of the greats.  We look forward to future collaborations and wish you the best of luck as an artist and professional graphic designer!

Check out his websites:

Artist Site:  ernestocuevasjr.com

Graphic Design Site:  cuevasmediastudio.com

Online Store:  redbubble.com/people/cuevasmedia

Click on the gallery below to check out some of his awesome work.

Southtown Vinyl Synth Meet Up

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It’s always cool when you hear about an event your interested in happening at a cool space near you.

This is exactly what happened when I heard about a synth meet up at Southtown Vinyl, a local record store in downtown San Antonio. I have been a big fan of Southtown Vinyl as they have a great selection of records and cool electronics.

As a local HiFi Shop (Dreamonoid’s HiFi) owner it’s awesome to see other retail spaces hosting events that are open to the public and encouraging artistic endeavors.

I showed up right at noon as I was super excited and sure enough was greeted by Luis Faraklas of Faraklas Electrical and Tommy Newman of Southtown Vinyl. Both of whom had synths ready to demo and allow people to get hands on experience with them.

I spent a good hour and a half picking their brains and learning all about hardware analog synths. Luis showed me a breadboard designed synth hooked up to an oscilloscope he had put together. It was awesome getting some nitty gritty details about the IC’s (integrated circuits) used and how simple it can be to get started making your own synth.

Then Tommy gave me a full tour of his synth case going into awesome detail about all the various components/modules. I learned a ton. From VCO’s to VCA’s to ASDR’s I got a slew of acronyms thrown at me and am now digesting it all and hope that at the next meeting I can show up with my own home brew synth.

So yeah, it was a great event, I highly recommend checking out future synths meet ups hosted at Southtown Vinyl.

And yes, as you might have guessed, since I am a vinyl junky and supporter of local music I did find an album I couldn’t leave without, Central Texas rap trio Third Root. Having had Marco Cervantes, a member of Third Root aka Mexican Step Grandfather give presentations to my students about Mexican American studies and hip hop, it’s amazing to be able to purchase their music on vinyl.  Good times for sure!

If you know of other cool new media events happening drop us a line and we can try to make our way out.

-joey lopez phd

2018 ACTLab New Media Conference

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The Convergent Media Collective is proud to announce we are going to be hosting the 2018 ACTLab New Media Conference on May 18th-20th in San Antonio, Tx.  We have created an official page dedicated to the event on our site, as well as a facebook event page for questions and updates.  You can also find the Call For Proposals at the official page.

We will be announcing key note speakers soon, so stay tuned.  The idea behind this event is to bring together new media professionals and academics to jam on the future of the field and also demo current projects and research.

So stay tuned!