Art and Design Commons^™

Spannungsfeld, Julian Voss-Andreae

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

My design for a sculptural installation for the University of Minnesota’s new Physics and Nanotechnology Building is inspired by a view of the human body through the lens of quantum physics.

The German title of the installation (literally "tension field") originated in physics but is used in contemporary German almost exclusively in a metaphorical sense, implying a dynamic tension, often between polar opposites, that permeates everything in its vicinity.

Influx, Julie Orr

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

My work is both a commentary on the pervasive societal ills of disposability and detachment in contemporary culture and an active participant in the same environment it criticizes.

Mana & Ea, Dan Taulapapa Mcmullin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This work, Mana and Ea, expresses Polynesian indigenous sovereignty struggles with colonialism and globalism in the Pacific Islands.

Big Horned, Juniper Harrower

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Tinta y tinto (Spanish for black ink and red wine)
Through a process of oxidation, reduction, and light manipulation, Juniper stains and colors paper with red wine and a rich black pigment made of the wild harvested mushroom Coprinopsis atramentaria.

Crochet As A Model For The Elasticity Of Skin Cells, Jaqueline (Jackie) Bell Johnson

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

My artwork is a result of the exploration of materials through process. The sculptures I make are the solutions to problems of how to combine materials, and create structure and form that I am able to build and transport on my own.

Design In Nature, Farhana Azim

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Floral Designs are a combination of, line, form and space. By creating balance while incorporating all these three elements in proportion to the space allowed, with an eye on the use of color and contrast, enabling the smooth visual flow of the design one produces the perfect arrangement.

The Quantified Self, Behind The Cover Art, Leslie Love Stone

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

We lead quantified lives. The information we send and receive through our computers, CD players, and smart phones is coded in ones and zeroes. We exist as numerical accounts, license numbers, and login IDs. Anyone who has ever waited on hold for a live customer service representative understands the desire to be treated like a person, not a number. We each want acceptance for our inherent peculiarities and consideration for our circumstance—conditions we believe extrinsic to numbers.

Colormoo: An Algorithmic Approach To Generating Color Palettes, Joshua Rael

CMC Senior Theses

Selecting one color can be done with relative ease, but this task becomes more difficult with each subsequent color. Colormoo is an online tool aimed at solving this problem. We implement three algorithms for generating color palettes based off of a starting color. Data is collected for each palette that is generated. Our analysis reveals two of the algorithms are preferred, but under different circumstances. Furthermore, we find that users prefer palettes containing colors that are compatible, but not too similar. With refined heuristics, we believe these techniques can be extended and applied beyond the field of graphic design alone.

A Look Into The Industry Of Video Games Past, Present, And Yet To Come, Chad Hadzinsky

CMC Senior Theses

Since its inception, the video game industry has been both a new medium for art and innovation as well as a major driving force in the advancements of many technologies. The often overlooked video game industry has turned from a hobby to a multi-billion dollar industry in its short, forty year life. People of all ages and genders across the world are playing video games at a higher clip than ever before. With so many new gamers and emerging technologies, it is an exciting time for the industry. The landscape is constantly changing and successful business models of the past …

Indefinability2013c.E., Clayton T. Ehman

CGU MFA Theses

I am a multidisciplinary artist; because I am committed to art that engages a broad array of subjects and ideas. This is reflected in my works which consist of diverse mediums and processes including graphic design, digital imagery, printmaking, painting, sculpting, poetry, song composition, clothing, website design, drawing, video, lighting, installation art, abstract art, Op art, conceptual art, political art, black light art, maximalist art, and various combinations of these.

The Beautiful Corpse: Violence Against Women In Fashion Photography, Susan C. Bryant

Scripps Senior Theses

My senior thesis deals with contemporary depictions of sexualized violence against women in fashion photography. Images of bloodied, bruised, and dead-looking models have proliferated in fashion magazine editorials and advertisements since the 1970s and I want to explore why sexualized violence is seen as sexy and compelling advertising, in light of the fact that domestic violence is the greatest cause of injury to women in America. I produced my own fashion photographs in locations of actual female homicides in Los Angeles County, particularly those nearest to Claremont, with the use of The Los Angeles Times online homicide database, which pinpoints …

Art Meets Science! Get Over It . . ., Stephen Nowlin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The news headline, when such projects garner attention, usually goes like this – Art Meets Science! Or perhaps Art Merges with Science! or maybe they combine, or art collides with science, or they fuse, join, bond, or unite. And ‘art’ in the phrase usually precedes ‘science’, perhaps because their integration is more typically initiated from the art side of the equation. But whatever the order of the two terms, and whatever verb is used to link them, the tenor of the declaration is typically the same – this is a story worth reporting on, it announces, because …

A Reflection: Art And Science In A Museum Gallery, Kaileena Flores-Emnace

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Art education in a public space can be a venue for the blending of art and science. As a Contemporary Art Start educator for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, I have experienced the many ways in which transdisciplinary education creates deeper student understanding and engagement. At MOCA we use Visual Thinking Strategies for student tours, a research-based teaching method that invites students to direct gallery discussions. We visit a few artworks for ten to fifteen minutes each to foster critical thinking and encourage students to bring personal knowledge and experience to the conversation.

The Unstable Ground Of Low Hierarchies, Joshua Dinsmore

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Broad Vision is a collaborative project between the Sciences and Arts. It involves students and lecturers from six different departments, across three schools at the University of Westminster, London, UK. In the first year of the project we worked with the microscope as the locus for our interconnections.

The Emerald Ash Borer, Emily Bryant

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

An Emerald Ash Borer made from recycled natural materials to create sustainable art.

Connecting The Contradictory With Science Art And The Aid Of A Caption, Carel P. Brest Van Kempen, Darryl Wheye

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

When the disciplines of science and art intertwine to reveal a truth then words and images are suited to telling different parts, and reveal the whole story most effectively when working in tandem. Decoding the underlying science within a work of art through a caption does not diminish its value as art, but when we fail to decode the science we miss entry into a narrative.

Steam With A Capital A: Learning Frenzy, David Rufo

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A student dipped a brush into a bowl of viscous tempera paint and in a few quick strokes formed thick magenta letters on a large display board. Nearby a handful of students were working together to attach string to paper cups and balloons. Across the room a small group of girls were lying on the floor carefully adding multi-colored text to a poster. Two others created characters out of Popsicle sticks for a puppet show...This is how the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math (S.T.E.A.M.) happened with the fourth and fifth graders during the first few weeks of …

Keeping Abreast With Liberal Arts And Science Through Steam, Tanya Rivas, Gregory Knotts

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The integrated unit on breast cancer described here includes biological science and visual art standards and was targeted at high school juniors and seniors. The goal was to make a potentially controversial and taboo subject relatable through an art-science approach

Reflections ~ How Stem Becomes Steam, Ruth Catchen

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Reflections from designing a STEAM class for high-risk students.

Quantum Man, Julian Voss-Andreae

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

According to quantum physics, the world is fundamentally quite different than it seems. Drawing inspiration from the underlying nature of reality, former quantum physicist Julian Voss-Andreae created an image of a walking human as a quantum object. Made up of parallel sheets of steel, the sculpture is a metaphor for the counter-intuitive world of quantum physics. Symbolizing the dual nature of matter with the appearance of classical reality on the surface and cloudy quantum behavior underneath, the sculpture seems to consist of solid steel when seen from the front, but dissolves into almost nothing when seen from the side.

The Wiseman, James William Sobieski

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

I created this artwork for a gallery show of masks. I have always been an auto-didact. I turned my love of books and learning into a sculpture that is a self-portrait. It is an icon of the power knowledge brings. A mask is a protective barrier between the wearer and the world. The paper word-filled book pages create a fierce and intimidating grill. I love working with a variety of materials and constructing objects that demand the viewer to think.

Bottled Sky, Ioannis Michalou(Di)S

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Cloud-hunter Ioannis ΜICHALOU(di)S, lies in wait of air streams, grapping pieces of sky, shaping them, molding them, and baptizing them as ‘aerosculptures’. MICHALOU(di)S is the first visual artist worldwide to use art and science in a unique way. His latest Art-Science achievement is ‘Bottled Sky’. He states:

“In October 2001, while I was trying to create a cubic nephele, in the Visual Arts Research Centre of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I came upon the silica aerogel for the first time... It is a space technology material, intangible -consisting of 99.9% air and 0.1% glass - which has been recently …

Propeller, Joel Kahn

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This image is based on several different algorithms interconnected within a single program in the language BASIC-256. The fundamental structure involves a tightly wound spiral working outwards from the center of the image. As the spiral is drawn, different values of red, green and blue are modified through separate but related processes, producing the changing appearance. Algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and analytic geometry are all utilized in overlapping ways within the program. As with many works of algorithmic art, small changes in the program can produce dramatic alterations of the visual output, which makes lots of variations possible.

Migration Grid #26, Stanton Hunter

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This work is inspired by invisible sky grids formed by Ultra Violet (UV) light researchers discovered that guide Monarch butterflies on their migration from the mid-western United States to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. I use terrestrial material, clay, to make something celestial. Earth, associated with mass and permanence, is translated into these shifting, ephemeral, and ethereal sky-forms. The work encompasses void more than object and the complex shadows they cast are immaterial. Together, the objects and shadows point to what can’t be seen, at least by the human eye.

Balconies, Joe Guimera

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Recent developments in theoretical physics suggest the possibility of parallel universes. What if we could see two or more universes at the same time? In effect, superimpose a scene from one universe; say a street corner, over the image of the same scene from a second universe? The photograph “Balconies” imagines the possibilities.

A Distributed Intelligence Approach To Multidisciplinarity: Encouraging Divergent Thinking In Complex Science Issues In Society., Jarod Kawasaki, Dai Toyofuku

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The scientific issues that face society today are increasingly complex, open-ended and tentative (Sadler, 2004). Finding solutions to these issues, not only requires an understanding of the science, but also, concurrently dealing with political, social, and economic dimensions that exist (Hodson, 2003). For example, 40 years after the first congressional hearing on climate change held by Al Gore in 1976, the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that climate change is still getting worse, despite efforts by governments, businesses, social actors such as Non-Government Organizations, and scientists. With the top minds in the world, across all disciplines, …

Steam...Now!, John Eger

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

With America slowly awakening to the need to turn out creative and innovative workers who can join the 21^st century (its already 2012) workplace -- because they have the new thinking skills --we have to change the current emphasis on STEM, for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to STEAM, by insuring that the whole brain is nurtured through the arts: thus STEAM.

Merging Science And Art: The Bigger Picture, Natasha Hall

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

It has been stated that artists comprehend and chronicle the completeness of the visible world (Wallach & Bret, 1987), defining Art as the creative expression of knowledge about the visual world. But to what extent does that awareness extend into a scientific appreciation of the world? The acronym STEAM is an abbreviation of Science, Technology, Electronics, Arts and Mathematics. Weaving interactions between Science and Art, have been shown by Clarke and Button (Clarke & Button, 2011), to intensify interconnections between nature, with Landscape, and ultimately with sustainability.

Getting Real About The E In Steam, James Catterall

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

STEM and STEAM are in the news. Researchers and educators in my field (cognition, art, and creativity) argue reasons for adding the A to STEM. While I visit this below, my focus is elsewhere. In this brief essay, I want to explore the meaning and importance of the E appearing in both STEM and STEAM. What’s engineering doing in this mix? And what are some reasons for affirming the arts when the role of engineering is clarified?

Equations Of Light - The Steam Journal Inaugural Issue, The Cover Art, Chris Brownell

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This is the background to some of the work, art and thinking that went into the cover art for the inaugural issue.