With my lecture at Columbia College in 3 hours I have found some down time to reflect on my lecturing adventure to date. Universities and Institutions visited so far are University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Cranbrook Academy of Art and School of the Art Institute Chicago. I have found it so fascinating to experience first hand different teaching techniques and student cohorts.
My first port of call was the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I had been invited as Roman Witt Visiting Artist to give several lectures to different disciplines and years of students. My host John Marshall, thanks for everything John, runs a collaborative elective alongside side Karl Daubman and Max Shtein titled Smart Surfaces. I could try and explain the format of the course however I could not do it justice, however within this small group of students you have some very exciting creative minds. Check out their website, the faculty post every presentation (good & bad) online and it’s a great resource for both professionals and students.
Another highlight of the week was getting to experience their VR Cave. now usually they use this to simulate possible natural disasters and create safe conditions for surgeons. However I managed to persuade them that it would really interesting to experience sound artefacts from the Cross-fire series within a VR context. This created many questions for me as if this sort of technology allowed me to live within the piece. The video below though very rough due to the technical restraints of filming VR with a single lens camera shows the experience of walking around the piece and even to a lesser degree through it. The only thing I was missing as a maker was the haptic element.
Virtual Cave located within the University of Michigan’s 3D Lab.