Category Archives: MDP

In Case You Missed It

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

  • Cardwell Jimmerson show of work by Art Center alum and former faculty member Vincent Robbins—on display through Sept. 3— is another of the gallery’s great exercises in expansionist art history. L.A. Times Culture Monster

    Work by Vincent Robbins

  • Late Art Center alum and faculty member John Altoon will have works on display at Garboushian Gallery exhibit celebrating Armenian contemporary artists. Asbarez Post
  • Transportation Design alumnus Gabriel Wartofsky begins Kickstarter campaign for folding e-bike. Sustainable Business Oregon
  • Art Center partner, Bernhardt Design president Jerry Helling, talks about working with Art Center students to design furniture. New York Times
  • Alumna and faculty member Diana Thater’s Peonies, a nine-monitor videowall, now on view at the Wexner Center. Artdaily.org
  • Art Center’s “Visionary in Residence” Bruce Sterling creates his own augmented reality. Wired

Grad Media Design Work on Display at MoMA

Beyond the Fold, by Sebastian Bettencourt

Two Graduate Media Design projects are included in Paola Antonelli’s most recent exhibition, Talk to Me, now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They are Sebastian Bettencourt’s thesis project, Beyond the Fold; and Dustin York, Ting-Yuin Chien, Scott Liao and Jae Kim’s class project, The Messenger.

Also, new Grad Media alum Hoon Oh and current student Jisu Choi just completed a project at Synn Lab based on Hoon’s thesis work of interactive hybrid digital/physical sports.

Great work, everyone!

MDP Showcased in Little Tokyo Design Week

Art Center’s Graduate Media Design (MDP) program will be among the international designers, architects, filmmakers, corporations and other educational institutions exploring the “New Urban Lifestyle” as part of Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City (LTDW) this week. LTDW celebrates the power and energy of cutting-edge design and technology emerging from Japan and its relation to current trends materializing in Los Angeles.

“We look forward to participating alongside world class designers, artists and creative thinkers and engaging the public in an exciting dialogue about the future of our cities and the future of design,” says MDP Chair Ann Burdick.

Taking place July 14 through 17, the free, four-day public festival will span the geographic breadth of downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district with a series of museum exhibitions, student installations, public happenings and temporary galleries in the form of shipping containers placed throughout the public plazas of Little Tokyo. Under the auspices of the MDP program, the College will produce three separate projects for LTDW exploring how design and technology will shape lives in the cities of the future.

“Grad Media Design emphasizes an approach that responds to issues without the assumption of a particular type or mode of outcome and, similarly, to resist the adaptation of common assumptions for topics of technological or social concern,” says Tim Durfee, core faculty and director of amp: Projects in Media and Architecture within the MDP program. “This ethic is in evidence for both our PLAN C installation and Metropolis of Me symposium, in which we approach familiar topics from somewhat novel directions in order to reveal overlooked opportunities or implications.”

There are three projects being produced by Grad Media Design for LTDW.

Continue reading →

MDP Grads Help Define Future of Mobile

Alex Braidwood's Synthetic Din

The L.A. Times Hero Complex blog has a great piece on the evolution of mobile apps, and even better—it features the thesis projects from recent Graduate Media Design grads Alex Braidwood and Scott Liao!

From the article:

Media artists such as Alex Braidwood, 32, are in fact harnessing smart devices as the means to a more aesthetically nuanced end. The Art Center College of Design graduate programmed the iPhone’s built-in camera to function as a sensor that detects blue, red and yellow tones. The Synesthetic Din program then translates the colors into an ever-shifting electronic composition that plays into a user’s ear buds as he or she walks down the street.

“To me the most interesting things about smart phones and iPads is that they have all these capabilities that are just waiting to be glued together in new ways,” says Braidwood. “I like turning these devices into little performance machines.”

Braidwood, who last month earned his master of fine arts in Media Design, notes, “Most apps are commodities that people get either because it helps them do something or it’s some kind of novelty game. But there’s this space in the middle where it’s not about guiding you to the best sushi restaurant in town but more about helping you wander around and discover something new that you did not see or hear before.”

Art Center graduate Scott Liao has similarly toyed with the innards of iPad tablets to create what he calls “enriched narrative.” His Anonymous Triangle piece allows viewers to aim a sensor-rigged iPad at projected short films to trigger back-story texts about the various characters. “With current tablet technologies,” says Liao, 27, “we have the chance to change our viewing behavior from passive to active.”

Read more: Apps evolution: A new wave of digital artists is adding whimsy to mobile gaming

4 Hours Solid: April 20


Art Center’s newest tradition is back for its second year. Join us for 4 Hours Solid, an annual showcase of work and ideas from Art Center’s graduate programs in Art, Broadcast Cinema, Industrial Design and Media Design. Enjoy four jam-packed hours of exhibitions, screenings, installations, presentations, food trucks and more. The event will be held at South Campus. You won’t want to miss it!

4 Hours Solid
Wednesday, April 20, 6-10 p.m.
South Campus

Readings and Screenings: Lies

Join the Graduate Media Design Department Saturday, Feb. 19, for Readings and Screenings: Lies, at South Campus.

This special evening features an eclectic group of designers, artists and writers for whom writing or other narrative forms operate in a critical dialogue with visual practice. A concluding discussion will be held with Leonardo Bravo of Big City Forum.

Presentations by:

  • Denise Gonzales Crisp, designer, writer
  • Zoe Crosher, artist
  • Alexandra Grant, artist
  • Michael Joyce, author
  • Tom Marble, architect, author
  • Michael Meredith/MOS, architect, filmmaker
  • Keith Mitnick, architect, author
  • Janet Sarbanes, author

Co-presented with Big City Forum

Exhibition: 6-10 p.m.
Readings and screenings: 7-9 p.m.

Event info: http://www.artcenter.edu/mdp/madeup/lies.html
Exhibition info: http://www.artcenter.edu/mdp/madeup/exhibition.html

New Google Projects by MDP Grads

We’ve told you about the Google 5—and we have an update on what our Graduate Media Design alums have been up to over at Google Labs.

Today, Chris Lauritzen and team launched “Map Your Valentine,” which lets you use Google Maps to share a special place with a special someone. It’s been very well received—and it’s not too late to send your special someone one of these customized valentines.

Also today, Jonathan Jarvis and team launched Adroidify, a fun Android mobile application that lets you create custom versions of the Android mascot. Jarvis served as creative lead on the project, and it’s already a huge success.

Check them out—and we’ll keep you updated on what the team is up to.

Made Up: Design’s Fictions at Wind Tunnel Gallery

On Saturday, Jan. 29, Art Center’s Graduate Media Design presented the opening reception for Made Up: Design’s Fictions, showcasing the work of major and emerging international practices that forecast, hypothesize, muse, skylark, role-play, put on airs, freak out or otherwise fake it to produce work that is relevant to our increasingly confusing and accelerated world.

Held in the South Campus wind tunnel gallery, MAKING UP featured a panel discussion with Fiona Raby and Bruce Sterling, two of the world’s most influential voices at the intersection of fiction and design. The panel, led by MDP core faculty Tim Durfee and moderated by MDP Chair Anne Burdick, discussed tactical anachronisms, designing for ambiguous reality, and the re-emergence of speculative practice in the 21st century. It will be moderated by MDP Chair Anne Burdick.

Enjoy the photos below from the event:

Also, check out the video below of the OutRun video game concept car created by Garnet Hertz.

Design’s Flexible Future

More on Saturday’s Made Up: Design’s Fictions show in a lovely story in today’s L.A. Times quoting Tim Durfee and Ann Burdick.

Durfee

From the article: “Preparing students for the unknown is the basis of the program’s curriculum, creating designers who can imagine the unimaginable. Made Up showcases successful works of flexibility and openness to new ideas.

Take, for instance, ‘The Rather Large Array,’ a 50-foot wooden beam that visitors to the former aerodynamics lab will see suspended from a network of PVC support rigging. Some 24 cameras are mounted on the beam itself to collect images from the reception. The images will be projected in real time onto a window in the gallery and later be printed out on the premises, creating a sort of live catalog of the show.

If all that sounds a touch complicated, that’s because it is. But for Durfee, experimenting with structural complexity in the name of philosophical complexity (‘Who we are is not just where we are at the moment’) offers opportunities for growth. In addition to academic tradition, he cites strong interest from the students as inspiration for the project.”

Read more: Design’s flexible future

Making Up This Saturday

Art Center’s Graduate Media Design presents Made Up: Design’s Fictions, showcasing the work of major and emerging international practices that forecast, hypothesize, muse, skylark, role-play, put on airs, freak out or otherwise fake it to produce work that is relevant to our increasingly confusing and accelerated world.

Held in the South Campus wind tunnel gallery (where jets were once tested!), a panel and opening reception, MAKING UP, will be this Saturday, Jan. 29.

MAKING UP will feature Fiona Raby and Bruce Sterling, two of the world’s most influential voices at the intersection of fiction and design, joining MADE UP curator and MDP core faculty Tim Durfee for a panel discussion on tactical anachronisms, designing for ambiguous reality, and the re-emergence of speculative practice in the 21st century. It will be moderated by MDP Chair Anne Burdick.

Organized by Durfee and Burdick, MADE UP is part of a larger initiative to bring emergent themes in the work of the Graduate Media Design Program into dialogue with similar trends in art, architecture and design worldwide.

Made Up: Design’s Fictions
Saturday, Jan. 29
Presentations and discussion, 5-7 p.m.
Exhibition opening reception, 7-10 p.m.

Wind Tunnel Gallery
Art Center South Campus
950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105