Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 2014)
http://www.theclackamasprint.com Wednesday, Febuary 5,2014 Catch a laugh on page 4 Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, OR Opinion: pro-gay rapper’s performance at Grammys sparks reaction $ www.TheClackamasPrint.com An independent, student-run newspaper since 1966 Clackamis pioneers motion classes ■ ¡ Erin Carey Arts & Culture Editor Chris Morrow Copy Editor U p o n viewing hip hop artist Macklemore’s live performance of the track “Same Love” last month on the Grammys, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer took to Twitter to voice his opposition and concern, tweeting “Heads up: Grammy telecast to fea ture sodomy-based wedding ceremonies.” Fox News’ Todd Staines, star of programs such as Fox and Friends and Hannity, tweeted his own condem nation of the performance, “I’ve never seen such a dis play of intolerance, bigotry and hatred.” If Mr. Starnes really wants to see a display of intolerance and hatred, I invite him to Google “ 100 Tweets From Real Homophobes Who Would Murder Their Gay Child.” During the performance, fellow rapper Queen Latifah called.on^3,cguplps o f v a r y ^ in g se x u a l p referen ce and ethnic make-up to exchange rings as she used the power invested in her “by the state of California” to officiate their marriages. One of the lyrics from the track states, “If I was gay, I would think that hip hop hates me / Have you read the YouTube com ments lately? / ‘Man, that’s gay’ gets dropped on the daily.” Quite ironically, the comment sections for the various uploads of the per formance minor the lyrics. Borrowing the song’s title and backing instru mental, African-American Christian rap artist Bizzle penned a lyrical rebuttal containing such gems of wisdom as, “They hung us like tree ornaments, where were you at? / They bum us for entertainment, you go through that?” Given the opportuni ty to do so, I ’d love to suggest some reading and viewing material to Mr. Bizzle, ‘ particularly the article “Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich” on the website for the United States Holocaust Museum, the book “The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps,” authored by Josef Kohout (pen name, Heinz Heger) a survivor of Sachsenhausen concen tration camp, the Internet news article “Gay Man Beaten, Burned to Death by Mob in Africa” located at theedgeboston.com and eas ily found via Google search (warning, video and still images contain extremely graphic content), as well as a series of videos under the title “African Blacks Burn Gaysr” which can be found on YouTube, same as the video for Mr. Bizzle’s song. Please see OPINION, Page 4 JVIovie fans of “Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar” would have a hard time finding any { sort of common ground in the two. They do haye something r in common, however: motion goapture technology. I Both movies use this steadi- I ly {climbing movie-making |t o o | You see it in “Lord of ■ the . Rings” in the character ‘Gollum,’ and even more so in i a w «.” jSSrrackamas Community now offers an incred- J S ls r chance to learn the ins j|8nd( outs of 'motion capture technology, a process that for a long time people associated with only the making of video games. capture, or shortened to “mo cap” tech nology is more than just what makes the characters in a video game or movie come to life. Mo cap is used for not only < yjdeo. games and movies, but spans b e in g in to u sed m e d ic a l to p ra c tic e , u n d e r sta n d h o w jo in ts m oye and can be usedTto capture any tremors in a patient and help with treatment. Mo cap is also handy in defense technology research, being ^^CtlXonperate a machine from •RlWbrleeafion to spare human lives.. Damon Redmond is CCC’s current instructor on every- thing motion capture. CCC is working with compa nies like Oregon City’s own SuperGenius, a local game developer, and using technol ogy from Phase Space Motion Capture. The system that CCC is using is a first for the state DOW N of Oregon. It’s also an incred ible step for those interested- in learning about the motion capture process hands on. Motion capture at CCC is a 16-camera process, circling around the subject who has red LED lights at every joint for the cameras to record. These LED lights create a sort of skeleton on the screen, record ing the movements and giving the creator a way to animate anything they’d like. A simple student can be transformed into a knight onto a screen, battling his Own imaginary dragon. Redmond is incredibly excit ed to be at CCC and offering his skills in teaching. “Andy [Mingo] has such a strong digi tal media department... I came in and I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is amazing.’ You guys real ly have it together,” Redmond said. “It’s awesome.” The edges need a little bit of cleaning up, but Redmond is enthusiastic about the future of the class. The mind behind the idea is CCC’s own Andy Mingo, art instructor and the head of CCC’s Digital Multimedia and C o m m u n ic a tio n s p rogram . H e approached R edm ond to b rin g th e tech n o lo g y h ere to CCC, and the response was phenom enal. “At the DMC program, we are pioneers in video p ro duction and animation,” Mingo said. “There’s no other school in Oregon or the Northwest that has motion capture tech nology. We’re not the type of program to sit back and wait to see what happens.” Please see MO CAP, Page 5
