Field Notes
Field Note #36
On November 5, cofounder of Kickstarter Charles Adler hosted a conversation in the Outside Design classroom with a group of participants from the Center for the Lost Arts to discuss how this project came to its actualization. The group took turns sharing reflections on the process and the work they developed while in residency at the center.
Field Note #35
On October 29, 2015, Lucy Pringle led a dowsing workshop with a group of SAIC faculty, staff, students, and the public at the site of SAIC’s future building at Harrison and State Street. The group doused the location, focusing on sites of concentrated negative energy fields.
Field Note #34
On October 14, professor of architecture Thomas Daniell gave a lecture as part of the Mitchell Lecture Series in the Outside Design classroom space. He discussed the history of Modernology in Japan, including artist Akasegawa Genpei and collaborators’ concept of “hyperart,” the Lost Items Research Institute, Architectural Detective Agency, Thomasson Observation Center, Street Observation Society, and Atelier Bow...
Field Note #33
For SAIC’s 150th anniversary Alumni Weekend, the AIADO department held a reception in the Outside Design space. Curator Jonathan Solomon gave the group a tour of the exhibition, and then exhibitor Eric Ellingsen led everyone on a walk through the Loop asking the walkers to look at their surroundings through hand held mirrors and ...
Field Note #32
On October 28, 2015, Lucy Pringle presented the second lecture in the Taboo Subjects series, Crop Circles: Windows of Perception, in the Outside Design classroom space. Pringle discussed the complexity of crop circles: from the occurrence of man-made circles, to hoaxes, to scientific findings that reveal the presence of energy fields, to forms that would ...
Field Note # 31
Josh Rios’s Core Studio class visited Outside Design on October 28, 2015, looking for inspiration for their current work in video and found media compilations.
Field Note # 30
On October 28, 2015, Jessica Westbrook and Rosalyn Gingerich’s Core Studio classes from the Contemporary Practices Department toured Outside Design. They engaged in a conversation about the intent, ethics, and responsibility of using animals in an exhibition and how their presence relates to the prototypes and works on view.
Field Note #29
Eric Ellingsen and artist-in-residence Christina Kousgaard led an event on October 24, 2015 amidst Species of Space’s installation in the Outside Design exhibition. It inaugurated the opening of the D-centered Garden of the Senses. Participants explored many perceptual, tactile, and cognitive investigations, like walking barefoot through soil and creating soap film projections. Visitors also witnessed a ...
Field Note #28
On October 21, 2015, Sullivan Galleries hosted the first of the Taboo Subjects series in the Outside Design classroom. [Environmentioalsi…] Nance Klehm presented “Foul Odors and Loathsome Sites: a Practical Reorientation to our Waste Systems.” Klehm discussed many of her projects including Humble Pile in which she asked friends and others throughout Chicago to “poo ...
Field Note #27
Moe Beitiks’s class, Introduction to Performance, visited the galleries on Thursday, October 15, and had a discussion about the nonanthroponormative as found in Outside Design. Beitiks asked her class to identify processes occurring within the exhibition, and consider what was happening without humans acting as initiators. Students then created a series of thoughtful, responsive performances ...
Field Note #26
On October 22, 2015 Emmanuel Pratt and the Sweet Water Foundation brought a group of students and recent graduates in a program called There Grows the Neighborhood to learn about aquaponics.The students first discussed three fundamental factors that help keep the system working: symbiotic relationships, recirculation, and photosynthesis. Then, to engage more closely with the biodynamic feedback loop ...
Field Note #25
As mentioned before, collaboration is one of the main themes in Outside Design. On October 22, 2015, there was a moment of kismet when two groups that had previously worked together unexpectedly stopped by the gallery at the same time and were able to exchange ideas. There Grows the Neighborhood was doing an aquaponics workshop with Sweet ...
Field Note #24
Anne Liu brought her AIADO Design Communication undergraduates on October 16, 2015 for a visit to Outside Design. They met with curator Jonathan Solomon and toured the exhibition.
Field Note #23
On Saturday, October 10th, a group of students in the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s program TEENS, Teenagers Exploring and Explaining Nature and Science, came by to do some research for their online data mapping projects. They had a very interactive and hands on experience, and were documenting their observations ...
Field Note #22
Michael Ryan’s class, Visible Side, came to the Sullivan Galleries to learn about the process of putting together an exhibition on September 29. They looked at both Civilization and Its Discontents and Outside Design and discussed how an exhibition moves from an idea to an actuality. One of the things they learned about was the ...
Field Note #21
An Inclusive Edge, an intimate panel discussion, was held on Saturday, September 19 in the Outside Design space with seven architects and advocates from around the world who discussed shifts in the field of architecture resulting from more diversity in practitioners’ backgrounds. Panelists Louise Braverman, Farrokah Derekshani, Yasmeen Lari, Juan Moreno, Brigitte Shim, Yasmin Vobis spoke openly from ...
Field Note #20
CAPE sited its latest professional development workshop in the Outside Design Laboratory. CPS (Chicago Public Schools) teachers and CAPE teaching artists are paired together to augment arts integration in CPS using inquiry questions to guide new curriculum. CAPE teachers explored the Outside Design exhibit to speculate the inquiry questions that may have inspired the work on view at the show, ...
Field Note #19
Delicate aromatic mists drift throughout the gallery. Approaching the north side of Sullivan gallery, meditation cymbals and soft bells ring, bouncing off objects and through windows. Beyond Eric Ellingsen's syllabus bookshelf, a long row of fresh soil beckons an invitation for grounding. Black Gold Magic is in an art performance designed by Erika Allen and Lynn Peemoeller involving food and ...
Field Note # 18
It was an afternoon of lively discussions and interactions in the galleries with exhibiting architects and designers: David Hays, Analog Media Lab, Urbana-Champaign; Joyce Hwang, Ants of the Prairie, Buffalo; David Benjamin with Ali Brivanlou, The Living and Brivanlou Laboratory, New York; Eric Ellingsen, Species of Space, Chicago; and Emmanuel Pratt, Sweet Water Foundation, Chicago.
Field Note #17
Several of the Research Studio classes have stopped by the Outside Design exhibition for a tour with curator Jonathan Solomon. On Thursday, October 1, Michael Ryan’s Research Studio class and Ginger Krebb’s Research Studio class both explored thermal expansion and experimented with material properties in Analog Media Lab’s installation.
Field Note #16
Extradisciplinarity and collaboration are key ideas embedded in Outside Design. These concepts can be seen for example, as The Living worked together with the Ali Brivanlou Laboratory to pair design and embryology in the Amphibious Envelope, and Ants of the Prairie worked with a biologist to create the Habitat Wall. The ...
Field Note #15
The Sullivan Galleries were filled with students, faculty, friends, and family for our September openings. Thanks for coming out!
Field Note #14
Utopia from Greek ou "not" + topos "place" "You shall not touch; the more you see the less you hold - a dispossession of the hand in favor of a greater trajectory of the eye." -Michel de Certeau The Art of Everyday Living Negative space What can occur in the spaces between objects, between surface, between directives? Windows, despite their structural ...
Field Note #13
Sara Huston, a FT visiting artist, is an artist, designer, educator, and curator. She is one half of the Last Attempt at Greatness, an interdisciplinary avant-garde studio. Her work explores subjects of progress, expectation, liminality, categorization, perception, value, and the intersection and language of art and design. The work is aimed at provoking discourse and contemplation in the viewer ...
Field Note #12
Eric Ellingsen’s MFA Seminar class Space Activism meets weekly in the Sullivan Gallery. Keeping consistent with Ellingsen’s practice, the class often ventures out into the city, engaging in actions, participating in walks Ellingsen has designed, and discovering suitably sunny sites to discuss readings.
Field Note #11
Topographies of Defense is a project led by graduate students Michael Rado, Louis Kishfy, and Frances Lightbound, which examines design in the urban sphere that functions primarily to discourage, rather than facilitate, human usage: features such as homeless spikes, decorative security facades, anti-skate rails, bollards, benches, and planters that contribute to a covertly ...
Field Note #10
On Saturday, September 19, professor Marissa Lee Benedict’s SAIC class, Natural Dye, in Fiber and Material Studies, came for a tour of the exhibition and met with exhibitor David Hays. The group was especially interested in Analog Media Lab’s caulk knits, and they discussed his experimentation with various materials. Then the class went back to their studio and ...
Field Note #9
Biologist Tomo Haremaki from the Ali Brivanlou Laboratory of Stem cell Biology and Molecular Embryology at Rockefeller University isolates the frogs to be included in The Living’s Amphibious Envelope. The frogs in this adaptive ecosystem are living biosensors, monitoring the oxygen level in the water and filtering the air.
– JA
Field Note #8
How can design invite our participation? The manner with which we interact with content in a gallery setting is often dictated and enforced by etiquette and rules. Does our attention and curiosity suffice for participation or can we expect more? -JA
Field Note #7
At our opening reception visitors began to inhabit the exhibition furniture in the space. We spotted babies standing, families gathering, visitors taking a rest, and students chatting and eating on and around the classroom modules. We even saw one visitor lying down under Joyce Hwang’s Habitat Wall– a structure made for cohabitation with bats and birds, ...
Field Note #6
Rope is one significant material used in Species of Space’s work. The rope that’s in the exhibition comes from Eric’s travels to Africa. It has all been hand-twisted. The opposing forces created by the twist allow several strands of a given fiber to hold their position resulting in a strong rope. Here are some pictures of ...
Field Note #5
The Living in collaboration with Ali Brivanlou Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Molecular Embryology at Rockefeller University have built a work titled Amphibious Envelope, a structure that can moderate air circulation and temperature through its design. See a detail of the insulated glass unit below.
Field Note #4
Eric Ellingsen of Species of Space has been building a book case in preparation for the exhibition. Species of Space play with perception and the different senses. Here it is as it’s being built.
Field Note #3
Emmanuel Pratt of Sweet Water Foundation and his team have brought fish into the gallery! They have built a biodynamic feedback loop using aquaponics- their speciality. Here are some photographs of this project as they were setting it up.
Field Note # 2
Ants of the Prairie have been creating a Habitat Wall over the course of the last couple of weeks for bats and birds. The project seems to helps us consider how we humans might co-inhabit cities with other creatures who live just outside the buildings we work and live in. Here are a few photographs that were ...