Category Archives: General Interest

From muscle machines to dinosaur skulls: Art Center’s March 2014 alumni notes

It’s that time of month again. Time, that is, to catch up on the creative undertakings Art Center’s talented diaspora of alums have been plotting, planning, pitching, prototyping, publishing, publicizing, producing and plying. And that’s just the p’s.

Dive into the following digest of alumni accomplishments and works-in-progress. And for those alums among us, be sure to clue us in on your own news and notes for inclusion in our next dispatch. We don’t want to miss anything. This is Art Center, after all. And we’re nothing if not completists.

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Creative disruption: Image strategists on photography’s new frontier

CicLAvia

Photographs by Annenberg Apprentice Dave Koga are part of Our Story, a digital visual narrative he curated in collaboration with CicLAvia.

“The advent of new technologies and a global population consumed by social media have turned photography on its head,” says Dennis Keeley, chair of Art Center’s Photography and Imaging Department. “The profession now demands a daunting versatility for survival—including skills in entrepreneurship, computational competency and critical thinking. Image-making now extends well beyond the traditionally constructed photograph to more immediate and interconnected processes. These contemporary practices and ideas utilize art, science and communications, and demand an intellectual flexibility, collaborative spirit, and a willingness to engage the world with strategy.”

To prepare photography students to meet the demands of this rapidly changing profession, Keeley and his colleagues developed a pilot class this Spring, Creative Disruption: Beyond the Classroom. Co-led by Everard Williams, Ann Cutting and Elisa Callow, the class embeds students in local nonprofits where they’re given a creative challenge and work in collaboration with the partner organization to tackle that challenge.

The class is part of an Art Center study, funded by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, investigating and testing models for the future of photographic education.

Read on to learn about our first two Annenberg Apprentices, and their innovative work with two community-based organizations, CicLAvia and the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.

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Expand your mind without emptying your wallet

Glitter art on view at Jones Coffee Roasters. Photo: Teri Bond

Glitter art on view at Jones Coffee Roasters. Photo: Teri Bond

It’s the last few weeks of the term, and your top priorities are probably work, sleep and the next cup of coffee. But what about re-charging your creative batteries?

Art Center is nestled within one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial environments in the world. But be honest: When was the last time you pried yourself away from your projects and prototypes to find inspiration among Los Angeles’ vast creative riches?

We ask you this not to taunt or torment you about artistic opportunities missed. Really we’re here to simply offer you some incentive to take a break from your creative toils to remind yourself that great art and design is not created in a vacuum. Or a wind tunnel, post office or hillside haven.  It requires stimulation. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with the suggestions below.

Try the hidden gem on Fairfax, Family, which is stocked with a unique selection of art books, prints and zines you won’t find at chain retail stores. Be sure to check out the mini art gallery in the back. Just a few yards away is the Supreme store, where you’ll spend less time shopping than hanging out or taking advantage of the indoor skate ramp. You might even run into Tyler, The Creator.

Closer to campus, you can get the best-of your much-needed coffee at Jones Coffee Roasters, where you may run into Art Center chairs or faculty. The open space is a great studying spot, and there is always interesting art on the walls.

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Inside ‘In Particular:’ Sarah Magladry’s installation in the Fine Art Gallery

This creative manifesto is part of a series of first-person pieces by Fine Art students reflecting on the ideas informing their work. Each post will feature the artist whose work is currently rotating through the Undergraduate Fine Art Student Gallery, at the Hillside Campus. This week Sarah Magladry explores the inspiration behind her exhibit, “In Particular.”

“Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or, more likely, to be corrected.” – Richard Feynman

Dissection is a crucial element in my practice. The minute details ignite the story. It’s a process of deduction, examination and reappropriation. I am never finished searching for what I am attracted to in an image and am typically drawn to the unexpected, the failed or the perverse. It is these details I relish that make the final viewing. There is an embracing of aberrations: a celebration of them. A self-reflective nature that allows the inadvertent to take on more than perhaps what the piece originally intended to do. The fragmentation of each piece allows them to converse with one another. Each element feeds upon the next, creating a carousel of information more thorough and more complex with the progression of each concept.

Products become just as much a narrative of the image-maker as the image itself.

And the narrative is as the quote suggests… we are in constant entropy. And yet it is this degree of disorder and uncertainty that allows for metamorphosis.

Check out these new student videos from our stellar Myspace occupiers

Roman Vargas, Photography and Imaging – second round from Art Center College of Design on Myspace.

Shortly after the Spring 2014 term passed its halfway point, our participating students (Myspacers?) produced a new set of videos tracking their progress on the path toward creative completion.

Starting a project is never easy. And finishing it is, arguably, even harder. But let’s not underestimate the challenges involved in persisting through the obstacle course of roadblocks artists often face once they’re deep enough into a project that starting over isn’t an option, and the finish line isn’t yet in sight.

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Peering into the future of 3D printing: Q&A with Graduate Industrial Design Chair, Andy Ogden

Printing_with_a_3D_printer_at_Makers_Party_Bangalore_2013_11

The Dotted Line: What can 3D printing technology do?

Andy Ogden: The technology can make a solid 3D ( material)  model (output) of anything one can imagine in a 3D modeling program—from cookies, to doorstops to rocket engine tooling.
These machines churn out working prototypes (not just models) made from solid usable parts. This technology is especially valuable for making models, mockups and prototypes that do not require the time or labor traditionally necessary to achieve a similar result.

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Go ahead and touch the INFINITE, a student sculpture in cold steel and concrete.

Infinite by Nicole Shara

This creative manifesto is part of a series of first-person pieces by Fine Art students reflecting on the ideas informing their work. Each post will feature the artist whose work is currently rotating through the Undergraduate Fine Art Student Gallery, at the Hillside Campus. This week, Nicole Shara explores the intersection of identity and language in her new sculptural work, INFINITE (2014).

We are skewed by ego and commodity, consumed by that which is cryptic: media and language, science and truth. The idea that our role on this planet is perpetual or somehow divine is completely absurd. By taking advantage of the preexisting structure of language, I mock subjects like mortality. I repurpose words by breaking them down into two parts; they become self-cancelling creating a new awareness of the paradoxical whole. Combined with materials that physically relate to the word’s contradictory nature, a new enigma is born.

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Of one minute wonders and sustainable paper planes: February’s Art Center alumni notes

Hiroshi Sugimoto's design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

From art installations inspired by NASA’S space oddities to a self-styled museum in Japan: Art Center alums have been busy in February. Read on for more details about last month’s alumni accomplishments, including Designmatters’ new alumni engagement efforts.

News

Dan Goods GRPK 02 was featured in a story on Yahoo News about his work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  Yahoo

Satyendra Pakhalé PROD 94 discussed his design process and curiosity in a One Minute Wonder video. One Minute Wonder

Hiroshi Sugimoto PHOT 74 has announced plans to design and build a new museum for his work, the Odawara Art Foundation, which will be located in Odawara Japan. Wall Street Journal Blog

Jennie Warren PHOT 05 collaborated with Welsh singer Cate Le Bon and illustrator Erin Althea and on a series of promotional images for Cate’s upcoming tour. Erin Althea’s Blog

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SXSW Interactive 2014 wrap-up: Chelsea Clinton, Neil Young and Toms.com

Chelsea Clinton at SXSW Interactive 2014

Chelsea Clinton at SXSW Interactive 2014

The final day of SXSW Interactive has now taken on a different cast; in light of the tragic car crash that claimed two festival-goers’ lives and injured many more. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of those victims.

Even though the festival was technically winding down; passion, engagement and insight revved high throughout the day’s panels and presentations. The conference had successfully lived up to its interactive title. Many themes in the 2014 program were plucked from a virtual suggestion box, including this year’s focus on tech’s role in social change, culminating with Chelsea Clinton’s galvanizing closing keynote address (more on that later). In fact, all of the events we attended on that final day—from presentations by TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie—were informed, either directly or indirectly, by a socially conscious approach to technological innovation.

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