RISD

Planetary Geologist Peter Schultz talks to first-year D+M students about the importance of visual evidence for scientific research at the Northeast Planetary Data Center. | photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH.

As a group of Digital + Media grad students gazes through 3D glasses at a wall-sized image of a Martian crater, planetary geologist Peter Schultz is eager to provide a rare perspective about the importance of art, design and visual communication to the sciences. “When I was on a mission to a comet,” says the director of the Northeast Planetary Data Center (PDC), “we flew by it and everyone rushed to print out large images so that we could make observations together.” During a presentation at the NASA/Brown University research facility, he pointed out how practitioners in his field rely very much on imagery and visual evidence to pursue their research.

The late September visit to the PDC is one way first-year students in a D+M graduate studio/seminar are introduced to research-based studio practices. “We work with a very rich definition of research,” says D+M faculty member Aly Ogasian MFA 15 DM. “Research can take place in a library, or an academic institution, or in the studio or a laboratory. This is something we really push D+M students to think about.” A recent graduate of the program herself, she has a strong interest in astronomy and photographs of space exploration, and finds the PDC to be an ideal site for students to consider similarities between artistic and scientific inquiry – in terms of both processes and outcomes.

“It’s about presenting what’s possible,” Ogasian continues. “We want our students to make real-world connections, either through research or through collaborations with people in other fields, or simply by finding inspiration in unexpected places.” At the PDC, one of eight facilities of its kind in the US, Schultz dug into a rich archive of both analog and digital research from NASA missions like Deep Impact and the LCROSS expedition, which sought to detect the presence of frozen water beneath the surface in a shadowed lunar crater near the south pole. He also shared 6,000 frames-per-second video evidence from his volcanic ballistics research at NASA’s Ames Vertical Gun Range in California, a facility that allows him to study planetary-scale phenomena in a small space and then extrapolate the results.

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SUPERMAJOR, Matt Kenyon’s piece on the politics of oil, has taken on an unexpected life of its own.

Newly hired Associate Professor in Digital + Media Matt Kenyon is deeply interested in how art “lives as a story and as an object – in its multiple lives.” Over the years, he has embarked on a range of projects that take him beyond the studio and into the heart of complex political and economic systems – whether he’s turning his body into a barcode scanner to disrupt Nielsen market analysis (in Consumer Index) or collaborating with Syrian journalist Honey Al-Sayed and translator Laura Marris on an upcoming sculptural installation that explores the many ways translation affects the current refugee crisis.

Kenyon, a new media sculptor who earned his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University and most recently taught at the University of Michigan, looks forward to the shift in scope afforded by RISD’s art-centered approach. “At large state schools, I’ve had opportunities to advocate for art within a larger research direction and align it with science,” he says. “But here it’s the inverse: Art is the norm, it’s the core. It’s clear that students are serious about becoming artists. This is a really special place that attracts people who are super-passionate about their work. And to me, that’s exciting.”

Kenyon has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work in a number of permanent collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He conducts his research under the umbrella of SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass Production), a practice focused on “critical themes addressing the effects of global corporate operations, mass media and communication, military-industrial complexes, and general meditations on the liminal area between life and artificial life.”

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Jewelry + Metalsmithing major Anthony Anderson 18 JM discovered his talent for the medium by happy accident during his first year at RISD. | photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH

When verbal communication eluded him as a young child, Anthony Anderson 18 JM focused on making art instead. “When I was four I used to fill little Monopoly houses with different colored crayon shavings and press them against a space heater to make my own crayon colors,” he says. “Art was something I could control, [so] my lack of control in other areas made me want to hone my artistic side.”

Today Anderson is thriving as a Jewelry + Metalsmithing major, learning new ways to use art to champion social justice. “RISD has instilled in me the belief that you can say things with artwork that matter,” says the junior, who came to the US from the Philippines as a baby and grew up in southern Rhode Island with his adoptive parents.

Beaming at how much their son loved drawing – and how seriously he took it – Anderson’s parents arranged for him to take painting lessons with Solace Loven, a local artist who taught him that “art could be something I do for the rest of my life.” For years, her studio provided the perfect place for exploring his creative talents and passions, which he continued to do in high school at Providence’s LaSalle Academy.

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Dean of Liberal Arts Dan Cavicchi researched and wrote 400 artist and industry profiles for GRAMMY Museum Mississippi’s core exhibit.

Ever eager to share his belief that popular music deserves critical attention, Dean of Liberal Arts Daniel Cavicchi embraces the unique challenges posed by music history museums. “Sound isn’t contained easily,” says the historian, who was invited to help create two permanent exhibits for the Recording Academy’s new GRAMMY Museum Mississippi.

Having worked as a curator for the organization’s flagship GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles almost a decade ago, Cavicchi was pleased to expand on that earlier work and extend the reach of his research. “I love finding [audiences] I haven’t talked to before or had the opportunity to reach yet,” he says of bringing music scholarship to the general public. In fact, creating new ways to teach and understand how the arts intersect with American history and society is essential to both his own research and RISD’s approach to liberal arts education.

“You’re only getting part of the picture if you’re not looking at the arts in American history,” Cavicchi affirms. “They don’t just exist on the side. They are central to who we are and how we think about ourselves.”

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