AASF: Hybrid Practice

Moderated by Archeworks, School for Poetic Computation, Southland Institute, and ZZ School of Print Technology discuss how are new combinations of traditionally distinct disciplines coming together in arts education?

Archeworks
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Archeworks is a design school, research lab and think-tank based in Chicago.

Since our founding, Archeworks has offered a postgraduate certificate focused on the skills, techniques and implementation of Public Interest Design: identifying opportunity, engaging a collective audience, convincing and testing ideas, and making design an agent of change. Through a vast network of industry experts, civic leaders, award winning practitioners and successful social entrepreneurs, students are given the tools and access to make a difference in the world, and the accountability to do so.

In 2015, Archeworks launched Chicago Complex, a satellite campus for national and international universities. This academic consortium for advanced urban studies utilizes the Chicago metropolitan area as a laboratory for contemporary cultural production. Students from diverse areas, nationalities and backgrounds bring a balanced and unbiased dialogue around some of Chicago’s most pressing social dilemmas, often exposing latent challenges and finding promising solutions.

In addition to educational programming, Archeworks operates as a multidisciplinary think-tank, conducting research in areas beyond design that influence the social climate that we design within: education, policy, media, technology, waste streams, energy. The think-tank deepens the focus, precision and impact potential for our projects.

School for Poetic Computation
New York, NY, USA

School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school in New York that was founded in 2013. A small group of students and faculty work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a hybrid of a school, residency and research group.

Our motto is: more poetry, less demo

We value the craft necessary to realize an idea, recognizing that every writer needs space and time to hone their trade. Our school aims to provide a safe haven for you to get acquainted with the craft of coding at your own pace, make it your own, and investigate the space between creative process and craft. This takes conversations with colleagues and the right push at the right time.

The school aims to be more than a technical bootcamp. It is an opportunity to work intensively with a small group of students, faculty, and artists to explore questions about the poetics of computation. For us, computation is poetic when technology is used for critical thinking and aesthetic inquiry – a space where logic meets electricity (hardware), math meets language (software) and analytical thinking meets creative experimentation.

This is also a school for teaching. Every student who comes here will be asked to share their expertise with their classmates in the form of workshops and outreach.

Southland Institute
Los Angeles, California, USA

The Southland Institute (for Critical, Durational, and Typographic Post-Studio Practices) is an unaccredited postgraduate program and workshop built around a central curricular helix consisting of the tools, processes, histories, and discourses of typography and critical art-making. Offering a reciprocally inflected graphic design / post-conceptual art education, with a high level of interdisciplinary discourse, The Southland Institute is a space for self-directed research, critique, conversation, cross-pollination, and expansion along and between continua of critical, durational, and typographic post-studio practices. We are actively seeking participants with integrative and trans-disciplinary practices who are interested in interweaving discourses of 20th- and 21st-century art, media, graphic design, literary, and critical theory.

The aim of the institute is to expand and deepen participants’ practices and provide an experience and education roughly analogous to graduate-level study, while removing it from the world of investment and speculation.

The program is intended to function as a practice-based, research-driven, stand-alone educational environment, or as a supplement to other institutions or engagements with which participants may be currently or previously involved.

The institute arises in response to a gap in dialog between discourses at existing institutions of all sizes. The aim of the institute is to activate and explore the points of contact between disciplines and media, and to create a space for extended development, exposure, and conversation, which comes without a heavy debt burden.

We also believe in paying instructors fairly for their contributions, and hope to model an alternative to the ubiquitous undervaluing of educators.

The Zz School of Print Media
Kansas City, Missouri, USA

The Zz (zee) School of Print Media is a printmaking focused education initiative based in Kansas City, Mo. We aim to promote print-based public art, encourage exchange between artists and the community, to create opportunities for artists and educators, and to expand the role of printmaking in our art community. In addition to technical services and equipment access, Zz School rounds out artist opportunity with community aimed programming, visiting artist projects, and conceptual courses. We aim to enable artists diversely, creating opportunities for artists to grow the content of their work in tandem with technical ability. Zz School mission is not only in service to artists and learners, but just as importantly, at Zz School we aim to create a space for educators to gain experience and to experiment. Proudly, Zz School instructors are paid more per contact hour than adjunct instructors at the leading art school in our city.

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