It’s an Exhibition!

Throughout this semester, as you may have seen in past postings, I’ve been working with designer/teacher/writer Ellen McMahon (whose work can be found here) and some fine students in her Critical Issues in Design course to uncover or develop the relationship between design and science.

The questions we asked and are still asking are: How can designers incorporate science into their practices? How can scientists utilize designers to communicate their messages and research to the general public? In what ways can each pursuit strengthen the other? And when we bring scientists together with designers, what happens?

Well, now we have an answer. Or at least a possibility. A few projects have developed over the past four months involving energetic scientists and designers at all levels. Our work will come together in the Kachina Gallery at the University of Arizona next Tuesday evening at 5pm. Here are the major projects being shown:

Tara Oceans

Tara Oceans is a three-year global expedition to explore our world’s oceans and relate the findings to recent changes in the environment (like temperature). Our designers teamed up with Matthew Sullivan’s research lab (who are a part of the expedition) to create a series of posters describing the problems being explored by the Tara Oceans crew.

Marine Biology Research

Students in Katrina Mangin’s Marine Discover course teamed up with our designers to create a series of posters illuminating research they conducted in Puerto Peñasco in September of this year.

Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts & Oceans

One component of the exhibition is a series of posters (we’re into posters this semester) promoting the 30th anniversary of CEDO, the research station in Sonora, Mexico where the Marine Discovery students conducted their research. Founded in 1980 by Peggy Turk-Boyer and Rick Boyer, CEDO just received the Award of Ecological Merit from Mexico’s Ministry of the Environment.

(For the curious, others have been talking, too: The Institute for the Environment)