Launching Cultural Innovation Tools–Herberger Institute highlights from April 2020
Cultural Innovation Tools
ASU’s National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation, a partnership between the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and ASU Gammage, launched Cultural Innovation Tools, a collected site that brings content and solutions together for the community to understand how design, arts and culture at ASU are responding to the moment. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, students, faculty and staff at Herberger Institute are leveraging their creativity to pull together tools and resources for other artists/designers/culture makers, for families sheltering at home, for educators adapting their work online and for community organizations and government leaders who seek to partner with artists and designers as they respond and rebuild resilient and equitable communities.
Helping hospitals in need
ASU has responded to the coronavirus crisis by designing, producing and distributing critically needed personal protective equipment and other medical supplies. Students, staff and faculty from across the university, including designers and artists in the Herberger Institute, are contributing to this work.
A space for invention
Artist and School of Art Professor Liz Cohen has been named a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in photography by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Spotlight on research
Ariane Middel and Robert LiKamWa, both faculty members in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, have earned National Science Foundation early faculty career awards for 2020. The NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program selects young faculty members throughout the U.S. and supports them with funding to pursue outstanding research and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
Read about Ariane Middel’s work
Read about Robert LiKamWa’s work
By the numbers
This month’s number is 4’33”! Written in 1952 by American experimental composer John Cage, “4’33” (four minutes, 33 seconds), was Cage’s way of expressing his belief that any sound had the potential to be considered music. Cage visited an anechoic chamber at Harvard University designed to completely absorb all sounds made in the room. He expected total silence but discovered he still heard two sounds — one high (his nervous system) and one low (his circulating blood). Cage’s realization that true silence was impossible led to the creation of “4'33”. In the three-movement composition written for any instrument or combination of instruments, Cage instructs the performers not to play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece. In the spirit of physical distancing and in honor of the concert halls around the world that have fallen silent, the ASU Wind Bands designed a remote project to mash-up the iconic piece.
In pictures
Though the stage has been dimmed through the rest of the semester, the School of Film, Dance and Theatre revisited some of the incredible dance works that took place this school year.
