fandomhigh | The Art of Scrap, Friday, Period 4

Okay, cool. Dean had been on the island for exactly a week now, and so far he was still more or less sane. This probably had something to do with the way he'd managed to avoid actually meeting any of the students yet, granted. But for the time being? Sane.

Ish.

"Hey, guys," he greeted, once everyone had settled down in their seats in the art room. "I'm Dean McCoppin. Please, please just call me Dean. I don't need any of that 'professor' stuff being thrown my way on a Friday afternoon. And it's the last class of your first week this semester, so there's coffee at the back of the room for anyone who wants it. Try not to take too much, or you won't be able to work straight later, capiche? Good."

Overall, Dean was pretty easy to please.

"Welcome to the Art of Scrap, which I'm pretty sure most of you kids probably decided to take for the easy grade, right? It's cool. I was a kid once, went to school and everything, I know this stuff. But I'm going to tell you right now, I'm planning on actually teaching you guys some things too before the semester is through. If you can't tell by the name of the class, this is going to be one of those crazy beatnik artist classes where pretty much anything is fair game to be turned into art. Especially, you know. Junk."

Junk was his thing. Dean smirked and took a sip of his coffee before continuing on.

"See, guys, I'm a sculptor by trade, even though I dabble in paint and that kind of thing on the side, so while we'll touch a little on the sort of thing you might want to frame and hang on the wall, most of what we'll be doing here is going to be way more hands-on, and you're going to want to wear clothes you don't mind getting dirty, since almost everything we'll be building art from is going to be junk. Cleaned junk, because I don't want rats moving into the classroom, but junk."

So no, they probably wouldn't be gluing macaroni to the side of a tin can in this class.

"This week, we're going to take it easy, though. Since I'm new here," be gentle, "I'm going to need a little help getting to know you guys. But you're probably all sick and tired of introductions, right? So on the table up here, there are a bunch of old magazines and newspapers and stuff, some poster paper, and some scissors and glue. Go through the periodicals there, cut out whatever catches your eye, and glue it to the poster paper however you want to. You can make a collage, try to cobble together a self-portrait, show the class a bit about your hometown, write a ransom letter with random words you cut out, whatever, just so long as it tells us something about who you are. The catch is, at the end of the period you have to present your piece to the rest of the class explaining why you did what you did. And maybe for my sake, you guys can let me know your names, while you're at it."

He took another mouthful of coffee.

"Don't eat the paste or anything, okay? I'll be making my own if anybody needs me. And if anyone wants to volunteer to TA or whatever, that'd be cool, too. It's like, double-easy art class marks or something."

[And open class is open!]

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"Physics, huh?" Dean pursed his lips thoughtfully as he looked at the coffee-powered papercraft.

Oh yeah. He was impressed.

"Not so sure about the hacking part," mostly since he had no idea that it existed in a computing sense, "but the cobbling parts are going to come in handy this semester for you, I think. A lot of what we're doing is going to involve a bunch of bits that aren't going to fit together at all, at first."

"I'll have to remember my tool belt next week, then," Claudia said cheerfully.

She'd always been the more hands-on of the physics geniuses in her family.

"Next week is mostly going to be the basics," Dean replied, smirking a little. "Some theory before we get started. But some pliers and wire-cutters couldn't hurt."

"Duly noted, mon capitaine. Anything else you want me to bring along? You said you might need a TA, and I'm pretty good at acquiring stuff."

She had lots of practice, thanks to Jamie's mostly nonsensical lists from last semester.

Dean couldn't help but look thoughtful at that suggestion.

"... You know any good place to pick up a couple rolls of chicken wire?"

That was not as random a request as it sounded. Honest.

"Sure. You can get anything on the internet." Heck, with Craig's List and Freecycle, she might not even have to pay for 'em.

So help him, Dean couldn't quite fight back that momentary blank stare, there.

"That sounds kind of useful," he admitted as he shook himself out of it. "You're going to have to forgive me, I'm fresh out of the fifties. But... internet?"

He was from the fifties? Man, that explained a lot. You'd think Claudia would have some experience explaining the internet to a computer newb, but H.G. Wells had actually been pretty up on technology, and they hadn't managed to accidentally unleash any other historical figures on the world at the Warehouse, yet.

"Well, uh. It's basically this giant network of computers. . . ." She trailed off, then decided to go a different route and pulled her laptop out of her bag instead. "Here, I can show you." She called up Google and did a general search for chicken wire, then turned the laptop so Dean could see.

"... Whoa."

Mind = Blown. Dean was going to need more coffee for this. Between the size of the computer itself, and just how much information he was staring at, all about chicken wire, would anybody really blame him?

"So people just... type what they want, and it shows up in that little box there, and then you get... all of that?"

"Pretty much. You can be as specific as you want, too, and sometimes it'll try to guess what you're looking for as you type, based on what other people around the world have searched for." Claudia typed in "chicken", and the little box popped up, suggesting "chicken recipes", "chicken out", "chicken breast recipes" and "chicken parmesan".

Because that was totally going to help with the blown mind situation.

Oh yeah, that was clearing it all right up.

"It's spitting out results as fast as you can type," Dean noted, trying, oh, he was trying, to be casual about this. It still wasn't working so well for him. "Chicken parmesan is pretty popular these days, huh?"

"Eh, I like chicken tikka masala better. But yeah, that's because our wi-fi network here is really fast. It works kind of like a telephone, you know? Almost instantaneous."

"Kind of like," Dean echoed, straightening up and clearing his throat. "I'm going to need to learn how to use one of these things, I think. Uh, in the meantime, Claudia, if you want that TA job, you've got it. Let me know if that chicken wire ends up costing anything, and I'll get it back for you out of the budget for the art program this semester, okay?"

"Aye aye," Claudia said, closing the laptop back up. "Let me know if you want a hand with the computer stuff ~~handwavily or not~~. I bet I could get you set to hack into secret government facilities in no time."

Pause.

"Not that I've ever done that. Or endorse it. Um."

"No, of course not," Dean replied, falling back into an easy smirk. "I'm not all that interested in half the thing those hacks in the government are up to most of the time, anyhow."

He was totally going to get her to teach him so that he could do just that. Yessir.

"Most of it is totally boring." She would probably insist on teaching him just in case, anyway.

"Which you know only because you're a good guesser, because you'd never break into government information."

Naturally!

"Yes! Naturally. I'm just, you know, stating the logical conclusion. Government is totally boring."

Oh, if he only knew.

Give him time, he'd at least get some vague idea.

"I can't even imagine." He couldn't! "Good to have you in the class this semester, Claudia. And thanks for the impromptu computer lesson, there."

"No problemo. Sounds like this'll be fun."

The Art of Scrap, Friday, Period 4

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