The Design Criticism MFA department announced another exciting lineup of speakers for the Fall 2009 Lecture Series. Join us on Tuesday evenings for lectures by Pentagram partner Abbott Miller, Museum of the City of New York curator Donald Albrecht, photographer Jason Fulford, design critic Peter Hall, and Antenna Design cofounders Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger, among others. Each lecture is followed by a drinks reception, where students, speakers and guests can chat over cocktails and refreshments. Space is limited; RSVP dcrit at sva.edu as soon as possible.
September 29: Jamer Hunt
"Becoming Transdisciplinary: Critical Unbecoming"
Designer, writer and educator Jamer Hunt will discuss the nature of interdisciplinary design. He is chief scientist at Big + Tall Design, which combines conceptual, collaborative and communication design; associate professor of transdisciplinary design at Parsons The New School for Design; and author of the forthcoming graphic design textbook Form Follows Context (Thames + Hudson).
October 6: Abbott Miller
"The In-Between of Form and Content"
Designer, writer, curator and educator Abbott Miller will present his work at the intersection between design, curation and art direction, and his ongoing love affair with objects, images and words. He is a partner in the international design consultancy Pentagram, and recently co-curated the exhibition "Design for a Living World" at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
October 13: Kazys Varnelis
"Network Culture: A Changing Context for Design"
Kazys Varnelis is the Director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He is co-founder of the conceptual architecture/media group AUDC, which published Blue Monday: Absurd Realities and Natural Histories (2007) and has exhibited widely in places such as High Desert Test Sites. He is editor of The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles, Networked Publics and The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews with Robert A. M. Stern (all 2008).
October 20: Donald Albrecht
"The Power of Display"
Curator Donald Albrecht will explore relationships between an exhibition's content and its design, both three-dimensional and graphic, as well as related means of communication such as brochures, catalogues and public programs. He is curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York and has worked as an independent curator for the Getty Center, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Vitra Design Museum and Yale University.
October 27: "Blind Handshake"
*Please note that this lecture begins at 6:30pm at 133 West 21 Street, room 101C.
In a panel moderated by art historian Gloria Kury, David Humphrey, Geoff Kaplan and Molly Nesbit will discuss their recent collaborations on books about contemporary art and art writing. Humphrey is a writer and visual artist who is a recipient of the Rome Prize and a senior critic at the Yale School of Art; Kaplan is a graphic designer at the General Working Group and teaches at California College of the Arts; Nesbit is a professor of art at Vassar College. Presented with the BFA Visual & Critical Studies Department.
November 3: Jason Fulford
"LAND"
Photographer Jason Fulford is co-founder of the non-profit J&L Books. He is a contributing editor to Blind Spot magazine, and his photographs have been featured in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and on book jackets for Don Delillo, Richard Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell and John Updike.
November 10: Martin Beck
"Selected for their Implications"
Conceptual artist Martin Beck will focus on methodological aspects of working with design history from an artistic perspective, including his reconstruction of George Nelson's modular Struc-Tube system. He has exhibited work around the world, including Graz, London and New York City, and is the author of About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe (Four Corners Books, 2007).
November 17: Jake Barton
"Post-Attention Span Audiences and Designing for Them"
Jake Barton is founder and principal of Local Projects, an award-winning media design firm for museums and public spaces. Jake is recognized as a leader in the field of interaction design for physical spaces, and in the creation of collaborative storytelling projects where participants generate content, including the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Storycorps and the Official NYC Information Center.
December 1: Katie Salen
"Everyone Knows Something: Design of Participation"
Writer and educator Katie Salen will discuss how modern communication and collaboration tools can lead to collective authorship, discovery and invention. She is a professor in the Design and Technology Program at Parsons The New School for Design, director of the Center for Transformative Media at The New School, executive director of the Institute of Play and co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media (MIT Press).
December 8: Peter Hall
"Writing Design History: Problems and Provocations"
Peter Hall, design critic, and senior lecturer in design at the University of Texas at Austin, will discuss the relationship between writing design criticism and writing design history. He has been a contributing writer for Metropolis magazine since 2000 and has written for publications including Print, I.D. Magazine, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He wrote and co-edited the books Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Sagmeister: Made You Look and Pause: 59 Minutes of Motion Graphics.
December 15: Antenna Design
"Design for Activation"
Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger are co-founders and partners at Antenna Design New York Inc. Together they will speak about their belief in design's power to activate people, both physically and intellectually, and to stimulate social interaction. For Antenna Design, "people-centered" design means recognizing people as complex beings with the potential to learn and grow, to be responsible, creative and reflective.