Placentia company helps raise ceilings on major projects

Ron Bishop, president of Placentia-based Elljay Acoustics, discusses some of his firm's work at ARTIC in Anaheim. Elljay Acoustics has been installing acoustic products at entertainment venues, resorts, international airports and public works projects for nearly 50 years.

JOSHUA SUDOCK, , JOSHUA SUDOCK, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Address: 511 Cameron St., Placentia

Contact: 714-961-1173

Website: elljay.com

If you live in Orange County, its likely youve walked under at least one ceiling installed by Elljay Acoustics.

The Placentia-based company has raised thousands of acoustic tiles and decorative suspended ceilings at department stores, universities, public transit hubs and auditoriums throughout Southern California.

The contractor bids on multimillion-dollar jobs and works with some of the regions largest general contractors; Elljay employees can regularly be seen on C.W. Driver and Clark Construction job sites.

Were what they call a finish trade, owner Ron Bishop said. The structure, the foundation, the earth work, you know, all that stuff, thats way earlier in the project.

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Placentia company helps raise ceilings on major projects

By Christine Kern

In news this week, a proposed revenue ceiling could affect IT VARs in the federal IT reseller market, a new strategy will guide R&D investment decisions for federal agencies, and vendors are selling convergence as the next big thing. Also, the Department of Defense (DOD) security requirements are driving smartphone developments, and agencies are adopting flash storage arrays.

SBA Proposal Could Change Landscape For IT Resellers

A new revenue ceiling proposed by the Small Business Association (SBA) could significantly alter the landscape for IT resellers by excluding a large number of small businesses from the federal IT reseller market, according to the E-Commerce Times. The SBA is proposing revisions to the size standards affecting IT VARs who provide hardware, software, or both as part of projects that also involve installation, systems integration, or other IT-related services for federal agencies. The change means that companies with over $27.5 million in annual revenue no longer qualify for small business preferences.

New National Strategy For Federal Agencies Will Guide Big Data R&D Investment Decisions

Fed Tech Magazine reported that the federal government is developing a collaborative strategic plan that should provide direction for Big Data research and development for federal agencies over the next decade. A collaborative effort among government, industry, and academia, a draft of the National Big Data R&D Strategic Plan was published last month. A workshop is scheduled for January to further discuss the framework document and incorporate feedback. No date for finalization has been released.

Convergence Is The Next Big Federal IT Thing

According to the E-commerce Times, IT solutions providers have started to sow the seeds to sell convergence services to federal agencies. They are presenting the possibilities of marketing a full range of capabilities, called Xaas, to federal agencies that currently spend more than $80 billion annually on IT budgets.

DOD Security Requirements Drive Commercial Smartphone Development

According to Fed Tech Magazine. The DOD has shared its security requirements with industry and companies are responding including Apple, whose iOS 6 operating system was approved for government use last year.

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Government IT News For VARs November 26, 2014

Originally published November 26, 2014 at 12:37 PM | Page modified November 26, 2014 at 3:21 PM

The Japanese artist Mr. (yes, the artists name is Mr.) paints big canvases that are vivid and sparkly and inhabited by wide-eyed anime characters. They are everything that the expression Japanese Neo-Pop implies: bright, flat images packed with references to consumer goods and the latest trends in manga.

Born in 1969, Mr. grew up during Japans postwar economic miracle period, and his work usually reflects the shiny surface of consumer culture.

But if you visit the exhibition at the Seattle Asian Art Museum the first solo exhibition of Mr.s work in the United States you will not be greeted with these vivacious images. First, you must walk through a huge installation of garbage.

A towering mound of trash looms in the center of the gallery, like some abstractly constructed beast. You are forced to walk on either side of it, through narrow alleyways. Magazines are stacked up to the ceiling, clothing hangs above you and plastic food containers are practically underfoot.

To take it all in, you have to circle around and then reverse direction again to see the rest of the exhibition. The experience suggests both the cycle of urban waste and the natural disasters of 2011. The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan affected the artist deeply. He traveled to devastated areas, taking photographs and video footage that are part of this show.

As I emerged from the garbage installation, called Give Me Your Wings think different, into the galleries filled with Mr.s upbeat paintings, a sense of youthful exuberance grew, even as the undertones of waste and destruction persisted.

During a walk-through with the artist, he confirmed this duality, saying, Underneath all this happy imagery, I have dark thoughts, especially after the disastrous events of 2011. When considering what to donate to a charity auction, Mr. said, I thought about making something that said, Were suffering. Everyone look at us. Instead, I decided to create very energetic young girls.

These energetic young girls became a central focus in his work. They are archetypes of the concept of moe (which means budding) and, as they cavort, play guitar, and flip up their short skirts, they tap into a nostalgic longing for youth.

I see how they embody the hopeful title of the exhibition, Live on, and I get their appeal. But this very appeal this allure also makes me uncomfortable. I asked Mr. to help me understand the obsession with the schoolgirl type and those variations that seem to be sexualized. He was candid in his acknowledgment that sexuality can be seen as part of that culture and that there are people who say, please dont draw girls in this way.

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Big eyes and a big pile of detritus: Mr.s Japanese Neo-Pop at SAAM

Shanghai Office Timelapse of Ceiling Installation
Striving for our LBC biophilia imperative and the ceiling! See this time-lapse photography of a ceiling installation in our Shanghai Office, the first proje...

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Shanghai Office Timelapse of Ceiling Installation - Video

In a Heartbreaking New Work, Peter Forgacs Uses Old Home Movies To Recreate Jewish Life

from the archives of the yivo institute for jewish research

Stolen Moments: Letters to Afar is comprised largely of dramaticallty edited footage of Polish home movies taken during the 1920s and 30s.

Peter Forgcss beautiful and heartbreaking video installation Letters to Afar at the Museum of the City of New York consists of several video projections accompanied by music and narration. The audio comes from speakers that hang from the ceiling inside transparent hoods. The large, darkened room is filled with hushed ambient sound music and lists of names and bits of narrative but the hoods focus the sound in places, and this mind-bending hasidic tale is the first thing you hear when you enter the room. As youre trying to make sense of it, a boys face appears on a monitor. He looks about 10 years old. Dressed in hasidic garb, he is goofing around and grinning at the camera in stark sunlight. You see him in split-screen: sometimes in action playing with his hat, shaking hands with a man in a suit (the filmmaker, perhaps?), and sometimes in freeze-frame, in close-up, stilled long enough for you to study and memorize his features. The boy was filmed in 1935, in Kazimierz a Jewish neighborhood of Krakw, Poland.

Using dramatically edited footage of interwar Poland, Forgcs creates an immersive monument to a vanished world. Monument is not the right word actually, since it implies something grand, static, and permanent. Forgcss installation, though massive it consists of six hours of footage playing on multiple screens is an intimate and deeply moving experience.

The films in the installation, from the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, are fascinating in themselves. Throughout the 1930s, well-to-do Jewish American immigrants who could afford home movie equipment traveled back to their hometowns, filming the daily life of their relatives and communities in d and Krakw, Warsaw and Vilna, as well as in smaller places such as Nowogrdek and Oszmiana, Kolbuszowa and Kurw. A few were made as purely personal family records. Others were marketing or fundraising tools. The footage of d and Warsaw, taken by the travel agent Gustave Eisner, is heavy on monuments and landmarks, promoting travel to Poland. Several other films were made by landsmanschaften New York-based hometown aid societies that raised money to help specific towns and villages in the old country. Stylistically, most of these are very much home movies, full of touchingly familiar tropes: abrupt shifts of the camera; people posing awkwardly, accustomed to still photography holding smiles, then remembering to wave; others shying away. There is a sense of visceral repeatability that we dont expect from historical footage perhaps because most history documentaries focus on public figures and important events, using films made by professionals, for public consumption that imply a certain distance. Watching these, I kept thinking, I know these people; these could be my relatives. Some scenes of Warsaw are shot on color film dont miss them, theyre the definition of uncanny.

Talking about Letters to Afar, Peter Forgcs has likened his process to forensics, and compares these films to a record of a crime scene just before a crime. We dont know much about the hasidic kid in Krakw just that he was enjoying being filmed, and what his street looked like. But we know, with a nearly 90% certainty, that he didnt live to be an adult. Forgcs chooses to concentrate entirely on peacetime, and not to include any references to Shoah. The installations impact depends on our awareness of the tragedy yet to come.

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A Monument to the World Before the Holocaust

Last Monday, Pauline Oliveros and the Thingamajigs Performance Group convened inside the Berkeley Art Museum to begin plotting a one-time performance for that Friday. Oliveros, an 82-year-old composer and avant-garde luminary, settled on one of the brightly colored pieces of modular furniture scattered about as part of the Kaleidoscape installation. Without discussion, the Thingamajigs a local ensemble of instrument-makers, educators, and performers composed of Edward Schocker, Dylan Bolles, Keith Evans, and Suki O'Kane slowly navigated BAM's severe concrete ramps and platforms while running their moistened fingers over the lips of crystal glasses.

Intermittent water droplets plopped on the ground from a slowly leaking ceiling; a ballpoint pen scratched paper; fingernails bristled two days' stubble; and the sound of ringing glasses, which first seemed nearly inaudible, became a consummate series of quivering hums that zipped around the resonant structure.

After almost an hour, the Thingamajigs returned to Oliveros. She'd sat motionless, listening. "I'll tell you what was beautiful," she said, emerging from a reverie. "There was an engine sound, and the sound of a bell from outside." She gestured toward the window.

She continued, "Sound actually moves in this room and it turns." She suggested that the performers mind the "tail of the sound" and "listen to it from start to finish," and then posed a question: "Are you projecting, or are you reflecting?"

Schocker and Bolles studied under Oliveros at Mills College in the late 1990s. Oliveros became the first director of Mills music department in 1966, then known as the Mills Tape Music Center. She left the position the following year. Today, Oliveros teaches at Mills via Skype from her home in New York. Recalling Oliveros' teaching style, Schocker said, "I'd ask her questions, and she'd never really give answers."

Conversation with Oliveros was somewhat elliptical. When asked if parameters had been predetermined for the Berkeley Art Museum, Oliveros responded, "The instruments they play and the tunings." So, what instruments? "Well, I'm not sure," she said, smiling.

The creative process employed by Oliveros and the Thingamajigs play first, discuss after has roots in the late 1950s, when Oliveros and Terry Riley decided that imposing guidelines beforehand stifled the collaborative experience. Playing, recording, and then discussing the results critically afterward yielded better results. Their sessions are considered one of the first instances of "free improvisation" in the avant-garde.

In 1963, Oliveros became involved with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, a space that was dedicated to interdisciplinary work and relished institutional autonomy and community inclusiveness. Among the Tape Music Center's major contributions were the 1964 debut of Riley's groundbreaking minimalist piece, In C, for which Oliveros played accordion, and the commission of Donald Buchla's pioneering modular synthesizer, the Buchla Box.

In an essay for the book The San Francisco Tape Music Center, published in 2008 by the University of California Press, Oliveros recalled rehearsing a duo piece for accordion and bandoneon with David Tudor. Her housemate's mynah bird kept interrupting, so they wrote it into the score. The piece became Duo for Accordion and Bandoneon with Possible Mynah Bird Obligato. For a performance, they just played it on a seesaw, and brought the bird along.

In 1965, Oliveros improvised the tape and oscillator piece Bye Bye Butterfly, which incorporates a recording of Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. Listening to it next to an early track by hip 1980s industrial act Coil, or something new by electronic producers such as Vatican Shadow, illustrates the prescience of her 1960s work. In 2012, the label Important Records issued a twelve-disc box set of her recordings from the decade.

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Avant-garde Luminary Pauline Oliveros Listens Deeply to the Berkeley Art Museum

With Sizzling Summer Finally Fizzling Into Fall, Denver Based VO Heating and Cooling Offers Furnace Tune Ups Seven Days, 7am-7pm

In business since 2012, Van Orden's focus has been on offering energy efficient systems in compliance with green certification principles applied to the HVAC industry utilizing solar and geothermal heating and cooling systems, tank less water heaters along with other aspects of energy conserving green technology.

With utility companies raising fees, many homeowners and renters can't afford to run their heating and air conditioning for maximum comfort. Some tips to stay comfortable include installing ceiling fans while turning the thermostat up a few degrees, reversing the direction of ceiling fans in the cooler months forcing the heat downward, using bathroom fans to remove excess heat and humidity in the home, keeping heat generating appliances like lamps, computers, televisions, away from thermostats to avoid tricking it into pumping more cool air into a room than is necessary.

Homeowners can save energy while improving their home's comfort level simply by investing in energy efficient appliances and products from VO Heating and Cooling reducing their consumption of energy from fossil fuels while lowering their carbon footprint. "Every homeowner committing to using green power is a contribution to preserving and improving life on the planet," according to Van Orden.

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With Sizzling Summer Finally Fizzling Into Fall, Denver Based VO Heating and Cooling Offers Furnace Tune Ups Seven ...

BYU MOA exhibits shifts from cinema to natural phenomena

By Sara Jarman

November 24th, 2014 @ 10:42am

Brigham Young University Museum of Art

PROVO Hollywoods time in Provo is coming to an end. BYUs Museum of Art exhibit, CUT: Costume and the Cinema, featuring pieces worn by Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Amy Adams amongst many others will be ending Dec. 6.

While one exhibit leaves though, a new installation just arrives, Plexus No. 29, by artist Gabriel Dawe that provides a tangible perspective on light.

A range of characters greet visitors upon first arrival into the exhibition room, from Captain Jack Sparrow to John Smith to Christine Daa. Photos are prohibited though unfortunately, for museum goers and paparazzi.

While vibrant colors and versatile fabric provide eye candy for viewers, the mechanics behind costuming is also vital to understand. How a costume fits a particular individual's body, as well as the various underpinnings of a garment are equally important in accurately portraying the clothing and setting on camera.

The correct underwear is essential to give the proper look: once strapped into corsetry and other curious underpinnings an actor will assume the appropriate deportment of the period, reads the Museum of Art introductory placard.

Each piece is specifically tailored not only to the actors body, but develops almost a distinct personality itself as well.

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BYU MOA exhibits shifts from cinema to natural phenomena

Mysuru is set to undergo a major facelift, with some of its historical structures and tourist attractions set to undergo renovation, at a cost of about Rs 45 crore.

Installation of a statue of the last Maharaja of Mysuru, Jayachamaraja Wadiyar and renovation of Mysurus two landmark buildings, Lansdowne Buildings and Devaraja Market, are likely to be taken up soon.

Another project awaiting clearance for execution is the widening of the Irwin Road that connects the City Railway Station at a cost of Rs 24 crore.

The statue of Jayachamaraja Wadiyar will be installed at the Hardinge Circle for Rs 5 crore where stands an inoperative fountain. This will be in line with the two other statues of the Maharajas of Mysuru, Chamaraja Wadiyar and Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, at the busy Chamaraja Statue Circle and K R Circle respectively on the same road.

The Lansdowne Building, collapse of the ceiling of which on August 25, 2012 had resulted in the death of four persons in a rented shop of the Mysuru Municipal Corporation. It will be restored for Rs 6 crore. The Devaraja Market, Mysurus premier shopping centre in a heritage building in the heart of the city, will be renovated for Rs 10 crore.

Both buildings are in a dilapidated state. Though the Devaraja Market continues to be a busy market area, the Lansdowne Building remains neglected after the tragedy, its shop-keepers temporarily accommodated in makeshift stalls opposite the famous structure.

Informing this at the district development review meeting today, officials said tender process had been initiated for the restoration of the century-old Lansdowne Buildings and installation of the statue of the late Maharaja. Works would be taken up soon on these three projects.

The installation of the statue has been approved by the state government and has been included in the budget.

Deputy Commissioner C Shikha said, clearance from the government was awaited for widening the Irwin Road proposed at a cost of Rs 24 crore Rs 14 crore for land acquisition and the rest for asphalting.

District incharge Minister V Sreenivasa Prasad asked the officials concerned to speed up the construction of the Maharanis Commerce College and hostel in Vinayakanagar in the city and also explore the possibility of setting up an extension centre of the Maharanis Science College in the erstwhile Taluk Office premises on Hunsur Road.

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Mysuru's attractions to get facelift for Rs 45 cr

November 24, 2014

Three apartments blocks have no roofs and are relying entirely on the ceiling of their homes during heavy rain.

KLANG: Taman Permai Indah Apartment residents in Pandamaran have appealed to the Selangor Sultan to intervene and resolve delays in repairing the roofs of their apartment that was damaged by a freak storm on Oct 21.

Residents Association chairman Muhammad Adam Prakash said the residents had filed a complaint on the matter to the state government but there were no follow-up action to repair the roofs at Block A, Block B and Block C.

So far, repairs to the water tank has not been done thus causing installation of new roofs to be postponed since the storm hit nearly a month ago.

Sadly, residents of the three blocks have no roofs above them and are relying entirely on the ceiling of their homes which is hazardous during heavy rain, he told reporters before submitting a memorandum to Istana Alam Shah here, today.

Muhammad Adam Prakash alleged there could be some elements of fraud and misuse of power in the provision of RM1.5 million by the state government for the repairs at the apartment since nothing has been done.

He claimed an additional allocation of RM40,000 was also provided by the government to build a parking lot in the apartment, but to date nothing had been constructed.

On Oct 21, a tornado-like storm hit Pandamaran and subsequently a 30-minute downpour resulted in severe damage to dozens of houses and business premises in the area, trees were uprooted and poles crashed.

BERNAMA

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Residents seek Selangor Sultans help