Desert Art Storm

By MARK MUCKENFUSS
The Press-Enterprise

Artists from seven University of California campuses will gather Saturday amid the creosote and hollowed-out cabins of Wonder Valley east of Twentynine Palms for a desert-inspired art event.

The remote landscape will be host to art installations, musical performances and at least one video work. The public event includes 19 artworks created by 24 artists.

"Dry Immersion 3" is the third part of a project co-organized by UC Riverside's Sweeney Art Gallery and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts.

In October, a four-day roving symposium shuttled 66 artists to various areas of the desert to familiarize them with the terrain and culture and encourage them to create desert-oriented works.

Events on Saturday and Sunday March 6 & 7 is a result of that exposure. For more info, see www.artsblock.ucr.edu

Startl Education

"Online learning. Kaboom! At the post-secondary level, the demand for online extended learning is growing faster and more furiously than we can keep up with, partly because it’s cheaper to participate in online courses versus paying college tuition, and partly because online courses allow flexibility for the many post-secondary students juggling work, family and school." This is the short version business model for the start-up Thinktank /slash/ Funder STARTL. Click here to read the interview with director Phoenix Wang and post-discussion on plans to infuse (buzz-word) innovation and entrepreneurial savvy into the US educational system. Startl is a consortium of foundations who together are taking a private sector approach: let the schools worry about training teachers, let's unharness access and skill development using scalable media technologies and pedagogical models.