MS_ACT

Master of science in architecture, computational technologies

MS_ACT LECTURE SERIES S2022

Informed actualizations: From AI to physical computation

The MS ACT Lecture Series aims at discussing research framed by invited guest speakers. The MS ACT Program focuses on architecture expanding relationships between science, technology and culture through innovation in algorithms, simulations, ai, robotics, robotic fabrication and materials. The spring 2022 lecture series discusses alternative means to understand the dialectics between the ideal digital and the physical digital. Within an architecture of information, ai, robotics and materials are thought as actualization interfaces. This process understands information flows and their actualizations as architecture.

Postponed to Fall 2022

MS_ACT INNOVATION KEYNOTE LECTURE

THINKING WITH MATERIAL: CALL AND RESPONSE

Introduction and Moderation:

Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa, Director, MS ACT, New York Institute of Technology-SoAD

Presentation:

FELECIA DAVIS,

PhD, Principal Felecia Davis Studio, Director SOFTLAB@PSU

Work with actual material requires improvisation and a call and response mode. What is meant by that? This describes a connection between body and material. Material is shaped by the body but contrary to what we might think, material also changes and shapes the body. There is a conversation.What happens to this idea when the ways that we use to shape materials are codes, and invisible descriptions given to machines? Well, that changes us too. Maybe not the same as shaping clay with one’s hands but something is happening in that feedback between body and stuff. The author of this lecture will present design works that will create a space to discuss the above questions through the process of design and making.

Felecia Davis’ work in computational textiles questions how we live and she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis is an Associate Professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU. She completed her PhD in Design Computation at MIT. Davis’ work in architecture connects art, science, engineering and design and was featured by PBS in the Women in Science Profiles series. Davis’ work was part of the MoMA’s exhibition Reconstruction: Blackness and Architecture in America. She is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective a not-for-profit group of Black architects, scholars and artists supporting design work about the Black diaspora. Davis work has been recently recognized by the New York Architectural Leagues’ 2022 Emerging Voices in Architecture program.

https://blogs.nyit.edu/msact

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kjiPr82e1pGkPKaZ6hjnQ