Formalism Roundtable

The Academic Initiative Committee of the Academic Senate will be hosting an evening discussion on Monday, April 9, from 6:30 to 8:30 PM in the Alumni Reading Room of the Pratt Library, Brooklyn campus.

The goal of the discussion is to offer faculty members from different disciplines a forum for a collegial exchange on key issues with regard to “Formalism in 2007,” the title of the event. Each participant will present about ten minutes of material on the role of formalism both in their academic work and in their teaching, followed by a general discussion. We are looking for the ways in which formalism can be regarded as a unifying element between the disciplines in a school of art and design and a point of departure for interdisciplinary discussion, in particular with regard o the critical relationship between formalism, technology and humanism.

Presenters:

Jon Beller, Associate Professor of English and Humanities and Critical and Visual Studies, author of The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle

Karl Chu, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture

Michael Silver, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture

Suzanne Verderber, Associate Professor of English and Humanities, Coordinator of Freshman English Program

Moderator:

Jeffrey Hogrefe, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, English and Humanities, Coordinator of Architecture Writing Program: Language/Making, Research Associate: Academic Initiative Committee

All faculty members, administrators and students are welcome. Refreshments will be served.

About the Program:

The roundtable on Formalism is part of Art, Design, Architecture, Liberal Arts and the Future of Formalism in 2006-2007, a research group founded and coordinated by Professor Jeffrey Hogrefe and inspired in part by faculty interest in exploring issues of interdisciplinary methodology among the areas of art, design, architecture and liberal arts.

-Jeffrey Hogrefe (jeffreyhogrefe_at_earthlink.net)

Technology and Artistic Practice

AIC Perspicuous Representations Lunchtime Discussion Series

What: “Technology and Artistic Practice”

Where: Alumni Reading Room

When: Tuesday, April 03, 12:30-1:45 pm

Please join us for the next AIC lunchtime discussion in the Perspicuous Representations series. We will be dedicating our discussion to how technology is affecting artistic and design practices. We are pleased to have presentations by:

Timothy Mohn, Director, Digital Arts Research Laboratory

Morgan Silver-Greenberg, Gallatin School of Individualized Study

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

What is the relationship between technology and artistic practice? How does technology influence our understanding of what practice is? Does technology subvert originality even as it makes possible new forms of creativity? Where is the artist in the technological process? Is technology a means to realizing an artistic end, or is it an end in itself?

Timothy Mohn (b. 1969) is an artist and computer scientist. He is the Founding Director of the Digital Arts Research Laboratory at Pratt Institute in New York City. He graduated from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, as a Tisch School of the Arts Fellow where he studied with Red Burns. His current research is focused on the relationships between artist, viewer and artifact and focused on expanding and redefining these systems of interrelation through artifacts, computational aesthetics and kinetic painting. He is also interested in the creative act as digital artists, digital art conservation, curating of digital art, and what it means to be working within these roles at the intersection of art, design, technology, science, and culture.

He has worked collaboratively with Ben Fry and Casey Reas at MIT on Processing and has worked professionally for such organizations as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yurba Buena Center for the Arts, Sony, Intel, Yahoo!, Macromedia, AT&T, and Lucent Technologies. His work has been featured in Wired, Art Forum, New York Times, and Forbes, and has been recognized by the Art Director’s Club New York, ID Magazine, Critique Magazine, Communication Arts, the MUSE awards and the AIGA.

Morgan Silver-Greenberg is an honors student at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He studies complex systems from a broad and interdisciplinary perspective. Concerned with understanding the relationship between structure, system principles, and system dynamics, he explores these issues from multiple disciplines including sociology, linguistics, culture and communications, philosophy, computer science, architecture, and design. Professionally, Morgan has worked as a consultant for a small creative agency in Manhattan that deals with sophisticated urban countercultures.

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: interdisciplinarity; criticality, and; space.

Further information can be found on the AIC blog:
perspicuous.wordpress.com

–
Matt Howard
Research Assistant in Academic Initiatives

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.

Introducing Kimberly Lamm: AIC Exhibition Curator

I am pleased to introduce Kimberly Lamm as the Exhibition Curator for the AIC’s upcoming Institute-wide exhibition Perspicuous. Kimberly is completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Washington and is an assistant professor of English at Pratt Institute, where she also teaches in the Program in Critical and Visual Studies. Her dissertation examines literary and visual portraiture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American culture. A former Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, Kimberly has published essays on the poetry of Juliana Spahr, the art of Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée. –M. Eng

Perspicuous: The Exhibition

Call for Participation and Submissions:

Perspicuous:
An Institute-wide exhibition of student and faculty/staff-student collaborative work

Dear Pratt Faculty and Staff:

The Academic Initiatives Committee is planning an Institute-wide exhibition of student work, as well as faculty/staff-student collaborations, dedicated to this year’s AIC theme, Perspicuous Representations. The exhibition, entitled Perspicuous, will take place at the beginning of the Fall 2007 semester and feature panel discussions with the participating artists, a catalogue, and a prize to be judged by an outside critic.

A description of the exhibition follows below and can be downloaded here. We would like to hear from you if you would like to participate in the exhibition’s organization, including serving as a member of the exhibition jury, or as an exhibiting artist.

Have you seen or produced work that could be part of this exhibition? Do you know students who create work that represents, in compelling ways, their engagement with concepts such as “space,” “visuality,” “narrative,” and “perception”? Do you know students who can — and wish to — reflect on the ideas at work in their projects in clear and interesting ways? Please send them our way.

We plan to begin considering work 01 February 2007.

Michael Eng, Chair
Academic Initiatives Committee

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Social Science
& Cultural Studies
meng@pratt.edu

Kimberly Lamm
AIC Exhibition Curator

Assistant Professor of English
Department of English
& Humanities
klamm@pratt.edu

What is Critical Thinking?

Please join us!

Thursday, December 7

“What is Critical Thinking?”

Alumni Reading Room
Pratt Library, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn

Lunch will be served and begins at noon
Discussion begins at 12:30 and runs until 1:45

What is critical thinking? What forms does critical thinking take? Is
critical thinking simply something that takes place ‘in one’s head’? Or
can we imagine forms of critical thought in a more public and material
sense? How does critical thinking ‘make its appearance’ in various forms
of practice?

Leading the discussion will be Professor Ann Holder, from the Department
of Social Science and Cultural Studies, and Professor Scott Lundberg,
from the Industrial Design department.

Professor Holder teaches in the Department of Social Science and
Cultural Studies and is Director of the Program in Critical and Visual
Studies (http://www.pratt.edu/cs/)

Professor Lundberg teaches industrial design at Pratt and is principle
of the design firm [MAKE] (www.makeinc.net)

Follow-up: The Studio as a Model for the Academic Course

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The next AIC lunchtime discussion will take place from 12:30-1:45 next Monday, 20 November, in the Alumni Reading Room of the Brooklyn Campus Library.

Professor Jeffrey Hogrefe, Research Coordinator for the AIC Research Group “Art, Design, Architecture, Liberal Arts and the Future of Formalism in 2006-07,” will be leading a follow-up discussion to the group’s roundtable event, “The Studio as Model for the Academic Course,” which took place Nov. 8.

Please join us. Lunch will be provided, and the event is open to faculty, staff, administrators, and students.

Lunch begins shortly after noon, discussion begins at 12:30.

Roundtable Event: Studio as a Model for the Academic Course

Wednesday, November 8, 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
THE CAFÉ HIGGINS HALL SOUTH

The evening event seeks to address pedagogical issues in the development of curriculum through faculty presentation and discussion on the critical topic of the relationship between the studio culture and academic courses. Three faculty members and an esteemed colleague from Parsons The New School of Design will present academic courses which were conceived and executed in response to a request from the studios for critical, philosophical and theoretical support. Ninety percent of the matriculating students at Pratt are enrolled in studio-based programs in fine arts, design and architecture. For the most part academic classes at Pratt continue to develop under a model that supports the separation of academic curriculum from studios based on the premise that the aims and goals of the liberal arts are distinct from those of studios in substantive ways.

If, as John Dewey proposes in Education and Experience, the environment that the student brings to the classroom may be a guiding factor in the formation of curriculum, the questions to be addressed by the event fall into two categories:

1. To what extent will an affiliation with a studio benefit an academic course?
2. To what extent will it compromise the sanctity of the disciplines?

Each presenter will introduce a curriculum brief followed by a general discussion period. The faculty presenters are: Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Associate Professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School of Design; Pratt faculty members: Amy Lesen, Assistant Professor of Biology; Alessandra Ponte, Professor of Architecture, History and Theory Coordinator; Jeffrey Hogrefe, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, English and Humanities. Coordinator: Architecture Writing Program: Language/Making; and Michael Eng, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Faculty Senate Academic Initiatives Committee.

All faculty members, students and administrators are invited!

Refreshments will be served

 

About the presenters:

Miodrag Mitrasinovic is an architect, author and Associate Professor at Parsons The New School for Design. He holds an MArch in Architectural Design from the University of Belgrade, Serbia [1992], MArch II from the Berlage Institute, the Netherlands [1994], and a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Florida at Gainesville, United States [1998]. His work was published in Metropolis, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Journal of Architecture and Building Science of the Architectural Institute of Japan and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space’ (Ashgate 2006), and also co-editor of ‘Travel, Space, Architecture’ (with J. Traganou) forthcoming from Ashgate in 2007; both books are recipients of the prestigious Graham Foundation grant in 2004 and 2005 respectively. He has taught, lectured and reviewed student projects at a number of architecture and design schools including the University of Texas at Austin, Pratt Institute, The Berlage Institute, Kyoto University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of Pennsylvania, University of Belgrade, and others. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Design at the University of Texas at Austin (1998-2005).

 

What is Interdisciplinarity?

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please join us this Monday, 30 October, for the next lunch-time discussion of the Academic Initiatives Committee. We will be meeting in the Alumni Reading Room of the Pratt Library, Brooklyn Campus, from 12:30-1:45 pm.

Dedicated to the question “What is Interdisciplinarity?”, the Academic Initiatives Committee is pleased to have Toni Oliviero, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Kimberly Lamm, Assistant Professor of English, open our discussion.

We hope you will join us. The meeting is open to faculty, administration, staff, and students. Lunch will be served.

What is Interdisciplinarity?
What do we mean when we describe something–a work, our research, our teaching–as interdisciplinary? Is it the collaboration of disciplines? Is it the ‘use’ of one discipline’s concepts and methodology in another discipline? How do disciplines make their appearance? Are there such things as disciplines (anymore)? If not, then is there such a thing as interdisciplinarity?

What is an Academic Imperative? (Part 2: A Conflict of the Faculties?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilhelm von Humboldt

 

The Idea of the University

In my last post on the “Charge to the Academic Initiatives Committee,” I began to suggest that perhaps the first “academic imperative” the committee ought to identify is the task of providing a definition of an academic imperative.

After reading Alan Wolfe’s review of Michael Bérubé’s new book, What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts?, in last Sunday’s New York Times, it finally struck me why the phrase “identify academic imperatives” in the committee’s charge seems to me so strange.