CRITICAL THINKING TO M A K I N G 2 0 1 8 F R A M S I G N AT U R E E V E N T R I T C O L L E G E O F A RT A N D D E S I G N
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he College of Art and Design at Rochester Institute of Technology co-hosted the 2018 Fram Applied Critical Thinking Signature Event: Critical Thinking to Making. This event was sponsored by the Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking and was organized by a committee of faculty and staff members from the College headed by Associate Dean Chris Jackson. Marco van Hout, Head of Programs & Impact of the Digital Society School in Utrecht, Netherlands, delivered the Fram signature lecture and conducted three workshops for RIT students. The title of Marco’s lecture was Design for Transformation, Needs a Transformation in Design. The Digital Society School seeks to research the impact of technology on society, develop the skills necessary to guide the transformation, and pass on this knowledge and these skills to a new generation of professionals. Workshops were also conducted by RIT College of Art and Design faculty members Amy McLaren, Marla Schweppe, and Mari Jaye Blanchard. I created this “Instant Photobook” of the three-day event, and published it on Amazon a few hours after the last workshop ended. The constraint of time imposed by the necessity to finish the book on the same day makes it impossible to look too deeply into the images, or second guess my choices. T he first opportunity I will have to study the details in the photographs is after I receive the printed copy of the book in the mail. I hope to be delighted by aspects of the images or coincidental relationships I did not observe at the time the exposures were made, nor even when I assembled the book. Because of this, I am able to preserve a level of surprise for myself that is impossible in the normal slow, deliberate book-making process. Frank Cost Thursday, October 25, 2018
Critical Thinking in Photography by Frank Cost Humans have been communicating with pictures for tens of thousands of years. Photography automates the production and reproduction of images, but the way those images are used to communicate ideas draws upon knowledge and culture accumulated over the ages. The study and practice of photography in the realm of visual communication is analogous to the study of literature and creative writing in the realm of words. There is no upper limit to the effective use and presentation of photographs to say what one means. Thus the student of photography must commit to an eternal cycle of self-analysis and criticism that becomes increasingly collaborative as the complexity of the message and sophistication of the audience increases. The years during which students are enrolled in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences provide an intense and concentrated environment where applied critical thinking is the hammer and anvil that convert weaker visual communicators into stronger ones. ​ Critical Thinking in Film and Animation by Mari Blanchard and David Long In the School of Film and Animation, the applications of critical thinking are inseparable from the art of filmmaking itself. Theorists suggest that a new idea is born from the “collision� of two (and successively more) images. SOFA students, from the moment of ideation, are involved in a complex process of collecting information, weighing that information in the form of critique, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of both visual and auditory pairings not only scene by scene, but frame by frame. Film and Animation students make calculated decisions about medium, style, and tone, as well as the technology they will utilize to make their films. The students in the Motion Picture Science program critically explore the tangible mechanisms of the medium, calibrate and maximize the productivity of present tools, and theorize future applications, working in tandem with the BFA students to facilitate informed decision making across all available technologies. Critical thinking is about reflection and active learning. Through considered storytelling, SOFA students engage in reflective practice and grow as agents of their own learning.
Critical Thinking in Design by Alex Lobos Critical thinking is at the core of design process and it provides two key benefits to the discipline. First is that decisions around the features of a given design come mostly from understanding what end-users need and want, instead of simply relying on the designer’s own criteria. This attention to the user provides balanced decisions that generate relevant, effective and meaningful solutions. Second is the designer’s ability to think by making. Sketching, illustrating, modelmaking, and other visualization tools are ways for designers to think in tangible and applied ways, and to understand how design concepts will be experienced by a wide array of people. Successful designers develop a strong sense of empathy and pay attention to “why” new designs should exist and how they can improve quality of life. This insight comes from applied critical thinking and making. Critical Thinking in Art by Michaël Amy Art is made up of marks, or is built up of interventions, resulting in objects, images or actions. Objects, images and actions inscribe themselves within an ongoing tradition, or reject it in part, in an effort to fulfill a particular function while projecting meaning and sensation, which we, on the receiving end, attempt to decode as we experience and seek to understand the work of art. In order for the artist to successfully interpret the task at hand -say the commission issued by a patron, or a passage drawn from poetry or history, or a glimpse of reality, or the sliver of a dream, or a particular current within painterly abstraction- he or she will apply critical thinking, as first concrete decisions and then strategic interventions underlie the creation of the work of art. Critical thinking enables the artist to either fully master the existing set of rules she or he decides to apply, or establish a different set of parameters in an effort to develop a new, idiosyncratic style, imagery and body of meanings.
About the Photographer Frank Cost is the James E. McGhee Professor of Visual Media in the School of Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has taught a wide variety of courses in the field of visual media for more than three decades. Frank has been photographing professionally since 1975 and has authored both textbooks and experimental photobooks exploring new forms of graphic expression enabled by digital technologies. He can be contacted at frank. cost@rit.edu. This book is a Fossil Press Instant Photobook, published on the last day of the event depicted.
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