The SUNY New Paltz School of Fine & Performing Arts is pleased to announce the launch of New Paltz Design Week, March 28 – April 1, featuring more than 15 design events and exhibitions on campus.
“New Paltz Design Week marks the inauguration of a new program in Fine & Performing Arts, called FUEL,” said Fine and Performing Arts Dean Jeni Mokren. “FUEL’s mission is to connect our current students, alumni, faculty, staff and the College’s surrounding community with notable guest artists and scholars in the arts. It is our hope to sustain this extraordinary program and continue to offer many more unique experiences like New Paltz Design Week.”
Design Week is the product of new collaborations between talented students, faculty and community members from a variety of disciplines and professions, who have worked with regional businesses and organizations to bring an incredible roster of leading design professionals and teams to the New Paltz campus.
Presenters and workshop leaders will include pioneering digital design and fabrication team Nervous System; renowned artist and scholar Lev Manovich; James Grady and Brian James from Fathom Information Design; Kia Motors Senior Designer Michael Torpey; and Shapeways Design Evangelist Lauren Slowik, in addition to a collective of design-focused College faculty.
The Design Week slate of events promises unique fusions of contemporary design principles, modern engineering practices and new technologies. There will be lectures, workshops, films and exhibitions on a diverse range of topics.
The week culminates with a one-of-a-kind “Slide Slam,” featuring a rapid-fire sequence of presentations by some of the Hudson Valley’s top designers.
Click here to view a full schedule of NP Design Week events. All are free of charge and open to the public.
Some NP Design Week Highlights include:
Monday, March 28, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m., Coykendall Science Building Auditorium
Lev Manovich, CUNY professor and director of the Software Studies Initiative, will open the week with a lecture titled “Visualization, Big Data and Cultural Patterns.” Manovich will discuss his cutting-edge work exploring patterns in massive amounts of visual, user-generated content (such as the billions of images and video on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter), and considering how “big data” can be used to question our assumptions about cultures and societies.
Thursday, March 31, 7 – 8 p.m., Lecture Center 100
The design team of Jessica Rosenkranz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, more commonly known as Nervous System, will share insights into their process and the research that informs their work. They are “…digital gardeners, creating forms modelled from nature’s growth patterns,” and applying those patterns to wearable and non-wearable products.
Friday, April 1, 7 p.m., Fine Arts Building Rotunda
The Slide Slam, on Friday, April 1 is emceed by Sophi Kravitz, engineer and interaction designer at MIX-E. The Slam will feature 8-10 participants who will share their current work in a rapid presentation of no more than 10 minutes. This event will showcase an array of design work happening in the Hudson Valley, and is sponsored by the Hudson Valley Tech Meet-up.
Additionally, NP Design Week will feature eight exciting workshops, each providing opportunities for participants to learn a new digital or analog process, including data visualization, digital sketching, 3-D scanning, letterpress printing, stone-carving and more. Follow these links for information about Digital Workshops and Analog Workshops.
Two evenings of film have also been planned for NP Design Week – one focusing on design and data, the other on materiality and design in print and industrial contexts.
Four exhibitions will be on view during NP Design Week as well:
Made for You: New Directions in Contemporary Design, at The Dorsky Museum;
The Design Process Made Visible, at the Sojourner Truth Library;
Ceramic Design for Serial Production, at the Fine Arts Building Rotunda;
and a SUNY New Paltz student design exhibition in the McKenna Theatre Lobby.
NP Design Week is made possible thanks to the efforts of the organizing team, including Mokren, Assistant Professor Michael Gayk, Assistant Professor Dimitry Tetin, Assistant Professor Amy Papaelias and Art Department Chair Anne Galperin.
It is co-sponsored by the School of Fine & Performing Arts, the Hudson Valley Advanced Manufacturing Center, Hudson Valley Tech Meet-up, the School of Business and the Career Resource Center. For a complete list of events and more information, please visit www.newpaltz.edu/fuel.
