Opening: Friday, February 6, 6–8pm
Symposium: Saturday, February 7, 9am–5pm
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107
California College of the Arts is pleased to host the Data Clay symposium, a one-day event presented by the Architecture and Fine Arts divisions on Saturday, February 7. The symposium is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Data Clay: Digital Strategies for Parsing the Earth, January 17 through April 19, at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco. A special opening reception for the symposium will be held at the museum.
The event will focus on the use of digital tools and ceramic materials—a hot topic now in architecture, fabrication, digital craft, ceramics, and sustainability circles. Armed with technologies of advanced modeling, 3D printing, and digital machining techniques, today’s designers and artists are able to explore with renewed vigor complex relationships that have always been critical within the ceramic tradition: interiority and exteriority, porosity and containment, surface and figuration, singularity and multiplicity.
Through this symposium, leading architects, artists, designers, researchers, and critics will seek to define the relationships among the precision of digital technologies, craft sensibilities, and earthen materials.
Keynote
Dries Verbruggen, Unfold Studio, Antwerp
Presenters
Andy Brayman, Matter Factory, Kansas City
Laura Devendorf, School of Information, UC Berkeley
Jason Kelly Johnson, Architecture, CCA; and Future Cities Lab, San Francisco
Ron Rael, Architecture, UC Berkeley; and Emerging Objects, Oakland
Jenny Sabin, Architecture, Cornell University
Jenni Sorkin, Art History, UC Santa Barbara
Michael Swaine, Ceramics, CCA; and Future Farmers, San Francisco
Stephanie Syjuco, Sculpture, UC Berkeley; and artist, San Francisco
Bobbye Tigerman, Associate Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Moderators
Del Harrow, Ceramics, Colorado State University
Joshua Stein, Architecture, Woodbury University; and Radical Craft, Los Angeles
Symposium funding was generously supported in part by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the CCA Digital Craft Lab. This research was supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from The Center of Craft, Creativity & Design, Inc.
About Data Clay
Data Clay connects a nascent movement of architects, artists, and designers exploring the medium of ceramics coupled with new digital technologies. In recent years, a renewed interest in the potential transformation of basic materials into complex hybrid systems has pushed ceramics to the forefront of innovation in the allied design fields. By sharing innovative projects and techniques, Data Clay aims to promote continued research into this digital reworking of the earth.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) offers 22 undergraduate and 12 graduate programs in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers BFA, BA, MFA, MA, MBA, BArch, MArch, and MAAD degrees. It has campuses in San Francisco and Oakland and currently enrolls 1,950 full-time students. CCA students are encouraged to work in an interdisciplinary manner, undertaking projects and collaborations with students in other majors and engaging with outside communities.
Noted alumni include the artists Nathan Oliveira, Jules de Balincourt, Robert Arneson, Robert Bechtle, Viola Frey, and Peter Voulkos; the Oscar-winning filmmaker Audrey Marrs; the illustrator Tomie de Paola; the conceptual artists Harrell Fletcher, David Ireland, and Dennis Oppenheim; and the designers Lucille Tenazas, Michael Vanderbyl, and Gary Hutton. For more information about CCA, visit our website.