School of Art, Media, and Technology

Joselyn McDonald (MFA DT ’15) shares a workshop experience

Written by:

share

MFA DT student Joselyn McDonald has had a number of sucesses this year: her and MFA DT cohort Nicole Messier‘s *blink blink*, a soft-circuits kit and curriculum that aims to provide young adults with an entry point to STEM concepts via crafting, making, and play, won red and blue ribbons at this year’s Makerfaire, put them in the winners’ circle for The New Challenge, and got them into the 4.0 Schools launch program, a non-profit education innovation lab that trains entrepreneurs to build breakthrough solutions  in education  (just covered by Forbes!).

josandnicole

Joselyn McDonald and Nicole Messier’s *blink blink* table at Maker Faire

In addition, Joselyn and Nicole, along with MFA DT students Alex Tosti and Lucy Matchett–a group known as new media artist collective “Snaxxx ‘n Macs”— had their In​structablescreated in the Spacebrew Collab at Parsons, selected by the Instructables editors for award.

The Ladies of Snaxxx 'n Macs!

The Ladies of Snaxxx ‘n Macs!


(Crystalline Highlands from Lucy Matchett on Vimeo.This is a step-by-step on how to connect Arduino to OpenFrameworks using Spacebrew.)

“I participated in a Spacebrew Collab in Spring 2014, where I worked with my fellow students on exploring the boundaries of what the Spacebrew toolkit could d​o, while adding to the open source library. I primarily focused on using the Capacitive Sense library for Arduino with Spacebrew in order to turn everyday conductive objects into sensors for audio visual installations.” 

Joselyn recently led a workshop on using Spacebrew and physical computing techniques in order to create interactive installations at Dartmouth College’s “Workshop In the Woods: Audio Visual Synthesis”.

IMG_20141012_240040379-MOTION-1

Joselyn had much to say about the three day “Workshop in the Woods” event, located in a remote pastoral setting where the participants–creative computer scientists, programmers, musicians and visual artists–had free reign to roam the grounds, take hikes, attend workshops, tutorials and roundtable discussions on audio and visual synthesis methods, and spend evenings by the campfire, enjoying performances by invited multimedia artists and engaging in collective AV synthesis jams: 

dNi4aPIxn3x1nhgy7MQmQH3a4V4x4CZe2P70pM44Tkk,3lrFtpDO2xj2Zin-BL6ZgEFjfK2PLMby7kjLkLN8vbQ

Joselyn McDonald presenting her workshop.

“The Workshop in the Woods was absolutely incredible! My presentation went quite well, and I definitely piqued a lot of the participants curiosities about Spacebrew, and more generally about installations, collaboration, and improvisation over distance. The event was incredibly well organized and the premise of the event – that every attendee had to present – really created an immediate small community of equals.
Dartmouth AV Synth Workshop '14

Dartmouth AV Synth Workshop ’14

I learned a lot as well about animation’s long history of incorporation of experimental and synthesized sound from Dartmouth professor, Jodie Mack. Professor of Digital Musics, Michael Casey, shared his work (and his code) for replicating well-known concertos with a multitude of individual sound clips from movies. I could go on and on. I learned something new and applicable to my work in almost every workshop session.
Workshop

Workshop

At night we held an AV Synthesis Jam. There was live computer music and generative/responsive code or video based worked being projected by 4 projectors, a photo slide, and an overhead projector presenting liquid-animation.”
AV Synth Jam

AV Synth Jam

AV Synth Jam

AV Synth Jam

Find out more about Joselyn McDonald at www.joselynmcdonald.com
Twitter: @josmcdos
All Rights Reserved © 2024. Parsons School of Design.