The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University is a laboratory for atypical, transdisciplinary, and inter-institutional research at the intersections of arts, science, technology and culture.

Founded in 1989 within the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the STUDIO serves as a locus for hybrid enterprises on the CMU campus, the Pittsburgh region, and internationally. As a venue, a classroom, a laboratory and a commons the STUDIO boasts more than three decades of experience hosting interdisciplinary artists in an environment enriched by world-class science and engineering departments.

The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry is a flexible laboratory for new modes of arts research, production and presentation.

Through our research, residency and public programming, the STUDIO provides opportunities for learning, dialogue and production that lead to innovative breakthroughs, new policies, and the redefinition of the role of artists in a quickly changing world.

The STUDIO is closed to the public during the summer for renovations and maintenance.

The STUDIO will open again for regular hours (9am-5PM Monday through Friday) in mid August 2024.

What We Do

The STUDIO supports emerging artists who create and adapt emerging media. Our people (who include CMU faculty, staff, students, and visitors) work at the edges of diverse fields such as virtual/augmented/mixed reality, interactive robotic installation, generative arts, playable art, critical software, biological art, tactical media, experimental interaction design, relational art, and other specialized forms of cultural instigation. To such researchers, the STUDIO provides direct financial, administrative, logistical, advisory, and technical support. The STUDIO also serves as an open “laboratory” — a portal to the larger university context through which creative persons can connect to the widest possible array of experts, facilities, and resources.

STUDIO Programs

Institutionally, the STUDIO resists easy definition. Our unit fulfills its mission in six distinct ways, discussed below:

1. Support for Arts Research
2. A Collaborative and Accessible Workspace for Interdisciplinary Research
3. The FRFF Grant Program
4. Steiner Visitor Invitation Grant Program
5. Educational Programs
6. Creatives-in-Residence Program

Support for Arts Research

The STUDIO provides administrative, logistical and technical support for faculty-led arts research initiatives, including assistance with fundraising, grant-writing, travel, payroll, purchasing, contracting, reporting, fiscal management and forecasting, event planning, and much more. Faculty-led research projects projects, by their nature, can entail unusual requirements and periods of fitful intensity. By administering these projects, the STUDIO provides a key easement to the CFA Schools, whose business managers would otherwise be distracted from running the day-to-day business of their educational units.

Building on our hard-won knowledge of our university’s institutional policies and procedures, one of the most valuable services the STUDIO provides helping faculty, students, an staff navigate and achieve compliance by leading them to guidance from CMU’s Office of Sponsored Projects, Sponsored Project Accounting Office, Controller’s Office, Advancement Office, and Intellectual Property Office, as well as meeting the reporting requirements of outside foundations and federal agencies.

Since 2009, the STUDIO has administered projects from every School within the College of Fine Arts, and beyond. In addition to supporting research projects by CFA faculty, the STUDIO also undertakes arts-research initiatives of its own, arising from the efforts and interests of the interdisciplinary crew of students, guests and others who inhabit the STUDIO space.

Collaborative and Accessible Workspace Advocating for Interdisciplinary Research

The STUDIO operates its 1800-square-foot facility as a flexible and adaptable “Third Space”: a deterritorialized incubator, oasis, and collaborative workspace for students from around CMU who seek a diverse community of creative minds and relief from disciplinary compartmentalization. The STUDIO welcomes you to drop in during out open hours to get to know the Staff and researchers who gravitate to its supportive and collaborative environment.

The FRFF Grant Program

The STUDIO administers the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund (FRFF): an endowment to encourage the creation of innovative projects by the faculty, students and staff of Carnegie Mellon University. With this fund, the STUDIO seeks to develop a cache of groundbreaking projects created at CMU — works that can be described as “thinking at the edges” of the intersection of disciplines. The Frank-Ratchye Further Fund supports approximately forty projects per year through a combination of full grants and Microgrants. Any faculty, student or staff person actively affiliated with Carnegie Mellon is eligible to apply, regardless of their home department. For more information visit the FRFF grant page.

Steiner Visitor Invitation Grant Program

The Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series brings creative practitioners who push boundaries, defy definition, and demonstrate excellence in all aspects of the arts, to our campus for deep engagement with our students and faculty. The series is administered by the STUDIO with the assistance of an advisory committee comprised of faculty from around the university.

The STUDIO invites members of the CMU community to bring a guest lecturer of their choice to visit CMU virtually, and limited support is also available for in-person visits; please see details below. Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to nominate guests who align with the goal of the Steiner Speaker Series: to bring creative individuals to CMU who share diverse perspectives and interdisciplinary expertise in the arts, and who address our current moment in timely ways. We strongly encourage proposals to bring visitors who identify as women, BIPOC, and/or LGBTQIA+.

We welcome proposals to bring guests to visit CMU courses, degree programs, departments, and organizations. For virtual visits, each visitor will receive an honorarium, as well as the administrative support of the STUDIO to make their visit a success. For in- person visits, the STUDIO provides support to coordinate funding for travel and stay. In-person visits often require collaboration between multiple departments to fully fund your guest. As an example, guests have been brought to:

• give a presentation via Zoom about their creative work
• deliver a lecture about the history or theory of a topic
• lead a workshop in some creative technique
• participate in a critique, review, or charrette
• facilitate a guided discussion with students

Additional Creative Research Grants and Awards

The STUDIO stewards multiple finite, annually gifted and endowed grants and awards. Opportunities will appear on our grant page as they are available.

Educational Programs

The STUDIO conducts free and low-cost public educational activities. These forums for the presentation and discussion of innovative work include a diverse array of lectures, exhibitions, workshops, concerts, conferences, performances, symposia, hack nights, and meetups. Some of these activities are organized in collaboration with other units at Carnegie Mellon, and others are initiated by the STUDIO itself. The STUDIO’s primary educational programs include the Sylvia and David Steiner Lecture Series in Creative Inquiry, and the STUDIO’s quasi-biennial, large-scale ART && CODE conference series, which has had four editions since 2009. In addition, the STUDIO has organized a series of leading-edge workshops on the use of machine learning in the arts.

ART && CODE is a series of events concerned with liberating the cultural and aesthetic potentials of emerging technologies. Half maker’s festival, half academic conference, the series’s aims to showcase independent and emerging voices, creative approaches, diverse and oftentimes marginalized perspectives, and imaginative and critical positions that depart from that depart from typical tech fantasies and other normative, corporate media. The symposiums often feature artist talks, speed presentations, technical workshops and demonstrations, discussion panels, a participant-driven unconference, and a public exhibition of new media works. Average attendance has ranged from 200 up to 350 participants, mixing together a unique group of artists, creatives, corporations, students and faculty. Since 2009, there have been five Art && Code conferences:

• Art && Code: Programming Environments for Artists, Young People, and the Rest of Us (March 2009)
• Mobile Art && Code: Artistic and Tactical Approaches to Mobile, Networked and Locative Media (November 2009)
• Art && Code 3D: DIY 3D Sensing and Visualization (October 2011)
• WEIRD REALITY: Head-Mounted Art && Code (October 2016)
• Art && Code: Homemade: Digital Tools and Crafty Approaches (January 2021)
• LIVE! Art&&Code (Fall 2023)

In addition the STUDIO hosts one class per semester. These classes are in keeping with the interdisciplinary ethos of the STUDIO and open to faculty and students throughout the University. For more information click here.

Creatives-In-Residence Program

At the STUDIO Director’s discretion and in close collaboration with other CMU departments and faculty, the STUDIO hosts creatives-in-residence, offering stipends, facilities, and administrative assistance to artists and others whose work exemplifies new modes of artistic production. These residencies allow students to observe and participate in the creation of new culture — for example, through apprenticeships — in ways that are altogether complementary to their coursework.

The STUDIO has hosted more than 40 guests since 2013 from 10 to 100 days at a time. The funding sources which support these guests are diverse, ranging from grants raised by the STUDIO itself, to project grants raised by CMU faculty who are collaborating with a guest on active research.