Jamie Nhi Vuong
As part of the Spring 2025 DKC Fellowship program, I got a grant that helped me purchase the VDMX program. I was inspired to use this program after someone was using it in Jason Robinson’s New Media class. During this fellowship, I began experimenting with different effects and stock videos to create a cool contemplative video synth visuals. The samples of this project included here are a compilation of these videos.
Drew Meisenheimer
This project is building off of a previous one where I built a StoryMap in ArcGIS examining the historic preservation and interpretation efforts at 13 Negro League Baseball Stadiums. I found a lot of other directions I could take it, so thought starting a podcast and website to talk about more of those different things could be cool. Through a DKC Fellowship, I have built the website in WordPress, and built the podcast using Adobe Podcast and SoundTrap. Putting it all together has been a learning curve for me, but it has also been super fun and I hope to be able to continue it after I graduate!
Stephen Zdgiebloski
In this project I attempted to use CAD software and 3D printers to create 3D representations of molecular structures such as proteins. I did this by using Fusion360, a free student CAD software, to edit readily available protein structure files that can be found online. In Fusion360 I was able to create holes and pegs that allow the structures to be taken apart showing how intricate molecular structures can be. After completing these edits, I was able to import the files onto a multi-extruder 3D printer. The overall process of learning how to use CAD software was relatively simple and did not take long. However, learning how to work with a multi-extruder 3D printer was much more difficult and often required consultation with our DKC consultants, Shannon and Cartland.
Read more about Stephen’s process of learning and creating these 3D models.
Eugene Hlaing & Liam Kiely
A reflection of the Two Gamers on a Couch genre through the lens of an archivist revisiting and reuploading the 2008 webcomic “Losing CTRL.” The genre became popular in the early 2000s, characterized by gag-of-the-week webcomics typically featuring two friends shooting the breeze while playing video games. Now considered lost media, Losing CTRL garnered the negative attention of “The Archivist” and their friends, and turned Nate, our artist, into a niche internet “LOLCOW” — a target of harassment for public entertainment. Writing both the comic and commentary, we explore the perspectives of an amateur artist during the 2008 election, and the perspective of the archivist on their past relationship.
Boone Fleenor
This was an extensive Fluid Dynamic/engineering cross over that spanned over the last year and a half. The goal was to design and optimize a flume that could be used in testing fluid dynamic concepts. My research advisors began the project, and then when my research switched to a theoretical understanding of fluid dynamics, I took up the project with the DKC. They aided in increasing my abilities on a computer, like 3D design. They also gave me the resources and space to let this project flourish and bloom. Additionally, they provided a platform for me to blog and present my project to many creators.
AJ Gluchowski
An iterative 3D design and printing project that focused on creating a practice bagpipe chanter.
You can read more about AJ’s experience designing and printing the chanter on his site.
Jenell Poling
A study of accurately portraying my dreams using mixed-media video work.
“A group of protagonists end up on a train that takes them towards the edge of the forest. They exit the train and find a rest stop, but something about the owner is a little suspicious…”
Included in this project are also process video of how Jenell planned the video, filmed, and edited their work.
Normally when people build their content in posts or pages they tend to think of the blocks as being stacked on top of each other like this:
What is important to note that there are layout and theme blocks that function differently. What this means is some blocks are actually containers for other blocks. So, you can begin to imagine blocks more like this:
When you begin to deal with site design it is important to know that these things are possible and are the main way a lot of themes are doing the layout of your header and footer areas.
Now you may be wondering how will you keep straight which block is inside of which block. This can be a challenge for people at first, but WordPress provides another view that can help you understand what is going on and that is the List View. Any place you are editing content or your templates you’ll find the list view option along the top of the editing.
This toggle opens up a panel on the left-hand side of the screen that lets you see all the different elements happening on your page.
With every block you add you have a contextual menu.
There are more settings and controls available in WordPress 5.9. When in the editor and using a block they should appear in the right hand column but you can always get to it via the 3 dot menu (1) and selecting Show more settings (2).
There you can see there new controls over typography, color, and more.
Often times people want to change the header area of their site. In a block theme this is done through the site editor.
By default when you open the site editor it will open up the home template for editing. The home template is going to contain some template parts (like a header and footer). In order to change the header itself we want to focus on that template part.
You can focus in on the header only when you are in the site editor by clicking the WordPress symbol in the corner (1) and selecting template parts (2).
By default the Twenty-Twenty Two theme has 4 template parts. The “Header” template part is also included in “Header (Dark, small)” and “Header (Dark, large”). So you can even nest template parts in to to templates parts!
In the past we’ve thought about the menu as something that was confined to the header of our site. With WordPress 5.9 menu choices exist inside a navigation block and inside a navigation block you can select from different menus to display and edit.
In the Twenty-Twenty Two theme by default the navigation block is using a menu called “header navigation”. This menu only contains a page list block which shows all your published pages in publication order. This display was usually the default behavior of themes if you never created or changed your menu.
Most people want to have more control over this so if we want to edit change this we have to do a couple of things. We can either get rid of the block entirely or select the “edit” button in the contextual menu for the page list which will prompt us with this:
This changes this block from one page list block in to multiple blocks representing all the pages. From here you can add, re-order, add sub-menus, and a few more features in to the menu. Think about the navigation block as a container for your menu.
You can change something things from the styles editor like typography of text and links, theme palette, colors of certain elements of the site, and you can even customize the appearance of specific blocks for the entire site. For example you like to use the buttons block a lot and instead of the default colors and font every time you use it you can change it to a different default.
What is important to note that when you change things from Styles is that it changes things sitewide unless a block already has customization done to it. So, any block that has not be customized will change to match and any future block you add will also use the new stylings.
The best time to engage with the Styles editor is at the beginning of building a website. It can help you create a cohesive look and feel when you layout your site.
To find the Styles editor you’ll need to open the Site Editor and click on the little half moon icon to bring up the options on the right hand side of the screen. Click it again to hide it.
