CommDe’s Open Studios are elective courses for students and leading professors to come together and share theories and practices from various fields and aligned to the CommDe curriculum. 2021 has nine outstanding Open Studios available for students from Years One, Two and Three that will enrich their studies.

In Praise of Shadow: Jinjoon Lee

This workshop presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings, crafts, finishes, jade, food, cosmetics and mono-no-aware (the art of impermanence). Students will learn to understand “a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional East Asian interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age.”

Interface, Intertext: Ho Rui An

This module explores contemporary artistic practice as a critical framework for engaging with our technomediated and digitally networked public spheres. Taking the persistent accumulation and circulation of images on the Internet as a point of departure, students will develop ways to excavate the social and political lives of these images and to write against the systems of power into which we are embedded through the various ways we interface these images.

TAP! (Touch and Play): TeZ Maurizio Martinucci

TAP! is a hands-on workshop aimed at discovering the potential of “capacitive touch” technology for interactive design applications. The course will first offer a theoretical and practical introduction to touch sensing technology and easy DIY implementations. For this distant learning edition, the course will dispense more complicated manual operations such as soldering, circuit making and the building of sound instruments, while basics of physical computing, programming and design techniques will be explained.

Cabinet of Curiosity/ Hands-on Bookbinding and Mill-Board Box Making: Phantipa Thanchookiet

This program of study will explore the age-old craft of bookmaking, focusing on hands-on traditional bookbinding with various methods and also mill-board box making. During the program, basic skills will be a foundation for students to experiment with other forms of construction, new techniques and materials. These practices can be applied to publication design, packaging design as well as personal projects.

Art and Technology, How Technology Influenced the Way We Create and Appreciate Art: Punpitan Pitanpitayarat

The workshop begins by discussing the effect of integrating technologies with various approaches, e.g., science, politics and religion. The main course is then split into two sections: creative programming in Python using Touchdesigner (designer-friendly programming software); and demonstrations of the tools and equipment that are used in professional artworks (e.g., moving head lights for concerts, laser machines, smoke machines, kinetic sensors, and kinetic motor systems).

Communication Design and Storytelling through Podcasting: Dana Blouin

This session teaches students how to research, design, test, produce, optimize and publish a podcast. Students will learn how to apply design thinking methods to research, design and test stages-and then make use of best practices to produce, optimize and publish their podcast. At the end of this session students will understand how to define a podcast audience, and apply theories of podcast research for design.

Designing Brand Identity with Farmgroup: Vorathit Kruavanichkit

Here students will have the opportunity to develop strategy and identity for an assigned brand. This will include brand strategy, name, tagline, visual identity, look and feel, and in-store customer experience. Students will also develop a deeper understanding of the branding process from start to finish, learning fundamentals of the branding process and best practices for building brand identity.

Understanding and Creating Experience: Eiji Sumi

After decades of consumerism, our societies have been facing a drastic shift of value from the material to the experiential. This workshop aims to understand basic concepts of experience: what and how people think and feel moment by moment when interacting, participating or sensing generally. The workshop asks how users can succinctly understand the world through narratives that stimulate, transform, change, and encapsulate our sense-making experiences.

Typography Expert Group and the international Style of Visual Aesthetic in Layout: Graham Newman

This workshop will introduce students to advanced principles of typography that exist within the international style of graphic design gestalt. With an application usage of white space and aesthetic elements in the process of a design outcome leading to a better understanding of what the gestalt rules are, and how to break them. This practice-based studio will be supported by theory drawn from the greatest works in graphic design from the last 50 years.

Open Studios are delivered either as an eight week module, from Friday 5th February to 26th March (9am – 12 noon, 3 hours of study each day); or a four day module from Monday 24th – Thursday 27th May 2021 (6 hours of study each day). Students can choose their Open Studio in November 2020.

Ho Rui An, from ‘Student Bodies,’ 2019. Video.

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