It’s pretty quiet on campus here today after a whirlwind few weeks leading up to the end of Spring Term and Saturday’s Graduation.
Enjoy this slideshow of images from Thursday night’s Grad Show Preview, featuring work of graduating students:
The following post, written by faculty member Phil van Allen, is reprinted from his blog.
View Slideshow
Recently a few of my students from the Media Design Program at Art Center and I created an interactive video installation for the 10th anniversary of the Architecture+Design Museum.
The A+D is a growing institution in the Los Angeles area, and they were having a party for their board and major donors. Two weeks before the event I got a call from museum supporter Garson Yu owner of yU+co, asking to help out in a volunteer effort to create something to show the history of the museum. By the time I got some students to sign up, and an approach approved, we had just one week to make the entire project.
The project consists of six plywood panels mounted to the wall, with separate slideshows running on each panel. Because the panels are different distances from the wall, there’s a dimensional effect created.
The idea was to break the normal flat rectangle of projection and create an installation that felt more like a physical part of the space. In addition to the randomly playing slideshows on each panel, we created a simple interactive feature so if someone walked up to the wall, a flourish of motion graphics would appear unifying all the panels, then fading into a photo of the front of the museum spread across several panels.
The project was a collaborative design and build between myself and three students: Brooklyn Brown, Manny Darden and Rubina Ramchandani. The design approach was partially inspired by some of Manny’s thesis work.
For software, we used my NETLab Toolkit with a new SlideShow widget I developed that runs each of the slideshows - the entire project has no ActionScript, using only the toolkit widgets. Images were placed in folders, and each SlideShow widget played a set of images from these folders in a random order. Two projectors were used to get a wider display (2500 pixels), and these were fed by a video splitter out of a MacBook Pro (this way the Flash movie played across both projectors). An Infrared proximity sensor was used to detect someone in front of the wall, and this started the playback of five different video streams across the different panels.
Tomorrow is Spring Term 2011 graduation!
Join us as we welcome the newest graduates into the Art Center family, and check out the work of graduating students afterward at Graduation Show.
Can’t join us at Hillside Campus tomorrow? Watch our live online webcast.
After graduation, check out the work of the newest Art Center graduates at Graduation Show from 6 to 9 p.m. at Hillside Campus.
Spring 2011 Graduation
Saturday, April 23, 4 p.m. PST
Hillside Campus
Two recent alums from Art Center’s Photography and Imaging Department, Christie Hemm and Maeghan Henry, are among eight artists who recently completed the fifth annual Jeunes Talents photography program. This cultural tourism initiative combines tourism and the arts, photography and real-life experience, travel and inspiration, and American and French sensibilities to show life in France today.
Neither Hemm nor Henry had been to France before the program. Watch the videos below to hear their thoughts on their upcoming adventures:
Be sure to follow along with Christie, Magehan and the other artists at Jeunes Talents.
Brooke Woosley at work in her booth at the Salone Satellite
The New York Times has a great article on last week’s International Furniture Fair in Milan, where several Art Center students and alumni were exhibiting their work.
For up-and-coming designers, “Milan is something else: a gateway to an international reputation, the place where a prototype might be snapped up for production, or a chat at Bar Basso (the watering hole that is to ambitious designers what Les Deux Magots was to expatriate writers in Paris) might lead to a job in a renowned studio. Mixing with the throngs of manufacturers, distributors and buyers are legions of young designers who aspire to global recognition and the important money that goes with it.”
The article highlights alumna Brooke Woosley, who was at the fair exhibiting two designs: Chloros, a faceted display case and Bundle, a dangling lamp.
From the article:
By noon on the fair’s opening day, Ms. Woosley had already begun to regret her brown leather boots with their cruel wooden soles. In 2007, she had helped design the booth at the Satellite occupied by her classmates at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. This was her second trip to the fair. Had she forgotten that sensible shoes, even in this capital of style, aren’t a fashion crime, but preventative therapy? And speaking of discomfort, what was she planning to do if someone ordered, say, 100 Chloros?
View student designs on display at the fair, and check out additional coverage on the fair and Art Center students exhibiting designs there:
Scientific advances in recent decades have meant that HIV and AIDS are no longer a death sentence. People with AIDS are living longer today than ever before, and by 2015 half the people in the U.S. with HIV or AIDS will be 50 or older.
© 2011 Art Center College of Design/Dlugolecki Photography (“The Greying of AIDS Exhibition”)
A current Illustration Department/Designmatters student project is underway examining the graying of AIDS. It is being conducted as a corollary to the current Williamson exhibition, Graphic Intervention, and is on display through Sunday.
The Pasadena Weekly has a wonderful article today on the topic. Carl Kozlowski writes:
In an attempt to educate the public about this increasingly important issue for the nation’s senior community, Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design presents “The Graying of AIDS Exhibition: Off the Wall,” part of the larger “Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters” exhibit at the college’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery through Sunday.
“Our project tries to address ageism and living with HIV/AIDS among older adults,” says Brian Rea, an instructor with the Art Center’s illustration department who teaches the school’s Off the Wall installation-art course. “Often they’re seen as statistics, so the students really took it upon themselves to address that, and take the most powerful things being said and make them the most accessible for those who might view the piece.”
Rea first learned of the project after being approached by Art Center’s Educational Department, which aligns students and faculty with outside organizations to produce art and design that can affect social change. Rea’s Off the Wall course, housed in the Illustration Department, teaches experimental image-making and installation work as they apply to illustration and design.
Read more: The Graying of AIDS: Art Center exhibit focuses on America’s largest group of people living with HIV/AIDS
© Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design
Did you know that Art Center was recently ranked among the “Top 100 Social Media Colleges” by StudentAdvisor.com, a subsidiary of The Washington Post, in recognition of our “mastery of public social media methods, tools and websites”?
It’s true! Check us out for yourself:
StudentAdvisor is awarding a $1,000 scholarship each hour for 24 hours on April 26! Submit a review of your college by April 26 for a chance to win! Share your thoughts about Art Center to enter the contest: http://www.studentadvisor.com/decision-day-scholarships.
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.
© Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design
Art Center, we’re already halfway through Week 14, and you know what that means—tons of events culminating in Graduation on Saturday.
Rest up and prepare for:
It’s a jam-packed few days. But don’t worry—there’s still time to sneak in a nap before the fun begins!
Photo by Lara Warren
Have you ever wondered about Art Center at Night (ACN), the College’s continuing studies program? Then check out Experience Art Center at Night, underway at South Campus through Wednesday.
A variety of classes are open to the public tonight and tomorrow night from 7 to 9 p.m. Stop by a class, sit in on critiques and student presentations, view student work, take a self-guided tour of South Campus, ask questions and register for Summer Term classes.
ACN offers a variety of courses, short workshops and seminars to help you update your skills, polish your portfolio or recharge your creative energy.
New ACN courses include The Ultimate Photo-Shoot Guide for Photographers and Designers; Create and Publish Content for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone; and Transpor-Tainment. “Summer-only” offerings include Manufacturing Techniques; Shoes: Fact and Fantasy; Neoimpressionism: Painting the Landscape; and Animal Sketching.
Courses begin May 16, and registration is now open. Check it out—there is something for everyone at ACN.