Publications
STUDIO Publications
Code as Creative Medium (2021) Golan Levin & Tega Brain
This book is an essential resource for arts educators and practitioners who want to explore code as a creative medium, and serves as a guide for computer scientists transitioning from STEM to STEAM in their syllabi or practice. It provides a collection of classic creative coding prompts and assignments, accompanied by annotated examples of both historic and contemporary projects. These are enriched by more than 170 illustrations of creative work and a set of interviews with leading educators. Picking up where standard programming guides leave off, the authors (Golan Levin & Tega Brain) highlight alternative programming pedagogies suitable for the art- and design-oriented classroom, including teaching approaches, resources, and community support structures. Order a copy here.
Spooky Technology (2021) Daragh Byrne, Dan Lockton (eds.)
This book is the result of a Summer of 2020 project focused on creating an inventory of ‘spooky technologies.‘ To do this, a group of students and faculty from Carnegie Mellon University collected and reviewed works across art, design, and human-computer interaction research, both historically and more recently, along with forays into writings on the supernatural, myths, and superstitions. Their aim was to produce, collaboratively, a set of examples, from which we can extract possibilities, insights, and opportunities. Order a physical copy here.
Artists for President 2020
(2019) Angela Washko
In 2019, fifteen Pittsburgh-based artists, activists and cultural producers came together to envision ways of intervening into culture to work toward alternative futures.
During this process, the contributing authors of this book came up with the material inside based on two prompts: A CALL TO ACTION AGAINST “THE INSTITUTION” and TACTICAL PERFORMANCE SCHEMATICS. Through these prompts, these artists produced written and illustrated tactical schematics for future interventions and calls for action against institutions in the form of speeches, essays, open letters, videos, performances, slide lectures, posters, zines, lawsuits, websites, public projections, video games, books, collaborative actions and commercial products.
The works produced in this book cover a wide range of intersectional approaches to activism in a variety of contexts and topics including waste, climate change, domestic abuse, athletics, the entertainment industry, first generation college students, pedestrian rights and safety, fetishization, objectification, racial profiling, public transit, labor unions, water, homelessness, politicians, branding and marketing, public space, urban planning, pornography, luxury real estate developments, fashion, military technology, the gig economy, among many others.
The authors wrote these texts responding to the issues of the present, taking issue with the institutions responsible, and produced demands for change in an effort to inspire alternatives.
#OSSTA Open Source Software Toolkits for the Arts (2018)
This report documents a convening on Open Source Software Toolkits for the Arts (OSSTA) held in June 2018 in Minneapolis. This event was a one-day conversation populated by founders, maintainers, and contributors of open-source arts-engineering toolkits. During this convening, participants discussed the challenges facing the development, maintenance, funding, sustainability, and community management of open-source arts toolkits, as well as their values and goals for the future. The goal of this report is to help generate new opportunities for understanding, recognizing, and supporting work in this field.
12 Manifestos “THIS CAN BE ABSURD, PRACTICAL, IDEALISTIC, CONTRADICTORY, HOSTILE, HOPEFUL, UTOPIAN, DYSTOPIAN, IN-BETWEEN AND BEYOND”
(2016) Angela Washko
There are 12 manifestos in this book. They were written in October of 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by 12 artists with distinctly different experiences and interests. These 12 artists came up with the texts inside this book based off of a prompt to write an unconventional manifesto on an underrepresented topic which could be absurd, practical, idealistic, contradictory, hostile, hopeful, dystopian, in-between and beyond.
They took cues from the manifestos that came before theirs- reading F.T. Marinetti, Wyndham Lewis, Kazimir Malevich, Frank O’Hara, Valerie Solanas, George Maciunas, Situationist International, Gilbert & George, Ad Reinhardt, Claes Oldenburg, Donna Haraway, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Zoe Leonard, Bread and Puppet Theater, Lady Jaye & Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Laboria Cuboniks, VNS Matrix, Martine Syms, Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke, K-Hole, Working Artists and the Greater Economy, and more. Their manifestos cover topics including abstraction, the data body, bad art, rejuvenating spaces for oppressed people, human-plant communication, disability and spectacle, inertia, audio processing software, fetishized heteronormativity, halting global production, expressive prosthesis, distribution of resources, among many others. And they wrote these texts situated in the present, aware of the past, and speculating other futures.
Deep Lab Book
(2014) Deep Lab
The Deep Lab Book represents the capstone to Deep Lab, a residency and congress of cyberfeminist researchers hosted at the STUDIO in collaboration with CMU’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. Order a physical copy here.
Warhol Amiga Report
(2014) Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Cory Arcangel
The Warhol Digital Recovery Project was a multi-institutional effort which discovered and recovered more than a dozen of Andy Warhol’s previously unknown Amiga experiments, which had been “trapped” on aging floppy disks from 1985. The project was a collaboration between New York based artist Cory Arcangel, members of the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club, The Andy Warhol Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, with support from the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
University Artist-in-Residence Programs
(2013) Golan Levin, Shanae Phillips
This document presents a benchmarking survey of university-based artist-in-residence programs across the United States, with a particular focus on issues related to intellectual property policies and research in the field(s) of new-media arts.
Readings in Performance and Ecology
(2012) Theresa J. May, Wendy Arons
Readings in Performance and Ecology
Edited by: Wendy Arons (Professor of Dramaturgy, CMU), Theresa J. May (Professor of Theatre Arts, U. Oregon).
This ground-breaking collection focuses on how theatre, dance, and other forms of performance are helping to transform our ecological values. Top scholars explore how familiar and new works of performance can help us recognize our reciprocal relationship with the natural world and how it helps us understand the way we are connected to the land.
New Art / Science Affinities
(2011) Andrea Grover, et al.
The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University have co-published “New Art/Science Affinities,” a 190 page book which considers the history and challenges faced by artists working in the context of science research laboratories. Order a physical copy here.
Pittsburgh Signs Project (2009)
Better Together – An Inquiry into Collective Art Practice
(2007) Robin Hewlett
This report documents the collective residencies, as well as a symposium titled Creativity in Collective, which took place in November 2006 at Carnegie Mellon University. The work of STUDIO affiliates such as the Critical Art Ensemble, subRosa, and the Institute for Applied Autonomy is included.
Ecology and Recovery – Allegheny County (2006) Timothy Collins, Jonathan Kline, Kostoula Vallianos, Cyril Fox
Ecology and Recovery – Allegheny County is the culmination of the 3 Rivers 2nd Nature Project, a five year inquiry directed by artists Tim Collins and Reiko Goto. Using full page maps, photographs and charts, the report reveals extraordinary ecological opportunities in Allegheny County, providing a solid foundation for greening our collective future. The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry is grateful to the interdisci- plinary team of artists, geologists, botanists, architects, planners, historians, regulatory experts, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists that participated in gathering the material for this report and to the Heinz Endowments for their support.