Due Midnight, Monday, 4 September 2017. Submit your statement as a response to this post. If you can’t submit a response, email me your statement at jtownsen@andrew and let me know you are having problems with the blog.
Work with your partner(s) to write a three or four paragraph artist’s statement about you, what you like, and what you’ve done. Include your experience with electronics projects, art projects, or activities outside your major that reflect who you are as a person.
Golan Levin and Hiroshi Ishii have good summaries of complex, massive careers.
A good guide to writing statements.
Here’s a one-paragraph statement I use on my resume:
“I am a designer, maker, and arts-engineer, with a professional interest in using, designing and evangelizing new tools for creativity. I have more than 20 years’ experience developing projects with DIY technologies and other arts-engineering workflows, including software development, electronics design, computer-aided design, and digital fabrication. For the past eight years, I have directed a small consultancy in Pittsburgh, Functional Prototype, which creates proof-of-concept models, working prototypes, and customized physical interaction devices. My personal and professional projects range from industrial design products and open-source software to art-cars and music performance. I run a clean, well-organized studio; I have a very healthy respect for safety; and I love to empower people by teaching them how to create their own circuits, software, clothing, and costuming accessories.”
Akshat’s Artist Statement (akshatp@andrew.cmu.edu)
I am a sophomore Computer Science international student from India. I am also a math and physics enthusiast. My life goal is to develop and create IoT solutions to help thousands of Indian households below the poverty line.
I have several years of experience in Android and software development, and I love tinkering with Arduinos and electronics. This summer, I worked as an Android developer a Pittsburgh startup that develops IoT solutions for truck driver safety. Last year, I built an IoT project to automate my dorm lights using my smartphone as a controller. In my Junior year, I developed an IoT product named HelixSafe that aims to save lives of victims left unattended in vehicle accidents. In my senior year, I researched on household air pollution and created portable pollution sensor nodes that could stream pollution data, in real time, to a user’s smartphone.
All my significant works have the commonality of interfaced hardware and software. These have cemented my interest in interactive hardware, Android and IoT. I am very passionate about creative ideas that make a difference, and I love working in teams. In the future, I want to utilize my skills, interests and enthusiasm to address health, safety, and educational hurdles that people in underdeveloped regions of India face.
Thanks to my love for mimicry, I have developed a keen sense of observation. I have and will continue to use this skill to identify problems in my immediate environment and push towards solving them.
I am a sophmore ECE and Robotics student, and I am passionate about combining STEM with art to create fantastic projects that change the way people interact with art. I believe everyone is defined by their passions, and I enjoy watching others become animated by the ideas or problems that motivate them. I am also passionate about helping others find their passions, and I hope to be able to inspire others through the technologies I create. While I do not yet have an artistic style, I am inspired by artistic games like The Beginner’s Guide and kinetic art like Theo Jansen’s STRANDBEEST.
This summer, I worked in the Biorobotics lab at CMU, and I designed a camera sensor through all stages from prototyping to PCB manufacturing to deployment. I’ve worked with teams on projects ranging from assembling robots to building a mousetrap car out of plywood and bearings. I also have software experience, and last year I programmed a 4D wrapper for OpenGL that allows players to navigate 4D mazes, providing them with a better understanding of higher dimensions.
I am interested in pushing the bounds of existing mediums of art and exploring art through new forms. While I am comfortable with designing boards and programming, I want to apply my skills to not just solve problems, but to make technology that provokes the creativity in others. Emerging mediums like video games and technology-aided art provide observers with a level of interaction that mediums like film and literature cannot as easily replicate – and I wish to take on projects that utilize the ability of technology to immerse or respond to observers.
I am an architecture student with a technical background and a strong affinity for technology. I see technology as a driving force in society and want to harness the power of computation to advance my various professional endeavors. Even though my interests in technology are very pragmatic in nature, I see an incredible amount of potential in technology as an art form with the ability to create unique connections between our perceptions and the world around us, drawing from an ever-increasing cultural relevance in society.
My experiences have shaped the way I think about my pursuits. Over the last few years, I have developed a deep understanding of fabrication through various processes, including CNC milling, 3d printing, laser cutting, plaster and concrete casting, and metal and woodshop manipulations. Through my studies in computer science and computational design, I have gotten very close to issues of computation and technology, out of which numerous societal and existential questions have emerged.
These thoughts and experiences have culminated in a number of projects that vary widely in scope and intent. I have designed numerous architecture projects that utilize computation as a means of form-finding, with methods ranging from simple rule-based design to magnetic field simulation as a means of proximity-based resource allocation. I’ve made drawings and written about sentient houses that have trouble managing their emotions. I have created an installation piece which created a dialogue between two dancers by using motion capture to translate one dancer’s physical motion into a spatial, visual, and aural dancing environment for the other. I have also worked on a number of physical objects in which technology was used to generate, fabricate, and/or operate the object – ranging from a planter to a fully operational pinball machine. These projects deeply excite me and I live to create more of them.
I dream of the cyberpunk future, where technology with such potent capability it seems to most like magic is ubiquitous and cheap to the point that it can be found in junkyards. I fear the civilization that looks like modern United States but controlled through cronyism between corporations and government institutions wielding such supreme technological power that they seem like immortal demigods of death; gleaming post-human fascism; perfect matter and energy transmutation in the hands of trillionaire cyborg lich kings. But I hope for the future of DIY human existence; every person in the world capable of customizing their corporeal form for the lolz, starting their own hydroponic space weed factories with only grit, spit, a trip to the scrap yard, and some wiki-how articles. I yearn for the time when an arm and a leg will cost you less than an iphone, when all people can hack themselves into technomancers; and social democracy happens as fast as you can make the bandwidth.
I believe we live on the threshold of either of these futures.
For this reason, I believe we must all get better at hacking. I believe that messy, purposeless, frivolous misuse of technology is righteous. I believe in “fucking around with things” as a moral virtue. I want to make powerfully purposeless art with the highest technology at my disposal. As a matter of course, the more potent a technology is, the more I feel compelled to apply it toward silliness. I leave my deep conceptual concerns on paper and in clay. When I have fancy toys, I want only to make big complicated messes with them.
I’m mostly a comic maker, or painter, or a weirdo who schemes up role playing systems and monsters. I’m a lover of fantasy, and arguments about what kinds of magic are better. I could go on for a LONG while in a discussion of whether Batman is a bad person (if the answer weren’t obviously yes.)
I don’t have much experience with electronics, but I’ve built a lot of lego things. I’ve tried to make cool wearables, like armoured gauntlets. I’ve made a robotic hand that moves with a user’s hand out of the Lego NXT amateur robotics kit. I really like extensions of the body, enhancements to one’s physical capabilities, mimicry of bio-mechanical form. My ultimate robotics project would be a suit of MJOLNIR power armor from Halo. Or an Evangelion.
I am passionate about the relationship between people and their environment. Artifacts represent and embody belief, behavior, and the contextual spirit of not just the designer but also the time period it existed in. I’m interested in the design of artifacts, and how they can push the boundaries of our current behaviors and inform new experiences.
I hope to design/prototype meaningful interactions and experiences between the worlds of physical user experience and services. I’m in love with philosophies like The Aesthetics of Joy (http://www.aestheticsofjoy.com/about/) which investigates how physical experiences can harbor emotional connections and Allan Chochinov’s Manifesto (http://www.manifestoproject.it/allan-chochinov/) which outlines rules for all those in the business of making stuff.
I am currently pursuing a Bachelors degree in Design and a minor in HCI, focused on the experiences of hardware (form and interaction). In the past, I’ve worked on projects like making a fire alarm (just replace the sound with a light and placed in the context of an operation room) and heartbeat monitoring teddy bear (a rudimentary Arduino project I never totally completed), where both were my first introduction to electronics.
I would say my experience with electronics is on the border of total beginner and familiar, and have skills in physical prototyping and drawing. I spent this last summer designing Fresh food packaging experiences at Jet.com, and I’ve recently engaged with service design and found a lot of passion for it too.
Although I am an electrical and computer engineer by major, I have some experience with the traditional arts including acrylic painting, watercolor and sketching. Conversely, I like working with engineering projects that integrate software and hardware components. Thus, I can appreciate the importance of aesthetic and design components for any engineering project. Whether arts or technology, I am fascinated by the idea of being able to “make” something and be part of the maker culture.
In the past year, I worked with a team to build a walking robot from scratch, a process involving programming Arduinos and working with servos. I also worked with the bio-robotics research lab to implement control features on a modular snake robot in Matlab (a modelling program). Projects such as these show my level of proficiency with circuits and hardware, as well as showcase my desire to contribute to the maker culture.
I am interested in the artistic applications of the sciences and engineering. In the past, I used Matlab to generate beautiful fractals amidst mathematical chaos. I was inspired by the notion of beauty within chaos, and art that could be produced from a rigorous science. Since then, I have tried to appreciate math, engineering and computer science from an aesthetic point of view and hope to make the potential viewer feel the same way.
I am a business student studying on a Finance/Accounting track in at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. I have experience working in the financial sector of Investment Banking and Asset Management in NYC. My experiences include working at BlackRock as a Business Economics Intern analyzing investment team finances, and as a debt restructuring intern at a boutique investment bank. I also worked as banking intern at Bank of America Merrill Lynch last summer, specializing in Municipal Bonds. In my high school, I have gained experience in digital electronics and 3D CAD.
In my free time, I enjoy aviation photography, flying drones and flying airplanes (rare). Using my CAD skills, I sometimes design 3D prints and laser cuts for personal projects. I have made a chess set, a Connect 4 game and much more. I fly a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced that I try to maintain on my own. I make ametuer cinemetography of wherever I take my drone. My favorite activity to do is watch and photograph airplanes. I developed this hobby as I learned to fly planes and received a DSLR camera the same time in my life. I have shot my first airshow at the 2017 Wings over Pittsburgh Airshow. I don’t like most animals except fish and birds and have studied four styles of martial arts, two of them in college. With my basic understanding of programming and circuits, I would like to combine my hobbies, software and hardware to mush my abilities to the limits. I appreciate technology but I never had the platform to truly grasp the concepts on my own.
Noel Lau
I’m a junior in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University with a background in biological sciences. I changed majors in sophomore spring to focus more on environmental topics. I am also heavily considering an HCI minor because I enjoy the logic and dynamic od design-oriented fabrication, and am really interested in how individuals react to their environment. I’m very involved in community services and just finding ways to make someone’s experience better. After working in district office of local government official in NYC and observing how a community’s structure, resources, appearance profoundly affect quality of life for individuals, I became interested in urban planning and design, creation of a dynamic, livable habitat. In the same vein, I am really interested in team dynamics (interactions with other team members, resources etc.) and hope to find ways to improve a work environment. I am also involved in researching and tackling the campus stress problem as part of the HCI Campus Stress project, in addition to taking the ReCharge Summer course to brainstorm and reflect on ways to improve the feeling of inclusion at CMU.
I am also an active member of several on campus projects. In Engineers Without Borders (EWB), I am working on the PET Thach project to automate a machine that processes plastic bottles into ribbons for roof thatching in developing countries. I am a service project site leader and was last year’s Educational Programming chair for Partners Allied in Civic Engagement (PACE). My work included collaborating with local organizations such as Pittsburgh-based Native American culture org Echoes of the Four Directions to organize events at CMU promoting environmental justice. This summer, I was a research assistant in CEE doing mobility data analytics, to evaluate fuel consumption and pollutant emissions (CO, CO2, NOx) in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area. I was also a TA for the SAMS Mechanisms in Motion course about using gears, CAMs, linkages to create motion, and for the Lasercutting/SolidWorks micro.
I am heavily involved with CMU’s Black Awareness/multticultural org, SPIRIT. Since freshman year, I’ve been part of SPIRIT Buggy as a pusher, SPIRIT Fashion Show as Design Chair and AfroArt Festival as Logistics Coordinator. In IDeATe’s Arduino micro, I made a sun-tracking plant rotator and developed a simple understanding of simple circuits and Arduino use. I hope this semester I can resume making cosplay props. I took a soft fabrication micro and am interested in applying soft circuits as well as Arduino to new cosplay projects. My favorite activity is cooking, and I planning on studying food culture and chemistry in America in the future.
I am a dreamer by heart, but grounded in reality in practice. I love practicability but enjoy something extra when it doesn’t get in the way. I enthuse about the macroscopic scale of outer space and the cosmos but I am equally fascinated with the hidden microscopic world all around us. I relish in the evolving technological world but equally love the arts, as I am a violinist myself. As an Information Systems major at CMU, I aim to combine the opposites that I feel so passionate about and use that conglomeration to create more efficient pleasing products and systems.
Even though I’ve only had a couple years of formal programming education, much of my knowledge on coding comes from self-taught courses and YouTube videos. I have experience on working with Python, HTML, and JavaScript to name a few. My experience with the arts and technology isn’t limited to just programming languages as I am well versed in 3 languages and have a deep understanding in the cultures behind them. The thing that I am most passionate about however, is the product development cycle. I have designed, prototyped, and built projects including everything from websites to robots.
Over the past few years, I have worked on a variety of products. My first experience in product development was a robot a couple classmates and I built in high school. The robot was designed to play a competitive 2v2 game and students were responsible for all aspects of development from designing to building to programming. My experience with development doesn’t end there as I have also built websites as well as made them more user friendly. One such example is my personal website I built last year. The website included elements that made navigation easy and data more accessible.
All in all, I am a person of opposites who enjoys the arts as well as the sciences. Over the next year as well as the course of my career, I hope to use my passions, my skills, and my experience to design and create physical and digital products that are not only pleasing, but also practical.
Jessica Yin
I am a sophomore mechanical engineering major, with interests in product design, consumer electronics, robotics, and entrepreneurship. Outside of school, I am a brother of Alpha Kappa Psi, CMU’s professional business fraternity, and I enjoy travelling to hackathons with my hackathon team.
Since I discovered my passion for working with my hands in middle school, I have dabbled in a variety of hobbies. I have experience in various hands-on activities that range from more traditional crafts such as drawing and wood carving to aquarium design, lock picking, and pyrography.
This past summer, I worked at CMU’s Integrated Soft Materials Lab, contributing to an underwater soft robotic gripper project by designing, fabricating, and testing both rigid and soft custom circuit boards for a flexible, waterproof sensor skin. From this experience, I gained a familiarity of Arduino programming, various sensors, liquid metal conductivity, and PCB fabrication techniques. I also have a working knowledge of bicycles, as I volunteered as a bicycle mechanic at the Free Ride Bicycle Co-Op. My favorite class project has been my term project for 15-112; I built a virtual reality video game using Python and Panda3D.
Leah Kendrick (lkendric@andrew.cmu.edu)
I am a second-year student-athlete at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am currently enrolled in the 5-year Bachelor of Architecture program with a minor in Intelligent Environments within CMU’s IDeATe program. I love to compete on the Women’s track and field team as a hurdler and a sprinter as it keeps me healthy and able to maintain a balanced lifestyle as a perpetually busy college student. I am also a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and use my membership to increase my involvement in various social, philanthropic, and community events.
As an architecture student with a passion for implementing sustainable and technological design in my work, I strive to find a medium that allows me to pursue this passion in an artistic and expressive manner. I have traveled to countries and cities around the world that continue to influence me culturally and creatively, such as Cuba, the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Germany. These experiences, though widely different, have stirred a love for adventure, volunteerism, and study abroad that I wish to continue to have throughout my life.
While my sister played with dolls and instruments as a child, I found that my interests lay in building Lego houses, directing short videos, embarking on photography excursions with my friends, countlessly repainting and redesigning my room, and using my younger sister as a model for my latest fashion pieces haphazardly sewn together with my mother’s old sewing machine.
These interests have only developed throughout my lifetime, leading me to pursue an internship at Raphael Architects in my hometown of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a photographer position for the CMU chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), and a spot on a study abroad trip to the Netherlands through the School of Architecture this past summer. As an intern at a traditional firm I added a new understanding of modeling software’s, such as AutoCAD and Sketch-up, to my current knowledge in Adobe programs, Rhino, Grasshopper, and VRay.
Sarika Bajaj (sarikab@andrew.cmu.edu)
I am currently a student at Carnegie Mellon University (Class of 2018) pursuing a Bachelors of Science in my student defined major of “Product Ideation, Prototyping, and Development.”
Having originally entered the university as an Electrical and Computer Engineering major, I am extremely passionate about developing technology driven products. However, as I became more exposed to the world of design and prototyping through some courses, I began exploring the possibilities located at the cross section of engineering and design. This interest has pushed me not only to design my own major but also to work on a wide variety of innovative and interdisciplinary projects, from designing a belt with a built-in projector that walked on Hussein Chalayan’s Spring 2017 collection at Paris Fashion Show to reinventing the Morewood Makerspace, Carnegie Mellon’s first dormitory makerspace.
My experience lies mostly in the domain of creating integrated products and experiences, specifically in CAD modeling, electronic systems design, rapid prototyping, product design, and experience design. In terms of relevant software, I am proficient in the following: (mechanical) Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Remake, (electrical) Arduino programming, soldering, circuits design, (design) Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop. As alluded to briefly above, I’ve worked on a wide range of products which include designing and prototyping a 3D printer that prints in plastic and conductive ink, working on the electronics system for a Netflix Project MC2 dress which had 10 electronic flapping butterflies on it, designing and prototyping an injection moldable sculptural lamp, and designing the directional floor decals located on the basement of CMU’s Hunt library. In my free time, I like to dabble in photography and art related projects (such as making a giant layered cardboard octopus), as well as struggle over making my website.
I hope to use technology and design to bring a little bit of magic into our world; I believe that by exploring these intersections of disciplines we can create new experiences, unexpected reactions that can help people find wonder in the world again.
Artist’s Statement
Cathy Fang
My relationship with art has evolved along with my growth as person. I was a little girl who was obsessed with window shopping not for the pretty clothes but for the fascinating installations and displays. My parents noticed my interest in art and decided to send me to private art classes. Therefore, at a young age, I began practicing Russian style drawing of Greek sculptures like David Michelangelo and Ariadne, and I was fixated with the idea of capturing the perfect and precise shapes of objects. I became skilled at reaching the expectation of the adults around me, my drawing teacher and parents, yet I felt something was missing.
After I came to the United States alone for high school, I was constantly presented with the idea of being different and not knowing what people expected of me. I began to explore art beyond perspective, proportion, and degree of shades—a new world of uncertainty and “imperfection”. I was encouraged to experiment with unconventional media like coffee stains and burnt wood. My journey of exploring different media has allowed me to see the world through different lenses. Art allows me to make sense of the two cultures intermingling within me and to project my inner thoughts onto reality.
Now, as a college student studying mechanical engineering, where my mind is trained to derive answers to problem sets from formula and calculations, when we live in a time that people are determined to use technology to solve every problem in the world, I still strongly believe in the power of art in influencing people’s perspective and perception. My grandparents, who are my biggest inspirations in life, bring joy and human connection through sharing their traditional Chinese paintings with me, our family members, and people in their community. They inspire me to also bring art to places like earthquake-ravaged villages and homeless shelters, where expression of creativity is neglected but much needed to revitalize people’s lives.
As I continue to explore the connection and interaction between the technical and artistic part of my life, I have grown an interest in interactive art, where technology and art come together to reach the audience with stronger messages. My goal is to connect people with different background and values through my art.
Academically, I’m very interested in the composition and interactions of materials. By extension of this, my studies as a sophomore in materials science and engineering involve a lot of data analysis and the application of physics and chemistry. Within MatSci, the focus on considering a material in the specific context of the environment and system it’ll be functioning in fascinates me.
Last semester I created a program in python that takes real-time audio and converts it to sheet music, as well as allows a user to save, edit, and playback generated sheet music. For me, the most interesting part of the project was the combination of figuring out the right way to quantify the audio input and deciding how to meaningfully re-express it. While a lot of what I tend to focus on is technical, I’m very interested in creative applications of my skills. Particularly, I’m interested in interpretations of quantitative aspects of environments that allow technologies to respond and interact meaningfully with their surroundings.
As a coxswain for the CMU rowing team, I need a heightened awareness of my surroundings. I’m responsible for coordinating rowers on the water, control of the boat, and the safety of the crew. It’s given me a lot of practice in reacting swiftly to my environment, as well as being aware of its many minute details. This has proven to be useful off the water, too – it’s gotten me into the habit of approaching questions much more comprehensively.
Hi, I’m Scott. I’m originally from Northern Virginia but have spent the last two school years and working summers in Pittsburgh as I go into my third year studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. When it comes to art, I like to stay in the realm of computers, software, and electronics. From a young age one of my favorite hobbies was playing around in expensive software for things like music production, video editing or still digital media.
Growing up my favorite hobby was downhill skateboarding. I started a youtube channel where I spent my time learning Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I wanted the videos have some deeper satirical meaning to poke fun at everyone who we thought were trying too hard, but really it was just something for my friends and me to watch when we weren’t hanging out.
Later in High School I found a new favorite software, FL Studio, producing all different variants of electronic music. Music has always been something I like to explore and talk about, but as a kid I could never get the hang of an instrument, so I thought maybe it would be easier if I could just use a computer, something I feel much more comfortable with.
At CMU, I have found a strong interest in computer programming. I love the way that you can make real world projects quickly and with less cost than any other type of engineering. I have done things like building my own quadcopter, writing software for p2p chat and file sharing for me and my friends, and building the receipt generation service at a startup I worked at over the summer. My studies as well as the distractions of college have taken some of the time I used to spend on artistic pursuits but I hope to incorporate my artistic interest in my projects and hopefully one day in my professional career.
Bolaji Bankole
I’m a sophomore electrical and computer engineering, and I’ve had a decent amount of experience applying what I learn to real life projects. In my free time, I like to experiment with various electronics, and I’ve collected many small electronics that I use to learn, sometimes destructively, which is sometimes a part of the learning process.
I have had a decent amount of experience with most aspects of electronics, so I’ve done board design, prototyping, programming, and plenty of soldering. I think that at a certain point, you learn enough of how to get something to work that you can take some liberties in aesthetics and the general experience of using it to create a more polished product, and I try to show that in my work. I think that this is important because the end experience is of using a product is second only to it functioning, and the extra effort it takes to clean it up is almost always worth it.
My largest current obligation is as head of research and development on CMU’s FSAE team, where I’ve been given the freedom to experiment with things that are not necessarily directly needed for the car to function. This means that I can explore in other directions, like validating design decisions and making tools that help teach new members and make experienced ones more productive. In addition, I’ll be able to start whatever project I want, provided it is somewhat related to the team.
I am a sophomore mechanical engineering student interested in green energy. I’ve always loved being outdoors, and I hope to develop more sustainable alternatives to the way we currently use energy. I am deeply influenced by my cultural background and my travel experiences growing up. I love exploring and hearing people’s stories, learning different languages and about different cultures.
My interests are fairly varied. For the past year I’ve been working on an Engineers Without Borders project to develop a hydroponic indoor agriculture system to implement in Pittsburgh. This project has taught me a lot about the engineering design process, working in a team, giving back to the community, and combining technology with the beautiful simple pleasure of growing.
In my free time I like drawing mandala-style patterns and geometries using ink, and playing around with other crafts like pyrography and bookbinding. I’m also a musician; I’ve been playing flute for the past ten years and being able to express myself through music has been an enormous part of my life. Music has taught me how to connect and understand others and this very much influences the way I work. Last year I explored the intersection between technology and music by writing a script that turns images to sound based on color contrast using Python, PyAudio, PIL, and OpenCV. I have experience with Solidworks, 3D printing and laser cutting through the IDeATe intro micro course and for personal projects. Most recently, I gained experience with data analysis and visualization this summer when I worked for the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies mapping pollutant concentrations throughout Pittsburgh.
Hello, my name is Selena Norman. I am a senior product design major who has a love for all things colorful and quirky. My passion is functional design; things that play with the systems needed to support a human experience. I always find that the relationships formed between ‘human and object’ are real and reflective of something more than design, a tangible connection. I like to think of design as both the push and pull between the beauty of form and the need for function as well as how one can walk that fine line without tipping over to one side or the other.
What resonates with me is the way design can embed itself. When I share an experience with something inanimate, I have entered into a space that is completely unique. Good design is something that makes me think, makes me wonder, makes me recognize where I stand in reality. When I design something, it allows me to bring the user to a foreign place of unique enjoyment; a state of interaction between user and product. There is beauty in creating small moments that can subconsciously follow you through your day. I live for those small moments in my practice.
My interests outside of design range from collecting unique vintage pieces of furniture, jewelry and clothing to fluid sports such as dance and diving. In my younger years I competed in gymnastics. I find the nuances that present themselves within my athletic practices speak volumes on how the human body subconsciously shapes presentation. The tilt of the chin or the flick of a wrist at the end of a dismount are all forms of artistry, despite where they originate. I plan to let my hobbies and diverse interests support my love for the small things in life and propel me towards the design career I desire.
EDIT- Final version (sorry for the double post I copy pasted the wrong one and you can’t edit or delete something once its commented).
My name is Selena Norman. I am a senior product design major who has a love for all things colorful and quirky. My passion is functional design; things that play with the systems needed to support a human experience. I always find that the relationships formed between ‘human and object’ are real and reflective of something more than design, a tangible connection. I like to think of design as both the push and pull between the beauty of form and the need for function as well as how one can walk that fine line without tipping over to one side or the other.
What resonates with me is the way design can embed itself. When I share an experience with something inanimate, I have entered into a space that is completely unique. Good design is something that makes me think, makes me wonder, makes me recognize where I stand in reality. When I design something, it allows me to bring the user to a foreign place of unique enjoyment; a state of interaction between user and product. There is beauty in creating small moments that can subconsciously follow you through your day. I live for those small moments in my practice.
My interests outside of design range from collecting unique vintage pieces of furniture, jewelry and clothing to fluid sports such as dance and diving. In my younger years I competed in gymnastics. I find the nuances that present themselves within my athletic practices speak volumes on how the human body subconsciously shapes presentation. The tilt of the chin or the flick of a wrist at the end of a dismount are all forms of artistry, despite where they originate. I plan to let my hobbies and diverse interests support my love for the small things in life and propel me towards the design career I desire.
In the past I have done projects heavy in tangible production whether that is woodworking, foam modeling, 3d printing, or laser cutting. I have found a sense of peace that can be overpowering when it’s just you and the object growing together through the production process. Sanding for hours watching something come from the simple pressure of ones hands is rewarding in and of itself. The next frontier is how can I meet the life that form can exude and pair that with the interactions the come with physical computing.
(dpetroul@andrew.cmu.edu)
I am a sophomore Mechanical Engineering student interested in how technology and art affect the balance of the efficiency and quality of our daily lives.
I believe that art serves as a communicator of our internal beliefs and values, a catalyst for change, and inspiration. It often adds greatly to our quality of life. Technology is an extension of art which serves to make our lives more efficient and effective (extending the value of the art of efficiency and productivity), or help art serve its purpose. It also maximizes efficiency. When combined, I believe these two can help create optimal solutions to problems in many aspects of life.
I spent most of my life traveling and moving every couple months between my home country of Greece and the US and as I rapidly shifted lifestyles, managed to observe many fundamental differences between the two. This helped me appreciate the distinct workings, structures, and common ways of life in each country, but also see their shortcomings. I started out attempting to help the communities I was in and solve the issues I saw by running projects and heading organizations. These solutions however felt neither impactful nor long lasting.
I also grew up with a love for creating and tinkering– initially through poetry and music, then, sketching, pottery, Legos, building treehouses in my backyard. As I gained more access to technology, I became fascinated with the possibilities for creation and functionality it added and incorporated technology into my self expression through automated toy cars and programmable doll houses for my siblings, lego mindstorms, a little bit of arduino, and Solidworks.
Upon coming to CMU I started working in robotics research to help design and create a robot for nuclear pipe cleanup. I realized that my side hobby of creating, when cultivated and worked, could be used to solve real world problems in a permanent and more effective manner. As I picked up and mastered skills like 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC machining while building a robot that was to inspect pipes and prevent potential nuclear disaster, I became inspired with the seemingly limitless possibilities for creation and expression they offered, as well as the effectiveness of a creative and technological solution.
I’m currently hoping to gain as many skills as I can in order to be able to form creative solutions to any future problems.
Madelynne Long
I am a third-year mechanical engineering major and robotics minor with a fascination for learning how the world works and a passion for recreating and reimagining. While I love analyzing the dynamics of the things we encounter in our everyday lives on a mathematical level, I thrive on working with my hands and dismantling things so that I can better understand their functionality. I bring this passion for tinkering into my everyday life, where I enjoy making art and playing the ukulele. These pastimes have become key components of my life and complement the hardness of mechanical engineering.
Recently my artistic style has developed into something very new and exciting for me. In the past, I focused on photorealism and analyzing the gritty details, imperfections, and emotions of my subject so that I could better portray them through my drawings. While I still greatly enjoy this form of art I started to struggle with the concept of artistic integrity and defining my individual style. This sparked the beginning of an experimental phase which is ongoing. I have now branched out into different mediums such as paints, wire, jewelry, ceramics, etc., and have learned to implement my engineering mindset by incorporating it into my work.
In engineering, I am constantly propelled by curiosity with regards to machinery and technology. I have always enjoyed tinkering with everything from simplistic gadgets such as stopwatches and alarms to more complex machinery like car engines. Over the summer, I interned at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission where I redesigned a test fixture for their Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle (ROV) Testing Procedure. This project was invigorating for me because it focused on the interaction of multiple instruments that were required to receive and transmit data to autonomously control the ROVs and collected data to assess their safety and performance. This allowed me to dip my toes into the then foreign field of electronics and tap into my design mindset to achieve a more efficient setup. My final product yielded a fully integrated system that was compact and adaptable for any vehicle while requiring only a fraction of the previous system’s setup time. In this project, I got to utilize both my engineering mentality and my artist’s perspective to achieve my final product.
I am proud of my ability to merge both of these ways of thinking because it opens up a whole new approach to everything I do. I love finding the beauty in machinery and trying to reimagine the functionality of the things we interact with every day.
I am an undergraduate researcher who prioritizes looking for questions rather than finding answers. Whenever a problem becomes (seemingly) understood, I change a scale. A shift in understanding that stems from a distorted perspective can lead to previously unconceived intuitions. Is a distorted intuition true or false if it can be used to accurately further an understanding?
DIY screen printing was the start of my realizations into this type of problem solving: how do the tools affect the outcome? Specifically, how does silkscreen mesh size affect the printed ink? My past work focused on the dynamic qualities of the print medium. The series explored layers of screen printed glass to create imagery that shifts with a viewer’s perspective.
The misconception of 2D ink has lead to many millions of magnificent artworks for centuries, and the influenced my work as a poster designer. A study of microscopic screen print inks revealed the volume of the two-dimensional medium. Researching screen printing at the micro-scale has lead to exploring ink properties. My current work focuses on screen printing with conductive, illuminative, and functional inks. Placing functional inks in close proximity to each other can expose previously unseen properties.
My most recent print project directly leads me to a motivating question of scale: when a person builds a project, is the result artificial? If spiders are part of the natural world, is their web, attached to trees, an extent of a natural process? How did the spider learn to build its web? What are the spider’s tools? If a person discovers functional properties of a material, then places that material in context of other materials, is that material similar to a spider’s web?
I’m a maker, engineer ,and a designer. I’m a junior in Mechanical Engineering, and I am also pursuing a minor in Physical Computing. I am interested in the relationship between engineering product and its market impact made by non-engineering design decisions. I am also interested in interactive art and hands-on educational machinery, such as the ones people can play with in a science museum. My goal is to bring more engineering, art, and innovative education into schools in China.
For the past year, I have been involved in several organizations on campus. I worked as Head Mechanic in CIA buggy, and manufacturer in Carnegie Mellon University’s Formula Racing team. I am also involved in Atlas – a self driving buggy project within CIA buggy. These experiences have taught me valuable lessons in circuits, sensors, data collection, and troubleshooting.
My experience have changed my view towards the relationship between art and science. Shifting from “art is art, science is science” to “art and science is not complete without one and another”. The shift have inspired me to consider more of the design aspect in my engineering project. This have inspired my work on the “Design for the Better” project. Where I take pictures and interview from people while they are working with tools and machinery about what they don’t like about the product. I am planning on expanding the project into try to come up with ideas to improve the product by non-engineering aspects, like from a design perspective.
In my spare time, I like drawing and sketching, cooking, photography, and playing instruments. I started my bagpipe lesson in my freshman year, and violin lessons last year. And I also used to play piano before going to college. I believe, all of my hobbies and experience can turn into something valuable to me and others when I slowly mesh them into my work. In my freshman spring, me and three of my friends designed and prototyped a programmable music box for the annual Build 18 competition. This project have inspired me to explore and work more on projects that combines art and engineering.
RANJINI NARAYAN
I am a senior from Bangalore, India, currently studying Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a focus on embedded systems. Right now I’m learning about how designs influence human experiences, circuits and network security. I’m interested in wearable technology and IOT devices. On campus, I’m on the executive board for 1000plus, a service organization that organizes a day of service that allows Carnegie Mellon students to give back to the community.
This summer I worked as Deeplocal as an electrical and computer engineering intern. I really enjoyed being able to have an impact on the design process while helping with the engineering behind rapidly prototyped projects. Over the past couple of semesters I have tried to work on projects that combine my interests in technology and design. Last semester, I worked on the Twitter Trump Projector, which combined natural language processing and physical form to create a data visualization that combined public opinions of Trumps actions with their ramifications. I appreciated being able to use technology, rapid prototyping and crowd-sourced input to create a complete installation. The semester before that, I worked on a booklet that chronicled the feelings of multiple women engineers with respect to being a minority in their chosen profession.
I believe in ubiquitous computing which is the idea that computing should be accessible at any time and at any point. In the future, I want to be working on technology that supplements people’s lives subconsciously by making technology intuitive and accessible. I am also really interested in making everything an interface to the digital realm.
By working on wearables and IOT, I think we are moving toward a future where the integration between the physical and digital worlds will be seamless. I would love to spearhead that movement by working with artists, engineers, designers and writers. Tim Brown once said,
“Some say the world is divided into humanities people and science people; artists and geeks; intuitive types and analytical types. You’re either one or the other, and our culture, education system, workplaces and news media do their level best to reinforce this divide. But throughout history, it’s been proven over and again that if you want to be truly innovative, reaching across the divide between the sciences and the arts is the starting point for triggering the boldest ideas.”
And I try to live my life by perpetually reaching across this divide.
I am a senior from Bangalore, India, currently studying Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a focus on embedded systems. Right now I’m learning about how designs influence human experiences, circuits and network security. I’m interested in wearable technology and IOT devices. On campus, I’m on the executive board for 1000plus, a service organization that organizes a day of service that allows Carnegie Mellon students to give back to the community.
This summer I worked as Deeplocal as an electrical and computer engineering intern. I really enjoyed being able to have an impact on the design process while helping with the engineering behind rapidly prototyped projects. Over the past couple of semesters I have tried to work on projects that combine my interests in technology and design. Last semester, I worked on the Twitter Trump Projector, which combined natural language processing and physical form to create a data visualization that combined public opinions of Trumps actions with their ramifications. I appreciated being able to use technology, rapid prototyping and crowd-sourced input to create a complete installation. The semester before that, I worked on a booklet that chronicled the feelings of multiple women engineers with respect to being a minority in their chosen profession.
I believe in ubiquitous computing which is the idea that computing should be accessible at any time and at any point. In the future, I want to be working on technology that supplements people’s lives subconsciously by making technology intuitive and accessible. I am also really interested in making everything an interface to the digital realm.
By working on wearables and IOT, I think we are moving toward a future where the integration between the physical and digital worlds will be seamless. I would love to spearhead that movement by working with artists, engineers, designers and writers. Tim Brown once said,
“Some say the world is divided into humanities people and science people; artists and geeks; intuitive types and analytical types. You’re either one or the other, and our culture, education system, workplaces and news media do their level best to reinforce this divide. But throughout history, it’s been proven over and again that if you want to be truly innovative, reaching across the divide between the sciences and the arts is the starting point for triggering the boldest ideas.”
And I try to live my life by perpetually reaching across this divide.
SooJin Sohn
I am a senior international student from South Korea, majoring in BHA in Global Systems Management and Fine Arts, and minoring in IDeATe: Animation and Special Effects. I have strong interests in learning cultures(especially, culinary customs and music) and languages internationally: I am currently studying both the cultures and the languages of Korean, English, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese. Recently, I have been concentrating to practice Japanese by participating in multiple short-term designing and translating internships in Japanese corporations in Fukuoka and Tokyo.
As for interests in Art, I have been mainly working on 2D Media painting, drawing, story-boarding, animating, and 3D Animating. After years of being inspired by numerous animated works from Disney, Pixar, Miyazaki Hayao, Shinkai Makoto and Hosoda Mamoru I aim to pursue my love for the art of story-telling in hopes to find the most organic, and original way for me to communicate stories. In my sophomore year, I have participated in an animation project with my classmates outside of class: For a children’s opera song of the traditional “The Little Mermaid (Rusalka)”, I took the responsibility of story-boarding, designing props and characters, and animate them. As to further train and develop ways of story-telling through digital art, I have studied abroad in Tokyo Polytechnic University over the Spring semester 2017, and took courses on not only animation production and the social history of animation, but also received an introduction to interactive media with rudimentary-level approach on physical computing. I have also used Python and Java language to develop my individual project on utilizing a X-box Kinect’s camera to manipulate human body coordinates to create a 3D-space sketching simulator.
Having to explore multiple ways of making Art, I am now aiming to develop art projects that convey meaningful messages to the audience, using the techniques I have grasped. Nowadays, I am wishing to spread the messages of compassion for people, the environment, energy internationally and efficiently, with the artworks I create.
Gaurav Balakrishnan
I’m used to solving problems; it is what I have been trained in. I am currently in my 3rd year studying Materials Science and Engineering with an additional major in Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. This training has me approach problems in a highly mechanical and logical manner. My scientific training and my tendency to dream can lead to the creation of innovative and functional work.
I want to use my work to make concepts, experiences, and emotions that might be hard to grasp accessible to as many people as possible. This is reflected in most ideas that I have. I enjoy finding innovative ways to complex scientific ideas to people. I want this to be a central theme in a lot of my work. I think physical and tangible representations of things we read in books can be quite powerful. I have been quite interested in modeling physical systems for a long time. This summer, some of my work at a Cancer Nanotechnology lab was modeling the interactions of nanoparticles with the tumor cells. I am interested in creating an interactive physical model that physically represent various computational techniques used in Materials Science.
My relationship with music has been quite different from the one I share with my academic training. It is one that is more full of feeling and familiarity than technicality and theory. I like exploring different sounds through voice and different instruments. I am interested in using my work to explore different mediums of experiencing music. Something I have begun to explore recently is creating a robust technology that allows people with hearing impairments to experience music. While this work is still in a prototyping phase, I have gained some experience in working with electrical systems.
I want to use the diversity of expertise in Carnegie Mellon’s environment to collaborate and realize ideas that can make the world a slightly better place.
I am a junior studying design for environments at Carnegie Mellon University. Design is my process of exploration, innovation, and understanding. I enjoy investigating and prototyping with unique mediums to explore how they can produce new forms of communication and interaction in an environment. My recent projects use materials like wax, paper, print, pixels and fabrication methods (3D printing and laser cutting) in order to investigate physical, qualitative experiences.
For me, placing unique mediums in a new context is a way to understand information from a new perspective. One of my favorite projects used wax and light-sensitive PLA filament to visualize the thermodynamic information of a space. My work allows me to translate and share my interpretation of the world with others. These translated experiences harness new understandings of unexplainable phenomena.
I also enjoy conceptualizing environments that navigate between digital and physical spaces. This work involves redefining interactions between people and the micro-interactions we have with the material world. I am excited to begin learning how to translate my concepts into working physical realities. My other favorite mediums include glassblowing, screen printing, bookmaking, pastel / charcoal and oil paint.
Christoph Eckrich
I am a second year architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University, pursuing a five-year B.Arch. I have specific interests in intelligent environments, reactive media in architecture, and sustainable low cost building. I am fascinated by the cutting edge intersection of architecture and technology, and how they work together to improve not only building performance, but human experience and spatial quality. Through class and work experience I intend to develop a hybrid style that fuses this technological interest with my respect and value for historical precedent and formal architectural theory.
I have worked on a full set of multi-media projects from video editing to identity design to construction. I’ve operated as the videographer for the school of architecture for nearly a year, capturing, editing, and curating our phenomenal lecture series. I have a position on the school tech crew live mixing audio and helping set up/take down sets. Recently I worked as a TA for the pre-college architecture program at CMU, a job which utilized another one of my passions: Teaching. For the past 4 months I’ve been working as the identity designer for the 2017 wats:ON? Festival, creating a logo, posters, and other branding materials. As the school year starts I am starting another project with Ultra Low Res Studios, working on a reactive light and form installation that will go into Wean Hall this fall.
In my artistic process I try to iterate as much as possible. I find it crucial to have an objective eye and be able to see your work without attachment, even if that means ripping it up to start over again. My cultural background is German, and I think I take many of my sensibilities from my time there. Be it the work ethic and production focus, or the environmental consciousness and deep appreciation for place, I have deep respect for such an approach to life.
I have a background in music as well, playing multiple instruments, and appreciating many more that I cannot. Going forward I am interested in pursuing ways where I can bring sensibilities from music into my art and architecture. I believe a great deal of creative potential lies in the intersection of fields; a belief that will hopefully lead me down many fascinating interdisciplinary paths.
Tatyana Mustakos
I am a junior in CFA studying art, technology and interactions. While at CMU I was introduced me to the field of New Media Arts, and the different ways that code can be used as a tool to produce new types of works. Right now, I am spending my semester experimenting mainly with physical interactions, I’m taking classes in physical computing, robotics for creative practice, open sculpture, and physical construction through solid works and laser cutting, as well as a class in experimental game design.
I recently spent the summer interning with new media artists Taeyoon Choi, Tega Brain, and Surya Mattu. This introduced me to new ways of thinking, and to new ways that coding can be utilized. I also helped teach middle schoolers how to tell stories through P5.js, HTML, and CSS.
Some projects that i’ve done in the past are Webcam Drawing, which was designed and implemented using python with opencv. This drawing application takes in live data from a video feed of your desk surface. It tracks a designated pen and uses it to draw in real time on the digital canvas. You can also draw digitally, and create looping animations. Another one was Modular People, which were modular, jointed, people coded through OpenSCAD and printed through the MakerBot Replicator 2. This is a customization construction kit with changeable limb lengths, body width, and height. All the joints are the same size which allows construction of non humanoid entities and varying structures. All forms are constructed through additive and subtractive geometric shapes to form a human-like figure
I’m interested in further contrasting digital and physical objects and how we interact differently with each, as well as the inherent differences between real life and the digital realm.
tademu.com