RISD

07/14/2017

The RISD Nature Lab has won $280,000 in support from the National Science Foundation EAGER (EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) program to help develop a new bio-design maker space in the Waterman Building. The space will provide an immersive environment for students to engage in hands-on design projects that cultivate a working knowledge of biology and natural systems. The timing is perfect, notes Nature Lab Director Neal Overstrom, since the lab will celebrate its 80th anniversary during the 2017/18 academic year.

Led by the lab’s Biological Programs Designer Jennifer Bissonnette and supported by co-principal investigators Paul Sproll—head of RISD’s Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD) department—and Associate Professor of Interior Architecture Eduardo Duarte, the project will not only provide additional nature-rich spaces in which students can work but also find an avenue for both RISD and K–12 students to engage with the biological sciences beyond the traditional STEM curriculum.

“Ultimately, we are trying to prototype a space with biophilic elements as a cornerstone of design and the study of design,” Overstrom notes. As Bissonnette explains, biophilia is a recently coined term that refers to “our natural affinity for life and lifelike processes around which we evolved as a species.” Think of the hardwired and cross-cultural fears humans have of heights and snakes, for example, which evolved to protect us from harm—or our shared attraction to plants and water.

Click to read more…

Music fills the first-floor studio of the Metcalf Building where a digital design by Sara Al Ahbabi and Shaikha Al Ketbi is being transformed into a colorful textile on RISD’s high-tech Jacquard loom. “I’m in love with this machine,” Al Ahbabi effuses as Al Ketbi squeezes past, her arms loaded with spools of richly colored thread.

Al Ahbabi and Al Ketbi are two of the 15 fellows from the UAE who visited RISD in May and early June as part of the 10-month Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) program. Jointly designed and directed by RISD and the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation in Abu Dhabi, the program selects some of the UAE’s most promising emerging artists in order to help them develop a sustainable artistic practice and potentially prepare to apply to MFA programs across the globe. Once they’re accepted, it then covers their tuition.

“Architecture and design programs in the UAE are very strong, but there seemed to be a need to strengthen fine arts programs, which is why RISD got involved,” explains Professor Anais Missakian 84 TX, head of RISD’s Textiles department and academic program director for SEAF. “The expectation is that alumni of the program will go back to the UAE and drive a community of serious artists—maybe as teachers or maybe by starting arts-related nonprofits.

Now in its fourth year, the program has surpassed expectations in terms of the number of fellows who have gone on to pursue MFAs at top-tier institutions like the Royal College of Art in London, Yale University and RISD. “We’re currently supporting 10 graduate students across the US and the UK, and nine more will be matriculating in the fall,” says SEAF Program Manager Khulood Al Atiyat, who visited RISD for the third time this spring. “SEAF has been an experiment for everyone,” she adds. “It’s so exciting to watch the fellows’ practices expand in response to the experience.”

This two-week visit to the US—which includes workshops and critiques at RISD as well as studio, museum and gallery visits in New York City—is a small component of the 10-month program. A team of RISD faculty members travels to SEAF’s studios in Abu Dhabi four times per year to work directly with fellows, who also complete a series of online seminars administered by Amy Horschak, Associate Director, Graduate Commons. “The online community was created to keep the fellows and faculty in contact throughout the year,” explained Horschak. “It provides a platform for discussions and virtual studio spaces where works in progress and ideas are shared.”

Click to read more…

As people increasingly turn to computers and smartphones to run their lives, tech firms and other businesses create a seemingly endless array of tools designed to streamline digital activity. And although we benefit from these innovations, there is much about them that runs counter to the artistic imagination. Recognizing the growing desire of artists and designers to exploit the creative potential of new technologies, this spring RISD launched Computation, Technology and Culture (CTC), an undergraduate concentration that invites students to experiment with digital devices, programs and languages, and integrate them into their diverse studio practices.

Experimental and Foundation Studies (EFS) Programs Head Shawn Greenlee 96 PR, who administers the new concentration, says a central goal is to foster more versatile makers by limiting dependence on proprietary hardware and software. “We want students to resist using technology the way creators think they’re supposed to use it,” the electronic media and sound artist explains. Through the new 15-credit undergraduate concentration (which is like a minor at other colleges), students learn to write code, develop software and build programmable machines while also coming to better understand how these things are transforming art, design and the world at large.

Greenlee began leading efforts to establish a CTC concentration once the interest and need became increasingly apparent in recent years. In co-teaching a course called Experimental Data Visualization, he realized that students were searching for ways “to engage with [digital] code as a medium and material.” Soon he and fellow faculty members Carl Lostrittoand Clement Valla MFA 09 DM began applying for various grants and other sources of funding to plan a cutting-edge curriculum suited to the needs of emerging artists and designers.

CTC “creates pathways for students to specialize” in many areas of digital art and technologically-informed making, says Greenlee—from programming for music and sound design to creating virtual-reality and immersive environments. Concentrators can also take related courses in diverse departments—from Sculpture studios on robotics to Liberal Arts courses on the history of technology—to build a highly individualized, interdisciplinary experience. Designed for those at all levels of experience with programming and code, the concentration is expected to attract roughly 50 students a year as it continues to grow

Click to read more…