Design Lab 1

Interactive Media Design Installations

Eleanor Schmitt — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:28:56 +0000

Final projects from Michael Gurevich’s Interactive Media Design course (PAT 452) will be shown in Design Lab 1 early next week. Students will present their work in DL1 on Monday, April 29 from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Their installations will be displayed both Monday and Tuesday.

Conor Barry, a Master’s candidate in Media Arts, set up his piece entitled “Leave a Message” early Thursday morning. The viewer is prompted to speak into one of six telephones suspended from the ceiling. From Barry’s artist statement:

An interactive sonic art installation that encourages people to leave messages to create a communal answering machine of feelings and thoughts left for whoever wants to listen in.

Pick up a phone and say ‘Hello’. The operator will then ask you to leave a message. Each phone will store 10 messages before replacing the oldest. Or you can just listen.

The recorded messages are played continuously, and can be heard faintly when approaching the telephones. Barry’s installation has already attracted many curious onlookers in the Central Collaboration Area outside of DL1.

Be sure to stop by DL1 next Monday or Tuesday to see the rest of the Interactive Media Design projects!

Collaborative Creative Projects – Living Arts

Alex Chen — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:06:09 +0000

Today in Design Lab 1, a team of students was working on the functionality of their Collaborative Creative Project (CCP). This year-long project is part of the curriculum for Living Arts, an interdisciplinary residential community in Bursley Hall on the University of Michigan’s North Campus that brings together 80 undergraduates in the arts, architecture, engineering, and other fields to explore innovation, creativity and collaboration. This particular project aspires to address the emotional connection people have with light.

All 15 groups look at separate, assigned topics and will have their projects on display this Saturday, April 13th from 4 – 6pm in the Gallery at Duderstadt Center–feel free to stop by!

Three Universities / One Concert

Maura Youngman — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:46:33 +0000

What’s better than a concert? A concert in a library.

Music feeds from three universities together in one space at Design Lab 1.

The Digital Music Ensemble (DME) brought student musicians from the University of Illinois and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to perform with them remotely in DL1, producing a concert in the three schools simultaneously. The score was composed by Carolina Heredia and the performance featured very special guests Elliot Sharp (in DL1) and Henry Grimes (at Illinois). The event addressed the “problem” of delay in simultaneous internet performance by embracing it, exploring the value of improvising with phrases that were intentionally passed from location to location at the speed of sound. Pictured in close-up below, the sound domes hanging from the ceiling on the left and right enabled the musical feeds from RPI and UI to be focused directionally in the room.

Final Luminary Public Workshop in Workantile this Sunday

Conor Barry — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:00:47 +0000

Hello all…

Its crunch time on the Lumenotbots. We will need to have a manufacturing extravaganza soon to complete the rest of the boards but this Sunday we will be meeting in the Workantile again at 12pm, on South Main Street.

We will hopefully have some working demos to show off, finish up some LED strips, and all the little things that still need to be sorted out.

See you then!

CHROME ZOO: Architectural Modeling Series, Part 3 of 3

Alex Chen — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:46:50 +0000

Over the past semester, I have been working on a series of week-long models with a partner from my ARCH 422 studio, Charlie Gaidica. All three of the models were inspired in some way by the goings on in Design Lab 1. Now that the series is over, we will be sharing them and showing how their development was influenced by this wonderful space!

All three of the projects incorporate the same programmatic elements in different sites. Our group was tasked with designing a performance space and the site for the third iteration was the apse at the University of Michigan Museum of Art on central campus. The materials required to make the model were “found objects.” We decided to continue our exploration of the potential of the plastic animal toys we used for our first modeling project. This time however, the model would be scaled down, so instead of working with the toys at a 1/4″ = 1′ scale, we utilized them at a 1/8″ = 1′ scale.

Through this play of scale and reimagining of form, this project aimed to recreate a relatively conventional performance space using unconventional materials. Drawing from such precedents as Greg Lynn and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (better known as The Bean in Chicago), we hoped to dematerialize the found objects and “forget what they actually are.” The decision to paint the found objects metallic silver was based on the idea of dematerializing the forms further as well as drawing upon the precious nature of museum objects and the cultural implications of chrome.

Thanks for tuning into this three-part series, hope you enjoyed the models!