Name: Dori Tunstall: Decolonizing Design Practices in Academia | Design division @CCAarts
Uploaded: 2024-10-16T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Dori Tunstall: Decolonizing Design Practices in Academia | Design division

Dori Tunstall: Decolonizing Design Practices in Academia | Design division

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-10-16 | Dori Tunstall: Decolonizing Design Practices in Academia | Design division

Living and learning among artists | BA History of Art & Visual Culture

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-06-12 | Explore beyond the boundaries of traditional art history at California College of the Arts (CCA). While studying the past, present, and future of visual culture, you also get the unique opportunity to directly engage with material practices you want to research through our interdisciplinary learning culture.

Learn more: https://www.cca.edu/humanities-sciences/history-of-art-and-visual-culture/

CCA 2024 Commencement Alumni Video | Wally Corona (BFA Painting & Drawing 2023)

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-05-13 | Join CCA alum Wally Corona (BFA Painting and Drawing 2023) for a journey on the 22-Fillmore bus line, one of the main routes connecting CCA to the rest of the city, where he finds inspiration for a newly commissioned work celebrating CCA’s 117th Commencement Ceremonies.

Explore our commencement festivities: cca.edu/2024

Endless exploration of the written word | BA Writing & Literature

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-05-06 | Writing and literature at CCA can be whatever you want it to be. Set within an art and design school, our program gives writers the freedom to explore many different modes of narrative and storytelling.

Find out more: https://www.cca.edu/humanities-sciences/writing-literature/

Rashaad Newsome: Engineers

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-24 | PROGRAM: MFA Design and Animation

The Design Division at CCA welcomes Rashaad Newsome to the Fall 2023 Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

In this lecture Rashaad Newsome discussed ideas around their new and recent work in 3D animation, collage, sculpture, and Artificial Intelligence.

This event was organized in collaboration with the CCA MFA Design and Animation programs and is supported by the Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series, a year-long conversation series that spans the disciplines of art, design, architecture, and writing.

Lonny Avi Brooks, Nick Foster, Radha Mistry, and Helen Maria Nugent: Welcome Dear Futurists

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-23 | Program: Design Division

The Design Division at CCA welcomes four leading futurists, Lonny Avi Brooks, Nick Foster, Radha Mistry, and Helen Maria Nugent as our first panel in the Fall 2023 Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Anh and Hoang Nguyen: Creative Session

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-23 | Program: Industrial Design

The Design Division at CCA welcomes Anh and Hoang Nguyen in the 2023 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

In their talk “Creative Session.” CCA industrial design graduates Anh and Hoang Nguyen, known collectively as “the Brothers,” recount their career trajectory since graduating in 2009. With a natural flow from one brother to the other, they reveal how they have used equal parts visual artistry, technical knowledge, business savvy, and playful engagement to move their work from classic industrial design and branding for consultancies into a more expansive practice. In their current position as design directors at the venture capital group Playground Global, they “partner up with mad scientists to build the future.” The Brothers’ serious play with Playground positions them at the frontiers of science and technology working on future-leaning projects such as finely-tuned 3D manufacturing, carbon-free flight, sustainable farming, and innovative materials discovery. At every step they use the essential design skills of formgiving, synthesis and storytelling to make complex systems comprehensible to investors, consumers and the larger public.

The Brothers explain how in project after project, they have found the courage to admit they don’t know all the answers, and they counsel students to merge three key components for design success - art for aesthetics and materiality, science for mechanics and engineering and business for branding and marketing, This multidisciplinary approach, amplified by their creative partnership, allows them to make wide-ranging impacts on how new companies will do business and rise to the increasingly complex challenges of materiality, sustainability, and equity on the horizon.

Authored by Mara Holt Skov

Mike Rianda: How to Change Lives With Your Art

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-23 | Program: Illustration

The Design Division at CCA welcomes Mike Rianda as our second speaker in the 2023 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Join one of CCA’s celebrated illustration graduates as he shares how he learned to accept fear (25%) as part of his creative process and merge it with inspiration (75%) to use both to chase his dreams (100%). In this talk, Rianda delights a packed house of illustrators and animators with his larger-than-life presence. Between exclamations of “yeah baby” and “oh shit!” Rianda zigs and zags through his angst-filled backstory of childhood fear and loneliness expressed in hilarious visual terms, his dynamic career trajectory in which he used fear as a driving force, and his rise to success as the creator of Gravity Falls and The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

Rianda’s presentation is animated with quirky characters (mostly his awkward childhood self) and humorous asides delivered with infectious energy, and bursts of audience engagement beginning with his callout of the leading animation houses that he was rejected from and an invitation to the audience to claim their own rejections out loud … really loud. With a spontaneous mid-point break to record the audience singing happy birthday to his dad, Rianda goes on to share the importance of learning empathy by living other people’s experiences through stories and a must-see list of films and animations. The talk ends with sage advice on making it in animation, and encouragement to fail more gloriously so that you can ultimately succeed in your creative work. Rianda’s talk is uproarious, yet completely sincere with a BIG heart open for his audience.

Authored by Mara Holt Skov

Evan Shively: Creating What is Already with Us: Nature, Design, and Alchemy

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-23 | Program: Furniture

The Design Division at CCA welcomes Evan Shively to the Fall 2023 Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.
Wornick Professor Evan Shively traces his journey finding form, function, and connection through the sawyer’s craft. This lecture is brought to you by the Furniture program at CCA.

The Verasphere Free your mind and your art will follow.

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-23 | Program: Fashion

The Design Division at CCA welcomes The Verasphere, Michael Johnstone and David Faulk, as our third round of speakers in the 2023 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Michael Johnstone and David Faulk join us as guests of the Fashion Program and are introduced by Fashion Chair Greg Climer as San Francisco legends who have worked together for more than 25 years. Johnstone starts the talk with drawings he made in high school– ‘70’s style swirls and curls, figures with long hair and tall boots, carefully penned on small rocks, left at river beds for people to find. The seeds of playfulness and generosity that blossom over decades are there in those anonymous gifts.

From there Johnstone and Faulk take us on a tour of their character Mrs. Vera, born early in their partnership from a need to do something light and fun. It was the 80’s, and Johnstone describes it as a heavy time with the AIDS epidemic ravaging the community. Johnstone was working with friends staging public puppet shows, painting sets, making costumes, telling stories. Facing his own health challenges, he and Faulk started making and wearing costumes and snapping pictures. “We were surrounded by so much darkness, we needed joy,” says Johnstone. You need to watch the talk to really get the feeling, but think: more is more, wigs made of combs and beads, vests of plastic straws, hula hoops swirling under skirts, googly eyes, plastic easter egg scale sleeves. The color, surprise, joy, freedom, and masterful crafting is impossible to not fall in love with.

Vera begins alone in dark rooms, expressive eyes popping through a thickly painted face. But over time, she becomes a figure in the city, people are drawn to her and to the spirit of the project. Johnstone and Faulk are committed to using what others throw away, and to sharing the pleasure of costume outside of commercial structures. They pop up on streets with costumes to share and a camera to document. They host workshops. “We don’t have anything for sale, we’re not in galleries. Since we’re outside of traditional systems, we aren’t beholden to anyone,” say Faulk. They give people permission to “do something crazy,” says Faulk, and Johnstone adds that it’s not exactly about identity or gender politics, “it’s about fun. You’re part of it, if you’re up for it.” By the end Vera “has a tribe,” she is a portal, a beacon, a leader.

The talk ends with a mural by Faulk in an LGBTQ Senior Center. It’s about survivors and their many paths. The wall along a staircase shows a pluriverse of characters, faces made from triangles, circles, stick legs, footprints leading in multiple directions. It’s called “The Scenic Route,” because “Everyone comes from their own starting point, each person’s experience of surviving is unique.”

Authored by Sarahleah Fordyce

Define your voice in storytelling | MFA Writing at California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-04-22 | We encourage writers to explore many different forms, with individualized instruction from mentors writing in every genre. Embedded in a creative community like no other, your writing will be energized in unexpected or unconventional ways.

Learn more about the program: https://www.cca.edu/humanities-sciences/mfa-writing/

Alum Spotlight: Joyce Choi | Interior Design

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-03-20 | Alum Spotlight: Joyce Choi | Interior Design

“ I think it's really powerful that you are doing something creative that affects everyone's emotions and experience.”

Joyce Choi (BFA Interior Design 2017) is a project designer at the luxury interior design firm NICOLE HOLLIS, where she manages projects for high end hospitality and residential clients. She credits CCA for teaching her industry standard practices and skills and giving her so many opportunities for professional growth and success.

Learn more about Interior Design at CCA: https://www.cca.edu/architecture/interior-design/

Alum Spotlight: Eleni Berg | Ceramics

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-03-18 | Alum Spotlight: Eleni Berg | Ceramics

"I knew early on I didn't want to settle for anything less than being an artist full-time."

Eleni Berg (BFA Ceramics 2019) is a professional artist, educator, and studio assistant. Her interdisciplinary practice includes painting and ceramic sculptures that comment on the culture of consumerism and rituals of our current times. As an educator, she helps high school students find their artistic voice and credits CCA for showing her an inclusive approach to teaching art.

Learn more about our Ceramics program: cca.edu/fine-arts/ceramics

Double Ground at CCA | Opening Fall 2024

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-02-23 | California College of the Arts' (CCA) campus in San Francisco extends with an additional 82,305 square feet of space, designed by a team led by award-winning architect Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang. Dubbed "Double Ground," new classrooms and studios with super-flexible interior spaces offer new opportunities for collaboration.

Learn more about our campus expansion: cca.edu/expansion

Meet President David C. Howse | California College of the Arts (CCA)

California College of the Arts - CCA 2024-01-16 | Get to know CCA's new president, David C. Howse.

Howse began his role at CCA in December 2023 and brings more than 20 years of experience leading arts organizations through strategic visioning, fundraising, and community building, working primarily in educational institutions. Please join us in welcoming him to our creative community!

Visit cca.edu/president to learn more.

A message of gratitude from President-Elect David C. Howse

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-11-20 | CCA President-Elect David C. Howse reflects on his first video to campus and looks toward a future of collaboration with students, staff, faculty, and alumni.

Rayyane Tabet Lecture

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-11-01 | Drawing from experience and self-directed research, Rayyane Tabet explores stories that offer an alternative understanding of major socio-political events through individual narratives. Informed by a training in architecture and sculpture, Tabet's work investigates paradoxes in the built environment and its history by way of installations, interventions and performances that reconstitute the perception of physical and temporal distance.

Most recent and upcoming solo shows include the MUDAM Museum in Luxembourg, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London, Carré d'Art Museum in Nîmes and Kunstverein in Hamburg.

Tabet's work was featured in the 80th Whitney Biennial, the 7th Yokohama Triennial, the 2nd Lahore Biennial, the 21st Biennale of Sydney, Manifesta 12, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, the 6th Marrakech Biennale, the 10th and 12th Sharjah Biennials, the 2nd New Museum Triennial and was part of collateral events during the 55th and the 59th Venice Biennial.

Joseph DeLappe Lecture

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-10-30 | Joseph DeLappe is currently the Professor of Games and Tactical Media at Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, where he relocated in 2016 after directing the Digital Media Studio at the University of Nevada, Reno which he founded in 1993. DeLappe was born in San Francisco, California. He received the first MFA degree awarded by the CADRE Institute (Computers in Art and Design, Research and Education) at San Jose State University in1990.

In 2006 he began the project “dead-in-iraq”, to type consecutively, all names of America's military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America's Army first person shooter online recruiting game. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org project, an online archive based on an open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. In 2013, he rode a specially equipped bicycle to draw a 460 mile long chalk line around the Nellis Air Force Range to surround an area that would be large enough to create a solar farm that could power the entire United States. And, in 2015 he collaborated with the Biome Collection to develop the computer game, “Killbox”, a two person shooter which explores the complexities and consequences of drone warfare – the project was nominated as “Best Computer Game” for a Scottish Bafta Award in 2016.

His creative works and actions have been featured widely in scholarly journals, film documentaries, books and in the popular media. These include the 2010 book from Routledge entitled “Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games”. He has authored two book chapters, including “The Gandhi Complex: The Mahatma in Second Life.” Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design, (New York, Routledge 2011) and “Playing Politics: Machinima as Live Performance and Document”, Understanding Machinima Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds, (London, UK, Continuum 2012).

For more updates on upcoming events, lectures and news follow CCA Fine Arts on Instagram! (@ccafinearts)

Cauleen Smith Lecture

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-10-19 | Cauleen Smith was raised in Sacramento, California and lives in Los Angeles. Smith is faculty in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Smith holds a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith’s short films, feature film, an installation and performance were work showcased at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. Smith has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MassMoCA and LACMA.

Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film / Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, and Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video 2016, United States Artists Award 2017, 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award, 2020 recipient of the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship.

For more updates on upcoming events, lectures and news follow CCA Fine Arts on Instagram! (@ccafinearts)

Annie Wong Lecture and Q&A

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-10-04 | Annie Wong, a.k.a. Headexplodie is a mixed-media artist and storyteller known for cooking up playful eye candy in the form of sculptures, illustrations, and stop-motion animation.

Her work is a blend of delightful fun, oddball humor, with a touch of teenage rebellion, all rooted in her experience growing up as a second-generation Chinese American in South Texas.

Pee-Wee Herman once told her she was very talented and she’s been riding high on that achievement ever since then.

She is a Giphy Featured Artist with over 28 billion views and her Ovary Actions project has received global coverage. Clients include Adult Swim, Apple, The New York Times, Washington Post, Vans, Creative Mornings, Meta, Instagram, and The Greater Good Science Center. Annie holds a B.F.A. from California College of the Arts and a Master’s Degree in Animation from the Academy of Art University.

For more updates on upcoming events, lectures and news follow CCA Fine Arts on Instagram! (@ccafinearts)

Design for the Greater Good | MDes Social Lab at California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-09-26 | Each year, our Graduate Interaction Design program makes a positive impact in many communities, with our Social Lab program. We partner with myriad organizations — from educational non-profits and startups to global enterprise organizations — to harness emerging design and technology for the greater good.

Learn more about the program: https://www.cca.edu/design/interaction-design/

CCAs 22 undergraduate majors

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-09-12 | Pursue your passions at California College of the Arts, where diverse practices meet and inspiration is at every turn. These are our 22 undergraduate majors. Learn more about each program at cca.edu/academics.

VR Demo

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-08-25 | VR demonstration video, made for students in a spring 2022 course by Jeremy Mende.

Undergraduate Information Session | Apply to CCA

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-08-15 | Interested in applying to California College of the Arts? We've got you. Get all your questions answered about the undergraduate admissions process in this information session with CCA admissions counselors Ana Scharfenaker and Francis Calimlim.

Join our creative community and apply to CCA: https://info.cca.edu/request-more-information

A Quick Intro to CCA | Undergraduate Information Session

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-08-15 | Interested in applying to California College of the Arts (CCA)? We've got you. Here's a quick run down about what life at CCA looks like and how to apply by CCA admissions counselors Ana Scharfenaker and Francis Calimlim.

Join our creative community and apply to CCA: https://info.cca.edu/request-more-information

Design in Healthcare Panel: Want to Fix Healthcare? Learn How to Design for It.

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Amira Selim, Camille Grigsby-Rocca, Joyce Shulman, Dana Anselmo as our fourth round of speakers in the 2022 Fall Design Lecture Series.

These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

In this panel discussion, CCA DMBA chair Justin Lokitz moderates a panel of four designers (including CCA alumni), each of whom share how they use their design skills, knowledge and tools to improve the experiences of both patients and healthcare workers. What follows is a frank discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of bringing the design process into an industry that has traditionally been slow to innovate. Panelists represent several different realms of healthcare - from hospital design, to pharmaceuticals, to insurance providers, to digital health. Each uses design not only to create educational and diagnostic tools, but also to generate conversations that can help providers of health services understand how they can best serve people across a range of care settings. Design thinking strategies and problem solving methodologies can be instrumental in meeting the needs of patients and their families, supporting them at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

We are reminded that the American healthcare system is a public good, but it is also a business that has strict issues of privacy, policy, practice and regulation that need to be negotiated at each step. Patience and consistency are essential for designers working in this sector. Despite the challenges, each member of the panel agrees that working in the healthcare sector is a deeply rewarding experience.

Authored by Mara Holt Skov

Katie Gong: Twists & Turns

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Katie Gong as our final speaker in the 2022 Fall Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Katie Gong’s talk hosted by the furniture program, is a humble and accessible record of her admirable career. She starts with her roots, sitting at the knee of two creative grandparents who instilled a love of form exploration and a sense of agency for responding to materials. After her undergraduate degree she worked for the retail store Anthropologie, where she built massive window displays on tight time and budget, honing her inventive sourcing and production techniques. When she outgrew that job and its ethical compromises, she bravely struck out on her own and rented a studio in a condemned building. From small commissions to large, for clients famous and unknown, she describes taking anything that came her way “always trying to keep it running;” balancing life as a mother, a wife, a production furniture maker and a sculptor. She works from a 'can-do' stance and has created complete environments for bars and restaurants as glimpsed through gorgeous interior shot that she casually flips through. She is clear that it wasn’t easy, that things didn’t fit through doors, that ceilings had to be cut, that she was constantly hoping and scrapping. But after years of doing everything others asked for, and doing it beautifully, she has earned time, and a reputation, to make her own mark. She finds herself drawn to a limited palette of steamed ratan, making twisting, knotted sculptures that feel like drawings, and that hang across spaces or against the wall. It’s a treat to watch her chart the path, and a reminder of how brave we must be, and how hard we must work to make a life in the studio.

Authored by Sarahleah Fordyce

Geoff Kaplan: After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet; A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Geoff Kaplan as our second speaker in the 2022 Fall Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Former MFA Design professor Geoff Kaplan returns to CCA to introduce his new book After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet, which traces the history of graphic design education as it moved from a craft-based making practice to a theory-based cultural practice. Kaplan shares his experience as a Cranbrook graduate student in the mid-1990s when he was exposed to the previous generation of semioticians and philosophers – Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes among others – who were deconstructing language and culture in their search for meaning in a postwar world. Cranbrook design professors and students alike mined semiotics to inform their design, deconstructing visual elements to get to the essence of graphic communication. Kaplan notes that the impact on pedagogy was long-lasting. Graphic esign pedagogy focused on toconceptual artistic practice, exploring theoretical approaches to image-making and ultimately questioning the meaning of communication itself.

Kaplan notes that the impact on pedagogy was long-lasting as graphic design education at the graduate level shifted into more of a conceptual artistic practice, exploring theoretical approaches to image-making and ultimately questioning the meaning of communication itself.
Kaplan’s continuously layered slide deck echoes the visual language of his website and is rich with visual puns and intentionally awkward juxtapositions that reflect the complexity of the theories he encountered. He shows how his bookshelf expanded with recommendations from mentors and peers who were also reading theory to inform their graphic design practices as they became increasingly conceptual and experimental. Today, he concludes, theory and practice are inextricably linked.

Authored by Mara Holt Skov

Andrew McLuhan: Design, Media, and the Matter of Effect

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Andrew McLuhan as our final speaker in the 2022 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.

Andrew McLuhan, the third in a family line of esteemed cultural and media critics, was invited to CCA by the BFA Industrial Design program and hosted by alumni Omar Ansari (BFA IxD 2020). Grandson and son of the esteemed media critics Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Andrew weaves threads of the McLuhan practices with his own teaching, writing, and hopes for designers as we contemplate the profound effects of new media and design in culture. “In design and engineering,” he says, “we make choices that have existential consequences (no pressure).”

Andrew joins us from a beautifully crowded nook in a repurposed barn, surrounded by files, boxes, notes and images. With no slides, his beautifully crafted talk starts by unpacking Marshall’s most famous book title The Medium is the Message. “The message,” Marshall said, “of any new technology, is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The effects of new media on our sensory lives are similar to the effects of new poetry. They change not our thoughts, but the structure of our world.” Consider the shift in our world structure when we go from writing to typing, calling to texting.

The media, Marshall argued, is not simply something we use, but more like an environment we inhabit. As an environment, Marshall argued, media “transforms our perceptions governing the areas of intention and neglect alike.” Andrew describes that while his father’s and grandfather’s work were inspired by a curiosity for how things work, his own path is more focused on practical applications and exercises that help students confront big themes like the impact of the cell phone on our daily lives. He ends the formal part of the talk optimistically, “As much as we design ourselves into these messes, we can design ourselves out of them. In the past, the majority of the effects of our technology were unintended. Tomorrow, with what we know today, we are in a position to potentially make most of the effects beneficial and intentional, by design.”

And in the Q&A at the end, he drops a final gem to help us anticipate effects as we work-the four laws of media, developed and tested by his father and grandfather. New media, they posit, always 1) enhances some function, 2) obsolesces something, 3) brings back something old but in a new way, and 4) and, if pushed to an extreme, reverses its characteristics.

Authored by Sarahleah Fordyce

Kristin Neidlinger: Extimacy, Expressive Technology for Connection

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Kristin Neidlinger as our second speaker in the 2022 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making. For the Spring 2022 Design Lecture Series we invite CCA alumni to share their design strategies and stories of success.

Kristin Neidlinger, Alumni of MFA Design 2010, returns to CCA to share her gorgeous and visionary work with wearables that translate biosignals into external communication of emotion. Her talk branches from her thesis at CCA, continues through partnerships, exhibitions, and innovations, and brings us to her current PhD research in the Netherlands, showing how she has translated skin conductivity, breath and heart rate to give the body a visual voice.

The auditory, visual and tactile displays of these translations promote what she calls “extimacy,” an external intimacy that communicates the wearer’s internal emotions to the outside world, while also offering valuable feedback to the wearer, since, she says, “We often don’t know how we feel.”

Neidlinger’s thesis at CCA explored devices for people with sensory processing disorders to help them express how they are feeling and to read other people. It included a device to help with slouching, a head piece to support meditation, and finally the “Galvanic Extimacy Responder,” a wearable collar that collects the same kind of information as a lie detector test but translates it into colors that correlate to emotional state.

The “Galvanic Extimacy Responder” was developed and featured in numerous exhibitions for eight years, allowing Neidlinger to build new contextual applications and branch into collaborative spaces with both wellness practitioners and new materials companies. The projects NeurotiQ, Awe, and Flexo all followed, ranging from woven headpieces that read brain signals to inflating, light-up responders that show excitement in one person and transmit to another. The Awe project uses 3D printed materials that flex, grow and glow, creating a kind of inflatable shell incorporated into clothing, looking like something between a mood ring and barnacle armor from the future.

Neidlinger has an enigmatic smile throughout, as she explains her work with acupressurists, astronauts, and caregivers in a rigorous and ambitious design and research practice. The work is mesmerizing and inspiring and highly recommended for Industrial and Interaction Designers as well as those building speculative wearables and narratives.

Weiwei Au & Aosheng Ran: Designing for Coziness

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-07-24 | The Design Division at CCA welcomes Weiwei Au & Aosheng Ran as our first round of speakers in the 2022 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making. For the Spring 2022 Design Lecture Series we invite CCA alumni to share their design strategies and stories of success.

CCA Alumni Weiwei Xu (BFA Interaction Design 2018), Aosheng Ran (BFA Interaction Design 2020), and May-Li Khoe are the founders of Sprout, a virtual collaboration and social space that optimizes coziness. Their goals in creating the space range from bringing the energy of Nintendo to computers, to enabling coexistence within a community. Hosted by Studio Forward in partnership with Google, the Sprout team talk is a delightful entry into the spirit of interaction design. They don’t cover the coding of the space, but instead focus on guiding principles that form the emotional experience of users.

“The goal of creating Sprout was to make spaces digitally, where we feel like we belong,” says Shu. “I spent the first twenty years of my working life in meeting rooms that seemed to suck the life out of people,” shares Khoe. With a clear description of un-coziness, they set out to define what makes something cozy. As you might expect, cozy to them is intimate, warm, playful, “and, we have to be able to be vulnerable,” Ran adds. They were looking to make something that wasn’t driven by the architecture of the code, or by industry, but rather by the feeling we have while using it.

“It’s tempting to try to recreate some interaction we love in the real world. But it’s important to think about the attributes, and then build for the digital realm,” explains Khoe. Instead of recreating a digital bean bag, they needed to create the feeling of relaxed posture and freedom of movement.

There is a consistent warmth, fluidity, and generosity woven through how the team speaks, moves on the canvas, responds to questions and interacts with each other’s additions to the space real-time. “Social media has us comparing ourselves to others, but our best memories are more like potlucks,” says Xu. To create this kind of feeling where we create trust and share, the team settled on the guiding principles of focus transparency (your face and pointer/cursor are united), removing gatekeeping, and encouraging playfulness. “We rely on the humane parts of us to set the boundaries, not the software,” says Ran.

Built up, moved around, culled, and played on in real time, we watch with the team’s faces moving around the capybaras, videos of puppies, party hats, and ice cubes, giving us a real sense of the Sprout experience. The final canvas ends with the note that, “Sprout is a love letter to people who want to bring giggles to the world, and to the future of computing.”

Authored by Sarahleah Fordyce

Solving Important Problems | MDes Interaction Design at California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-06-28 | MDes in Interaction Design is a one-year, intensive STEM-designated program that provides students with the most in-demand design toolkit: a combination of powerful design, process skills, and understanding of organizational systems that empowers them to address important complex challenges. Located in the creative capital of Silicon Valley, there's no better place to learn from industry leaders and grow your professional network.

Build the future with us: https://www.cca.edu/design/interaction-design/

Bring your imagination to life | BFA Animation at California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-06-27 | Develop your skills in animation to create authentic characters and stories that have a real impact. Our curriculum is rooted in rigorous interdisciplinarity, meaning you’ll extend your artistic reach beyond the work of a standard animation studio, giving you a competitive edge when you enter the industry.

Learn more about the program: https://www.cca.edu/fine-arts/animation/

VCS Spring Symposium 2023 April 22, 2023

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-06-02 | Opening Remarks by Jacqueline Francisc and Elizabeth Travelslight
Panel 1: Representing Resistance -- Moderator: Jacqueline Francis
Wenmimareba Klobah Collins -- Most Campy Objects Are Urban: Transgression in Villano Antillano’s “Muñeca”
Matthew Skurdahl -- Retelling History: The Historical Mural at Chicano Park
Alexander Antai Hwang -- Transgressive Motion: Glitched Being in Na Mira’s Night Vision (Red as never been)
Panel 2: The Spirit of Craft -- Moderator: Elizabeth Travelslight
Vickie Simms -- Willie Cole: Found Objects - Fine Art
Liz Godbey -- Envisioning an Enchanted World: On Christi Belcourt’s The Wisdom of the Universe
Alumni Award Presentation -- Dr. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa (Class of 2012)

CCA 2023 Commencement Alumni Performance | Kim Xuan Pham (BFA Fashion Design 2019)

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-05-15 | CCA's 116th Commencement Ceremonies commissioned alum Kim Xuan Pham (BFA Fashion Design 2019) to create a garment reflecting identity, craft, and CCA. This video documents Pham's creative process as she mentors a select group of graduating students to make their own wearable artifacts.

Explore our commencement festivities: cca.edu/2023

Impact the future of cinema | MFA Film at California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-03-27 | Develop your vision and artistry in a graduate film program that goes beyond training and convention. With the mentorship of our award-winning faculty, you’ll strengthen your conceptual capabilities, refine your working methods, and expand your understanding of the moving image.

Explore the program: https://www.cca.edu/fine-arts/mfa-film/

At Home with Gen Z : Near future smart home

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-03-20 | The Interaction Design BFA program at CCA explored what a near future smart home might be like for Gen Z (people born from 1995-the early 2000s).

Students participated in a three-month design research engagement looking at market behavior, socio-economic trends, and attitudes of their age cohort and in partnership with our sponsored created new and/or evolved existing product and service concepts.

Credits:
California College of Arts
Future Next Studio
Interaction Design Program, 2022

Course Leader: Aynne Valencia

Students (In alphabetic order)
Amaris Gil
Anh Truong
Brian Zhao
Casey Luo
DeeDee Kwon
Emily Tseng
Evan Tang
Gina Park
John Seungjun Cho
Madhumita Elan
Noah Ahrens
Rebecca Lin
Shoshana Tai
Shuyun Chen
Vincent Chen
Peter Yongming Peng
Zijie Zhou

Written and Directed by: Aynne Valencia

VIDEO PRODUCTION
Issac Pingree
Aynne Valencia
Aaron Fagerstrom
Brendan West
Ed Pritz

Designing Whats Next: Samsung Research America and CCA Interaction Design

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-03-20 | In fall 2022, CCA's BFA in Interaction Design program engaged in a partnership with Samsung Research America to explore the near future of home for Gen Z (those born between 1995 and the 2000s).

This video discusses the partnership.

CCA Fashion Design: Fashion Runway Class of 2022

California College of the Arts - CCA 2023-03-03 | Directed by Eman Ordonez
Music by Jengi, Sacha Vee

Constructing Architectural Ecologies | Architecture division

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-12-14 | ...

Meckel-Matic: The Idea Transformer

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-30 | In honor of David's retirement from CCA after 37 years of outstanding service, Henry Beer (Designer and Co-Founder of CommArts Inc. in Boulder, CO) created this "commercial" to encapsulate David's unique ability to turn unfinished ideas into incredible outcomes. Have a listen! Image credit: Pippa Garner

The Interview by Ian Sanchez

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-04 | Ian Sanchez (BFA Animation 2022)
The Interview, 2022

Sunnyside Up by Misha Felix

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-04 | Misha Felix (BFA Animation 2022)
Sunnyside Up, 2022

Dapper Dynamo by Chales Miller

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-04 | Chales Miller (BFA Animation 2022)
Dapper Dynamo, 2022

Solaris by Alistair B and Reno Nevada

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-04 | Alistair B (BFA Animation 2022) and Reno Nevada (BFA Animation 2022)
Solaris, 2022

Reclaiming Land From Dispossession to Reciprocity Architecture Division

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-02 | ...

Orit Halpern | Architecture Division

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-11-02 | ...

Tour RayKo Photo Center with CCA Faculty Michelle Murillo

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-10-07 | Explore the new home of Printmedia—Rayko Photo Center—with Chair Michelle Murillo. These purpose-built facilities host etching, lithography, monotype, relief, and paper-making processes and an extended screen printing studio. Murillo also imagines exhibitions and interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities with our Photography program, which shares the space.

Learn more: https://www.cca.edu/fine-arts/printmedia/

Photography Programs Home at RayKo Photo Center

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-10-07 | Chair Aspen Mays opens up the new Photography program facilities at Rayko Photo Center, where digital, analog, and experimental methods "all come together in one space." These purpose-built facilities include Icamon scanners, professional lighting equipment, a film cage, black-and-white darkroom, and mural enlarger to make giant silver gelatin prints.

Learn more: https://www.cca.edu/fine-arts/photography

Money Matters: Financial Aid (Domestic Students)

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-08-04 | CCA's Financial Aid Office is committed to maintaining a consistent level of scholarship funding to students demonstrating financial need and good academic standing.

Academic Affairs

California College of the Arts - CCA 2022-08-04 | CCA's Office of Academic Affairs supports academic programs in their mission to educate students to shape culture through the practice and critical study of the arts. Visit https://portal.cca.edu/teaching/academic-affairs/ for more information.