Buzzing, drilling, and hammering echoed through the Sculpture Shop at 185 Nassau on a late September day. These sounds—expected and encouraged in any sculpture class—were unique not to the studio space but to the class of which they were a part: Haptic Lab, a new course offered for the first time this fall by the Program in Visual Arts.
Led by Professor Joe Scanlan, “Haptic Lab” is a hands-on studio course in which haptic learning—that related to the sense of touch—both physical and virtual, occurs simultaneously. Students are given several materially intensive assignments that incorporate equally intensive digital production.
Students create sculptures in the "Haptic Lab" course where haptic learning—both physical and virtual—occur simultaneously. Photo by Zohar Lavi-Hasson
Students create sculptures in the "Haptic Lab" course where haptic learning—both physical and virtual—occur simultaneously. Photo by Zohar Lavi-Hasson
Students create sculptures in the "Haptic Lab" course where haptic learning—both physical and virtual—occur simultaneously. Photo by Zohar Lavi-Hasson
Students create sculptures in the "Haptic Lab" course where haptic learning—both physical and virtual—occur simultaneously. Photo by Zohar Lavi-Hasson
Guest artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy discusses working with hives of honeybees. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Guest artist Caitlyn Min-ji Au, who works between sculpture, video, and food, discusses her artistic practice. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Joe Scanlan instructs students in "Haptic Lab" during a recent class. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Students participate in a one-day workshop with guest artist Caitlyn Min-ji Au. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Students join Caitlyn Min-ji Au, a visiting guest artist who works between sculpture, video, and food, for a workshop. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Caitlyn Min-ji Au works with students during a recent visit. Photo by Jon Sweeney
In this particular class session, eight students used a variety of tools to craft a prosthetic of their own design from ribbon-thin strips of ash wood. Broadly defined, the final objects included a tennis racket, bike basket, ladder, figural sculptures, and more. While this first assignment did not have a digital component, because the material was “too weak” to accomplish anything on its own, a substantial amount of ingenuity and effort was required to make it workable. The act of making an unworkable material workable is analogous to the physical-virtual dynamic.
The objective of the course is to first help students engage in making artworks in the physical realm, translate them into the digital, and then to also engage the students in a critical analysis of the dynamic relationship between the two.
“In recent years, I’ve become very interested in the use of the term ‘haptic’ in virtual reality, since we don’t really hear it used in the real world anymore,” said Scanlan. “If that’s the case, then how do we retain the knowledge of what it refers to? The Haptic Lab encourages students not only to ask this question but to creatively negotiate the relationship between the two.”
At multiple points throughout the semester, Scanlan invited guest artists to join the class and demonstrate connections between the physical and virtual realms in their professional practice.
Artist and writer Lauri Lynnxe Murphy discusses her work. Photo by Jon Sweeney
On October 13, bio-artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy discussed her transdisciplinary work, which is driven by research and highlights issues of climate collapse and extinction. From her studio in Denver, Colorado, she utilizes foraged and homegrown natural materials and creates art in collaboration with other species. With the students, Murphy shared her most renowned artworks: objects and installations wherein she designs systems that animals can inhabit and coproduce artworks with her. What’s interesting for Murphy in relation to digital culture is that she never touches the work she makes until after the systems/inhabitants have run their course.
“Much of the work I do falls under the category of Bio Art—working within systems in nature to create artwork,” Murphy shares. “I’ve chosen to focus on creatures that are facing extinction, specifically insects. The relationship I have with these creatures often leads me to examine unintended consequences and best intentions. I make these works to invite my audience into the ephemeral moments in nature that they rarely see, such as the interior of a beehive or the intricacies of a snail’s journey. My hope is that I will encourage a sense of wonder, and a desire to protect the ecosystems that my collaborators and we humans depend upon.”
A second artist, Caitlyn Min-ji Au, met with the class on November 3 to share images of recent sculptures that involve built structures, video, and food. Even when one is standing right in front of Au’s sculptures, the artworks seem one step removed from reality, an aspect made explicit by her most recent artworks which only exist as AI, or artificial intelligence.
Caitlyn Min-ji Au works with students during a recent visit. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Initially trained to work in glass, Au’s interest in that particular material’s molten state expanded into other mediums. Based in Chicago, Au holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Chicago, where she is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of Visual Art and a studio research assistant for the artist Pope L.
In addition to working with ash wood, learning from these professional guest artists, and executing a final project assigned by Murphy in which the students must devise their own systems for producing artworks without touching them, throughout the semester students also completed an assignment called Text to Textile. They began by writing concrete poetry on manual typewriters. After presentation and discussion of those outcomes, select poems were scanned into Photoshop and reworked with an eye toward making digital files that could repeat endlessly. These files, in turn, were uploaded to the online company Weft which will produce unique woven textiles from the students’ concrete image files.
The “Haptic Lab” academic course and related events are supported in part by the 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education administered by Princeton’s Office of the Dean of the College.
