Mark Cuban is an entrepreneur who became a billionaire after various wheelings and dealings. He is best known for owning the Dallas Mavericks, but less known are his humble beginnings.

From the early age of 12 he began making business deals (selling trash bags). The deals have gotten a bit bigger since then. He came to UTD on Sept.14 and shared a few of his ideas about starting, talked a bit about his beginnings and answered some student questions.

We recorded the event so you guys can listen to his wise words.
He spoke for about 20 minutes and then answered questions for 20 minutes:

We went to see what kinds of creations were conjured by some of UTD’s artists. Music, paint and video were the mediums being played with that afternoon. It was a pretty impressive affair, with 18 art-pieces being displayed total. The video piece was projected in the backyard (see image to left).

There were also a countless number of spray paint cans strewn about the back yard. Sheets tacked up awaited the cans colors. This resulted in a few collaborative pieces being created that evening (see image blow). Large sheets of paper were also  taped up on the back fence so people could play on a less-permanent canvas.

Two musical acts were also scheduled to perform. [I incinerated NY] played first, followed by a DJ set by [DnC].

-Alex Hays

Sissy Ross is a psychology junior at UTD, with an undergrad in criminology. When she’s not reading about how peoples’ brains make them do bad things she’s making beats./

I went to see her spin some tunes on her birthday, last Tuesday (Aug. 3) at the Fallout Lounge. Sissy spins hip-hop, which is considered a complicated genre to mash up.

I asked her how she got into it.

“I went to go see one of my best friends DJ at a club downtown. I chilled with him behind the DJ booth and jokingly took a picture, captioning it with learning to DJ,” Ross said. “The next day he came over and offered to teach me, and I learned.”

It took Ross about a month to get money together for some equipment. Ross decided to go the turn table route because she said “thats where it originated.”

-Alex Hays

Sissy’s got three gigs under her belt and has about four more lined up.

Kyle Kondas is a PHD student and Arts & Technology Professor at UTD.

His father battled and subsequently died from cancer two years ago, and he’s had a friend die from the disease in ‘09. Instead of getting depressed about the whole thing he decided to create a social event where people could come together and share their stories and experiences.

Kyle threw an event called ShaveDallas: People got sponsored to come shave their heads, and any money raised was given to charity to help fight the disease. The event gathered far more people than expected, and was a huge success.

More information can be found at: www.shavedallas.org

See a video of an interview with Kyle about the event, and pics of me before/after the shaving.

Here is an Interview with Kyle about the event!

-Alex Hays

Hannah Weir is a literary studies major here at UTD, but that didn’t stop her from getting her hands covered in clay.

Hannah was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s poem The Jabberwocky; it drove her to buy clay and spend many hours fiddling with it. She wanted to create her own claymation interpretation of The Jabberwocky (the poem can be read at the end of the post).
Unfortunately, things went askew early on. There was an unfortunate bit of galumphing that lead to a bloody mess of a hand. Hannah explains what happened in this interview, and talks a bit about her creative process.

-Alex Hays

Here is an Interview with Hannah about the whole event.

See the video Hannah made after the jump!