Innovation Arts and the Conception of Rapid Design Pivot

5 Feb 2016

On 15 February, at 2:30 pm, Dr. Brian A. Korgel, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will be giving a lecture entitled "Innovation Arts and the Conception of Rapid Pivot Design", focusing on the interconnection of Emerging Technologies with the Arts.

The session will be held at UPTEC PINC Auditorium, Porto, Praça Coronel Pacheco, nº 2.

This lecture is part of the activities of MIL - Media Innovation Labs, of the University of Porto, and has the support of UT Austin Program | Portugal.

Innovation Arts and the Conception of Rapid Design Pivot

The concept of Innovation Arts is founded on the idea that innovation and technology development/implementation/commercialization can be significantly accelerated by creating collaborations between artists, creative designers, science/technology pioneers and entrepreneurs. At UT Austin, James Sham (visiting professor of Art & Art History) and I have been working to create collaborations between artists and scientists/engineers. The project began with funding from Skolkovo Institute of Technology (Skoltech) in Moscow, Russia, called Rapid Design Pivot led by Korgel, Sham and Adam Bock, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the University of Edinburgh (UK). Rapid Design Pivot aimed to partner inventors and artists to produce art exhibitions and technology prototypes using state-of-the-art scientific discoveries and technological advances as a creative medium. Within an environment that encourages breaking of norms by introducing artists and creative outliers into the design process to catalyze partnerships between artists and developers, the goal has been a range of outcomes as vast as they are diverse: On one side of the spectrum, art projects that are created with otherwise unavailable materials, interdisciplinary expertise and resources; whereas, on the other side of the spectrum, artists have the opportunity to make work without any disciplinary boundary with other experts—this could lead to spin-off ventures, start-ups and a plethora of opportunities for true innovation and impact. Rapid Design Pivot encompassed research from all three facets of Entrepreneurship, Technological Innovation and Contemporary Art. Expanding on industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s concept of MAYA (Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable): if the most advanced innovations have social acceptability as their limits, we aim to expand the “fringe” of innovation by introducing creative outliers to purposefully create pivots in thinking when it comes to development. By partnering artists with scientists and inventors, we aim to interface the developments that are “Most Advanced,” with the ideas in creative practice that from the outside seem “Barely Acceptable.” After the end of Skoltech funding, the project now continues with additional funding from UT Austin and the first art installation is scheduled for February, 2017, called Omnibus Filing involving artworks from James Sham, Patrick Killoran, Daniel Bozhkov and Steven Brower. In this presentation, I will discuss the conception of the project, the various challenges that we have faced, and the current status. Suggestions about how to foster collaboration between art and science/engineering will be made, especially within the specific context of the UT|Portugal program.

Bio Brian A. Korgel
Brian A. Korgel is the Edward S. Hyman Chair in Engineering and T. Brockett Hudson Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He directs the Industry/University Research Center (I/UCRC) for Next Generation Photovoltaics, the Emerging Technologies area of the UT|Portugal program and serves as Associate Editor of the journal Chemistry of Materials. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 1997 and was a post-doctoral fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland, in the Department of Chemistry.
He works at the intersection of nano & mesoscopic materials chemistry and complex fluids, tackling problems in lithium ion batteries, photovoltaic devices and medicine. He has given more than 260 invited talks and has published 240 papers. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Alicante in Spain, the Université Josef Fourier in France and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He has co-founded two companies, Innovalight and Piñon Technologies, and received various honors including the 2012 Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and election to Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).