Author Archives: Jered Gold

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices Panel and Reception

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices, a provocative exhibition exploring perspectives of Art Center students on the issues of freedom and human rights, is on display at the Skirball Cultural Center through Sunday. The exhibition features more than a dozen large-scale, illustrated posters created by Art Center students as part of a Designmatters project. A panel discussion featuring students, curators and special guests will be held tomorrow, March 3, from 3 to 8 pm at the Skirball. For more information, call 626.396.2310.

Read our previous post about the project here.

Alumnus Designs Hackable Solar Electric Car

Product Design alumnus Yves Béhar unveiled design plans for a “hackable” solar-powered electric car at last week’s Greener Gadgets conference in NYC. The affordable car will have a standard base frame, with user-customizable components. While Béhar and his design studio Fuse Project are not new to transportation design, this project covers new ground for the studio: it’s designed for the developing world. Read more about this interesting project at Inhabitat.

Improving Health Care Through Design Thinking

UK design firm Priestmangoode has issued the first in a series of manifestos exploring how design thinking could improve products and services. Their inaugural piece is, timely enough, dedicated to health care.

Dezeen reports: “One of the ideas is the Recovery Lounge, a ward where people can recover from minor operations … that borrows ideas from the hotel and airline industries.”

Read more at Dezeen.com and check out a PDF of The Health Manifesto here.

Big Picture Lecture Series: Steve Quartz

Don’t miss today’s Big Picture Lecture Series featuring Steve Quartz.

Quartz is an associate professor of humanities and social sciences at Caltech and directs the Brain, Mind and Society PhD program. His research centers on how new methods in brain science can be integrated into the humanities and social sciences.

Big Picture Lecture Series: Steve Quartz
Monday, March 1, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Visual Acoustics Screening Sunday

Grassroots think tank One Community, in association with the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University, will present a screening of the film Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman at Hillside Campus Sunday. The documentary will be followed by a moderated discussion—Does Architecture Create Great Communities or Do Communities Create Great Architecture?—featuring architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht and artist Michael Stern.

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, the film explores the monumental career of architectural photographer Shulman, who died last year at the age of 99. Shulman combined the organic with the synthetic, capturing the essence of urban design and nature in his photographs.

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP at onecommunitythinktank.com or onecommunitythinktank@gmail.com.

Screening: Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
Sunday February 28, 4 pm
Hillside Campus
Ahmanson Auditorium

(Pictured: Case Study House No. 22, Julius Shulman)

Davidson Elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees

Art Center’s Board of Trustees announced today that Robert C. Davidson Jr. has been elected board chairman. His appointment continues a new era of leadership at the College, following the announcement of a Lorne Buchman as president last October.

Davidson is the first African-American to serve as board chairman at Art Center, and among the first African-Americans to assume board leadership of a member institution within the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. He has served on Art Center’s Board of Trustees since 2004.

“It is an honor and a privilege to be asked to serve as board chairman for an institution as distinguished as Art Center,” Davidson says. “As the College celebrates its 80th anniversary, it is with a sense of excitement and renewed commitment that we will partner with Buchman to help Art Center achieve new levels of greatness.”

Read the full press release here (PDF format).

In Case You Missed It…

As you know, there’s always something going on when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty. Some of the latest:

  • Did you know that the “Godfather of Paparazzi,” Ron Galella, is an alum? the {warehouse} magazine
  • Illustration alumnus Tavis Coburn created a series of incredibly cool posters for last week’s BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards. (Pictured) /Film
  • The New York Times takes at look at the 2010 Acura ZDX, created by Transportation Design alum Michelle Christensen four years ago, while she was still a student here.  Also integral to the project were several alums: project leader Damon Schell TRAN ’99, interior designer Michael Wiedeman TRAN ’97 and color and trim designer Kimberly Marte ENVL ’99. New York Times
  • More on the upcoming Williamson Gallery DreamWorlds exhibit. Pasadena Star-News
  • Illustration alum Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad recently unveiled the FireBreather, a custom 2010 Camaro created for the upcoming supernatural thriller Jinn, which Zaheer is directing. AutoBlog
  • Photographer, alumnus and faculty member David Sotelo braves downtown L.A.’s shuttered El Dorado Hotel. GOOD
  • Faculty member Annette Weisser’s latest exhibit, The End of the World, opens Friday at Reception Gallery in Berlin. reception-berlin.de

MDP Graduate Thesis Project Goes Viral

Graduate Media Design alum Julia Yu Tsao’s graduate thesis project, Curious Displays, has gone viral, with mentions at Boing Boing, and Gizmodo and Loyal K*N*G, among many others.

“The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction,” writes Tsao, who graduated in December. “In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being.”

Check out the super-cool video after the jump.

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