Hi,
Just wanted to follow-up on the release I
sent your way a few weeks ago regarding the upcoming "Made Up" exhibition and
lecture series at Art Center College of Design taking place January 22 - March
20. For more information, images or if you'd like to speak with
Tim Durfee, curator, designer and director
of the MADE UP project and/or Anne
Burdick, chair of the Graduate Media Design Program, please contact me at
310.857.6994 or via email.
Best,
~Jeannine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Jeannine Schechter Jacobi/Fresh PR
Jered Gold/Art Center College of
Design
ART CENTER COLLEGE ANNOUNCES MADE
UP:
DESIGN’S
FICTIONS
Exhibition Explores the Future As
Envisioned By a New
Generation of Architects and Designers
Lecture Series and Public Exhibition
January 22 - March 20, 2011
(Pasadena, CALIF.) November 17,
2010 –Art Center
College of Design plans to celebrate the new year with a continuation of its
inquiry into the theme of “made up” worlds. The result will be a public
exhibition and lecture series, curated and designed by Media Design Program
faculty member Tim Durfee, scheduled to begin in January.
“In a world where media creates
pervasive, multiple realities and where the fast pace of economic,
environmental, and technological developments increasingly orient us toward an
inherently unknowable future—a generation of designers and architects are
turning to fiction for answers and inspiration,” said Tim Durfee, curator,
designer and director of the MADE UP project. “The MADE UP exhibition is
intended to serve as a window into the uses of fiction by contemporary
practitioners of design.”
“The
inspiration for MADE UP originated in work created in our program that pointed
toward emerging trends in art, architecture, and design worldwide,” added Anne
Burdick, chair of the Graduate Media Design Program. “Through a research
residency, an eclectic exhibition, panel discussions, readings, screenings, and
a publication, MADE UP considers the relevance of speculation, role-playing,
idealism, skepticism, and simple lying as instruments or objects of design
process.”
About the MADE UP
Exhibition
“We are
imagining worlds for technologies not yet available, in a present splintered by
multiple realities, inspired by futures promised but unfulfilled” said
Durfee.
The exhibition Durfee designed will be installed in the Wind Tunnel
Gallery on Art Center's South Campus and divided into six
sub-themes:
·
“As If: Alternate
Realities” explores the uses of role playing and fictional histories in
design. Contributors to this section include: Noam Toran, a London-based
conceptual designer who creates real props for imagined scenarios, and the
Brooklyn-based design-office Commonwealth, whose projects include
other-worldly head-pieces produced in collaboration with film director Timothy
Saccenti.
·
“Get Real:
Projections and Scenarios” looks at productive and provocative modes of
speculative practice, including corporate visioning videos from the promotional
to the satirical.
·
“Faking It: Larks
and Lies” considers the use of design as a unique medium for humor and
critique, and includes work by Maywa Denki, MOS, and
writer/designer/artist alter-ego Dexter Sinister.
·
“In Your Dreams: The
Fantastic” looks at the influence and effect of dreams and fantasy in a
diversity of work – from the cyber-baroque of Hernan Diaz Alonzo to the
sunny mash-ups of graphic designer Juliette Bellocq.
·
“Made Belief:
Building Ideas” looks at objects, media, and spaces that exist as non-verbal
embodiments of ideology, including visionary utopias and dystopias. Diverse
examples of political design range from the work of Dutch designers
Metahaven to that of visionary architect Lebbeus
Woods.
·
“Un-Unreal: The
Incredible Everyday” returns the visitor to the here and now, but with new
eyes for recognizing the remarkable, strange and fantastic in familiar daily
life. Featured in this section are the fashion designers Rodarte, and
recent Royal College of Art graduate Andrew Friend, who creates devices to
enable unforgettable—if somewhat perilous—encounters with the real world,
such as a portable lightning-rod that produces a tiny brand on the arm of the
owner.
About the MADE UP Lecture Series
The MADE UP exhibition will be
complemented by a provocative lecture series. The first, pre-exhibition panel
discussions (announced separately) are scheduled to begin in fall 2010. In 2011,
Art Center invites the public to its South Campus Wind Tunnel Gallery at 950
South Raymond Avenue for:
· MADE UP Exhibition Opening , Lectures, and
Discussion
Saturday, January 29
Lectures and discussion, 5:00 to 7:00
p.m.
Exhibition Opening Reception, 7:00 to 9:00
p.m.
Two of today's most influential people to
combine design and fiction, science fiction author and Wired contributor Bruce
Sterling and Fiona Raby, a partner in the London-based design firm Dunne + Raby,
will join MADE UP curator Tim Durfee to ponder the possible reasons we are
turning to fiction to not only inspire but facilitate the design of the near
future.
· “LIES: An evening of readings and
screenings,” co-presented with THE BIG CITY FORUM
Saturday, February
19
Readings and screenings, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Doors open 6:00 p.m.
Co-curated by MADE UP organizer Tim Durfee
and Big City Forum, this very special evening will feature a radically eclectic
and esteemed group of designers, artists and writers for whom writing or other
narrative forms operate in a critical dialogue with visual practice. Confirmed
participants include Michael Meredith, who will screen “Notes for Those
Beginning the Discipline of Architecture,” and Tom Marble, who will read from
“After The City, This,” in addition to Keith Mitnick, Alexandra Grant,
Michael Joyce, Denise Gonzales Crisp, Janet Sarbanes and Zoe
Crosher.
· “GET REAL: Conjuring the
Future”
Friday, March 11
Panel discussion, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Reception, 5:00-7:00
pm
This panel will consider how speculation
and storytelling can be used to influence thinking within policy making,
cultural criticism, and corporate futuring. The presentations will range
from fantastical lifestyle videos to idiosyncratic props and probes used to
prompt debate. The panel will include Jason Tester, research & design
manager at the Institute for the Future and Ian Sands, Director of Envisioning
for Microsoft Office Labs.
“It is the
responsibility of graduate programs in design to push the field in new
directions. Our goal with the MADE UP series, both the exhibitions and
the lectures, is
to bring the work of our students and faculty into direct dialogue with the most
daring work that we can find from around the world. In so doing, we hope to pose
new questions and, frankly, change the way that designers think,” said
Burdick.
“It is becoming
increasingly necessary for art and design colleges to engage in this kind of
critical culture building—both for our students and for the region. At Art
Center, we are participants in the world around us, whether we are volunteering
within our community or offering new ideas to the creative fields. Our goal is
to lead by example,” said Dr. Lorne Buchman, president of Art Center College
of Design.
All MADE UP events are free and open to
the public. Normal hours of operation for the Wind Tunnel Galley are Saturdays
and Sundays from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. or by
appointment.
About the Graduate Media Design
Program
Art Center’s graduate program in Media Design offers a two- or
three-year Master of Fine Arts curriculum that helps ambitious designers from a
variety of backgrounds become design leaders and researchers in emerging fields.
Graduate Media Design prepares designers for a world in which virtually
anything—from a new material to a global network—may be the next medium or
platform of communication.
About Art Center College of Design
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena,
California, Art Center College of Design is a global leader in art and design
education and the first design school to receive the United Nations’
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Art Center offers bachelor’s
degrees in advertising, entertainment design, environmental design, film, fine
art, graphic design, illustration, photography and imaging, product design and
transportation design. A graduate program of study can lead to a master’s
degree in art, broadcast cinema, industrial design and media design. The college
also offers a series of programs for the general public, including Art Center at
Night, its continuing studies program; Saturday High for high school students;
Art Center for Kids for children in the fourth through eighth grades; and the
Design-Based Learning program for K-12 educators.
* * *
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Jeannine Schechter Jacobi
Fresh PR
310.857.6994
