Category Archives: MDP

Meet Julia Tsao

Just what is Media Design?

Graduate Media Design student Julia Tsao defines it as “an opportunity space for designers to grapple with the existing elements in the world—whether those elements be tangible, intangible, digital, physical, cultural, social—and out of which create something new, exciting and sometimes confusing. It’s making the old feel new, and the new feel familiar, yet remarkable.”

Read more about Julia and her experiences studying Media Design at Art Center in this great interview.

Art Center Earthquake Project Showcased at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

LA HAS FAULTS, PHASE 1 (Sean Donahue, Graduate Media Design Faculty)

The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook and the short film Preparedness Now, developed at Art Center as part of The Los Angeles Earthquake: Get Ready project, will be showcased in Cooper-Hewitt’s 2010 National Design Triennial, opening Friday. Art Center students, faculty, alumni and artists, in partnership with leading scientists and community experts, generated new research and visual communication tools about seismic safety as part of this Designmatters-led project. The project has become a national and international example of the power of design thinking applied to disaster preparedness.

“When we initiated the research phase for Get Ready, we were coping with the aftermath and systemic disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina, and seeking to understand how we could use the art and design expertise of our community as a catalyst for resiliency in our own backyard,” said Mariana Amatullo, vice president and director of Designmatters, the College’s social impact educational initiative. “We wanted to provoke a conversation about preparedness and rally public attention around it. Today, we look back at this project that has engaged so many of our students, faculty, alumni and a multidisciplinary consortia of partners nationally through Designmatters with a great sense of accomplishment. The conversation we started keeps resonating with the same sense of urgency and relevance as before.”

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4 Hours Solid: Intimidating Title, Illuminating Event

Dubbed “the event with the intimidating title” by its organizers, the first annual 4 Hours Solid took place on April 21 at Art Center’s South Campus and marked the first time the College  specifically showcased work and ideas from its four graduate programs—Graduate Art, Broadcast Cinema, Industrial Design (GradID) and Media Design (MDP).

Over 300 people attended the evening event, which included a panel discussion, exhibitions of recent student theses and work, student film screenings and a reception.

For the students showing their work, the evening provided a welcome opportunity to get feedback on their projects.

MDP student Haemi Yoon, who presented her thesis project that explores the down-time of everyday electronic objects, said she was surprised by the questions visitors asked her. “I thought people wouldn’t understand the project, but they totally got it,” said Yoon. “People asked me, ‘What do you think a future object will look like?’ and ‘Do you think these objects should have personalities?’ It was a great dialogue.” Continue reading →

Dressing for Access

Ever felt that your computer and iPhone don’t keep you as connected to Facebook as you’d like? You’re in luck.

Graduate Media Design alum Jennifer Darmour has created hot-wired garments that can “poke” a friend, “accept” a friend request and receive notification alerts—all from the comfort of your clothing.

From InventorSpot.com: “In the development genre of ‘gesture’ technology, Seattle designer Jennifer Darmour gives a whole new meaning to ‘good vibrations.’”

Read more: Wearable Social Networks and at Jennifer’s site, Electricfoxy


Countdown to 4 Hours Solid

Join us Wednesday evening for 4 Hours Solid, an evening of work and ideas from Art Center’s graduate programs. Art Center’s Art, Broadcast Cinema, Industrial Design and Media Design departments will offer four jam-packed hours of exhibitions, screenings, discussions and presentations.

The event will feature “Screen/Culture,” a panel discussion of the ubiquity of screens in our everyday lives and their impact on makers of design, art and film. Panelists include Scott Watson, chief technology officer of Walt Disney Imagineering R&D; Kevin Mack, artist and Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor of What Dreams May Come; Mackenzie Wark, chair of culture and media at Eugene Lang College and author of Gamer Theory and Hacker Manifesto; and Anne Bray, founding director of Freewaves, a global arts organization dedicated to collecting and connecting innovative and culturally relevant independent new media.

The free event will offer an array of programming throughout the evening along with food from the Flying Pig Truck, Grilled Cheese Truck and Coolhaus. Yum! Find out more at the 4 Hours Solid Facebook page. See you there!

4 Hours Solid
Wednesday, April 21, 6-10 pm
South Campus

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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Philip van Allen Podcast on the New Ecology of Things

The design mind On Air blog has a new podcast of an interview with Art Center’s Phil van Allen, Graduate Media Design professor and director of the New Ecology of Things Lab.

Chris Sallquist writes: “Van Allen suggests that innovation not only means meeting customer needs by cultivating ideas, but he translates the activity of innovating to actually inventing things and new medias. Van Allen also stresses that holding an actual tangible object inspires and enables designers to ‘re-think the whole communication process.’”

Check it out: The New Ecology of Things