Author Archives: Mike Winder

Art Center at Night Students Explore Brave New Worlds

Plotting a new trajectory is never a simple task. Just ask Dave Doody, a senior engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

A recent image of the Sun, captured by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)

Doody is the lead flight engineer of NASA’s Cassini Solstice Mission, a mission in which the Cassini spacecraft is gathering and sending back information on the planet Saturn, its rings, moons and magnetosphere. Once a year, he also teaches Basics of Interplanetary Flight at Art Center at Night (ACN), a course in which curious students from all walks of life explore what it takes to navigate spacecraft across the solar system.

We recently trekked across the arroyo to JPL to ask Doody about his class.

Dotted Line: What do you explore in Basics of Interplanetary Flight?
Doody: We look at results from NASA’s probes, whether it’s from Voyager, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini or the others. In each session we touch on a few other topics as well. We ask a lot of questions like: What is the spacecraft all about? How does it work? What are all its pieces and what do they do? How do you design it? How does it travel?

We also explore the environment that it has to operate in, whether it’s the vacuum in space or plasma from the sun. Can the spacecraft go straight to its destination in the solar system or does it have to follow certain pathways?

And we cover the up-and-coming spacecraft and anything that’s happening right now, like a launch or a landing. We also touch on some historical information.

Doody.

Doody.

Dotted Line: What kind of students do you get in the class?
Doody: Of course we get some students from Art Center, both undergraduates and graduates.

We also get filmmakers and transportation designers. But the class is not just limited to artists and designers. It’s wide open to the public, so we get everyone from surgeons to secretaries. Anybody can take the class.

We don’t depend on any previous experience or knowledge. We just need people who are interested in the fact that today we’re looking at new worlds. And we’re looking at them with robots that have new senses on them. These robots can see not only in visual light but also in infrared and ultraviolet. And they also have expanded sensory regions, so they can analyze magnetic fields and high-energy particles.

Dotted Line: In class you discuss the different types of sensors found on spacecraft?
Doody: Yes, but we’re not just discussing. This course takes place after dinner after all! We get into all sorts of activities where the students are experimenting and seeing how different sensors work. I try to keep it interesting and informative and get everybody working together and talking to one another.

Dotted Line: Give me an example of the type of activity you do in class.
Doody: Well, once you leave the Earth, you’re outside the magnetic bubble that protects us from the Sun, which is constantly shedding protons and electrons, which we call the solar wind. In fact, if the magnetic field on Earth were to vanish, the Sun’s solar wind would blow off the atmosphere, dry off the oceans and there’d be little hope for life.

It’s not the easiest concept to grasp, so I bring some plasma, which are highly charged particles, into the classroom. And the students take a very strong magnet and they can actually see how magnetic fields interact with plasma. It’s real simple and helps illustrate this environmental concept. And that’s what I try to do with the course in general. I try to take something abstract, put it right in your face and let you play with it.

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Syd Mead: “The Future Starts Right Now”

Legendary visual futurist and Art Center alumnus Syd Mead stopped by Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium last week as part of the Design Studio Press Spring Lecture Series.


Syd Mead signing "Sentury II."

The always entertaining Mead delivered a presentation to a packed house whose attendees included The Lord of the Rings visual effects director Paul Lasaine, Megamind concept artist Samuel Michlap and Tron: Legacy vehicle designer Daniel Simon.

Mead’s lecture traversed the history of the automobile (“My total contribution to Americana automobilia is the taillight of the Ford Falcoln Futura.”), the future of transportation (“Antigravity is the answer for designers who don’t like to draw wheels.”) and his favorite color (“Cherenkov radiation blue, a fascinating optical phenomenon.”).

He also touched on Blade Runner, his early work for Ford and U.S. Steel, his latest book Sentury II and why the future is so difficult to predict.

Here are some highlights from his presentation.

On creative control:

The idea of controlling your creative idea right to the final format? That will never happen. Or rarely. Your ideas will go through a series of committees, compromises and pummels every single time.

On doing things by hand:

I learned how to hand-letter at Art Center, and that was very good training for drawing perfect ellipses. I still use gouache, which is putting paint on cardboard with animal hairs at the end of a stick. I know that’s not very romantic, but it works. All of today’s rendering software and code is made deliberately to mimic the hand-drawn technique.

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Meet Meliné Khatchatourian

Meliné Khatchatourian didn’t always know she was going to enter the arena of transportation design.

Khatchatourian

In fact, she never even took a fine art course until her senior year as a communications major at the University of California, San Diego.

“I was surprised to discover that I not only enjoyed those [art] classes, but I excelled in them,” Khatchatourian says. “I knew that I had discovered a path I had to pursue.”

She soon enrolled in Introduction to Product and Transportation Design at Art Center at Night (ACN). Khatchatourian vividly recalls the first day her class focused on transportation studies when her instructor used her car as a teaching tool. “My car was dissected and explained as a work of functional art,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I need to learn as much about this discipline as I can.’”

So Khatchatourian met with ACN Director Dana Walker, who suggested courses to prepare her portfolio for the College’s Transportation Design program. And the rest is ACN history.

Read her full story.

Ready to make history yourself? Then come to Experience Art Center at Night, April 18 through 20, 7to 9 p.m., a three-evening event where you can explore ACN’s broad range of courses.

Registration for ACN’s Summer Term is now open; courses begin May 16.

More From Meet the Presidents

Molano and Buchman

On Monday, Art Center Student Government (ACSG) hosted a “Meet the Presidents” event in the College’s cafeteria for Art Center students.

The event provided students an opportunity to hear directly from Art Center President Lorne Buchman and ACSG President Erik Molano on changes they could expect to see in the immediate future, and also offered a sneak preview of Art Center’s new strategic plan, which will be presented to the College’s Board of Trustees later today.

Today: Origins of the strategic plan, the Sinclaire Pavilion, and staying in touch with ACSG.

Lorne Buchman on the origins of the strategic plan:

“I came to Art Center 18 months ago and brought a central question to the community: What does a great art and design school of the 21st century need to be to serve its students, and provide the best education possible? Great institutions ask these kinds of questions. They ask them regularly, and they ask them rigorously.

“Asking this kind of question is how you stay responsive to a world that is changing and evolving. That applies to institutions as much as it applies to artists, designers and teachers. And that was the question that we went forward with.”

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Students Spend Presidents Day with the Presidents

ACSG President Erik Molano, left, and College president Lorne Buchman

Yesterday, Art Center Student Government (ACSG) hosted a “Meet the Presidents” event in the College’s cafeteria.

The event provided students an opportunity to hear directly from Art Center President Lorne Buchman and ACSG President Erik Molano on changes they could expect to see in the immediate future, and also offered them a sneak preview of Art Center’s new strategic plan, which will be presented to the College’s board of trustees later this week.

Over the next few days, we’ll provide highlights from the conversation.

Today: Lorne Buchman on changes at Art Center.

On funding scholarships and technology:

“Art Center delivers an education that is very expensive to deliver. It’s high in equipment, high in labor and there’s a lot of team teaching. The cost of educating each of you is actually greater than the tuition that is paid.

“A huge part of my job is to find the philanthropy and scholarships that are going to help with this, not only to cover the gap, but to be sensitive to the enormous financial commitment that you are making as students. I think about this all day. Sometimes I think about it all night.”

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A Rising (Sixth Magnitude) Star

Open issue 49 of CMYK Magazine (due on newsstands this month) and you’ll find the work of recent John Marshall High School graduate and Saturday High student Richard Kam.

A logo and poster Richard created for the nonprofit The World at Night was selected for inclusion in the magazine by Connie Hwang of San Francisco’s Connie Hwang Design. The logo and poster were part of a rebranding assignment in Zohrab “Z” Gevorkian’s Graphic Design Saturday High course last spring. Gevorkian was so impressed by Richard’s work that he encouraged him to submit his work to CMYK, a magazine that features work by emerging college art students.

The World at Night, poster by Kam

“I felt Richard’s work was at a place that was deserving to be competitive,” explains Gevorkian. “Yes, he was a high school student, but it is a college course. He was hesitant at first, but Richard ended up submitting his work, and he was selected. He really broke the mold.”

We recently caught up with Kam to chat about the honor.

Dotted Line: Tell us a little about the work that CMYK selected.
Richard Kam: They’re printing a logo and a poster I designed for The World a Night (TWAN), an offshoot of Astronomers Without Borders. TWAN is a photography group whose slogan is “One people, one sky,” and its members, who come from all around the world, upload and share beautiful nighttime and space photography. They also organize an annual exhibition. Their basic philosophy is that regardless of which country you’re from, the night sky is for all of us to share.

Dotted Line: Why did you choose TWAN?
Kam: I really like astronomy and space exploration. It’s a whole new frontier and it’s so vast. And I really like what TWAN is doing, so I wanted to bring some new light to them.

Dotted Line: Is TWAN aware of your redesign?
Kam: A few weeks before CMYK contacted me, I gathered together all my files, and I wrote TWAN a really long email. I started with, “If you’re really busy right now, please don’t read this. Open it at a later time. And please forward this to somebody who’s in a position to read this.” The rest of the letter was the creative brief I wrote for the project in class. I ended by asking them to just look at a fan’s work and see what they think.

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Exploring Soft Goods With Karen Bates

“I used to be purely academic, which was wonderful in many ways,” says Karen Bates, who went through Princeton’s Ph.D. program in architecture.

Bates

“But I always had that itch to do something creative. Instead of just studying the artists, I wanted to actually make something.”

Now she’s teaching others how to do just that in her course, Soft Goods Accessory Design and Construction, and a follow-up advanced course, both of which are being offered this spring at Art Center at Night.

Bates describes her background as eclectic, which might be the understatement of the year. In addition to her studies at Princeton, the Southern California native spent three years studying in Paris at the University of Paris, La Sorbonne and translating for UNESCO; and over a decade in New York, studying at Parsons New School of Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and running a photography studio. In her spare time, she managed to sell mixed media artworks and soft goods and accessory designs to both individual and corporate clients.

Now she’s back in the Los Angeles region and showing students the ins and outs of soft goods and accessories in Art Center’s continuing studies program. We caught up with Karen to get the scoop on her current and upcoming courses.

Dotted Line: Tell us a little about Soft Goods Accessory Design and Construction.

Crown purse by Bates. The only fur Bates ever uses is recycled fur, coming from vintage or thrift resources.

Karen Bates: This is the first class I’ve taught at Art Center at Night, and in the spring, I’ll be teaching an advanced version of the class. In the current fall course, we’re making handbags. We go through all the intricate details of pattern drafting, and then move on to construction. The students are enthusiastic about the work, even through the process can be challenging at times.  Let’s just say I give them their money’s worth in terms of educational value.

Dotted Line: So this isn’t all sketching on paper? You actually make the bags?
Bates: Absolutely. Students walk out of the course with two finished products. Drawing has its limitations—sketching is important in the conceptual stages, of course, but it’s during the construction stages when you really learn something. Plus, afterwards you have something you can bring home to mom and say, “Look what I made!” Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, you could use the bag as a prototype, take it to a factory and ask, “Can you manufacture this? How much would it cost?” From a business standpoint, that can save you a lot of start-up capital, because you’ll have already worked out a lot of those construction kinks.

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Shooting from the Flip

Each term, we spotlight a student who has achieved something noteworthy with their education from Art Center at Night, the College’s continuing studies program. We recently sat down with Laura Evans, a legal assistant for Girardi|Keese, whose documentary film No Such Thing as Color has been making the festival rounds.

Dotted Line: Tell us a little about yourself.
Laura Evans: During the day, I work for a law firm in downtown Los Angeles. At night, my husband and I play in a rock band called the Origami Llamas. I play drums and keyboards, sing, shoot our music videos and share website duties.

Dotted Line: You were initially interested in Art Center at Night for a course in Flash animation?
Evans: Yes, but while looking through the catalog, I saw a listing for Introductory to Documentary Filmmaking with Gabor Kalman. I had long wanted to make a documentary about my husband’s color blindness, and how it influenced him as a musician, and the class seemed like a great opportunity to actually get it made, so I signed up.

Dotted Line: You decided to shoot the film in a pretty unconventional way.
Evans: Right, on the first day of class, everybody shared their project concepts. My classmates liked my idea, but they were a bit nervous when I announced I was going to shoot it entirely on a Flip camera. But I stuck to my decision, and it ended up being the right one. The footage from the Flip not only looked great, but the camera’s small size meant I could take it anywhere.

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Meet Ronald J. Llanos

Metro’s Exposition Line connecting downtown to Culver City (and eventually Santa Monica) may not be up and running yet, but when it is, it’ll be impossible to miss the work of Illustration alum and Art Center at Night instructor Ronald J. Llanos.

Metro has commissioned the Art Center alum and Art Center at Night instructor to create Ephemeral Views: A Visual Essay for its light rail station being constructed at Western Avenue, and the 24 mosaic panels (each one standing 8’ x 3’) that comprise the work are being created right now.

Much of Llanos work captures the everyday moments of life in the greater Los Angeles area—whether it’s a visual documentation of downtown’s Toy District or an homage to Manet at Hot Dog on a Stick—so it’s not surprising that his Expo Line work inspired by the vibrant characters that make up the city’s street life.

Llanos work has been shown at Wax Poetic, Black Maria Gallery and Ghettogloss and he was the featured artist in Draw the Line, a recent group show at Cactus Gallery in Eagle Rock. We caught up with him to ask him about his favorite artists and teaching at Art Center at Night.

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Something Made Up This Way Comes

Ah, summer, that time of year when research-led design turns to rocket scientists, parking lots, quantum physics and the formation of cults.

Daniel Salomon, Ingrid Hora and MDP students at a desert shoot for their "Suspension of Disbelief" project

These summer days have been far from lazy for Art Center’s Graduate Media Design Program (MDP), whose students, faculty and researchers-in-residence have been knee-deep in off-kilter research projects for the past 13 weeks. Their findings will be unveiled at “In/Conclusions: Results from the MDP Research Residencies,” tomorrow, Wednesday, August 18 at 1:30 pm in the Wind Tunnel Gallery (RSVP here).

“In/Conclusions” is just one of several events surrounding a newly-launched bi-annual program designed to identify and explore ideas that emerge from recent MDP faculty and student work. A related exhibition, Made Up, and panels, screenings and readings are also scheduled for the fall and spring, and all the activities will be captured in a publication released in Summer 2011.

For its inaugural year, MDP chose the theme Made Up, which it describes as a consideration of “the relevance of speculation, role playing, idealism, skepticism, and simple lying as instruments or objects of the design process.” This year’s researchers-in-residence—Sascha Pohflepp and duo Ingrid Hora and Daniel Salomon—were chosen by a jury made up of MDP faculty Sean Donahue and Ben Hooker; Fiona Raby, principal of design practice Dunne & Raby; and science-fiction author, WIRED columnist and former Art Center Visionary-in-Residence Bruce Sterling.

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