Alum Lynne Aldrich leads a tour of her sculpture exhibit in the Williamson Gallery
While Car Classic dominated last weekend’s headlines, with its lineup of head-turning, high-revving art-imitates-life works of automotive aesthetics and ingenuity. Sunday’s auto design showcase wasn’t even the only audacious display of Art Center’s creative assets on view last weekend. On Saturday, the College hosted a curated selection of seminars and workshops known as Art Center Insights. The invitation-only event offers donors and trustees an opportunity to experience what it’s like to be Art Center student for an afternoon (minus the mountain of pressure to complete competing creative projects).
After a lunch in the student dining room with President Lorne M. Buchman, participants chose from the following Session 1 presentations: 3D Printing: A Revolution in 3D, Environmental Design: The Safe Aqua Project and Interaction Design: Evolving User Experience. Then came the second and final round of workshops: Transportation Design/Sustainability: Nature, The Mobility Innovator, Photography: Portraiture Unplugged and Fine Art: Lynn Aldrich: Un/Common Objects.
Because Insights reaches only a small slice of the population who might benefit from it; we embedded reporters in each of the workshops and live-tweeted the entire event. Taken together, these concise dispatches offer a cohesive (if not comprehensive) narrative of what it was like to experience Insights and the inspiring ideas and tools exchanged over the course of all six workshops.
Some people dream of being king for a day. But Insights makes a good case for the rewards that go along with being a student, for a day or a lifetime. Hopefully the chronicle below will conjure some of that mind-expanding thrill vicariously.
Join us as we live tweet @art_center‘s #ACCDInsights workshops until 5p.
I’m thrilled to be covering Evironmental Design: Safe Agua Projects presented by Dept Chair David Mocarski!
This just in: All seminars running 20 minutes late. Lunch ran over. Stay tuned. #ACCDInsights
So excited to discover how @art_center students are designing products to help developing world overcome water poverty. #ACCDInsights
We’re also covering the “Evolving User Experience” workshop at #ACCDInsights with Maggie Hendrie and Lance Blake. Starting now. #IxD
Here’s an example of an onerous user experience from the past. #ACCDInsights #ixd t.co/BrWNlfzTV9
Art Center College@art_center
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6 days ago
Compare that with the experience of a Kodak Camera: “You press the button, we do the rest.” #ACCDInsights #ixd t.co/RmpkxLXjuh
Art Center College@art_center
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6 days ago
Maggie Hendrie: Kodak was Steve Jobs before there was Steve Jobs. #ACCDInsights #ixd
Maggie Hendrie: If Kodak had kept their sights on “capturing the moment,” they might have invented @twitter #ACCDInsights #IxD
@art_center #IxD students are first asked: What’s your hypothesis? Why do you think it’s actually a problem? Go investigate. #ACCDInsights
Maggie Hendrie sharing an @art_center #IxD student project that explores how to create a better college orientation experience #ACCDInsights
Maggie Hendrie: Not everything should be gamified. I do not want to gamify landing at LAX or paying my taxes. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Maggie Hendrie: We believe Interaction Design can be learned. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Our students know they will always need to keep learning as new tools emerge. But the process remains the same. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Our students know they will always need to keep learning as new tools emerge. But the process remains the same. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Lance Blake now showing an @art_center student project that explores the future of autonomous vehicles. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Autonomous vehicle video soundtrack features @fotc‘s “Robots” on its soundtrack. Affirmative! #ACCDInsights #IxD
Lance Blake showing a utopian vision from the ’60s of what an autonomous vehicle future might look like. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Lance Blake showing how low tech tools can wield surprising results that can lead to high tech solutions. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Most likely somebody will have to be designated as a pilot of an autonomous vehicle. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Autonomous vehicles will send alerts to the designated driver for what they may have to do at any given moment. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Due to t.co/pOqbhoR0eR, the government has now identified a good user experience as necessary. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: The designer’s job is no longer to just create a beautiful piece but to create a platform for others to riff on. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Hendrie: Because of the dangers involved in driving, new technology is more slowly integrated into vehicles. #ACCDInsights #IxD
Blake talking about @StirWorks‘ “autonomous desk” he’s working on, which adjusts to whether you’re sitting or standing. #ACCDInsights #IxD
@StirWorks‘ Stir Kinetic Desk can also track your sitting/standing habits. #ACCDInsights #IxD
@StirWorks‘ Stir Kinetic Desk will subtly suggest you should stand after a while by slowly rising. #ACCDInsights #IxD
@StirWorks‘ Stir Kinetic Desk will subtly suggest you should stand after a while by slowly rising. #ACCDInsights #IxD
What is Environmental Design? We live between architecture and product design.
David Mocarski: We focus on the human-centered spacial experience. How do we feel when we go someplace? #ACCDInsights
David Mocarski: The story narrative is a very of the moment approach to design. #ACCDInsights
What is Safe Agua: One in 9 people in the world lives without access to clean water. #ACCDInsights
Environmental Design Faculty member Penny Herscovitch discusses Safe Agua
.@art_center students just began another project in Columbia. Design is creating a true #socialimpact. #ACCDInsights
If you live in Altos Del Pino in Peru you only get one hour of running water every eight days. #ACCDInsights
We believe we can design solutions for people living in poverty that will give them a leg up. #ACCDInsights
Designers are planting the seeds to be Agents of change in the future. #ACCDInsights
Balde a Balde is a portable facet that can be made from any bucket to wash using less water. Designed by @art_center student. #ACCDInsights
Good design is rooted in empathy: For three days prior to departing for the project faculty taped off all access to running water.
It can take up to 20 hours a week of a woman’s time to wash clothes. #ACCDInsights
Thinking through making and playing is crucial to innovation. #ACCDInsights
@art_center #ACCDInsights 3D Workshop w/ @MSchmidtStudios & 3D printed dress for burlesque star Dita Von Teese t.co/U7cwHevoSL
SRO crowd @ACCDInsights 3D Printing Workshop with @MSchmidtStudios who has designed for Madonna and Cher (who discovered him)
David Cawley instructs a 3D printing workshop
Next up: alum Lynn Aldrich gives a tour of her current mid-career retrospective in the Williamson Gallery. #ACCDInsights
Stephen Nowlin: Many of our exhibitions explore the intersection of art and science. #ACCDInsights
Lynn’s work concerns the found object recontextualized to have broader symbolic meaning. Everything has symbolic meaning. #ACCDInsights
Why did you start appropriating domestic objects? LA: I wanted to tap into ordinary life and find metaphors. #ACCDInsights
I got to live my high school fantasy of being a marine biologist by building this reef out of cleaning tools. #ACCDInsights
I’m a product of my time and place. And LA is about surface. I sense this loss of a connection to nature. #ACCDInsights
Lynne Aldrich: Some artists are inspired by the body. I get inspired gazing outward at the culture and nature. #ACCDInsights
It’s very important to me that the piece transcends its ordinariness. #ACCDInsights
Western civ. has a kind of anxiety about its future. Western culture has been a carrier of consumerism. Super abundance and supreme void.
Lynn Aldrich: This corrugated plastic shaped into gothic windows is called Seeking Sanctuary. #ACCDInsights
Aldrich: I’m an object maker and I add objects to the world. I had to come to terms with that. #ACCDInsights
I just read a book about transcendentalists. That inspired My Niagra. #ACCDInsights
Designers Choice: Naming of the Animals. There is so much out there that we didn’t create. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Portraiture explores what defines us. It’s the person as subject but also a mirror for the person making the work. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How many of you like to be photographed? (Nobody raises their hands.) Welcome to the human race. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: The camera is an extension of yourself and everything you do that creates meaning in your life. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: People ask me how long I’ve run this place? I tell them, ‘I haven’t started yet.’ This is a community. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Now is *the* time for photography. There’s never been a time like this, except when invented the daguerrotype. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: (holding up a smartphone) This is probably the camera you’ll see for the next 100 years. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Artists are not the majority of people making pictures. Flickr is not filled with artists. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Pictures are a way that people can really get a handle on important topics. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: The fewer questions you ask before you push the button, the worse the picture’s going to be. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: “We called this workshop ‘Portraiture Unplugged’ because we wanted to unplug portraiture from the 21st Century. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Most people only look at subject, they never look at background. #ACCDInsights
Dennis Keeley explores modern portraiture
Keeley: Most people only look at subject, they never look at background. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Photographic decisions are the same types of decisions that painters make. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Always have a plan. Every time I make a portrait, I have a plan before I even leave the door. #ACCDInsights
Fine artists are sometimes thought of as useless dreamers. But our role is to say things that might otherwise go unsaid. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Some people who are not interested in people at all have taken some of the most beautiful portraits. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: You wonder why people in pictures from the 19th Century look so unhappy? Because they had to sit still for 3 mins. #ACCDInsights
[ctd.] Keeley: And even though technology has improved, people still sit still for their photos. It’s part of our history. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Better technology does not make for better pictures. The devices are just pieces of metal. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Better technology does not make for better pictures. The devices are just pieces of metal. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Pictures are an opinion. A committed, decisive opinion. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: You want to make pictures that are investigations into your own way of seeing life. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: You want to make pictures that are investigations into your own way of seeing life. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Here at @art_center, we’ve created an environment in which students interrogate assumptions. #ACCDInsights
Looking at incredible work by Mike Disfarmer. Keeley: He didn’t like people. He never made more than $1 selling his portraits. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: There isn’t one single department at @art_center that can’t define itself without a picture. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: We have to light fires. Disrupt assumptions. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Photography is writing with light. Light is the defining movement, the thing that pushes the picture forward. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Photography is writing with light. Light is the defining movement, the thing that pushes the picture forward. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: When taking a portrait, use your eyes to see the picture that you’re making. Where is the light falling? #ACCDInsights
Keeley now showing participants how he would decide how to take a picture (or three) of Gugler in our current surroundings. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: If we don’t make people stand like wooden puppets, they start to look like human beings. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How important is failure to this process? It’s critical. I don’t get better by the pictures that succeed. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How important is failure to this process? It’s critical. I don’t get better by the pictures that succeed. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How important is failure to this process? It’s critical. I don’t get better by the pictures that succeed. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How important is failure to this process? It’s critical. I don’t get better by the pictures that succeed. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: How important is failure to this process? It’s critical. I don’t get better by the pictures that succeed. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: In failure, you’ve just defined the difference between what you did and success. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: We are training our students to be professional leaders. We deliver criticism with great humor, compassion. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: It’s a struggle to get people to realize their own bad work. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: We want our students to become image makers, not just better picture takers. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Today, image makers take a curatorial approach to the world. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: Now we’re going to step outside to see one thing that’ll make all our pictures better. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: When taking a portrait outside, Make sure you don’t have trees growing out of their head. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: When taking a portrait, there is nothing to gain by giving people negative direction. #ACCDInsights
Keeley: I’m not a big believer in teaching. I’m a bigger believer in learning. #ACCDInsights
Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, Professor and Director, Sustainability Iniatives
Heidrun Mumper-Drumm explains lifecycle assessment in order to design for sustainability #ACCDInsights @art_center
#ACCDInsights @art_center Heidrun Mumper-Drumm: The job of the designer is more relevant than ever if we want a more sustainable society.
Fred Fehlau: STEM is now #STEAM partnering more than ever w/ business, engineers who see value of design thinking #ACCDInsights @art_center
Fred Fehlau: STEM is now #STEAM partnering more than ever w/ business, engineers who see value of design thinking #ACCDInsights @art_center
One enthusiastic fan: bio-imagination is key as designers think globally, interdisciplinary #ACCDInsights @art_center
Keeley: I’m not a big believer in teaching. I’m a bigger believer in learning. #ACCDInsights
Keeley and Gugler are now showing participants a few tips for lighting subjects while outside. #ACCDInsights
