News
Click on the article for the full story or see the North Campus event calendars.
ArtsEngine launches new national website to support art-making in research universities.
School of Social Work 90th Anniversary Performance November 18th.
Articles about the Michigan Meeting.
Playful toasters in Japan by Art & Design and Architecture faculty.
Engineering, Art & Design, and Music faculty to teach undergraduates how to make brass bells sing.
ArtsEngine launches new national website to support art-making in research universities.
View the new website at artsengine-artmru.org. Read the press about the website in Montage.
School of Social Work 90th Anniversary Performance November 18th
University of Michigan School of Social Work is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. The anniversary celebration will end with the performance of Reach Out, Raise Hope Change Society, a social justice themed cantata. The cantata composed by Bruce Adolphe, is conducted by Jerry Blackstone and performed by the University Chamber Choir with woodwinds and percussion accompaniment. The cantata premier is Friday, November 18 at 7 pm at Stamps Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the public.
This is a unique collaboration between the School of Music, the University Musical Society and the School of Social Work.
News about the Michigan Meeting, "The Role of Art-Making and the Arts in the Research University"
Michigan Daily, May 8, 2011: At event, 'U' encourages collaboration between arts and sciences Read the article.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 2011: Syracuse President Urges Reimagining of Arts' Role in Colleges by Alexander C. Kafka Read the article.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2011: Mellon Foundation President Asserts One Culture, Not 2 by Alexander C. Kafka Read the article.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 4, 2011: Princeton’s Tilghman Calls U’s Crucial to the Arts by Alexander C. Kafka Read the article.
Michigan Radio, May 3, 2011: U of M conference shines spotlight on the "creative process" Read the article.
Montage, May: CALL TO ACTION: Higher role for the arts Universities from around U.S. attend symposium; action plan to be published within weeks Read the article.
R&D Magazine, April 20, 2011: Symposium aims to raise profile of arts, creativity at research universities Read the article.
Montage, February: Fostering innovation in 21st-century economy National symposium at U-M May 4-6 calls for higher profile of arts, creativity at research universities Read the article.
Playful toasters in Japan by Art & Design and Architecture faculty.
What if your toaster was part of the family? If it (she? he?) remembered how you and your partner and your kids like your toast, and served it up with a small inner smile. What if your mixer would take over and make the food you request once you tell it the recipe and provide the ingredients? What if your appliances needed play time before they would work?
These are some of the questions being asked by Assistant Professor of Art & Design John Marshall, Associate Professor of Architecture Karl Daubmann, and colleagues, with an interactive Japanese tea house installed as part of an exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto this summer. The cut-paper Tea House (an image of it is on ArtsEngine’s home page, on the far right side) is the size of all traditional Japanese Tea Houses — 9' x 9' x 6' — but it has windows that resemble eyes that open and close on their own, and it is populated with robotic appliances. Each element of the installation spurs novel interactions with visitors, and between visitors and the space. Might sensitive appliances and living walls change our relationships with our made objects, our built environment? Might they stay our hand as we move to throw away yet one more thing?
Marshall is documenting the complex, iterative process of making this project, combining art, architecture, and engineering, at his blog, Designed Objects.
For more information on the collaborators:
rootoftwo
John Marshall & Cezanne Charles
http://www.rootoftwo.com/rootoftwo
PLY Architecture
Karl Daubmann & Craig Borum
http://www.plyarch.com/
with help from Osman Khan, Zack Jacobsen-Weaver, Chris Johnson, Westley Burger and Robert Yuen.
Engineering, Art & Design, and Music faculty to teach undergraduates how to make brass bells sing.
Ann Arborites enjoy music issuing from two massive carillons on U-M’s campus several times a day, but few stop to think about how that music is produced. Carillon bells that are melodious and in tune are the product of transdisciplinary work in engineering, music, and design. Faculty from three of U-M’s four North Campus units — Steven Ball, School of Music, Theatre & Dance; Louis Marinaro, School of Art & Design; and Gregory H. Wakefield, College of Engineering — have created a course that takes students through the entire complex process, beginning with two-dimensional drawings and ending with a public concert on the bells they’ve made in class.
“Casting Bells: Shaping the Sound of Bronze,” offered Fall 2010 (ENGR 100, Section 150, Class # 46231), perfectly teaches, simultaneously, “the art in the science and the science in the art” of the carillon. Learn more here.
Five new interdisciplinary faculty hires to members will explore, shape, and lead developments in computational media.
Interactive, rich, electronic media — smart phones, YouTube, Facebook, iPads, Vimeo, and so much more — are democratizing the generation and exchange of knowledge and creative work, changing our daily lives, our perceptual apparatus, and our expectations, blurring distinctions between producer and consumer, negating distance and time. The complex relationships among computing, individuals, power, perception, dynamic social groups, and creative work are changing much more quickly than our ability to comprehend them.
A consortium of faculty from all four of U-M’s North Campus units submitted a successful proposal to hire five new interdisciplinary faculty members to explore, shape, and lead developments in computational media. These strategic hires — provided through President Coleman’s Interdisciplinary Junior Faculty Initiative — will create a new team that leverages existing strengths on North Campus to shape, understand, teach, and create via this emerging digital media paradigm.
Proposal team
Satinder Baveja, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering, led the successful faculty team. Contributing faculty and staff included:
Jason Corey, School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Steve Crang, College of Engineering
Georg Essl, College of Engineering and School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Farnam Jahanian, College of Engineering
Osman Khan, School of Art & Design
Malcolm McCullough, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
Mary Simoni, School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Elona van Gent, School of Art & Design
John Merlin Williams, Duderstadt Center and Digital Media Commons
Jean Wineman, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
Anticipated hires
The Computer Science and Engineering Division in the College of Engineering will look for two candidates, one focused on taking the flood of rich media content and producing abstractions and representations that are useful for artistic manipulation, and the other focused on developing methods that enable interaction and manipulation of dense media data.
The Performing Arts Technology position (in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance) will focus on issues surrounding the design and development of new interfaces for technology-enhanced instruments that extend the boundaries of musical expression.
The School of Art & Design will seek a faculty member whose creative practice focuses on experimental development of computational techniques in order to explore both the creative potential and cultural repercussions of these new technologies.
The Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning will seek a faculty member focused on knowledge representation and distributed production.
