There are two amazing student-led projects in the works for the summer of 2017. They are both working with Lisa Brawley as their faculty mentor. The first is called Experimental Classroom, created by Charlotte Foley, Audrey Keefe, and Antoine Robinson. In Charlotte’s words, “the Experimental Classroom is a project in 3 parts that puts classroom architecture in conversation with liberatory pedagogy and interrogating norms via physical interventions on classroom spaces. We will represent our research using industrial yarn, voice recognition software, and speculative/human-centered design thinking.”
Project inspiration: crocheted classroom in this amazing installation
The second project is called Windswept, created by Noah Trueblood and Jacob Brody. Their project aims to model wind using a large flexible copper structure, so as to show the wave-like effects of wind on fields or hay or grass through a different medium. They will explore the dichotomy of machine and organic.
In Noah’s words, “The goal of Windswept is to explore the experience of the touch of wind. When thinking of ideas for a project, we were drawn to the unique phenomenon of the feeling of the touch of wind. Wind is only experienced through the interactions that result from its force, whether it be a relaxing breeze or the shaking gust of a storm. In order to create a project that recreates the experience of the touch of wind, we want to simulate the interactions that occur between wind and nature. The first images that came to mind were of the wave-like movements that a gust of wind causes as it rips through a hay field. Wind interacting with grass became the visual inspiration for the project. Windswept is created out of copper strips actuated by a two dimensional array of motors that flex the copper to create a wave effect. With each actuator capable of being individually controlled, the copper surface can be manipulated to display natural wind patterns in real time.”
A preliminary model of their copper structure
CAAD also has two artists in residence for the summer: Courtney Starrett and Susan Reiser. They are two collaborators who have worked together in the past, and have come to Vassar to put on a creative inter-disciplinary lighting installation. This installation will investigate Vassar’s form and aesthetic, with individual lamps meant to represent particular buildings on campus, their architecture, histories, and current purposes. This installation will bring together the past and present of Vassar’s campus architecture through information displayed on or represented by the pattern or fabric of the lampshades and the shadows they create.
All three of these projects/installations will be up on Vassar’s campus during the week before family’s weekend, September 11th- 15th.