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JULY 2010

Philip van Allen, Core Faculty
.............................In collaboration with former MDP Chair Andy Davidson and current student Dustin York, Core faculty member Philip van Allen recently launched a new website for the NETLab Toolkit at http://netlabtoolkit.org. The Toolkit provides a simple and quick way for designers to create tangible interaction projects using sensors, motors, lights, sound, and video with no programming.

JUNE 2010

Manny Darden (C2), Jae Kim (C2), and Scott Liao (C2)
.............................Manny Darden, Jae Kim, and Scott Liao's e-reader project from Phil Van Allen's Productive Interaction class has been featured widely across a number of blogs like The New Yorker, Gizmodo, Design Boom, Inhabitat, The Next Web, Xataka, iPadPlant, hilavitkutin, and ilarialabe.

Sean Donahue, Full-time Faculty
.............................Sean Donahue's Roller Ball Project was included as part of the feature article "All Possible Futures: (Un)realized Projects" in the latest Task newsletter. Sean was interviewed along with Peter Bilak, Dunne & Raby, Daniel Eatock, Mr. Keedy, Lust, Zak Kyes & Wayne Daly, about the role and value of speculation in his research.

APRIL 2010

April 21 and April 24: 2010 Media Design Thesis Show
.............................Nine graduating students and two post-graduate fellows. View the show on Wednesday, April 21 as part of 4 HOURS SOLID or on Saturday, April 2 together with the Grad Art Open Studios, all at Art Center's South Campus. Click here to learn more about the projects, show hours, and location.

April 21: 4 HOURS SOLID: Work and Ideas from the Graduate School at Art Center College of Design
.............................Join us in the Wind Tunnel on Art Center's South Campus for an evening of Media Design Demonstrations, Art Exhibitions, Broadcast Cinema Screenings, and Industrial Design Presentations. Includes a panel discussion on Screen/Culture: An examination of the ubiquity of screens in our everyday lives and their impact on makers of design, art, and film. Panelists include Kevin Mack, Mackenzie Wark, Scott Watson, and Anne Bray.

MARCH 2010

March 23 CFP DEADLINE: Summer Research Residency
.............................Submit proposals for design-driven research projects to be conducted in Summer 2010 in the Graduate Media Design Program studio. Jury: writer Bruce Sterling; designer Fiona Raby; media artist and designer, Ben Hooker; designer and design researcher Sean Donahue. We are particularly interested in projects that address the theme “made up” which explores the role of fiction in design. Apply now.

Philip van Allen, Core Faculty
.............................Philip van Allen recently served on an NSF (National Science Foundation) panel to review applications for research grants to be awarded to professors around the country. As one of only a few designers participating in a panel primarily made up of leading scientists and researchers, Philip played an important role in bridging design and science in emerging forms of research.

FEBRUARY 2010

Julia Tsao, '09
.............................Julia Tsao's thesis projects, Curious Displays, was recently featured in Gizmodo and Boing Boing.

Sean Donahue, MDP Faculty
.............................Sean Donahue's project Touch Magazine 2/3 has been selected for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's Design Triennial “Why Design Now?”. Sean will also be guest editor for an upcoming issue of Design Philosophy Papers, focusing on the topics of Public Practices and Human-Centered Design.

Call for Proposals: Summer Research Residency
.............................Designers, filmmakers, architects, scholars, researchers, and artists are invited to submit proposals for design-driven research projects to be conducted in Summer 2010 in the Graduate Media Design Program studio. We are looking for projects that are motivated by research questions and that use design/making as a mode of inquiry. We are particularly interested in projects that address the theme “made up” which explores the role of fiction in design. Application deadline: March 23, 2010. Apply now.

Brad Bartlett, MDP Faculty
.............................Brad Bartlett will give an AIGA presentation on February 26 at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada. The talk will focus on his recent branding efforts for the Museum as well as a discussion of approaches for developing visual identities for art and cultural institutions.

Kylan Coats '09
.............................Kylan Coats's thesis project, Paper Balloons, is one of four finalists of the 2010 ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition. Paper Balloons is an iPhone app of quiet fantasy and inward thought in which candle-lit paper balloons land on the user's own floating island in the sky.

Design Dialogues Spring 2010: Media Morphologies
Guest Curator: Norman Klein
............................This series will explore how digital culture has absorbed and evolved media that presumably died, imagining New Points of Origin for understanding the history of "seeing machines," spatial design, and electronic sound. read full curator statement + visitor bios

JANUARY 2010

Scott Nazarian '04
.............................Principal Designer at Frog Design, is a featured "Thought Leader" on Forbes.com where he discusses the future of interaction and ideas about Sublime Computing.

Norman Klein, MDP Faculty
.............................Norman Klein will be speaking January 26, 2010 at the Goethe-Institut of Los Angeles as part of their series "Rethinking the City after the Crash".

Anne Burdick, Chair
.............................Anne Burdick will present, "Reimagining writing, research and scholarly practice through digital spaces," Thursday, January 21st with Johanna Drucker at USC's Digital Studies Symposium.

Making Labs Spring 2010
.............................Basics of Programming, Hardware Basics (Circuit Bending), Advanced NET Lab Toolkit + Sensor Networks, Data Structures + Text Manipulation, and Graphics Programming/Processing. The Making Labs bolster the current term's curriculum. Students can recommend Making Labs to support their own projects, from knitting to Processing.

Manny Darden (C2), Jae Kim (C2), and Scott Liao (C2)
.............................Manny Darden, Jae Kim, and Scott Liao's project, Notable: The Page: Adaptive Delivery Device, received an honorable mention for Core77's 1 Hour Design Challenge, The Future of Digital Reading.

Applicants for Fall 2010
.............................The application deadline for Fall 2010 is Monday February 1, 2010. Please read over the Application Procedures page for details on how to apply. If you have questions about the program or wish to schedule an appointment to visit, call or e-mail our director, Kevin Wingate: +1 626 396-2469 or kevin.wingate at artcenter.edu. You can also contact Art Center's Admissions Office for questions regarding the College and Financial Aid.

DECEMBER 2009

Adam Guzman '09 and Julia Tsao '09
.............................Adam Guzman and Julia Tsao will be performing the live visual show for, electronic musician, Nosaj Thing on Sunday December 13, 2009 at Brainfeeder Sessions at the Downtown Independent. Their visual show was recently blogged on the LA Times.

NOVEMBER 2009

FALL 2009 GRADUATE THESIS SHOW
.............................Visit the MDP on December 10-11, 2009.
Help us congratulate this Fall's graduates and view the thesis exhibition: Mia Berberat, Seedlings; Mia Case, Crosswalk Theatre; Kylan Coats, Empathic Play; Adam Guzman, Sound and Vision; Christiane Holzheid, Electronic Objects and Their People; Luke Johnson, Portraits in People-Knowing; YuSeung Kim, Shift in Perception; Ping Li, Collective Perusal; Mari Nakano, Future Cities/Future Creatures; Julia Tsao, Curious Displays. Click here to learn more about the projects, show hours, and location.

iDMAa Student Awards
..............................Kylan Coats, Haemi Yoon, Hyun Ju Yang, Yoo-Kyoung Noh, Hye Mi Kim and Yu-Seung Kim exhibited their work at the iDMAa Student Showcase as part of a larger conference on design and interaction at Ball State University. The Media Design Program was one of two winners for this juried competition.

Ben Hooker, Core Faculty
..............................Ben Hooker spoke at the Mobile Media Symposium at UCLA on Friday November 13th. This day of presentations and panel discussions explored how emerging networked devices are changing the ways we communicate, play, and explore the city.

Phil Van Allen, Core Faculty
..............................Phil Van Allen will present "Sofducts, Slabs, Hardware Sketching, Read-Write Culture, Clouds and The New Ecology of Things. The changing language and problematics of design" at Frog Design on November 12, 2009. This dialog/workshop for industry will form a discussion around the design of emerging forms of communication, mediums, and things.

SEATTLE ADMISSIONS EVENT
..............................November 13, 2009 MDP will be at Frog Design in Seattle, WA for portfolio reviews and an information session for prospective students. The event is full, but if you have more questions click the CONTACT link in the menu for more information. Download a flyer.

Norman Klein, MDP Faculty
..............................spoke at "What's at Stake? New Topographics: Photography and the Man-Altered Landscape", a symposium at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 7, 2009.

OCTOBER 2009

Anne Burdick, Chair
..............................will be presenting "Designing Knowledge" at Nowcasting: Design Theory + Digital Humanities on October 16 and 17th at UCLA's Design Media Arts. Nowcasting is the first conference to apply contemporary design theory to emerging issues in the Digital Humanities.

Jonathan Jarvis '09
..............................presented at the Adobe Max Conference in Los Angeles on October 6, 2009. His talk, "Learn How Design Can Make Complex Concepts Clear and Provide New Roles for Designers" was based on his thesis project, The New Mediators.

SEPTEMBER 2009

EAST COAST ADMISSIONS EVENT
..............................October 8, 2009 Please join us in DUMBO, NY, at Hush Studios, Inc., founded by MDP Alumni David Schwarz. Make an appointment for a portfolio review and/or attend a presentation on the program and how to apply. Open to applicants and faculty members alike. Reservations required. Download a flyer.

Design Dialogues Fall 2009: Data + Art
Guest curators: Dan Goods and David Delgado, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
..............................The speaker line-up includes scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and musicians. Access the full list, schedule, bios, and curator's statement here.

MDP's 9th Annual Dialectical Bus Tour
..............................Friday, September 4, 2009
Industrializing and Idealizing the Landscape of Los Angeles: the Artificial Terrains of Infrastructure and Parkland. Led by Norman Klein and Tim Durfee, MDP students and faculty kick off the term travelling a non-touristic path through the city, by boat and by bus. The tour will focus on two powerful systems that were the foundation of the early economical and mythical power of the city: the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach and Griffith Park and the L.A. River. On Saturday and Sunday, the entire department engages in a 2-day charette building multi-media installations that riff on the themes of the tour.

MDP classes begin
..............................Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The MDP welcomes NEW students and launches the second year of our NEW curriculum in our NEW space.

AUGUST 2009

Adam Guzman (M6) and Julia Tsao (M6)
.............................Adam Guzman and Julia Tsao's recent interactive performance was recently blogged on Fast Company and Filter Magazine.

Phil Van Allen, MDP Faculty
.............................Make Magazine blogged about the release of Phil Van Alllen's latest version of the NETlab toolkit.

Jonathan Jarvis '09
.............................Jonathan Jarvis' thesis project, The New Mediators, was recently featured in Fast Company and Motionographer.

JULY 2009

Adam Guzman (M5) and Julia Tsao (M5)
.............................Adam Guzman and Julia Tsao will be performing a live visual show for LA based electronic musician Nosaj Thing on Friday July 31, 2009 at Mighty in San Francisco.

Yuseung Kim (M5)
.............................Yuseung Kim's interactive work, Blowing Notes!, has won third place at the Incheon International Digital Art Festival (INDAF) in Incheon, Korea. Yuseung's project will be exhibited during the festival along with the eight other finalist from August 7 - October 25, 2009.

Justin Gier '08
............................Justin Gier will exhibit his work, REWIRE: Interaction Topologies, at NORDES 2009 in an exhibition called "Engaging Artifacts".

MDP Student Awards: Output 12
............................Current MDP students Yuseung Kim (M5) and Hunter Sebresos (Concept Year) as well as recent alumni Jiyeon Song '08 and Jonathan Jarvis '09 were winners of the annual :Output Design Competition. They will be featured in the upcoming publication :Output 12.

Jinmi Choi '08, Yuseung Kim (M5) and Jiyeon Song '08
............................Yuseung Kim, Jinmi Choi and Jiyeon Song exhibited work in "Five: Korean Young Artists" at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles running July 10 - July 23, 2009.

MDP Student Awards: AIGA Design Competition
............................Mari Nakano (M5) and Haelim Paek (Concept Year) were winners in the Print/Promoting category. Jonathan Jarvis ('09) was a winner in the Animations, Screen, and Experimental category.

Sebastian Bettencourt '07
............................is interviewed in Communications Arts about his thesis project, Beyond the Fold.

JUNE 2009

"Design Algorithms: Skeumorphs, Spandrels, Palimpsests
.............................@ Machine Project, 1 pm, June 20, 2009.
Skeumorphs, Spandrels, and Palimpsests continues a dialogue that began during the MDP's Spring thesis reviews. This month, MDP guest critic Garnet Hertz (UC Irvine), will host MDP Thesis Advisors Tim Durfee and Norman Klein in one of his Dorkbot Socal Events at Machine Project in Echo Park. Garnet, Tim, and Norman will explore how cultural objects shift over time, with each presenter exploring a single term related to patterns of cultural change.

APRIL 2009

Spring 2009 Thesis Show
.............................Come visit the MDP on April 16–17, 2009.
Thesis Projects include: Julie Phanstiel, Public | Media | Space; Jonathan Jarvis, The New Mediators: From Complexity to Clarity; Parker Kuncl, Right at Hand: Tangible Interfaces for Digital Collections; Yee Chan, ELECTRON: Designing a Culture for Sustainable Mobility; MDP Graduate Fellow Jinmi Choi, Architectonic Cinema_Interactions. Click here for hours, location, and more info.

Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess, Adjunct Faculty
............................are this term's guest curators for Design Dialogues. Read their curator's statement and this term's speaker line-up here. Jenna and Oliver run Materials and Applications (M&A), a research center dedicated to pushing new and underused ideas for art, landscape and architecture into view. Oliver recently became a TED Fellow and spoke at TED2009.

Syuzi Pakchyan '05 and Jiyeon Song '08
............................are both featured on Make:television, a new national series from MAKE Magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television. Syuzi stars in the Maker Profile, a five-minute video interview, and Jiyeon's One Day Poem Pavilion is a featured project on the Maker Channel.

David Schwarz, '04 and Nikolai Cornell, '04
............................collaborated on the design of an interactive installation for Nokia's Flagship stores featuring the Supernova phone series. David is co-founder and creative director of Hush who worked with Obscura Digital, where Nikolai is Director of Interactive Media.

Jonathan Jarvis, M6
............................The Crisis of Credit Visualized is an internet sensation!! Scott McCloud is the latest to add Jonathan's short video to his blog. It is also featured on boing boing, Information Aesthetics, and Delicious, among others.

FEBRUARY 2009

Sebastian Bettencourt, '07
............................Sebastian's thesis project "Beyond the Fold" has been selected to appear in the May/June 2009 issue of Communication Arts, Interactive Design Annual 15.

Jinmi Choi '08 and Justin Gier '08
............................will exhibit their work at RARE MEDIUM in downtown Los Angeles on February 10, 2009. RARE MEDIUM explores how art is shared and documented while preserved online in an attempt to record the process of exploration. Jinmi Choi and Justin Gier are the Spring 2009 Graduate Fellows in the MDP.

Fall 2009, DEADLINE EXTENDED
............................The application deadline for Fall 2009 has been extended to February 16, 2009. Portfolios that arrive after February 16 will only be considered for our wait list. For applications submitted after February 2, we recommend that you fill out the online application, here. This will allow us to expedite your portfolio and supplemental materials when they arrive. If you have questions please contact Kevin Wingate directly at, 626.396.2469 or kevin.wingate@artcenter.edu.

JANUARY 2009

Syuzi Pakhchyan, '05 and Nikolai Cornell, '04
............................are both featured in STEP Magazine's 25 Emerging Talents list in the January/February 2009 issue.

Justin Gier '08 and Jinmi Choi '08
.............................have each received fellowships to continue their thesis research, post-graduation. Justin is the College's Graduate Fellow for Spring 2009. He will continue to develop conceptual prototypes as part of REWIRE: Interaction Topologies. Jinmi was awarded the first MDP Post-graduate Thesis Fellowship to incorporate interaction into her work on The Next Illusion: Architectonic Cinema.

Anne Burdick, Chair
.............................is featured in the new book, Women in Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers, by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit.

Applicants for Fall 2009
.............................interested in a Masters in Media Design should check out the Applicant Profile and Application Procedures pages for details on how to apply. The application deadline is February 1, 2009. (We'll accept applications through February 2.) If you have questions about the program or wish to schedule an appointment to visit, call or e-mail our director, Kevin Wingate: +1 626 396-2469 or kevin.wingate at artcenter.edu. You can also contact Art Center's Admissions Office for questions regarding the College and Financial Aid.

DECEMBER 2008

Fall 2008 Thesis Show
.............................Come visit the MDP on December 11-12, 2008. Yu Ming Cho, Transbehavior: An Experience Toolkit; Jinmi Choi, Architectonic Cinema: The Next Illusion; Justin Gier: REWIRE: Interaction Topologies; Serra Semi: Jeans 2.0. Click here for more info.

NOVEMBER 2008

Theo Alexopoulos, '07
............................."Preparedness Now" is a new film by Theo Alexopoulos. The film was created by the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project in cooperation with the Designmatters program at Art Center to depict the physical, social, and economic consequences of the most comprehensive earthquake scenario ever created. Watch it at Motionographer.

Sebastian Bettencourt, '07
.............................Sebastian's thesis project, Beyond the Fold, was recently featured in the Just Imagine . . . what life will be like in 2020? section of CNN.com. Sebastian is currently working for George P. Johnson as an Interactive Media Designer.

SEGD Dynamic Environments II: Interaction, Collaboration, and the Design Process
.............................will visit the Media Design Program and Art Center College of Design from 10:00-5:00 on Thursday, November 13. Society for Environmental Graphic Design conference participants will attend the "Dynamic Design Education and the Design Process" workshop tour which will include lunch, a campus tour, and an afternoon of speakers including students and faculty from the MDP along with experts from design and the tech industry. You can download the pdf for registration and additional information.

SEPTEMBER 2008

The Dialectical Bus Tour 2008
.............................Mediating Space: Downtown Cores, Studio Streets, Global Malls, and the New Byzantium took place on September 5th and 7th. The MDP went on a unique tour of Los Angeles hosted by Norman Klein, Tim Durfee and Peter Lunenfeld. They examined the city in relationship to media by touring Waner Bros. Studio, the Americana Mall in Glendale, and downtown Los Angeles. You can read current MDP student Hunter Sebresos' blog about the tour and charette that followed.

Norman Klein, MDP Faculty
.............................The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory published in 1997, looks at ways technology has recreated the city, turning cyberspace into the last suburb. It's re-release was recently reviewed in the Guardian.

Parker Kuncl (M5)
.............................Parker Kuncl recently returned from Seattle, WA where he interned at T-Mobile's Creation Center—a future-oriented product development R&D studio. He focused on conceptualizing and rapidly prototyping for multiple projects. While in Seattle, he gave a demo to the Artefact Group on the topic of rapid prototyping for physical interactive environments, objects and ecosystems using the NETlab Open Source Tools for Designers. In August, he presented at Society of American Archivist 2008 in San Francisco.

AUGUST 2008

Sara Schmidt, '05
.............................Sara's interests in the intersection of culture + craft was tapped when she was commissioned to design an enormous, 86" x 23', quilt/curtain for Nike Town, New York. The design is based on the windrunner jacket, which was first released at the 1980 Olympic trials. It incorporates over 27 deconstructed and reconstructed windrunners, inspired by the palette of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Jiyeon Song, '08
.............................won the Adobe Design Achievement Award competition in the Installation Design category for her One Day Poem Pavilion. The Adobe Design Achievement Awards is recognized as one of the world's premier student design and film competitions. This year's submissions had over 2,700 students from 33 countries competing.

JULY 2008

Syuzi Pakhchyan, '05
.............................has just published Fashioning Technology, a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) guide to tech-infused crafting. Based on Syuzi's thesis project, SparkLab, Fashioning Technology introduces the reader to “smart” materials as well as sewing and assembling techniques. These dynamic materials, like color-shifting inks and hand sculptable plastic, magically give “life” to everyday items by changing and responding to their environment.

JUNE 2008

Peter Lunenfeld, MDP Faculty
.............................Gidget on the Couch: Freud, Dora (no not that Dora), and Surfing's Secret Austro-Hungarian Roots is featured in the June 2008 issue of Believer Magazine.

Phil Van Allen, MDP Faculty
.............................spoke about The New Ecology of Things and our NET Lab tools at the flashbelt conference that runs from June 8th to June 11th, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN. This conference focuses on the in-depth issues of designing and developing real interactive applications.

Sean Donahue, MDP Faculty
.............................recently presented his lecture "unmapping" at: University of Kansas, New School, Mayo Clinic and Cal Arts. In March, Sean organized, hosted and moderated Cultures of Inquiry: Context Research Symposium, featuring MDP alum Tina Park and adjunct professor Shona Kitchen at Art Center.

Jiyeon Song, '08
.............................was awarded the 2008 SEGD Honor Award for her One Day Poem Pavilion. The Honor Award is the highest award given for outstanding Environmental Graphic Design. This award is typically given to design firms and large architectural accomplishments; Jiyeon received it for her Fall 2007 thesis work. Congratulations!

Jonathan Jarvis (M5)
.............................was awarded the 2008 Designmatters Fellowship to pursue systems design for UNICEF at their headquarters in New York. The project builds upon the UNICEF- and mDialogue-sponsored project run by the MDP in Spring 2008, called "Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi." Students worked to develop new formats for digital story sharing in low bandwidth environments. Jonathan is developing the outcome of the class for youth communities in the Carribean and the Philippines.

MAY 2008

AtRandom #3 : Public Library
.............................Personal Libraries made Public, Public Libraries made Personal will be held at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts May 31st from 6 - 10 pm. AtRandom #3 accesses designers personal libraries that inspire, insight and/or influence their work. Making AtRandoms' library is not singularly concerned with indexing but rather a collection of practice, inspiration, curiosity and delight. The "Temporary Library" will include over 60 books from the personal libraries of our friends and collaborators; Anne Burdick, Emmet Byrne, Simon Johnston, Victoria Lam, Gail Swanlund, Alex De Armond of the Werkplaats Typografie, Michael Worthington, Martin Venezky, and many more.

APRIL 2008

The Biggest Visual Power Show: Next Nature
.............................will take place at 8 pm on May 17 in the Million Dollar Theater. The BVPS is an intellectual spectacle that mixes movies and live performance and is the project of Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort, the MDP's current Dutch-Design-Visionaries-in-Residence. Featuring: Manuel Castells [Globalism and Network Theorist], Kevin Kelly [Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine], Erik Davis [Writer of Technognosis and Visionary State], Julian Bleecker [Design-technologist], Peter Lunenfeld [Media Theorist and MDP Core Faculty], and many others.Tickets and more info: www.nextnature.net/powershow2008/.

The New Ecology of Things publication launched
.............................The Media Design Program transmedia publication The New Ecology of Things (NET) is composed of a book, website, poster and web-enabled cell phone content. The publication is part of the MDP's NET research initiative that explores emerging forms of interactive communication brought about by pervasive networked technologies.

Interactive MultiTouch table returns
.............................George P. Johnson and Honda America have generously donated an Acura Oracle MultiTouch table to the MDP which allows students and faculty to experiment with designing for a large-scale, multi-user, multi-touch surface. (See video of student explorations). Developed at GPJ by alum Nikolai Cornell with interaction and technology consulting by Core Faculty member Philip van Allen, the Acura Oracle table was engineered by MDP partner Moto Development Group.

Maria Moon '08
.............................has been awarded an Honors Term Fellowship to continue to develop her thesis project, neurographica. Maria used her skills as a visual communicator to work with scientists during the discovery phase of their research work, developing visualizations that were integral to the process of analysis and assessment.

FEBRUARY 2008

Media Design students research in the Philippines and Caribbean
.............................The Media Design Program has teamed up with UNICEF in a DesignMatters-sponsored studio called "Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi" to develop new formats for digital story sharing in low bandwidth environments. Between February 1–7, Parker Kuncl (M4) and Sevenju Pepper (Photo undergrad) will travel to the Philippines to conduct research with two bureaus of young journalists. Jonathan Jarvis (M4) and Brooke Reidt (Illustration undergrad) are meeting with youth media producers in Guyana and Suriname (at the height of the Caribbean Carnival!).

Recent speakers in the MDP:
.............................Juan Devis spoke to the Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi class about cross-cultural public media interventions. Juan is a Colombian-born artist who writes, directs, and produces collaborative multimedia projects focusing on social and political accountability. Devis is president of LA Freewaves and works full time on new media projects at KCET, the award-winning public television station in Los Angeles.

.............................Robert L. Staehle, Assistant Manager for Advanced Concepts of the Instruments & Science Data Systems Division 38 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will discuss the complex collaborations and technical challenges that go into the design of scientific probes. Rob and his team are responsible for a spectrum of remote sensing scientific instruments, advanced software for space science investigations, and archiving the incoming stream of data from NASA’s planetary missions. Rob will speak to students in Super Studio who are designing a "technological probe" to study the impact of real-time streams in the domestic sphere.

.............................Dave Wilson, founder/director of the The Museum of Jurassic Technology and Macarthur award-winner, hosted the MDP's Design Dialogues class on a tour of the museum. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a "specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities." To see the schedule for all Design Dialogues this Spring, see the Visiting Provocateurs page.

JANUARY 2008

Norman Klein, Thesis Advisor
.............................will have an opening reception for The Imaginary 20th Century on January 17th at 7:30PM at the Orange County Museum of Art. Join curator Margo Bistis, cultural critic Norman Klein, media artist Andreas Kratky and guest artist Perry Hoberman in this lecture/performance about their new project The Imaginary 20th Century, on view at the Orange Lounge from January 17 to April 27, 2008.

DECEMBER 2007

Anne Burdick, Chair
.............................has just published an essay at the Adobe Think Tank titled "Graduate education: Preparing designers for jobs that don't exist (yet)". Anne looks at how graduate design education is grappling with our current cultural, technological, and disciplinary flux. The piece features Media Design Program student work that demonstrates how the MDP gives students the tools they need to invent futures of their own making.

Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort
.............................will be in residence at Art Center this Fall and Spring 2007/08. Along with Koert van Mensvoort, Mieke Gerritzen will be staging one of their renowned Visual Power Shows. The Biggest Visual Power Show on Next Nature is a project by All Media, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, TU/e Industrial Design and Sandberg Institute. It is scheduled for Spring 2008.

The Media Design Program
.............................is proud to introduce its revised curriculum to be launched in the Fall of 2008. Details can be found throughout the site.

Fall 2007 Graduate Thesis Exhibition
.............................will be on view from December 12th - 14th in the Media Design Gallery with a reception open to the public on Friday December 14th from 7-10 PM.

Jed Berk, '07
.............................is featured on the cover in November's issue of Make Magazine The article "Escape of the Blubber Bots" highlights the work Jed has been examining with autonomous forms. visit website.

NOVEMBER 2007

Peter Lunenfeld
.............................published “Dispatches from the Front: Battling for Meaning in the War between Downloading and Uploading,” an excerpt from his forthcoming book in the Athens-based, on-line journal, Re:Public, in their special issue on "Re:Imagining Democracy." (it's also offered Translated into Greek).

Peter Lunenfeld has two new catalogue essays, “The God Scan,” in Caroline A. Jones, ed., Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Art Center and MIT Press, 2006), and “Style’s Cruelty,” (also translated into French and German) in Mieke Gerritzen, ed., Style First (Lausanne: mudac and Basil: Berkhaüser Verlag, 2007).

He has been speaking around Southern California, at the UCI Design Alliance's inaugural conference, “The Book, the Brand, and the Box,” in the “New Modes, New Meanings,” iMAP/Adobe Panel at USC, and at the AIGA “3x3: Writing About Design” panel at Art Center.

Norman Klein
............................. will have an exhibition of the Imaginary Twentieth Century-- database interactive science-fiction novel-- opens on October 20, 2007, at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. An introduction to the project at Redcat, Disney Hall on November 14 2007; and an exhibition early next year at the Orange Lounge, for the Orange County Museum of Art. The co-directors are curator Margo Bistis, novelist Norman M. Klein, media artist Andreas Kratky.

Amy Sheppard '07
.............................will be featured in :Output 10, an international competition for students of visual communication. "Letters are maps" and "Modular Book: How to make a Dadaist Poem".

Jonathan Jarvis (M4)
............................. is currently an intern of Interactive Design at George P. Johnson and was a semi-finalist in the Los Angeles Cut&Paste Tournament in October.

Manuel Alcala (M4)
............................. received a grant from Coleccion/Fundación Jumex to curate public outdoor screenings of films and videos in parks throughout Mexico City.

Hannah Regier(M6)
............................. presented her paper "The Critter: a leather and felt interface for open-ended interaction" at the Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces conference in Helsinki.

OCTOBER 2007

Jonathan Jarvis (M4), Manuel Alcala (M4), and Justin Gier (M4)
............................. were lead design interns with Adobe/AIGA in Summer 2007 to define the Designer of 2015 project.

SEPTEMBER 2007

Anne Burdick and Sean Donahue
............................. will speak at MAKE: A STUDIO-BASED RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM at Parsons The New School for Design. This symposium aims to spark conversations and model practices around studio-based research within the fields of art and design. With projects from Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art in the UK, and Art Center Pasadena, Parsons and The New School in the US, this daylong symposium aims to begin an important dialog about the contribution, criticality, and seductive nature of making within a research environment.

AUGUST 2007

Jonathan Jarvis (M3)
............................. will be competing in Cut&Paste's Digital Design Tournament: Los Angeles on October 13, 2007 at the Henry Fonda Music Box in Los Angeles. Designers will battle live against one another in front of a audience and a panel of judges, with their screens projected at crowd-scale. Cut&Paste shifts the design process into performance.

The Dialectical Bus Tour: infra LA
on September 8th, 2007, the MDP will be going subterranean and submarine to site the media designer’s glocal role — to acknowledge that we work in an economy that is both global and local. Peter Lunenfeld and Norman Klein will be your guides to seeing the unseen and appreciating the unloved. We will examine Los Angeles as the main port of entry for Chinese manufacturing, challenge the stereotype of Southern California as an autopia, and configure the urban fabric as a web of transit and small enterprise. If Hollywood is the glittering surface that everyone thinks they know how to represent, then the infrastructure of LA is the area’s hidden resource.

JUNE 2007

Philip van Allen
is featured in Cool Hunting's coverage of Make Magazine's Maker Faire 2007. Watch the Cool Hunting video in which Phil describes his new open source software called NET Connect which allows the web design program Flash® to communicate with sensors and motors. This is the software that Phil uses to teach students in his Interactive Objects and Spaces class. The video also shows a version of the Oracle multi-touch Interactive Table (see news item below).

Peter Lunenfeld
is a Vectors Fellow at the Annenberg Center at USC. He will be working on a trans-media essay titled “Gidget on the Couch: Freud, Dora (No Not That Dora), and the Secret Austro-Hungarian Roots of Surfing.”

He is also featured as part of Art Center’s 3x3 series, on a panel titled, “Worth 1000 Words: Writing about Design.”

Philip van Allen
is teaching students to work with Interactive Multi-Touch table this summer using an Oracle, a round, multi-touch table designed originally for use in the harsh environment of the Detroit Auto Show (e.g. it does not use a camera for touch detection). The table, on loan to the MDP from George P. Johnson (GPJ) in exchange for a first-look at new concepts developed by our students, was originally designed by MDP alum Nikolai Cornell, Interactive Design & Technology Lead at GPJ, who brought in Philip van Allen and the Moto Development Group to design the technology.

Sean Donahue, ‘02
will be conducting a series of Design Research Workshops at the Royal College of Art in London this summer.

Sean will also be presenting the results from Impact: Engaging the Next Generation of Ideas, an ongoing inquiry into how design is understood by young adults including communities that are underrepresented within the discipline, to regional design institutions this summer. The investigation, sponsored by ArtCenter and the Ford Foundation, will continue to explore transitional tools that foster connections between young adults and degree-granting design institutions.

Anne Burdick and  Lisa Nugent
will be part of a panel titled, "Designing Research" at the ICSID and IDSA Connections Conference, in October.

Qusai Kathawala (M5)
is an intern this summer at Intel Research in the Digital Health Group outside of Portland Oregon. He will be working with a team of social scientists and software and hardware engineers on an ongoing research study of mind-body health technology, an extension of his thesis research in the MDP.

Laura Janisse(M5)
just participated in an intensive one-day workshop at Kaiser Permanente's Garfield Health Innovation Center along with designers from IDEO which has led to a summer internship at the Garfield Center. The Health Innovation Center is a living laboratory where ideas are tested and solutions are developed in a hands-on, mocked-up clinical environment using human-centered design research and real-world scenarios and activities.

Jackson Wang (M5)
is working with the Culture Sector of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization) at headquarters in Paris.  Jackson will be assigned to a variety of design projects for UNESCO’s Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity and the Creative Cities’ Network. His fellowship with UNESCO marks the first collaboration Art Center leads with the agency.

Justin Gier (M3), Manuel Alcala (M3) and Jonathan Jarvis (M3)
have been hired as interns at Adobe Global Research and the AIGA's Designer of 2015 Project . The Designer of 2015 is based upon Adobe's research with hundreds of graphic designers nationwide. Justin, Manuel, and Jonathan will draw upon their experience in Super Studio and Bespoke Futures, two signature MDP courses, to generate visual analysis, inventive personas, and scenarios that bring the research to life.

MAY 2007

Philip van Allen
introduced NET Connect (New Ecology of Things Connection) at the Bay Area Maker Faire NET Connect is open-source software and hardware that enables designers and others to rapidly prototype interactive objects & spaces without any programming. Phil developed the alpha version for use in the Media Design Program's interaction design courses. Phil recently showed NET Connect and gave a talk at CRCA and Cal-IT at UC San Diego..

Lisa Nugent and Sean Donahue, '02
co-presented a paper together with Dr. Ilpo Koskinen of the University of Art and Design in Helsinki at the Nordic Design Research Conference.in Stockholm. The paper focuses on the use of clarity and ambiguity in the Media Design Program's unique approach to human-centered pre-design research. Justin Gier (M3) joined them in Stockholm and participated in the presentation.

Anne Burdick
is featured in this quarter's issue of DOT in an article about research and graduate education at Art Center, along with Industrial Design Chair Andy Ogden. Burdick discusses the MDP's belief in designers using design to generate new knowledge about people, their values, and cultural practices.

Lisa Nugent
Principal Investigator of Living Profiles, Art Center's first major research grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is thriving in the "Dognod Studio" on the South Campus at Art Center. Lisa has just returned from her third workshop with the Foundation in Nashville Tennessee where she reported on the Art Center team's progress working with teenagers with chronic illnesses. In the Vanderbilt Innovation Center, Lisa and members of the Art Center team – including medical researchers from Stanford and Childrens Hospital Orange County and technologists from Moto Development – worked with the other funded teams to explore how to integrate information technologies into patients' lives. MDP students Hannah Regier, Laura Janisse, and Peter Shultz continue their work as interns on the project. MDP Associate Professor Phil van Allen, MDP faculty and alum Sean Donahue, and MDP alum Tina Park are also working on the project.

APRIL 2007

New Ecology of Things (NET)
is a media Design publication released in April 2007. NET is more than a book, it is the physical portal to a transmedia publication. NET is an ecology of ideas that includes essays, a glossary, forums, interactive works, video, and a provocative story by postcyberpunk author Bruce Sterling. The transmedia publication is comprised of the book, cell phone content, a website, and a book jacket that turns into a poster. Each part relates to the other: place the book on the poster to see additional imagery, point a cell phone camera at barcodes on the poster and watch video, browse URLs in the book and find more content on the website. To purchase NET, click here

MARCH 2007

Up Next 2007: The Long Zoom
our bi-annual conference on the future of media design, will spark a dialogue about how designers move between the macro and the micro. As designers are called upon to imagine systems, services, ecologies, experiences, and networks, they will be developing the tools to design not only an object or a communication but also its context.

FEBRUARY 2007

Linda Yoon (M5)
will be presenting her paper, "Public Display of SMS: Beyond Personal Social Networks and into the Realm of Public Discourse," at the 6th annual Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, Cal Poly Pomona, April 26-28, 2007. The paper discusses the research and development of her project in the course, Interactive Objects and Spaces 2, as well as potential applications of the system.

JANUARY 2007

Hannah Regier (M5) and Peter Schultz (M5)
will present their papers this February in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the first international conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, TEI 2007. Hannah will present her paper, "Giving Materials a Voice", and will also demo her felt "shade" interface. Peter will present "Beyond video – choosing the right medium for a media rich interaction" as well as a poster of his slide projector video game.

DECEMBER 2006

Fall 2006 Thesis Exhibition reception
and Envisioning 6-Year-Old Boys exhibition closing reception will be on Friday December 15, 2006 from 6-9PM at Art Center's South Campus.Featured thesis projects include Jed Berk, Susan Lee and Nikhil Mitter.
Full Article >>

What does Delight have to do with Global Warming?
please join the Media Design Program on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 4PM to hear our first-year Media Design students reveal insights and interpretations of the research they conducted as part of the Super Studio fall semester course. Using design-driven human-centered research, the students worked with ten families from the Pasadena area to explore the themes of biosphere's voices, the interplay between place and identity, and delight.
Full Article >>

OCTOBER 2006

Envisioning 6-Year-Old Boys: Exploratory Methods in Design Research
documents the MDP's design-driven research methods. On view from October 13 - December 16 in the Public Programs gallery at Art Center's South Campus, the exhibition is a part of Art Center's Thinking~Making~Learning series. MDP graduate students approach human-centered research as a creative collaboration with their subjects and with one another. This exhibition includes the symbolic imagery, interactive objects and visual narratives the students developed from interviews and cultural probes given to 6-year-old boys as part of the Fall Super Studio course. (see the outcomes). Renowned sign painter and typographer John Downer gave voice to the exhibition with custom hand-painted lettering.
View the action

SEPTEMBER 2006

MDP Announces New Acting Chair
The MDP is happy to announce that award-winning designer, inspired educator, and noted design thinker Anne Burdick has been appointed Acting Chair.  Anne is the principal of the Offices of Anne Burdick and is renowned for her design of complex text-based projects across a variety of media environments. She is one of the most lauded transmedia designers in America, winner of everything from the Liepzig Prize for the Most Beautiful Book in the World to I.D. Magazine's award for interactive design. Full Article >>

AUGUST 2006

The MDP 2005-2006 Super Studio Project, Blux
is now online. This year long Super Studio project investigated the lives of 6-year-old boys in the US in terms of media messaging, social intelligence, and the construction of manliness. view the findings

Jed Berk (M5)
recently talked at Machine Project for the Make Magazine launch party. He spoke about his project ALAVS: Autonomous Light Air Vessels. Using the Sun Microsystem technology Sunspots, he created an autonomous flocking behaviour in robotic blimps.

Jed was part of the Cold Storage Project Series at Routes and Methods. He exhibited two projects, Herding Blimps and Wireless Geese. He was also in TechnoSpheres: New Work in the Art of Technology an exhibition in part with the SECT - Seminar in Experimental Curitical Theory at the Beall Center at University of California, Irvine. View installation

Matt McBride, '05
was recently hired at Schematic as a User EXPERIENCE DESIGNER. Currently working on Interface solutions and Enhanced Content experiences for Interactive Television and HD DVD.

Claire Myoung-Jung Kwon, '04
has received the "Excellent Instructor Award" at the Art Institute of California, Los Angles at the Spring graduation ceremony. She has been teaching at the Art Institute since Fall, 2005 and is currently a full-time faculty in the Interactive Media Design department.

More News >>