Design Education, University at Buffalo

John Jennings, popular culture afficionado visited my Graphic Design History class in November. John’s fascinating perspective on the visual communication found in Hip Hop culture was a fascinating, rarely talked about facet of Design evolution. John is also the co-author (w/ Damian Duffy) of the graphic novel The Hole: Consumer Culture and a co-founder of Eye Trauma, a web based collective of sequential artists, activists, and curators who seek to expand the public’s perception of the comics medium.

John broght with him a large portfolio of drawing samples from his recent projects with Damian Duffy. The students were able to see first hand how John draws out a cultural critique of image making through the visual culture of hip hop. And I was a witness to John’s inspiring presence in the classroom. He is a natural leader with amazing style. John and I first met at the AIGA Design Educator’s conference in Baltimore. John was one of the presenters for the Pecha Kucha-style events where a crowd of 300 listened to John perform his lecture as a poem — and it was brilliant.

John Jennings is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Join us at the Center for the Arts, 144, to meet with and experience the life of Brian Schorn. Musician, poet, designer, performance artist, Sheriff, Mayor AND the Judge visits the University at Buffalo Department of Visual Studies on September 9 at 9am. This opportunity is brought to you by the History of Visual Communication class, the Letter B and the number 240.

Brian Schorn is an interdisciplinary artist. His education includes an MFA in Electronic and Music and Recording Media from Mills College, an MFA in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art, an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, an MFA in Photography from the University of Michigan, a BFA in Photography from the Center for Creative Studies and 2 years of pre-med at Oakland University.
Schorn studied music composition with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros and electronic music with Chris Brown and Maggi Payne. His music has been performed in France, Austria, New York, Oakland and elsewhere throughout the United States. He has performed with other composers and artists such as Cecil Taylor, Maryanne Amacher, Steina Vasulka, Ken Butler and Clay Chaplin. His electronic music has aired on KUNM in conjunction with the Santa Fe International Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, WOBC’s Foldover program at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Village Nomade Radio in Marseille, France. His graphic musical scores were exhibited at The Mess Hall in Chicago as part of the Open Source/Open Ear event. For the last few years, Schorn has been active performing live electronic music incorporating theatrical elements, video and poetry. Schorn’s music appears on the compilation CDs “Open Source/Open Ear” and “The Last Signal.” His 60 second composition “Under a Submersive Sun” toured the Midwest with the 60×60 Project in 2007. Recent news includes: 1) “Textures,” a collection of text-sound compositions was released on cyclene.com; 2) graphic scores and creative writing were included in the new book “Notations21: An Anthology of Innovative Musical Notation.”
Notations21 [dot] [net]

Schorn’s visual art has been exhibited and published widely for the last twenty years including numerous solo exhibitions. In 2007, his solo art museum exhibition entitled “Magnum Opus: A 25 Year Retrospective,” featured over 75 works of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, sound art, performance art, video and graphic design. Other recent exhibitions include “Human Form” at Studio 71 South in Grand Rapids, Michigan; “Computer Punch Card Art” at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science in Souix Falls, South Dakota and “78th Regional Exhibition” at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon, Michigan.

Schorn’s graphic design has appeared in many books and magazines including Emigre, Ray Gun, Eye, Typography Now II, Cool Type and Typography 15. Currently, he is featured in Eye magazine (63) in the article “Dark Tools of Desire: Surrealism and Design” written by Rick Poynor. Check it out here:
Eye Magazine [dot] [com]

Schorn’s creative writing has been published in numerous books, journals and anthologies including Strabismus, a full-length book of poems, Palm Desert, Joshua Tree, One Score More, Sulfur and O.blek. His writing has been translated into the Danish and published in Banana Split, a literary journal in Copenhagen, Denmark. Schorn’s hand-made poetry books are in the Marvin Sackner Collection of Concrete and Visual Poetry. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1991.

Currently, Schorn is exploring interdisciplinary works that incorporate electronic music, computer-triggered audio, live video, poetic monologues and body-based endurance performance art. The content of the performances explore ritualistic ceremony and initiatory challenges that encourage social, physical and psychological questioning. In addition, he is exploring meditation, sound healing, shamanic practice, trance, chant, yoga and Eastern philosophy as compositional material for sound-based experiments.
Brian’s Myspace Page

Khalil Nieves from the Institute for Justice and Equity visits UB. Together with the students from the Identity Design, they collaborated with Khalil in an effort to promote the emergence of the IJE in the international community of socially conscious people.

From the IJE:
IJE is a social justice institute. It systematically prepares people to continue contributing to creating a just, equitable and sustainable world for all peoples. We do this through a comprehensive educational program and by developing people who are competent organizers and teachers. We help them develop a deep understanding of the social, political, scientific and technological trends inaugurated in the world since 1492.

We believe that humanity is a transitional period where western domination has been and is being challenged. Our understanding of history is that in 1492 Europe began a process of conquest of the world that divided humanity into conquerors and the conquered. This conquest was so that Europeans could amass wealth and power over other peoples. During these 500 years people have successfully resisted, and because of that resistance, the peoples of the world have created a new era. This era is emerging, but unclear. However, we know that if the peoples of the world continue to organize, patiently develop their current and emerging reform movements and independent countries, that we can continue moving towards a just, equitable and sustainable world. IJE consciously looks for people who are humble, have a deep sense of responsibility, and have a broad and comprehensive understanding of human development and civilizations since 1492.

(( James Jensen gets an ear full ))

These are committed to becoming competent, familiar with scientific technology, cultural, social, economic and political trends and dedicated to a lifetime of working to develop their people, movements to continue this evolution.

OUR core preparation is a 12-month program that systemically studies our era — the era of western conquest and consolidation of the planet in core and periphery nations where Europe and European descendants have dominated the world to the detriment of the majority of the world’s peoples. We systematically study the historical, political, economic, scientific, technological, cultural, sociological and ideological dimensions of western civilization and how it has divided humanity into a planet based on race, gender, class, wealth and access to the world’s resources.

During the second four months, students then look at how people are creating alternative models, movements and practices. During this state students refine their collaborative projects. The last four months students live in the collaborating country and actively continue working on their project. Projects could be solar powered community cafes in rural areas.

Every fall I teach the History of Graphic Design which is an Undergrad/Grad course in Visual Studies. We take a non-linear approach to the history of graphic design by trying to uncover the motivations behind the projects that make history. During my first semester teaching at UB, I chose Phillip Meggs “History of Graphic Design” as our text book. Towards the end of the semester, we reached the section on Dutch Graphic Design. The work featured in this section included none other than my former colleagues Bob van Dijk and Joost Roozekrans.

So instead of telling stories of my time at this historic studio, I decided to give them a call and let the students see for themselves that genius is often accompanied by insanity.

We used my laptop, hooked up to a projector, external speakers and the free video software, Skype. It worked brilliantly! When we rang, all of the members of the studio answered the video call wearing masks bearing my face. After the hysterical laughter died down (on both sides of the Atlantic), Bob van Dijk, Joost Roozekrans and Oscar Smeulders proceeded to give a guided tour of their studio, their work and a short documentary made especially for our class. The students asked questions, interacted and inspired by the antics, energy and intensity of the work that was presented…

NLXL (from Left) Hanneke Minten, Joost Roozekrans, Dennis Paauw, David Benque, Bob van Dijk

re·fuse from Angel! on Vimeo.
Angel Rivera, Doug Brooks, Dan Sieracki

From Angel:
Our Art 322 final project. We repurposed plastic grocery bags for a typographic installation. We also tripped on stuff a lot.

The original idea was to take used plastic bags and create hollow, airtight letterforms out of them and float them up to the ceiling of the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts. There were, however, three problems with this. First and foremost was the fact that the fifty-three double ply bags we initially ironed together were two heavy to float, and weren’t airtight anyway. Second, we were informed, literally an hour before we were about to launch our now-balloon-powered sculpture, that sensors would set off an alarm if it touched the ceiling. Without having a ceiling to rest up against, the unevenly distributed helium distorted the letters which were now simply tethered to chairs with fishing wire. And third, after finally arriving at a passable solution, someone came along and told us that using helium in our building was against “regulations.” So overall, this really didn’t turn out a whole lot like how we intended. But for a few hours, we managed to transform the CFA into a less rigid and sterile place, and that was good enough for me.