Category Archives: MDP

Required reading: Digital_Humanities, by Media Design Practices Chair Anne Burdick

burdickWhat are the digital humanities? That’s the question posed in a new scholarly book co-authored by Anne Burdick, chair of the Graduate Media Design Department. And judging by the critical response—from movers and shakers in the field like Lev Manovich, Dan Cohen and Alan Liu—it’s a question many want answered.

In Digital_Humanities (MIT Press), Burdick—along with metaLAB (at) Harvard’s Jeffrey Schnapp and UCLA’s Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld and Todd Presner—explores geospatial analysis, data mining, corpus linguistics and other non-traditional modes of humanistic inquiry. Writing for Leonardo Reviews, media artist and scholar Dene Grigar urges everyone to read Digital_Humanities, no matter their academic discipline, as it describes an area of research that has “the potential of transforming higher education.” And in the Italian edition of WIRED, Matteo “Mister Bit” Bittanti names the book one of his best of 2012 and recommends that every Italian university student add it to their reading list. A free Open Access edition of the book is available at the MIT Press website.

This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Dot magazine. Check out Dot online for more news of alumni and faculty exhibitions, products, books, films and social impact.

Step in to the shoes of homeless youth with Media Design Practices

 

Performing their song, "The Road I Walk," at the gallery are from left, Marlon "Mr. Stranger," Kevin "Lil' Krazy aka Ghetto Boy" and Lorenzo "Mr. L.A."

Performing their song, “The Road I Walk,” at the gallery are from left, Marlon “Mr. Stranger,” Kevin “Lil’ Krazy aka Ghetto Boy” and Lorenzo “Mr. L.A.”

The road I walk every day, it’s no game,

I try to make my way.

 People see what they want to see.  

But that person is not me. 

Look at me, look at me…

I might surprise you. 

Who am I?…

Lyrics by Kevin Lil’ Krazy aka Ghetto Boy from the song The Road I Walk

The assignment for the first term Graduate Media Design Practices Field students was to use design to tell a story that reframes preconceived ideas of homelessness. One of the results was a powerful collaboration that asks viewers to “step into my shoes” to explore homelessness through stories told by youth who have been there.

In partnership with Jovenes, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides housing and support services for homeless youth in Boyle Heights, three Art Center student teams got to work.

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Entering the Matrix with Media Design Practices’ dialectical bus tour

The data center at One Wilshire

The data center at One Wilshire

“How do I talk about infrastructure?” Norman Klein wonders aloud as Media Design Practices’ annual dialectical bus tour of Los Angeles gets underway on a sweltering Friday morning in September. This annual odyssey through the pivotal places informing the city’s past, present and future has become a rite of passage for students pursuing a masters degree in Art Center’s forward-thinking program exploring the subtextual ideas at the intersection of design, social impact and culture.

Norman Klein

Norman Klein

Klein, a media and urban theorist who divides his time teaching classes on the relationship between Los Angeles, history and forgetting at Art Center and CalArts, has been presiding over this event since its inception some ten years ago. The tour takes its name from the original concept, which placed him dialogue with then MDP faculty-member Peter Lunefeld, who is now a professor in UCLA’s Design/Media Arts department.  That lively meeting of the minds then formed the basis for the tours future pairings with Klein acting as the constant.

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Culmination celebration: Summer 2013 graduation events

Graduation at Art Center

With the all-nighter intensity of finals safely in the rear-view mirror, excitement mounts as Summer Term 2013 graduation week gets underway. Here’s an overview of the campus agenda, which teems with an array of culminating events showcasing the handiwork of the creative talent pool about to flow into the marketplace.

Thursday, August 15

Industry leaders and professionals, employers, corporate partners, donors and alumni will get the first look at the Summer Term’s graduating artists and designers at this year’s invitation-only Graduation Show Preview. The show will feature student projects from major fields of study at Art Center, including Advertising, Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Film, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography and Imaging, Product Design, Transportation Design, Graduate Industrial Design and Graduate Media Design Practices.

Graduation Show Preview will be held at Hillside Campus from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m., with a private reception hosted by Alumni Relations immediately following.

From 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., Graduate Media Design Practices will host a lab research discussion followed by an exhibition and reception, from 5 to10 pm, in honor of this term’s cohort of graduates, which includes the program’s first Field Track students. These events take place on South Campus (950 Raymond) and are open to the public.

Saturday, August 17

Join us in the Sculpture Garden at Hillside Campus from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. for our graduation ceremony. Cross-disciplinary faculty member and alum, Richard Keyes — who teaches popular classes in color theory, design principles and narrative structure — will deliver the commencement address. We will also hear from valedictorian and Environmental Design student, Rosa Tsaihua Lee and present the Art Center Student Leadership Award to Photography and Imaging student, Kate Marie Buntsma.

After the ceremony, Graduation Show opens to the public from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., where work by the newest Art Center graduates will be on display. In addition to Hillside Campus activities, Graduate Art and Graduate Media Design Practices will host  a Graduation Show at South Campus from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m.

Free valet parking will be provided at the Hillside Campus from 6 – 10 p.m.  Self-parking will be available at South Campus throughout the evening.

Congratulations to our Summer Term 2013 graduates!

Design gurus from Art Center, Facebook and MySpace share trade secrets on the past, present and future of web design

Marshall Rake, Maria Giudice and John Chambers at 3X3

Marshall Rake, Maria Giudice and John Chambers at 3X3. Photo by Chuck Spangler.

Ask a group of web designers to describe the state of internet aesthetics and you’re likely to get as many answers as there are designers. There are few working environments more fluid than the digital domain, a kind of primordial soup where new innovations and ideas constantly bubble up, creating a rapidly evolving field where the rules of engagement are constantly shifting.

However, the most recent installment of Art Center’s 3X3 lecture series, Web Design: Past, Present and Future (held on the evening of June 26 at the College’s Hillside campus) made some major strides toward delivering a clear picture of how to best navigate and succeed in this nebulous arena.  The event featured a trio of design luminaries — Art Center faculty member John Chambers, Facebook Director of Product Design, Maria Giudice and MySpace Creative Director (and Art Center alum) Marshall Rake – each of whom brought an array of  diverse professional experiences to bear on a specific phase of the state of the art of web design.

Chambers kicked off the proceedings by offering a longitudinal perspective of digital design, from its primitive beginnings (back in the 1980’s) through its rough infancy (when nobody believed it would survive) to the restless adolescent it has become today. The popular web design instructor harkened back to a time when designers had very few tools with which to ply their trade beyond simple HTML code, which, he pointed out, remains the through-line connecting the web’s earliest iterations and the complex motion-graphics enabled sites of today.

Maria Giudice then took the stage, donning a headset and unleashing a dynamic presentation that could have easily been mistaken for a TED Talk on the rise of web design in tech circles. (That’s no coincidence given that she’s no stranger to the TED stage).  Guidice described her career trajectory, which began in print, where she redesigned the PacBell yellow pages before migrating to the web and launching her own design firm, Hot Studio, which she recently sold to Facebook, where she now works as the social network’s design guru.

Giudice strongly emphasized the notion that we’re in the midst of a tectonic shift, from an entrepreneurial culture centered on engineering expertise to one driven by design innovation. “When Facebook acquired us, it was a declaration that designers have value too,” said Giudice. “Engineers used to have all the currency. But companies are making an investment in design. I think we’re going to see the rise of the DEO – leadership by design. They’re going to be the future leaders of companies. You have to think and act like a designer to unlock innovation.”

Graphic Design alum Marshall Rake followed Giudice and echoed some of her thoughts about how designers must respond to the explosion of content generation by taking a curatorial approach to their web presence (think: Pinterest). He also emphasized the idea that the future of web design has yet to be invented and encouraged aspiring designers to experiment and expand upon what’s already been created.

“On the web your creations are always on the brink of being discovered,” said Rake. “Three things to think about with every web design challenge are how to simplify, organize and contextualize information.” Following his brief, high-decibel video montage of some of the recent work he’s done for MySpace, Rake ended the evening with an imperative to future designers: “We have a crazy opportunity in front of us,” he insisted, as a mischievous smile spread across his face. “The web is a place we can experiment because so much stuff doesn’t exist yet. It’s our job to go out there and detonate.”

“Design for UNICEF” Showcase in New York

Media Design Practices Grad Students present Uganda projects March 28

 

 

Art Center Media Design Practices graduate students, in collaboration with the College’s Designmatters social impact department, are in New York this week, showcasing groundbreaking projects that feature insights from design research and prototypes created at the UNICEF Innovation Lab in Kampala, Uganda. The event is part of “Design for UNICEF” on Thurs., March 28, 2013 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the UNICEF House, located in the Danny Kaye Visitors Centre at the United Nations.

The seven students’ projects, aimed at addressing issues of sustainability, access and equity, grew out of a partnership between Art Center’s MDP/Field track graduate program and the UNICEF Innovation Lab. Faculty members Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Sean Donahue and anthropologist Elizabeth Chin head up the team. The student cohort — Jeff Hall, Maria Lamadrid, Judy Toretti, Betsy Kalven, Elizabeth Gin, Jacob Brancsi and An Mina — made multiple visits to Uganda and immersed itself in a broad range of issues challenging the country’s youth.

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Explore ‘Spaces In-Between’ before Sunday

“Spaces In-Between,” an interactive exhibition organized by Media Design Practices faculty member Sean Donahue, will close Sunday.

The exhibition, on display at the Hollywood WUHO project space, is a series of apparatus, temporaries, places, spaces and conversations intended to advance broader participation in community discourse.

“It’s these in-between spaces that my practice aspires to intervene and explore different trajectories,” Donahue told KCET of the project.

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Celebrate the Holidays with the Media Design Program

Art Center’s Media Design Program is ringing in the season with Cheers, a student work-in-progress show featuring thesis projects, concept year individual projects and development year installations.

The show takes place next Friday, December 16, 4:30-6:30 p.m. in South Campus‘ Wind Tunnel Gallery. No RSVP is necessary; just be prepared to “see, eat, drink and be merry.”

Interested in learning more? Read previous stories on Art Center’s Media Design Program.

Media Design Student Reaches Into Another Dimension

Media Design Program student Jayne Vidheecharoan working on her thesis project "Portals."

You’ve heard of Art Center students reaching across disciplines with their work. But how about reaching across space and time?

That’s what Media Design Program student Jayne Vidheecharoen has set out to do with Portals, her thesis project that combines chroma key compositing technology (aka “greenscreen”), Google Street Maps and a pair of “black magic boxes” to create a space where multiple users can interact with real and virtual objects across the Internet.

Vidheecharoen recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to “level up” her project, where she describes her inspiration for her project:

Lately, people have been getting pretty excited about the idea of interacting with computers by touching screens or gesturing in front of them. But I’ve been wondering, what if you could interact with them by getting under, inside, or behind the screen instead?

According to her project’s blog, Vidheecharoen is deep in the midst of writing the first draft of her thesis paper. We’ll give her some time to finish her paper, but you can be sure we’ll be reaching across space and time to follow up with her on this fascinating project.

When Apple Talks iPhone, the World Listens

Recent Graphic Design graduate Megan Potter presents her iPad magazine "Abyss."

Whether they’re augmenting reality, designing interactive magazines and newspapers, or creating apps that blur the distinction between games and art, many of Art Center’s students and alumni will be paying close attention to Apple’s iPhone announcement this morning.

What changes are in store for the ubiquitous smartphone? Rumors swirling around the Internet suggest Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook will unveil everything from a larger screen size to voice control software to compatibility with the latest LTE networks.

Regardless of what surprises emerge from Cupertino during today’s event, one things for certain: people will notice.

What are you hoping to see from Apple today?

And for those of you who can’t wait for today’s announcement, there’s a video after the break to keep you busy until 10 a.m. rolls around.

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