ABOUT

The Transdisciplinary Media Studio (TdMS) is a new type of collaborative design studio that uses digital media to foster multi-directional teaching and research collaborations among partners from different disciplines. It proceeds from the observation that evolving paradigms in computing technology enable new models and effects of disciplinary collaboration.  By serving as enabler, repository, and resource for these new types of collaborations, the TdMS seeks to broaden design-related discourses while at the same time forging new transdisciplinary projects intimately focused on pressing concerns in today's social contexts.
 
Begun in 2009, the TdMS is built around revolving annual topics, sponsoring teaching collaborations, public events, and visiting guests around these topics. It is our goal, by seeding these annual projects, and collecting and disseminating their ongoing work, to help advance longer-term transdisciplinary work at Syracuse University and beyond.

The TdMS is sponsored by a Chancellor’s Leadership Award and is supported by the Humanities Center and the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. It involves student, staff, and faculty participants from academic divisions across the campus, including the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the Syracuse University Library, and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Situated in downtown Syracuse in the University's Warehouse building, the TdMS is able to work in a highly collaborative context with the University's many programs in the Department of Design; the School of Visual and Performing Arts' interdisciplinary COLAB; the School of Architecture's UPSTATE center for design, research, and real-estate; the office of Community Engagement and Economic Development; and the many professional offices and community-focused groups in the heart of urban Syracuse.

Background

Digital computation techniques have transformed disciplinary boundaries by giving individuals the ability to incorporate, through a common medium, advanced tools from outside their traditional fields into their work practices.  The ability for designers to run complex scientifically-validated environmental simulations, or the  ability of vast multimedia archives to connect once disconnected strands of the humanities are examples. Digital media and networks, the internet and mass communication media, and immersive and virtual environments fundamentally shape the world in which we live--but they do not map easily onto familiar design categories such as “furniture,” “architecture,” “building,” or “city.” They challenge differences of scale and complicate distinctions such as inside and out, close and far, ideal and material. We are just now moving into a period where we can historically and critically re-examine the large body of work in this area which has for the most part been inspired more by exuberance than reflection. In this spirit, the TdMS brings together participants from the University and its broader communities to conduct research and teaching that explore the new practices emerging from this technology-inspired convergence.

Through the combination of digital media + studio pedagogy + collaborative practice, the TdMS seeks to generate innovative knowledge and practices to reshape the production and experience of our future media|space environments, from cities and landscapes to social computing environments, interiors, and products which impact the way we inhabit our lived space.

Aims

Advanced Computing and Media Resources

The TdMS offers specialized computational resources in the areas of visualization, data storage, collaboration, just-in-time 3d scanning and fabrication systems, and interactive  presentation. Innovations in hardware and software have challenged the way many reconsider not only traditional definitions of their professions and models of practice but to imagine ways in which computing may require, or allow, their disciplines to intensify, evolve or expand.

Design Studio as a Site of Experimentation

While one key to the TdMS is its incorporation of digital media, another is the pedagogical framework of studio teaching, which offers a uniquely intensive and synthetic context for experimentation and learning. Building on the pedagogical and creative traditions of the design and arts communities, the TdMS encourage the integration of collaboration, creative production, and social engagement.  Syracuse University's "Warehouse" building offers many opportunities for scholars and students to engage in interdisciplinary studio work.
 
Transdisciplinary Network and Exchange

By reconceptualizing the media and modalities of the design studio, the TdMS creates a venue for interaction among faculty, students, external experts, and community members outside of academia. These connections within and beyond the university generate not only new knowledge but also new networks of expertise and innovation.  As a transdisciplinary space for critical exchange and curricular practices, the inclusion of participants from multiple disciplines will foreground the differences, and encourage understanding of their differing disciplinary conceptions of space, media, and the efficacy of design relative to social and cultural practices. On the one hand, we hope to critically consider and debate the value and purpose of advanced design practice and information technologies; on the other hand, we wish to challenge those who might be resistant to the uses and viability of digital media to disseminate knowledge or communicate ideas.  By encouraging various perspectives and a range of scales, the pedagogical aim of the TdMS project is to integrate digital media into a studio curriculum and research agendas that will focus on the transformative relationships between digital media and transdisciplinary education, both in the academic world and in the community of Syracuse.

Activities

As a center for transdisciplinary teaching and research on the subject of the media/space environment, the TdMS hosts a range of events:

• Provocative conversations bringing together students, faculty, and communities beyond the University to focus on space, media, analysis, and design of both built and virtual environments;

• Experimental courses that integrate interdisciplinary research, design expertise, and advanced computing;

• Sponsored events such as symposia and lectures featuring University and external participants;

• Faculty workshops that enhance ongoing projects or translate their insights to larger audiences