Finally! Transcript for “What is Criticality?”

Well, we got one done! Here, finally, is the transcript for one of this year’s past AIC lunchtime discussions. This was an especially engaging event on the question “What is Criticality?” held last semester on 07 December 2006. Ann Holder, Director of the Critical and Visual Studies Program and Associate Professor of History in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies, and Scott Lundberg, principle of the design firm [Make] and faculty in the Department of Industrial Design at Pratt, shared some prepared remarks. Here are two excerpts:

Scott Lundberg: Form follows function, but which function are you talking about? Are you talking about how the buffet will hold the snacks? Are you talking about its ability to fly off the shelf and create money for the client? Are you talking about how well it recycles itself? Are you talking about the function of how much value it can bring a person who receives it as a gift? You know each and everything around us is filled with so many functions so a lot of time these little phrases like “form follows function” are really more hurtful than helpful.

Ann Holder: There is this notion in the educational establishment that critical thinking is this great thing. Everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon of critical thinking, but I find students aren’t really in touch with what that is. Why would we assume they have a propensity to be critical anyways? And would the results really be as rosy and bright as everyone seems to think — like creating better market competition, keeping the US ahead in the thought game? So I have a lot of questions about critical thinking.

Read the entire conversation here, saved as a pdf.

-M. Eng

Introducing Charlotte Noruzi: AIC Exhibition Designer

I’m pleased to introduce Charlotte Noruzi as the Exhibition Designer for the AIC’s upcoming exhibition Perspicuous. Charlotte will be joining Exhibition Curator Kimberly Lamm and Matt Howard, the Research Assistant in Academic Initiatives in organizing the exhibition. She will be bringing her impressive experience to bear on the design of the exhibition space and the exhibition’s catalogue.

Charlotte is a professor of graphic design and illustration in the Communications Department at Pratt Institute. She has participated in portfolio reviews at Pratt Institute and at Parsons School of Design and has also judged the Society of Illustrator’s student illustration show and the RX Club medical advertising competition.

Charlotte is a member of a creative partnership called Studio1482, and design director of “Go Do It”, the Studio’s semi-annual magazine. Additionally, she has art directed at some of New York’s premiere agencies, including Bates Worldwide, Publicis Groupe, and Grey. At Chermayeff and Geismar, Charlotte was able to work in all aspects of graphic design, from corporate identity and packaging to exhibition design and signage. Independently, she created the exhibit graphics for the Police Museum’s 9/11 anniversary tribute called, “Stronger than Ever”. Charlotte’s illustrations can be seen on book jackets and in advertising and her self-promotion campaigns are featured in The Art of Promotion, published by Rockport.

Charlotte’s interests are wide and varied and include art, culture, history, and mythology, language and literature. The combination of these led her to create several children’s books and currently, she is going back to her fashion roots, experimenting with sewing and weaving.

-M. Eng

What is Space?

AIC Perspicuous Representations Lunchtime Discussion Series

What: “What is Space?”

Where: Alumni Reading Room

When: Mon., March 19, 12:30-1:45

Please join us for the next AIC lunchtime discussion in the Perspicuous Representations series. We will be dedicating our discussion to the question “What is Space?” We are pleased to have faculty presentations by:

Emily Beall, Dept. of English and Humanities

Suzanne Verderber, Dept. of English and Humanities/Program in Critical and Visual Studies

Prof. Beall will be speaking on the relation between poetry and space, and Prof. Verderber will offer a short presentation on Baroque conceptions of space.

Students, staff, and faculty are all invited. Lunch will be served.

What is Space? What is the history of the concept of space? When did space become a concept ‘proper to’ certain disciplinary and artistic formations? Is there a phenomenology of space? That is to say, is space something experienced? Or does space make experience possible? How is space conceived differently according to different artistic practices? Is space in painting the same as space in architecture? Is space in poetry the same as space in sculpture? What is the relation between ‘digital space,’ so called, and ‘real space’ (so called)?

Emily Beall is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington.Currently on leave, she teaches freshmen English at Pratt. Her primary research interests include 20th century experimental poetries, contemporary poetics, and the relationship between modern dance and contemporary poetry.

Suzanne Verderber has taught courses in medieval,Renaissance, and baroque culture, as well as in critical theory, literature and writing. She has published on French medieval author Marie de France, French essayist Michel de Montaigne, and is currently working on a book entitled Power, Repression, and the Emergence of the Individual in the Middle Ages. She has also recently translated two books, Jean-Michel Rabaté’s The Ethics of the Lie, and Charles Enderlin’s, The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada, and Wars in the Middle East, 2001-2006.

About the Series:

A “perspicuous representation” is a “clear overview.” Coined by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is a practice of showing how a concept’s meaning takes on different forms according to the context in which that concept is used. Wittgenstein thus defines meaning ‘as use.’

Perspicuous Representations is a series of discussions dedicated to investigating basic concepts in the life of the Institute, concepts that lie at the heart of our practice but are seldom defined. The AIC’s goal is to show how these basic concepts take on different–sometimes antagonistic, yet legitimate–meanings in different disciplinary contexts. The aim is to make visible the life of the concept and the practices in which it is created, crafted, and worked on.

Previous concepts treated include: communication; criticality; practice, and; interdisciplinarity. The AIC is currently in the process of organizing an Institute-wide exhibition based on this program of questioning, titled Perspicuous, to take place Fall 2007.