Still kicking...

I'm working on several projects this summer. Pictured above are some test models for a 30' interactive double curved surface with Karl Daubmann. We are also working on a project for Kyoto, Japan in 2010.

I will also be moderating a panel discussion at Siggraph in New Orleans that is an opportunity to hear a selection of practitioners participating in the BioLogic and Generative Fabrication exhibitions talk about how they have employed computation beyond an assistive role in their work and discuss how technology has influenced their approach to creative practice.

Busy.

Cloud Gate (sculpture)

The award for best large-scale, permanent, public sculpture goes to... Anish Kapoor.

BioLogic (exhibition)

Siggraph 2009 - BioLogic Jurors

Marcia Tanner - independent curator and writer based in Berkeley and former director of San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art

Sabrina Raaf - artist working in experimental sculptural media and Asst. Prof. in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Suzanne Anker - artist and theorist, co-author of The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, and Chair of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in NYC

Cezanne Charles - artist, curator, Creative Industries Director for ArtServe Michigan, and former Executive Director of New Media Scotland

Sascha Pohflepp - artist, designer, contributing writer for we-make-money-not-art, and member of Design Interactions at RCA, London

John Marshall - artist, designer, curator, and Asst. Prof. in the School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan

BioLogic: A Natural History of Digital Life

Design Fiction - Reading Material

Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction by Julian Bleecker.

Excellent! As someone who uses examples from 'The Matrix' and 'The Empire Strikes Back' in my class syllabus, I think this is required reading. Julian will be speaking at the European Academy of Design Conference in Aberdeen.

Smartsurfaces (course)

"In order to prepare for a life of productive endeavor in the 21st century, undergraduates at the University of Michigan must learn problem solving across disciplines and launch inquiries in uncharted territories of knowledge and practice. They must examine the assumptions that inhere in a disciplinary perspective and integrate material outside of patterns they are taught. They must locate issues within larger frameworks of thought, negotiate multiple perspectives, and develop habits of critical questioning and creative problem solving. In addition, they must learn how to find their way through disconnected bodies of information and perspectives and create their own path to a coherent education. We believe that the major problems of our time, from the environment to poverty, from human rights to terrorism, from religious movements to health issues, cannot be studied effectively within any single discipline; all involve integrative, cross-disciplinary thinking."

Smartsurfaces - a multidisciplinary, hands-on think-tank

Karl Daubmann ARCH 409
John Marshall ARTDES 300
Max Shtein MSE 489, 490, 493

University of Michigan
Fall 2009
3 Credits
Fridays, 11am-5pm
Design Lab 1, Duderstadt Center

Smartsurfaces offers a collaborative, project-based learning experience in which artists, designers, architects and engineers come together to build physical systems and structural surfaces that have the capability to adapt to information and environmental conditions.

The course will operate as a multidisciplinary, hands-on think-tank where participants will pool their knowledge and skill sets to work together to produce environmentally sound and socially responsible projects. Public exhibition of these funded projects will provide an opportunity for participants to present their work to a wider audience and to review their achievements.

Projects will make use of the resources available to all participating university units, such as:

• parametric modeling
• digital fabrication
• networked sensors
• micro-controller programming
• energy harvesting using solar cells and nanostructured materials

The course is a collaborative endeavor led by three professors who will advise and contribute to all team projects. Teams will make use of visiting lecturers, specialists, site visits and relevant stakeholder organizations.

We have been awarded a grant from the Multidisciplinary Learning and Team Teaching (MLTT) Initiative to support this new undergraduate, multidisciplinary, team-taught course.

inter_multi_trans_actions preview (book)

inter_multi_trans_actions

Creative Practice at the Boundaries of Architecture, Design and Art

Edited by Paul Rodgers and Michael Smyth

[EDIT - the book is now called 'Digital Blur: Stories from the Edge of Creative Design Practice'.]

This book brings together ten of the world’s leading practitioners and thinkers from the fields of art, architecture and design who all share a common desire to exploit the latest computing technologies in their creative practice. The book reveals, for the first time, the working processes of these major practitioners’ work that breaks down traditional creative disciplinary boundaries. inter_multi_trans_actions provides a rich picture, both visually and textually, of the following ten leaders in the field – Jason Bruges Studio, Lucy Bullivant, Greyworld, HeHe, Crispin Jones, the Owl Project, the Pooch (BigDog Interactive), Bengt Sjolen, Troika, and Moritz Waldemeyer.

This book aims to inspire and inform any reader with an interest in design, architecture, art and/or technology and provides essential reading for any practitioner, researcher, educator, and/or other stakeholders involved in the creative arts and industries. The book provides a detailed insight into the techniques of these ten significant creative individuals and how they exploit the latest computing technologies in their work and the impact this will have for creative practice in the future.

• paperback
• ISBN: 978 1 904750 69 7
• 264pp
• 264 x 196mm
• £24.95
• Publication date: September 2009

• Middlesex University Press

inter_multi_trans_actions (book)

Inter_multi_trans_actions: Creative Practice at the Boundaries of Architecture, Design and Art (Paperback) by Paul Rodgers (Editor), Michael Smyth (Editor)

Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Middlesex University Press (1 Sep 2009)
ISBN-10: 1904750699
ISBN-13: 978-1904750697

Available to pre-order here.

Reading Material (books)

I've recently purchased a couple of books that I've been meaning to get for a while (too busy teaching/making stuff).

First up is the catalog from MoMA's Design and the Elastic Mind that features What's Cooking Grandma - the Human Beans project that we commissioned in 2006 for Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders. It is excellent. However, I was a little disappointed not to see Geoffrey Mann's piece Attracted to Light that was part of the MoMA exhibition (his Flight - Take Off was shown in PBB). I guess MoMA made up for this omission by acquiring the work (I'm quite proud of this, since I helped Geoff to make the Rhino file watertight).

No such oversight on the part of Troika. Their Digital by Design book is sumptious. (Also nice to see PBB mentioned in the section on Simon Blackmore).

This book is beautifully designed and well worth the investment. I'm now looking forward to the publication of the book from the inter_multi_trans_actions symposium (most of whom are included in Digital by Design). Julian Bleecker and I contributed a chapter to it.