Issue 018

DO

T Mag

azine 18

Guest Editor’s Letter

Perspective Shifts. Astonishment. Creativity.Guest Editor Lorne Buchman discusses his fascination with

mindfulness meditation.

Spotlight

Fine Art Alumnus Receives “Genius Grant”Installation artist Jorge Pardo wins prestigious grant from the MacArthur

Foundation—a first for Art Center.

Designmatters Formally Expands Into CurriculumThe newly launched Designmatters Concentration and Media Design Matters track

offer new opportunities for students interested in art and design for social impact.

“80 for 80” Initiative Supports ScholarshipsLearn how Art Center’s scholarship initiative is progressing.

MDP Explores Design’s FictionsThe roles of storytelling, fantasy and speculation in design practice have

sparked a year-long series presented by the Graduate Media Design Program.

Features

The Limits of ControlAlgorithms, uniqueification and bespoke objects: How DIY and “open ended”

art and design are changing the creative landscape.

Art Center Students Win BigIt’s always an honor when Art Center students receive outside recognition for

their work. Here, a look at three recent winners and their stories.

Mindfulness: Focusing the Mind’s Eye in the Digital AgeDiscover how an ancient practice taught by two Art Center faculty members

can help avert stress, foster deep attention and open new channels for

learning and creativity.

Portfolio The latest in student work.

The Last Word Recipients of Art Center’s first-ever Creative Spirit Awards weigh in on the

biggest challenge facing artists and designers.

Found Dot The Art Center dot found its way into a jar of printer’s ink at Archetype Press,

the College’s letterpress printing facility, currently celebrating its 21st anniversary.

Cover: Detail, “The Chair(s),” Eun Jin (Stephanie) Jang, Environmental Design,

eighth term. For full image, see page 32.

Issue 18, December 2010

DOT magazine is published by the Department

of Marketing and Communications

Art Center College of Design

1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103

artcenter.edu

Chairman of the Board: Robert C. Davidson Jr.

President: Lorne M. Buchman

Senior Vice President, Development and

External Affairs: Arwen Duffy

Director, Public Relations and

Communications: Jered Gold

Editorial Director: Vanessa Silberman

Design: Paul Gillis

Web Design: Chuck Spangler

Director, Design Office: Ellie Eisner

Art Director/Senior Designer: Winnie Li

Contributors: Mike Winder, “Fine Art Alumnus Receives

‘Genius Grant,’” page 4. John Sciulli, photography,

page 5. Summer Block, “Art Center Students Win Big,”

pages 16-19. Jennie Warren PHOT ‘05, photography, pages

14, 16, 18. Ping Zhu ILLU ‘10, illustration, pages 20-25.

Steven A. Heller, Vahé Alaverdian, photography, pages

3, 9, 26-32, cover and inside front cover.

© 2010 Art Center College of Design.

All rights reserved. DOT, Art Center, and

Art Center College of Design are trademarks

of Art Center College of Design.

Student works reproduced or referenced in this

publication are for educational purposes only. No part

of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

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including photocopying, recording, or any information

storage or retrieval system, without written permission

of the publisher.

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and 100 lb. Text, Bright White.

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Perspective Shifts. Astonishment. Creativity.

I write at a momentous time at the College. It’s our 80th anniversary and we’re at a crossroads, wrapping up a yearlong strategic planning process that will shape Art Center’s future. Beginning last January, the Art Center community entered into a dialogue designed to generate a bold vision and a strategic plan for the great art and design school of the 21st century. We wrestled with major issues of globalization, technol- ogy, social responsibility, culture making, community building, diversity, the evolution of new teaching and learning styles as well as new collaborations among people in art, design, business, engineering and social policy.

With that in mind, we originally envisioned DOT 18 as an exploration of the compelling ideas and trends coming to the fore through the planning process. In the end, two gripping and seemingly disparate topics stood out: first, the dramatic rise of “open source” art and design (with a handful of Art Center faculty members and alumni leading the way); and second, how educators across the country are confronting the challenge of fostering deep attention in students raised in a world of multiple information streams and diffuse attention.

We were unconcerned that these topics apparently had little in common. But sure enough, it turns out that the “open source” phenomenon underscores the urgent need to focus our creative energies. Let me explain: with “open source” art and design, there’s a ceding of control on the part of artists and designers and a dramatic expansion of choice, which presents extraordinary opportunities for self-expression and creativity. At the same time, we are left to wonder whether all of these newfound choices ultimately help or hurt our effectiveness as designers and creators. What does the explosion of combination and possibility mean for art and design students? How can we ensure students have spaces to reflect, reconnect and develop themselves as designers and citizens, and broaden the dialogue with other disciplines without giving up specialty and expertise?

In an attempt to address these questions, DOT 18 includes an essay on mindfulness practice and its power to focus the whole person toward meaningful creativity. Mindfulness meditation has long fascinated

The explosive creative life comes to us in varying scale.

Lorne M. BuchmanPresidentArt Center College of Design

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Guest Editor’s Letter

me. Through my somewhat limited experience, I have nonetheless discovered a fertile quality to the calm that can emerge through its practice, a self-awareness of everyday creativity. I am particularly compelled by the shift in scale and perspective that comes through mindfulness meditation. I am astonished, for example, by observing the simple act of breathing itself. We breathe all day long, but pay little attention to it.

Through mindfulness practice we take a moment to know the self engaged in a rhythm of life’s vital reflex. We observe. And the small, seemingly extraneous act, looms large and reveals its creative power (literally life-giving creative power). Similarly, I have also experienceda technique known as “walking mindful meditation” when the focus, the anchor, is entirely on the foot in motion, its contact with the earth. Astonishing? Indeed. I am a man walking, and I discipline myself to watch it, to know its cadence. What is unnoticed is given light and appears with great creative power. In my studies of Shakespeare films, I loved that the close-up could render Cordelia’s tears in King Lear to hold the same dramatic space on screen as the tortured King himself, out on the heath, contending with the fretful elements. Perspective shifts. Astonishment. Creativity.

Within the multitude of open source dialogue and the hyper, ineluctable, flow of stimuli, we can choose to pause. And we can understand that the explosive creative life comes to us in varying scale. The educational opportunity, to my mind, is to ensure that we build that bridge for our students, a bridge that begins with deep self-awareness, the courage of self-knowledge, the deep attention to life—with all its astonishing everyday attributes—and ends with an engagement with an outer world bursting with possibility. It’s not a question of one or the other, but to know the strength in the relationship itself.

Spotlight

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This past September, Los Angeles-based installation artist Jorge Pardo FINE ‘88 became the first Art Center alumni to win the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship—informally, the “Genius Grant”—a $500,000 no-strings-attached stipend from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

For 2010, the Foundation awarded fellowships to 23 individuals, whose professions range from theater director to quantum astrophysicist. In selecting Pardo, the Foundation noted the artist’s “visually seductive” body of work that explores the intersection of contemporary painting, design, sculpture and architecture and that reaches beyond defined aesthetic disciplines.

“Jorge was very interested in blurring the boundaries between fine art and commercial art,” said Fine Art Department Chair Laurence Dreiband, who chaired the department when Pardo was a student, and who believes Pardo’s notions of art were influenced by the cross-disciplinary nature of Art Center. “Some of our department’s most prominent alumni incorporate elements from the applied arts into their work and end up changing the discourse of art. Jorge has done that. He’s changed how we see art.”

Pardo’s work ranges from brightly colored lamps to large-scale architectural pieces like 4166 Sea View Lane, his residence which he temporarily opened to the public upon its completion. He has had solo exhibitions at the Dia Foundation, New York; Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills; and he was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.

“I used to like to make work with my hands, but I come from a working-class background,” said Pardo of his childhood in an interview available on the Foundation’s website. “I never really understood that there were these cultural professions that people could assimilate into. When I went to college, those options opened up, and I just ran with it.”

The MacArthur Foundation cited Jorge Pardo as an artist whose work elicits “great visual delight while questioning distinctions between fine art and design.”

Fine Art Alumnus Receives “Genius Grant”

Designmatters, Art Center’s College-wide social impact initiative, celebrates its 10th anniversary next year. Since its inception, Designmatters has served as a powerful nexus connecting undergraduate and graduate students with projects of social, environmental and humanitarian significance through strategic alliances with nonprofits and governmental organizations. These interdisciplinary projects have taken participating students out of the classroom and into the world, where they have created a highly diverse body of work tackling such issues as maternal mortality, access to clean water, urban congestion and earth-quake preparedness. Explained Mariana Amatullo, vice president of Designmatters, “We are striving to redefine and expand the role of the artist and designer into one who is a catalyst for social change and innovation.”

That goal just received a formal boost with the launch of the Designmatters Concentration this past September, open to students wishing to more fully explore art and design for social impact. Amatullo explained that by designing a more compre-hensive set of curricular touch-points for students to partake in, Designmatters is expanding to become a dynamic educational resource at Art Center that prepares graduates to become involved in local, national and global issues at the strategic and leadership levels. In addition, the Designmatters Concentration articulates career options students can access through the initiative’s significant network of partners and alliances.

And that’s not all. Beginning next Fall, the Graduate Media Design Program (MDP) will accept its first cohort of students into the Media Design Matters track, a specially designed curriculum that will explore the role of communication tech- nologies and infrastructure in people’s lives. Said MDP Chair Anne Burdick, “Integrating the Design Matters approach into the experimental research work of the MDP will allow us to expand offerings that are already uniquely suited to the challenges of the 21st century.” Visit artcenter.edu/designmatters to learn more.

The new Designmatters Concentration offers students expanded opportunities to participate in social impact projects like this 50th Anniversary Campaign for PCI.

Designmatters Formally Expands Into Curriculum

In today’s challenging economic climate, it’s more important than ever to make an Art Center education accessible to talented and deserving students who cannot afford the full cost of college. That’s why President Buchman and Art Center’s Board of Trustees have committed themselves to increasing the number of student scholarships in order to ensure that today’s emerging artists and designers can receive the highest caliber education. Through the “80 for 80” initiative —launched in celebration of the College’s 80th anniversary—Art Center aims to raise $2 million by July 2011 for students in its undergraduate, graduate and public education programs. That’s the equivalent of 80 $25,000 scholarships in honor of each year of the College’s existence. These scholarships will help defray tuition costs and enable students to concentrate on what they do best: creating meaningful art and design. Alumni, parents, friends and corporate partners have already given more than $1 million to this effort. As part of this fundraising effort, the College hosted a gala celebration this past October: Art Center at 80: Celebratingthe Creative Spirit, co-chaired by Trustee Alyce Williamson. The evening featured a tribute to four alumni who have helped shape their respective fields in new and profound ways, and have influenced society at large: Yves Behar PROD ‘91, Frank Stephenson TRAN ‘86, Zack Snyder FILM ‘89 and Pae White ART ‘91.The event raised $350,000, and all proceeds supported scholarships, including named scholarships in recognition of each of the honorees. Judy Webb, a trustee and chair of the Board’s Advancement Committee, said it’s efforts like these that inspire her to give. “At the end of the day, helping students who otherwise might not be able to attend Art Center is such a huge motivation,” she said. “Scholarships open doors that were previously shut—giving artists and designers opportunities to realize their dreams.” To learn more, call the Office of Development at 626.396.4216or email giving@artcenter.edu.

80 for 80 Initiative Supports Scholarships

Proceeds from Art Center’s recent 80th anniversary gala support student scholarships. Photo: John Sciulli ©Berliner Photography/BEImages

A make-believe world is taking shape inside the Wind Tunnel at Art Center’s South Campus. Who’s behind this bold adventure? None other than the provocateurs in Art Center’s Graduate Media Design Program (MDP), who recently launched a year-long series to examine the power and relevance of storytelling, fantasy and speculation for design practice. Called MADE UP: Design’s Fictions, the series expands upon a growing interest among students and faculty in visionary designers and the futures they imagine. According to Tim Durfee, a core MDP faculty member and principal organizer of MADE UP, design as a whole is witnessingthe rise of strategies that make powerful use of fiction. He cited the haunted evocations of architect Hernan Diaz Alonzo, the play- fully sardonic products of Tobias Wong, and the future worlds envisioned by tech companies such as Microsoft and Nokia as just a few examples. By bringing this work together, Durfee hopes to “get a sense of why strategies such as speculation and role-playing feel so useful—and relevant—at this particular moment in time,” he said. MADE UP: Design’s Fictions includes a broad range of activities.This past summer, London-based designer and artist Sascha Pohflepp, and Berlin-based design and art team Daniel Salomon and Ingrid Hora joined the MDP as researchers-in-residence. Next month, MDP will host an exhibition featuring their work, along with objects, books, videos and drawings by Keiichi Matsuda, MOS Architects, Eames Demetrios, Maywa Denki, Syd Mead and others. Meanwhile, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG and Fiona Raby of Dunne+Raby are leading a series of panel discussions, readings and screenings through Spring 2011. MDP Chair Anne Burdick believes it’s the responsibility of graduate design programs to push the field in new directions. “Our goal with MADE UP is to bring the work of our students and faculty into direct dialogue with the most daring work from around the world,” she said. “In so doing, we hope to pose new questions and, frankly, change the way that designers think.”

Keiichi Matsuda’s Augmented (hyper) Reality: Domestic Robocop, 2009, appears in a new MDP exhibition next month as part of the MADE UP series.

MDP Explores Design’s Fictions

Ask Art Center faculty and alumni what changes they think the next 80 years of art and design will bring, and you’ll get no shortage of compelling answers. Autonomous cars! Augmented reality! Networked schools of fish! (No, I’m not making that last one up.) All topics worthy of in-depth exploration, but there’s one emerging trend that keeps kicking at the door. It’s a trend that appears across many disciplines and fulfills deep-seated human needs, ensuring it won’t be going away anytime soon. This trend doesn’t have a name per se. It goes by many names: DIY (“Do it yourself”), hacking and open-source are just a few of its monikers. Whatever you call it, this trend represents a paradigm-shift for the creators of intellectual property. It’s a trend where end-users are increasingly expecting more control over their products and experi- ences, and where creators are shifting from designing finished products to designing spaces where user-driven expression can occur. And it’s a trend, which—although it has numerous historical antecedents—is about to explode thanks to both current technology and technology just around the bend.

1.INTRODUCTION

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2. ENTER THE ALGORITHM“Things are going to be more open-ended, and that’s a radical shift,” said Nikolaus Hafermaas, Chair of Art Center’s Graphic Design Department. Hafermaas believes the emerging sophistication of what consumers can do at home with digital tools means we will soon see more malleable products and services. To explain this concept, Hafermaas points to the music industry. “Pop charts in the future could be dominated not by songs, but by song algo-rithms,” he explained. “And within that algorithm, there would be variations that could be replicated and manipu-lated within certain parameters.” Think of Todd Rundgren’s No World Order (1993), where listeners, using a Philips CD-I device, could take elements of his songs and form their own unique permutations, or, more recently, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and film composer Atticus Ross, releasing tracks from The Social Network soundtrack as multi-track files for fans to edit and remix using popular music-editing software.

In this new landscape where end-users express them-selves in algorithmic playing fields, Hafermaas thinks art-ists and designers will need to become more proactive in creating their own tools. “I ask my students, ‘Who do you think is designing the software you use to illustrate?’,” said Hafermaas. “Engineers, not designers. Do you want engi-neers creating the presets under which you are working?” Hafermaas also believes the distinction between designer and engineer will virtually disappear, meaning students will need to prepare for a world in which they’ll be “hack-ing and inventing new codes.”

3. HACKING THE CODEArt Center Product Design alumnus Yves Béhar, whose firm Fuseproject has created such notable products as the One Laptop Per Child laptop computer, the Herman Miller Leaf Lamp and the Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset, believes consumers want to be more emotionally connected with their products. “We’re moving into an era of mass individu-alization,” said Béhar, who graduated in 1981. He thinks this shift marks a counterpoint to the uniformity of mass production and globalization. The type of individualization Béhar envisions goes beyond the type of cosmetic mass customization options we see today—NIKEiD, Scion, Build-A-Bear Workshop—and into the realm of adapta-tion to functional needs. “We’re moving into an era where people will be able to modify things based on their per-sonal needs,” said Béhar. “Whether it’s ergonomics, cultural differences or personal desire.”

Earlier this year, at New York’s Greener Gadgets Confer-ence, his firm unveiled a “hackable” electric concept car for the developing world. A symmetrical car built on an electric base, it can be easily converted to a truck, van, taxi, delivery vehicle or first aid vehicle, depending on the user’s needs. “In the developing world, everything gets fixed, so things need to be repairable and adaptable on site,” said Béhar. “The same is becoming true in the West. Whether it’s repairing, modifying, improving or adapting, we’re seeing more DIY consumers who are willing to take matters into their own hands.”

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL Algorithms, Uniqueification and Bespoke Objects:

A Changing Landscape for Art and Design

BY MIKE WINDER

4.CODE, CLOTH, CARS

AND CULTURE

5.COMPLEXITY IS FREE

6.INVENTING NEW CODES

1.INTRODUCTION

2.ENTER THE ALGORITHM

3.HACKING THE CODE

EAMES HACK / Eames Hack High Chair (2007)The Eames Hack High Chair, which transforms an Eames molded plywood chair into a child’s high chair, was featured in Yves Béhar’s Technocraft, a 2010 exhibition at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

JASON “JAY” BROEMMEL / Rocketbike (2001)A semi-functional bicycle propelled by highway flares, illegal fireworks and propane, Rocketbike was also featured in Technocraft as an example of the blurring line between creators and consumers.

takes Sega’s 1986 racing videogame of the same name and outfits it with the drive train of a golf cart and custom-built software and GPS sensors, transforming the arcade cabinet into a vehicle players can use to navigate the real world vis-à-vis the game’s primitive graphical representa-tions of its surroundings.

Hertz points to America’s hot-rod and custom car culture of the ‘60s as a spiritual predecessor to his style of work and as a period when the DIY philosophy was particularly strong. A small poster hanging above his desk features a variety of outlandish vehicles designed by Rat Fink-creator Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, showcasing what Hertz believes DIY does best—expressing individuals’ “weird, dark and crazy obsessions.”

Though Hertz acknowledges his projects are more extreme than what the average individual might undertake, he does believe DIY is a growing subculture, largely due to the Internet’s ability to bring like-minded individuals together. But he also points out that a significant part of DIY’s attrac-tion is its underdog status. “DIY shares a lot of attitudewith punk culture,” said Hertz. “It’s an aesthetic of being independent, self-sustained and not reliant on ‘the man.’”

“The thing I’m most proud of is the community I’ve built online,” said Syuzi Pakhchyan, an experience designer who focuses on wearable technology. “The community is about people coming together and helping, troubleshooting or just inspiring each other with their projects.” A 2006 MDP alumna, Pakhchyan both authored Fashioning

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Fascinated by this subject, Béhar spent two years assem-bling Technocraft, an exhibition which opened this past July at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The exhibition explored a variety of manners in which consumers are becoming intimately involved with the design of products, and featured objects as varied as the Eames Hack High Chair—an Eames chair “hacked” by a team of individuals into an infant high chair—and artist Jason Broemmel’s Rocketbike, a semi-functional bicycle propelled by highway flares, illegal fireworks and propane.

Perhaps no other technology better epitomizes cus-tomization than today’s smartphone devices. Between Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market, smart-phone users have access to hundreds of thousands of software applications they can download to person-alize their devices. Andy Ogden, Chair of Art Center’s Graduate Industrial Design Department, believes that as a society we’re seeking out transcendent experiences with smartphones and similar devices that offer infinite levels of customization.

“We’ve shifted from thinking I have to have ‘mine’ tothinking it has to be unique,” said Ogden, who believes the origin of this trend, at least in the digital realm, dates back to the screensaver software phenomenon of the early ‘90s. After the initial fad of After Dark’s flying toasters, for example, many consumers began using screensavers to display personal photographs and images. “With a screen-saver, I can display a picture of my kid that I took with my camera. Nobody else has that,” said Ogden. “Today, not

only do we expect to have something completely unique, but we also want to post it on Facebook and brag about it.”

To help explain why this trend is taking root today, Ogden points to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s five-level hierarchy-of-needs pyramid, which visually presents an individual’s needs: the basic necessities for survival are at the base, while activities leading towards self-actualiza-tion are at the peak. Ogden believes this “uniqueification”trend, as he calls it, and the driving forces behind the DIY movement, are characteristic of a society where many people have moved beyond the base of Maslow’s pyramid. “They’re not worried about fundamental safety,” said Ogden. “Very quickly, people discover the point of life is to make their own unique story of their existence.”

4. CODE, CLOTH, CARS AND CULTUREGarnet Hertz is no stranger to making absolutely unique objects. A faculty member of Art Center’s Graduate Media Design Program (MDP) and an artist-in-residence in the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction at the University of California, Irvine, Hertz makes one-of-a-kind experimental objects using obsolete technology. “In digital media there’s a real excitement about the ‘newness’ of the latest devices,” said Hertz. “But there are interesting things you can do with older technology. For me, that’s a design challenge.”

Hertz met that challenge most recently with Outrun, an “un-simulation” project which debuted this past September at the Zer01 San Jose Bicentennial. Outrun

Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting (O’Reilly, 2008) and founded the related FashioningTech website, a social network for individuals interested in “smart crafting,” or, as she calls it, “the intersection between code, cloth and culture.” Her book features instructions on how to make a number of such “smart crafts”—electronic “emoting” finger puppets made with vibrating motors, piezo speak-ers and LED lights are one example—that take advantage of inexpensive open-source technology.

As a student at Art Center, Pakhchyan’s thesis project “Sparklab” explored DIY culture and sought to create a tool or platform that could engage more women in technology-oriented craft projects. “All I did was change the context,” explained Pakhchyan. “Instead of creating robots, I shifted into building interactive toys, objects for the home and garments that can speak to one another.”

Though she’s seen the crafting and DIY communities explode both on the Internet and with events like the Maker Faire festival in recent years, Pakhchyan is cautious about labeling DIY as a movement that will transform design as we know it. After all, she points out, Photo-shop and desktop publishing didn’t eliminate the need for graphic designers. Pakhchyan then pointed to Etsy, the community-based handmade goods website, as an example of where she thinks the combination of the Internet and DIY will really make an impact: inexpensive distribution channels. “You may not be able to get your goods into Target, but if you’re good at marketing yourself, you have access to a global community online.”

DAVID ERVEN / Dihedral Tile, detail (2008)The Future of Objects, a 2010 exhibition in Art Center’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, featured complex objects that were conceived and “grown” using 3D printing technology like Erven’s Dihedral Tile.

SYUZI PAKHCHYAN / Space Invaders Tote (2008)Syuzi Pakhchyan’s Fashioning Technology (O’Reilly, 2008) features DIY projects that combine craft with open source technology, like this Space Invaders Tote that lights up when your cell phone rings.

standards. “I can be wrong,” said Bocanegra. “I can be really wrong and not worry about it.”

Where could such freewheeling, artist-driven investiga-tions into the realm of science take us? One example is Quasar, a 2008 installation in Los Angeles’ SCI-Arc gallery, mounted by Bocanegra and his colleagues at architecture and media art firm SLAP!HQ, which utilized a muon-detecting device. “The Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory lent us a $1 million device that detects tiny interstellar particles that pass through matter, and I got to fiddle with it,” laughed Bocanegra. Visitors inter-acted with the installation by standing near sensors that excited electroluminescent wire and manipulating a touch screen. “We didn’t let viewers know what was going on,” said Bocanegra. “We created a variety of rules, put them together in the same place, and let them mingle together.”

Experimenting with rules and letting technology mingle is exactly what Phil Van Allen, a professor of interactive design and a core faculty member of Art Center’s MDP, has achieved with his NETLab Toolkit. The Toolkit is a collection of open-source software that helps designers work with microcontrollers, without the need for programming, to create ubiquitous computing projects that combine sen-sors, video, sound, lighting and motors. It’s an important tool for MDP students working within the program’s New Ecology of Things (NET) research initiative, which was established to explore emerging forms of communication in a networked world. “The toolkit allows students to jump right in and focus on the concepts without getting

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5. COMPLEXITY IS FREEOne impending technological revolution certain to have a major impact on the growth of the DIY community is the mainstreaming of additive technology—machines capable of printing three-dimensional objects using 3D scanners, computed numerically controlled (CNC) machines, computer-aided drafting and design programs (CAD), 3D printers and other rapid prototyping technology. Prices have dropped significantly for such printers—as low as $750 for an open-source DIY Makerbot 3D printer—and within a few years they could very easily start appearing on the shelves of big box retailers.

This past June, Art Center’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery presented an exhibition titled The Future of Objects, which highlighted a variety of complex forms conceived and produced using additive technology—most of which would be impossible to create using traditional technology. David Cawley, a co-curator of the exhibition and the director of Art Center’s rapid prototyping and model shops, believes 3D printing has the potential to change everything. “Students come to me with a project and say, ‘Dave, this is really complicated,’” said Cawley. “And I tell them, ‘You’re in luck, because with 3D technol-ogy, complexity is free.’” This is because no matter how complicated a design might be, 3D printing tackles the project by printing one layer at a time, much like a dot matrix printer.

3D printers are already being used to create a number of objects, including custom-fit hearing aids, orthodontic

correction devices and parts for F16 jet fighters. But to highlight the potential of 3D printers to create the pre-viously unthinkable, Cawley points to the work of Joris Laarman, a Dutch designer who takes cross-sections of bird bones, scans them, scales them and then, using additive technology, prints chairs and tables that are tremendously strong yet light as a feather. “He found a niche,” said Cawley of Laarman. “And there are probably thousands of applications for additive technology that haven’t been touched yet.”

6. INVENTING NEW CODESYou’d be hard-pressed to find an artist more passion-ate about the potential of technology to flip artistic and societal conventions than Art Center’s 2004 Graduate Art alumnus Aaron Bocanegra. This past summer, Bocanegra taught a class at Los Angeles’ Machine Project titled “My Open Arduino EEG Class,” in which students, using open-source Arduino microcontrollers and software, built their own inexpensive Electronencephology (EEG) devices capable of reading electrical activity within the brain. “Thanks to open source, I built an EEG for $80,” said Bocanegra. “It may not be medical grade, but it gives me a great deal of information.”

Bocanegra is a firm believer that open-source tech-nology is giving artists the first opportunity since the Renaissance to make headway into the fields of art, science and math. And, he argues, artists have one distinct advantage over scientists in exploring these fields—they don’t have to worry about meeting the same publishing

bogged down in the details of, say, making an LED light blink,” said Van Allen. And since it’s open-source, the Toolkit is available for anybody who’s interested. Van Allen believes art and design education, and education in general, will move more towards such an open-source model. “I think this idea of the proprietary educational approach is dead,” said Van Allen. “Open-source is more productive for everyone. We build these tools and other people use them, and I use tools that other people have built. Just the other day I discovered on YouTube that a class in Brazil had done a project using the Toolkit.”

The NETLab Toolkit also provides us with a glimpse of where Van Allen believes designers will be heading in the future. On his website, Van Allen recently outlined what he sees as three emerging objects: “slabs,” “softducts,” and “bespoke objects.” The iPhone, iPad, Android smart-phones and other similar devices are examples of “slabs,” hand-held generic digital platforms that essentially transform into a new device each time a different appli-cation is run (i.e., a planetarium one moment, a barcode scanner the next). A “softduct” is an application that runs on a “slab” and is a hybrid of software and product (hence the name); they’re distributed like software, but transform your “slab” into a function-specific product when they’re run. And finally, a “bespoke object” is an object created for a specific user’s unique need. For example, today, if you need a suit custom-made for you, chances are you’ll seek out your neighborhood tailor. Van Allen envisions a day when consumers with a technological need will forego big box-retailers and instead seek out their local “bespoke designer” down the street who, using “slabs,” “softducts,” 3D-printers, inexpensive open-source hardware and their knowledge of ubiquitous computing and interactive design, will craft a unique “bespoke object” or system of objects as a solution.

“Designers have been forced into this model of mass pro-duction,” observed Van Allen. “They’re designing things to suit the masses, and that’s naturally a compromise. I think a more custom approach is an interesting challenge for designers. And a very good place for them to be.”

GARNET HERTZ / Outrun (2010)“A video game system that actually drives” is how Hertz describes Outrun, his project that transforms Sega’s 1986 videogame into a vehicle for exploring the overlap of the physical and virtual worlds.

AARON BOCANEGRA + SLAP!HQ / Quasar, exhibition detail (2008)For the Quasar installation at Los Angeles’ SCI-Arc gallery, Bocanegra and his firm hacked into a $1 million muon-detecting device on loan from the Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory.

ABRAHAM MASLOW / Motivation and Personality (Harper & Row, 1954)“What a man can be, he must be,” wrote Maslow in Motivation and Personality, which outlined his “hierarchy of needs” theory that rankedhuman needs from the most basic (food, water) to self-actualization.

ESTEEM

SAFETY

BASIC

ACTUALIZATION

SOCIAL

For additional thoughts and an online slideshow, please visit artcenter.edu/dot.

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ART CENTER STUDENTS

WIN BIG

PHOTGRAPHYJENNIE WARREN

PHOT ’05

To art and design professionals through- out the world, Art Center is known as a place where great students do even more than what was expected of them. It’s no wonder, then, that each year Art Center students are the recipients of dozens of prestigious art and design awards across the industry. On the following pages we’ve spoken to three recent winners to learn more about their award-winning projects, their work process and sources of inspira- tion. Like all Art Center students, these students demonstrate what is best about the College, combining creativity, talent and passion with conceptual rigor and solid technical expertise.

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This past August, seventh term Environmental Design student Vanessa Choi received one of those surprise phone calls that she’s unlikely to forget—the walnut stool she had designed for a studio assignment had just been awarded First Place in the “Design Creativity” category at the 2010 International Woodworking Fair.

Choi didn’t see it coming. Last spring, Choi was filled with a healthy dose of trepidation fol-lowing the first day of her Furniture Studio course. The professors, David Mocarski and Cory Grosser, announced that students would have just one assignment for the entire term—to design a stool from scratch, using any kind of material. The students would have until midterms to experiment with form and perfect their designs, after which they would begin the assembly and finishing process. Choi, an Orange County native whose Environmental Design studies up until that point focused on spatial and experience design, was a tad overwhelmed. She had never created a piece of furniture before and didn’t know where to begin. Still, Choi knew that she had come pretty far to even be in this position—from having never taken an art and design course throughout high school or college (where she graduated with a degree in cognitive psychology from UC-Berkeley), to deciding that working in a lab wasn’t her calling and that she’d rather pursue a career in environmental design, to enrolling in Art Center at Night for a year and a half before eventually being accepted into the degree program. So Choi put her worries aside and began experimenting with paper—folding it in different ways to explore shapes and create layers. It turned out to be a good strategy as the paper

models helped Choi develop a sense of scale and propor-tion, while also allowing her to quickly visualize how these forms would appear in three dimensions. Soon, Choi had created dozens of paper-model variations on the wooden stool she hoped to make. After several phases of refinement, one particular paper-model stood out: an elegant S-shaped design consisting of two pieces —one for the front leg, one for the back. The design possessed such simplicity of form and clean lines that it seemed to float in the air, like a feather. “This was the one,” Choi later explained. At the same time, Choi realized that the stool design had to be sturdy and stable enough for a person to actually sit on it. As she moved on to cardboard models and CAD software, Choi’s research led her to ballet as a source of inspiration. “The dance form requires lightness and flow but a bit of rigidity and structure,” she explained. Choi was particularly drawn to a movement in ballet known as the tendu, where the foot extends backwards to provide balance and strength, while never leaving the floor. Choi decided to incorporate this idea into the stool, moving the back leg to a slight angle. Now the stool, which she named Tandu, possessed the qualities needed to withstand weight while retaining its sense of lightness. To emphasize the lightness even more, she created a visual space between the top two planes—supported by a parabolic trajectory—so the stool’s seat would seem to be floating. Choi continued to refine her design during the milling phase at the College’s CNC shops, increasing the number of parts from two to seven to be more environmentally friendly. “It almost sounds counter intuitive, but in this case it was more sustainable to use more parts but in smaller sections,” she said. “There would have been a lot of wasted negative space if I had used just one large block when milling down the walnut.” Following the assembly phase, Choi sanded and oiled Tandu to reveal the natural and raw beauty of the walnut. Her finished stool stands 16 inches tall and reflects her aesthetic in general: clean lines, logical, well-balanced and versatile. Tandu looks equally comfortable being used as a side table or a simple seat. Ultimately, Choi says it’s about creating experiences for the user. “I really enjoy being able to craft someone’s experience, thinking about the steps they go through sequentially, whether they’re walking through a space or sitting in a chair,” she said. She credits the multidisciplinary approach of the Environmental Design program with helping her develop and apply her creativity. Congratulations as well to Environmental Design student Zorine Pooladian, who won a merit award for her stool at IWF this year.

—Vanessa Silberman

2010 IWFDESIGN

CREATIVITYAWARD

Ballet became the perfect metaphor for Vanessa Choi’s award-winning walnut stool, Tandu. “The dance form requires lightness and flow but a bit of rigidity and structure.” (Top) CNC milling of the individual parts to reduce waste; (center) the finished stool; (bottom) computer rendering of Tandu.

Vanessa Choi

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Eric Hu

When it comes to the work process of Graphic Design student Eric Hu, he says he likes to come up with an idea and then mess it up. “I sabotage myself,” he said. It’s an unconventional strate- gy that paid off this year, when Hu became the youngest person to ever win the ADC Young Guns award, an Art Director’s Club honor reserved for designers under the age of 30 who have sev-eral years of professional experience under their belts. But Hu is used to taking big risks, starting with applying to Art Center.

When he looked at the Art Center catalog for the first time at age 13, it intimidated him. “I open- ed it and closed it, it seemed impossible to reach. But I kept the catalog for five years, and then in my junior year I opened it again. The work in it was still stellar, but it seemed more like something I could do,” he explained. Once at Art Center, one of Hu’s first teachers was Dustin Arnold, who became an inspiring role model. “He turned design on its head for me and made me totally rethink what I thought was good design,” Hu said. Arnold’s receipt of the ADC Young Guns award in 2006 motivated Hu to one day apply for the award himself and hopefully follow in Arnold’s footsteps. As fate would have it, the manager of the Art Director’s Club discovered Hu’s website in 2009 and contacted Hu to suggest he apply for the award. Hu waited until the following year, when he thought he’d acquired enough professional-level work.

Hu’s aesthetic is dense and eclectic and borrows equally from deconstruction to Dutch Typography. He begins each project with a daunting amount of historical, philosophical and cultural research. “I try to go really far out—as far as I can go into a topic,” explained Hu. While working with the computer chip manufacturer AMD, for example, Hu spent eight hours looking up information on the color green (AMD’s primary color) and its uses, implications, history and psychology. “A lot of times the lines of research lead you to dead ends, but once in a while, you can find really cool ideas,” he said. After weeks of such research, Hu observed that the actual idea comes to him in five minutes, but it “has been incubated in my head all that time.” Hu thinks in terms of ideas. Drawing doesn’t necessarily come easily to him. “I’m not natural at image making,” Hu said. “I write instead of sketch, my process is very verbal.” Hu’s dual drawing and writing style is evident in his graphic work on posters and catalogs as well as in the combination of digital and hand-drawn elements he combines in projects like the CD sleeve for the local band Moldar. Perhaps it can be seen best in Hu’s design for The Lagoon Is Gone, a 200-page book about the death of Mexican immigrant Jose Diaz and the subsequent murder trials that led to the 1943 Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots. Hu’s work is perfectly suited to book design: it is literate, wide-ranging and allusive; his designs both support and extend the content he is presenting. Hu credits Art Center with giving him the freedom to move around and develop a personal style. “Each term I have an identity crisis, I expand my education and experi-ment with different kinds of forms, and my work develops a very different look and feel,” he explained. “Now I see certain common threads and I have more of my own attitude…It’s a style I’m glad to think I can call my own.” Notwithstanding Hu’s ever-evolving style, there is a consistency to his message across platforms, a sign of his burgeoning interest in branding: “Branding allows me to take on these different interests in motion graphics, print, design and research and combine them into one cohesive message,” he said. His most substantial professional experience with branding came when working with AMD. Hu was able to participate in every level of the branding process, determining the general look and feel of the product, and culminating in a presentation for the shareholders. Inspired by Arnold, Hu hopes to teach someday himself, but in the meantime he plans on moving to New York after graduating next spring. Recently, Hu enjoyed a shorter stay in New York, accepting his Young Guns award at a gallery exhibition with 49 other winners from 14 countries.

—Summer Block

2010 ADCYOUNG GUNS

AWARD

Eric Hu credits Art Center with giving him the freedom to move around and develop a personal style. (Top) Brigman & Lucien poster, 2010, hand silkscreened in a limited edition of 12; (center) the cover to The Lagoon is Gone, a 200-page book that also won Creative Quarterly 21 this past fall; (bottom) inside spread to The Lagoon is Gone.

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Running around with a camera is how Art Center Film student and Sacramento-native Saman Keshavarz learned his craft, and this infectious enthusiasm is reflected in his free-spirited, high-energy work that has won some of the most coveted awards in the industry.

Long before the Art Center classes that helped him ground his keen instincts in solid theory, Keshavarz had a passion for film just waiting to be formed. “I was 14 and didn’t know what film was,” Keshavarz explained, “but after watching films like Blade Runner, Memento and Requiem for a Dream, I knew it was something I wanted to do.” In Fall 2007 he began his film studies at Art Center, drawn to the artistic environment of the College, the small classes in the Film program and the freedom it gives students to shoot any kind of project. At first, Keshavarz was attracted mainly to Art Center’s more hands-on studio classes, but now that he is approaching graduation in December, he looks back fondly on Jean-Pierre Geuens’ Cine 1 and 2 theory courses. He said, “[Geuens] asks questions with- out answering them…It shakes you a little bit.” Initially he was impatient with the teacher’s analytical approach, but to this day he still goes to Geuens for advice. Even with a more thorough grounding in theory, though, Keshavarz remains dedicated to learning on the job. In fact, running around with a camera became the inspiration for one of his short film projects, Freeze Tag, completed for a PSA & Commercial course taught by Jonas Mayabb and Andrew Harlow. In Freeze Tag, a spec commercial for Canon digital cameras that was filmed in the lower level of Art Center’s Elwood building, young people race through an

industrial building playing a fast-paced game of freeze tag with cameras as weapons. They race down stairwells and hallways shooting each other with cameras, darting and then freezing dramatically in mid-air; cameras are tossed, dropped and detonated like grenades. The commercial feels free and spontaneous even as it was obviously the result of a great deal of thoughtful planning. “I just wanted to bring back fun in commercials,” said Keshavarz. “Everything was so serious and clever and witty,” and while Keshavarz appreciates that cleverness, he found his personal style was more about punch than puns. And Keshavarz isn’t the only one who appreciates action-packed, high-energy commercial work: Freeze Tag went on to win a College Television Emmy Award, a Clio Award and a Silver Cannes Lions Young Director Award, among others. This same kind of frenetic energy is seen in Keshavarz’s music video for the Cinnamon Chasers’ song “Luv Deluxe,” a song Keshavarz first heard in his car and couldn’t get out of his head. With co-writer Nate Eggert, Keshavarz took a road trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Seattle, filming all the way with director of photography Justin Gurnari and actress Darcy Ripley. Along with his team at home (Art Center students Francis Pollara (producer) and Nate Tam (editor)) Keshavarz produced a shifting narrative, shot from a first-person perspective, that pays homage to films like Memento while also being very much his own.Though the subject matter is darker than in Freeze Tag, the feeling of youthfulness and boundless energy is the same: even when handling dark themes, his work feels hopeful, filled with possibility. “Luv Deluxe” won “Best Music Video” at South by Southwest and appeared in Saatchi and Saatchi’s New Directors’ Showcase. Keshavarz traveled to Cannes and last month he was a nominee in the U.K. Music Video Awards where he competed with the directors of music videos for acts like M.I.A., Hot Chip and Massive Attack. Meanwhile, he recently completed a video trilogy for musician Russ Chimes’ Midnight Club EP, a new music video for the band !!!, has been signed to two production companies and is working on a feature-length script—all while preparing to graduate in 2010. More running around, but Keshavarz makes it look fun.

—Summer Block

(Top) Film stills from Saman Keshavarz’s new music video, “Jamie, My Intentions are Bass,” created for the band !!!; (bottom) film stills from Keshavarz’s award-winning music video for the Cinnamon Chaser’s “Luv Deluxe,” which was shot from a first-person perspective. To view his music videos, visit artcenter.edu/dot/students/saman.Saman

Keshavarz

Online profiles of two more student winners: John Narciso, Transportation Design Koo Ho Shin, Graduate Industrial Design

2010 CANNES LIONSYOUNG DIRECTOR

2010 EMMY AWARDCOLLEGE TV

2010 CLIO AWARD

2010 SXSWMUSIC VIDEO

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Text by Vanessa Silberman

Illustration by Ping Zhu ILLU ’10

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A college student sits down to compose a piece of design criticism after several weeks of thorough research. Yet when it comes time to put pen to paper, the student becomes distracted and unable to concentrate. Perhaps it’s the steady stream of email that’s to blame, or the seductive lure of the Internet—where the siren call of instant access to the world outside can be painful to ignore. The student wasn’t always this way. In the not-too-distant past, the student’s need to focus could conquer the hunger for external stimuli. Now the student is left wondering, “Why can’t I focus?” It’s tempting to conclude that this student simply lacks self-discipline or hasn’t learned to multi-task effectively, but the truth is you’ve probably experienced similar frustrations at one time or another. If you haven’t, consider yourself one of the fortunate few. Because we are in the midst of one of the most profound cognitive shifts in our intellectual history, moving from a “deep attention” to a “hyper attention” society, to quote Duke University professor Katherine Hayles. She defines “deep attention” as the cognitive preference for input from only a single information stream, to be engaged for an extended period. “Hyper attention,” by contrast, is marked by a hunger for a high level of stimulation and a desire to shift rapidly among different information streams. Surfing the Internet while IM’ing and watching a YouTube video, all with

music playing in the background: Yes. Reading 100 pages of a novel in one sitting or writing a term paper: No. Evidence of this shift can be found just about everywhere in our culture, but nowhere is it as pronounced as in higher education, where the ability to concentrate deeply has tradi-tionally been considered the cornerstone of intellectual and creative achievement. With the overwhelming number of distractions now competing for students’ attention, coupled with the acceptance bordering on admiration of multi- tasking in our culture, that goal seems ever more elusive. That’s not to say that hyper attention doesn’t have its advantages; for one, hyper attention allows us to navigate quickly through an ocean of information. But, as Hayles pointed out during a recent interview, what’s extremely valu-able today isn’t just locating information—anyone can do that with the click of a mouse—but being able to process and evaluate that information in order for learning and creativity to happen. This is the realm of deep attention. And so one must ask, in today’s hyper attentive culture, in which students work in network systems moving at the speed of light, how and where do they learn to engage in deep attention? Where in our culture do we encourage sustained thinking and provide a quiet, reflective space to ponder, reflect and develop ideas?

Mindfulness

Focusing the Mind’s Eye in the Digital Age

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Hyper to DeepCreative individuals such as artists and designers are natu-rally skilled at deploying their attention—they must possess this ability given the intense levels of concentration and time required to develop their craft (10,000 hours according to soci- ologist Richard Sennett). In fact, these individuals are often thought to be experts at attaining flow, which is described by leading creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as an optimal state of being associated with complete immer-sion in a chosen activity. But even artists’ creative minds are not immune to distraction, information overload and the pressures of modern technology, which can cause anxiety and stress while hindering intellectual and creative devel-opment. These dangers apply with particular force to the Millennial Generation, the digital natives who were raised on the Internet and who are used to multiple information streams competing for their attention at any given time. Just ask Art Center faculty member M.A. Greenstein, a brain fitness and awareness expert and certified yogi. Greenstein reports that a growing number of students express concern about reaching their desired levels of creativity. “They don’t have a sense of control over when and how they get to that creative space,” she said. While there are many different paths to creativity, Greenstein believes that educators must ward off “patho-logical conditions of stress” that could hinder creative devel-

opment. The very presence of hyper attention—or moving quickly from one task to another—brings with it a certain amount of physiological stress, and neuroscientists agree that cognition works best in a non-overly stressed state. Of course, not all stress is bad—mental stress requiring one to go outside one’s comfort zone helps new skills emerge and neural networks develop. But, warns Greenstein, when stress raises the hormone cortisol in the body and exhausts immu-nity, individuals no longer have optimal circuits for thinking and cognition, let alone creativity. A common misunderstanding about the creative process is that, to come up with original ideas, one must actively gener-ate and then analyze ideas, the more the better. Art Center faculty member Steven Saitzyk compares this to trying to pour more water into a glass that’s already full. “More isn’t neces-sarily better,” he said. He pointed out that creative moments often occur when we connect with an experience in a very simply way and let our brains “breathe”—when we step away from the computer screen, go for a walk, enjoy a hobby, even fall asleep. “We need to create these spaces so that when some-thing original arises, it can be recognized,” explained Saitzyk. “All that activity means there’s no room for anything else.” So how do we thwart unproductive stress and encour-age deep attention while opening new avenues for learning and creativity? Instead of impulsively looking outward for a

solution, perhaps we should delve inside—an approach both Greenstein and Saitzyk embrace. They’re convinced that a meditative practice known as mindfulness can, in a simple yet profound way, help us address our hyper attentive tendencies.

Mind, Body and Brain Mindfulness, or being actively aware of one’s attention in the present tense, is rooted in Buddhist meditation and other contemplative practices such as yoga and guided imagery. It’s a tool to tune out distractions and calm the brain by focusing on the movement of the mind in relation to the movement of the breath, encouraging open inquiry with one’s inner experience. The end goal isn’t relaxation so deep that one could fall asleep, but rather a state of being calm and alert, aware of where one’s attention is allocated. If partici-pants feel their minds start to wander, they are to take note and gently redirect their attention back to the present tense. Eventually, the skilled mindfulness practitioner can apply the practice during the course of day-to-day activities, such as eating, driving and talking. Greenstein first began exploring mindfulness as a grad-uate student at UCLA in the 1970s, when she studied under the pioneering modern dance educator Alma Hawkins. As Greenstein explained, “The Inner Game of Tennis had just been published, causing a wave of excitement around guided imagery and meditation as a way to enhance creativ-ity. People would say, ‘You’re getting more relaxed and are more open,’ but there wasn’t a lot of good science yet to link whether the two were related.” Today, a number of scientific studies on mindfulness suggest what proponents have believed all along: mindfulness training enhances attention, creativity, productivity, memory, health and even life expectancy. In terms of our physical and mental well-being, studies indicate that mindfulness training can boost the immune system, lower blood pressure and aid in the treatment of anxiety, depression and attention disorders like ADHD, among other benefits. This revelation has resulted in a surge of interest from the medical and psychological communities; more than 240 clinics and hospitals teach mindfulness meditation to patients. During the past decade, as the link between mindfulness and health benefits grew stronger, and studies on neuroplas-ticity showed that the brain is malleable well into adulthood, scientists broadened their inquiry into mindfulness’ possible applications to cognition and information processing. The

results have been highly encouraging. For example, a 2007 study conducted by two University of Pennsylvania neuro-scientists shows that training in mindfulness enhances the ability to reach deep attention. In 2009, a UCLA study found that the brains of meditators have more volume than non-meditators in areas important for attention, focus and regulating emotion. In addition, these brains also contain more gray matter, which could sharpen mental function. And this past summer, UNC-Charlotte researchers found that mindfulness training produced significant improvement in participant’s critical cognitive skills after only four days of training for 20 minutes each day. The implications of mindfulness training on our hyper attentive minds are potentially staggering. The practice is slowly making its way into the educational environment, at both the K-12 and higher education levels, as a way to balance and deepen the learning experience. At Art Center, both Greenstein and Saitzyk teach courses that incorporate mindfulness practice. Beyond Art Center, UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) offers classes and work-shops on mindfulness training to undergraduate and medi-cal students, as well as to schools and the public. Meanwhile, the Mindfulness in Education Network and the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education each host conferences on topics such as the brain and creativity, memory and attention, and the role of mindfulness and other contemplative practices in the development of curricula.

ClassroomA range of mindful awareness practices can be incorporated into the classroom, from guided imagery exercises to yoga, tai-chi, or anything that’s somatic or encourages people to use breathing to focus on their bodies as a whole. Plenty of college campuses offer yoga or some kind of meditative prac-tice as extracurricular resources. The challenge, however, is to avoid marginalizing these attention practices and, instead, bring them into the classroom—whether they last 15 seconds, 15 minutes or more.

Connecting the

A Mindful

From

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At Art Center, Greenstein asks her students to engage in “somatic tracking” exercises—a term she prefers in lieu of “meditation” in order to avoid meditation’s non-secular asso-ciations. She usually introduces the practice for 15 minutes at the beginning of each class, when students are most alert. Seating positions are adjusted so students feel like they’re in their own space, but other than that, the physical environment isn’t altered so students can learn to be mindful in all types of conditions. Since art and design students are naturally gifted in visualization, Greenstein’s somatic tracking exer-cises incorporate guided imagery to visually steer students inside their bodies. Once inside, students are instructed to notice the internal dialogue occurring in connection with their breath and body, and they’re encouraged to separate other kinds of mental noise from the tracking work. Fine Art student Chelsea Rector was first introduced to mindfulness practice during her second term at Art Center in a transdisciplinary course co-taught by Greenstein and Mason Cooley that explored biomimicry, technology and nature in relation to the body. Greenstein led a session on somatic tracking, and, for Rector, the experience was a real eye- opener. “I learned that my attention was something I could have an amount of collaboration with,” she said. “Before, I was at the mercy of my own bio-systems behaving as they were, and I was sometimes overwhelmed by all the day-to-day distractions. I hadn’t realized that there is this thing called will, or volition, that I could communicate directly with.” Of course, any kind of contemplative practice is intensely personal and each person’s background and experience is different. As with other awareness-enhancing activities, getting students to simply be aware of their attention is the first step. Greenstein said internal practice is highly unusual for many students who are used to living in a culture where all their experience is “based on screens outside, whether virtual or just the perceptual field they think is real.” Before introducing a mindfulness practice in a specific course, she asks students to complete an assessment form that asks vari-ous questions about how they use their attention: Are you engaged in any physical activities? Do you doodle? Do you have issues of wandering attention? By letting the students assess how they use their attention, they recognize the value of considering these issues. Educators who aren’t trained in contemplative practice per se can nevertheless encourage mindfulness in their class-rooms. At the beginning of his digital journalism and social media course, for example, Stanford and UC-Berkeley profes-sor Howard Rheingold asks students to shut their laptops, turn off their phones, close their eyes and spend a minute noticing where they’re placing their attention. Rheingold, one

of the word’s leading authorities on the social implications of technology, explained that he began investigating mind-fulness about five years ago when he noticed, “as all college professors do these days,” that he was standing in front of a group of students who were not looking at him. “They were looking at their computers, searching,” he said. Simply raising the issues of attention and multi-tasking and having students discuss them in person and in online forums is beneficial, observed Rheingold. He also mentioned another experiment, or “probe” into mindfulness that involves asking students to co-teach with him. “The personal experience is so important,” he said. After co-teaching, his students began developing norms that spread from student to student—voluntarily closing their laptops and making eye contact with the teacher, for example.

Where Can FlowRector, the Art Center student, has subsequently taken three other courses taught by Greenstein, including “Neurons Sparking” and “Beautiful Networks,” which explore the mind in relation to the body and technology and which also incorporate mindfulness exercises in class. For Rector, these exercises have helped her handle technology in a more effec-tive way, enabling her to more clearly distinguish when and where it is being misused in her daily life. The exercises also help her re-experience her environment, which in turn opens her to new ideas or moments of insight. “I’m not looking for new information; it’s made available because my attention has changed. It’s all sensory at that point. I’m hearing things differently, feeling my body differently,” she said. According to Marvin Belzer of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), it’s not uncommon for individuals engaged in mindfulness practice to develop novel thoughts. In fact, he said that mindfulness training provides a compatible framework for enhancing creativity by height-ening awareness of one’s emotions, prompting new ideas to flow. “Part of mindfulness training is getting more attuned to the physical,” he said. “With an emotion, our ordinary habit can be to stay obsessed with the same ideas. But if we can tune our attention inwards and focus on the body—to try and feel the physical components of those emotions—we have more freedom in our responses and aren’t just stuck in the same old habit patterns.” As a result, since mindfulness encourages engagement with all the senses and doesn’t judge whether or not something

is extraneous, thoughts and emotions that might otherwise get shut down are acknowledged and potentially pursued. Saitzyk, who has taught meditation since the mid-1970s and currently teaches a course called “Meditation and the Creative Mind” through Art Center at Night, believes the power of mindfulness to encourage deeper connections with one’s inner experience is tremendously valuable for contem-porary artists and designers. “So often today, we’re taught to strengthen our conceptual understanding of an issue but forget to balance it with our intuition, which can be captured and put to great use in the creative process,” he explained. This isn’t to say that creative moments necessarily occur during mindfulness meditation. But if they do, these moments are more likely to be skillfully acted upon due to the active and fully present state of mind of that individual.

Radical IdeaSometimes the most radical notions are the most intuitive. Since ancient times, humans have practiced mindfulness as a way to balance their lives, reduce stress and cultivate their attention. Today, with the digital age upon us, these outcomes

couldn’t be more urgent as the shift toward a “hyper atten-tion” society continues to accelerate, overloading our brains with competing information streams and seemingly endless reams of data. Without balance, the system cannot stand. We all have the power to engage in mindfulness. But living in a wired, constantly-on culture means that our atten-tion is often scattered and essentially mindless. To remain connected not to our gadgets but to our bodies—noticing thoughts and raw sensations as we live each day—requires skill and conscious effort. And it’s especially critical for creative individuals like artists and designers to remain attuned to their attention for this very reason. At its core, learning requires learning where to allocate one’s attention, and attention itself involves a holistic, multi-sensory sensing in and sensing out. Mindfulness is not the only bridge linking hyper to deep attention, of course, but its usefulness is increasingly being recognized by scientists, educators and creative individuals alike, and will only continue to grow as digital stimuli becomes even more omnipresent.

New Ideas

A Not-So

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Portfolio

“The genesis for this piece was to make a portrait about a family member. I chose to paint a picture about my little sister and her life living on the fringe of society and partaking in historical re-enactments.”1 Josh Evans, Illustration, seventh term, “Rebekah’s Battle.” Instructors: Aaron Smith, Jason Holley

“This photograph was shot as an independent project outside of class. During my studies, I was always working on my own projects to push myself further. This piece was shot guerilla style in a Hollywood club, and we were nearly kicked out, but luck was on our side and we were able to capture the spirit of the shoot unscathed.”2 Amber Gress, Photography and Imaging, fourth term independent study, “Eclipse.”

“This photograph is part of a series titled ‘Observations.’ The subjects of the photographs are all fictional characters, situations and events that I have experienced in real life and have documented at a later time with carefully chosen actors, props and locations.” 3 Damon Casarez, Photography and Imaging, second term, “Observations.” Instructor: Patrick “Pato” Hebert

View additional student work online at artcenter.edu/dot/portfolio

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“’Silhouette’ is the gentleman’s pedal to work, delivering low cost through ease of maintenance, efficiency and vehicle classification. It features aero through minimizing frontal area, and a wide footprint of piezoelectric composite chassis ensures lane ownership as well as delivering a plush ride. Solartouch provides shade, power and telemetry.”5 Jake Loniak, Transportation Design, seventh term independent study, “Silhouette.” Advisors: Richard Pietruska, Gaylord Eckles, Eric Bauer

“Classic lines with contemporary features was the idea behind the revival of this classic British icon. Inspired by the pure sport of racing and the spirit of Donald Healey, this roadster is for the weekend driving enthusiast.”6 Jeremy Burgess, Transportation Design, eighth term, “Austin Healey 200.” Instructor: Dave Hacket

“I want my portraits of monkeys to evoke familiar human qualities while emphasizing traits that are clearly alien. I heighten these aspects so that the subject is not easily understood as human or animal, inviting the viewer to evaluate these primates from a different perspective.”4 Jordan Swerdloff, Fine Art, eighth term, “Golden Snub Nose.” Instructors: Dave Bailey, Laura Cooper, Kevin Hanley

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“’I created ‘EcoPrint’ for a Design for Sustainability course. ‘EcoPrint’ is a home printing system that makes it easy and rewarding to save paper for the average American family. It is comprised of a physical printer as well as a sophisticated user interface. ‘EcoPrint’ helps reduce paper usage with options in the interface and by printing on rolls rather than sheets. For example, smaller print jobs can be compiled so there is no need to waste an entire sheet.”9 Christine Purcell, Graduate Industrial Design, fifth term, “EcoPrint.” Instructors: Fridolin Beisert, Heidrun Mumper-Drumm

“Women in rural India walk almost six kilometers to fetch water or firewood. ‘Samarth’ is a low cost sustain-able intervention tackling the problem of mobility for these women, created for a Design for Sustainability course. It is a DIY bicycle trailer made by these women with multiple configurations for various functions.”10 Radhika Bhalla, Graduate Industrial Design, fourth term, “Samarth: Empowering Women through Increased Mobility.” Instructors: Fridolin Beisert, Heidrun Mumper-Drumm. [“Samarth” is currently on view in the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum “Why Design Now?” exhibition triennial.]

“’Somatecture’ is an exhibition and art piece that explores the self in its physical and psychological manifesta-tions, posing the question: Does the self exist in one realm more fully than the other? Is there more truth in the object than the experience? Is a memory worth more than the artifact? Utilizing complex structural design and the deteriorating nature of certain elements of the exhibit, we look into the connection one feels towards the physical.”7 Christina Nizar and Jaime Lopez, Graphic Design, fifth term, “Somatecture.” Instructor: Carolina Trigo

“The assignment was to create an entirely new beverage brand and design suitable for packaging the product. My concept for “Elysium Vodka” derives from the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology, hence the white tree. It was a place where favored heroes went as a final resting place in the afterlife. In the English vernacular, elysium means a place of perfect happiness.”8 Aaron Komae, Graphic Design, third term, “Elysium Vodka.” Instructor: Dan Hoy

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“’Deeper Cuts’ is a new music gallery and performance venue that subverts expectations common in visual arts galleries by providing immersive experiences of music and audio-visual works of art in privatized listening stations; an original ‘sound gallery.’”11 Melodie Yashar, Environmental Design, second term, “Deeper Cuts: A New Venue for a Musician or Performing Artist.”Instructors: Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herscovitch

“’Hop’ is an interactive street garden that encourages sustainable behavior. It allows pedestrians to water the garden’s plants through the use of foot pumps. This hopping activity gives people a way to release everyday stress and enjoy the fresh air, even in a hectic metropolis.”12 Snow Dong, Malek Idriss, Tim Meyer and Jamie Haewon Kim, Environmental Design, eighth term, “Hop.” Instructor: James Meraz

“I wanted to create a piece that would stand out, so I came up with the idea of making a chair out of chairs. I chose the simplest chair form for the clear big chair, and used the most ordinary chair form to make the small wooden chairs. Users see only a pile of mini chairs from a distance, but when they walk up to it, they realize that they can actually sit on them.” 13 Eun Jin (Stephanie) Jang, Environmental Design, eighth term, “The Chair(s).” Instructors: David Mocarski, Cory Grosser

The biggest challenge for today’s designer is to retain that idealistic spirit we enter the creative field with. Commercial and peer pressures will not make us succumb to that cynical strain that corrupts so many. Let’s always start from ideals and let’s ignite the world with designs that treat people with health, nature, inclusion and enlightenment as core values...contagious values for a 21st century that needs designers to inspire.

Yves Béhar, Product Design ’81; Founder, fuseproject

In a medium where technology changes daily, a major challenge is exploiting the emerging technologies in a manner that yields the greatest creative results, without ever letting the technology drive the vision. Perspective is what makes a project distinctive and interesting, but if one isn’t careful, those unique character-istics, that human voice, can easily get lost in the binary digits of the tools.

Zack Snyder, Film ’89; Blockbuster filmmaker

Einstein once said: ‘Creativity is more important than intelligence.’ Designers are creators. Their passion lies in forging ahead, creating improved interpretations and better solutions. This has to be fueled by more than just passion. The other ingredi-ent is innovation. Therefore, the most challenging aspect of being a designer today is to remain curious and obsessed with innovation and breakthrough technology. This way, a designer can contribute toward a better tomorrow.

Frank Stephenson, Transportation Design ’86; Automotive visionary

Life in the arts is not what you imagine it might be in school. Cultural production is big business; as a visual artist you are regularly encountering people and situations that urge you to compromise. It is important to remain open to the world, not to disengage from curiosity or inquiry, to be honest with yourself when something’s not working and have the agility to change course when necessary—in short, to clear a space for yourself so that you can still hear the voice that first summoned you to make your initial artistic gesture.

Pae White, Graduate Art ‘91, Distinguished artist

We asked the recipients of Art Center’s first-ever Creative Spirit Awards to consider the most challenging aspect of being an artist/designer today:

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