Innovatus is produced by the Office of the Vice-Provost, Teaching & Learning in partnership with the Communications & Public Affairs Division.

In this issue, AMPD invites 91亚色 community members to read stories about how it is empowering students with learning experiences that advance their knowledge and skills.

Greetings from the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at 91亚色,

As we collectively navigate the turbulence of the past year, it is vital to remind ourselves of the excellence in innovative teaching and learning that inspires and empowers our students, faculty, and staff in our communities across Canada and beyond.

Instructors across AMPD have been at the forefront in new program development as well as research-creation initiatives that deeply integrate research and pedagogy. Two events in October 2023, led by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council-funded Partnership Grant Hemispheric Encounters Network, highlight these entanglements through the ever-growing need for cross-border communication 鈥� and . These events brought together artists and scholars from across the Americas to work with faculty and students through the Arts Activism Speaker Series and share methodologies, practices and strategies. 

In April, AMPD鈥檚 new pan-Faculty Integrative Arts program at the 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media & Education, featuring works by students from Integrative Arts and from across AMPD programs. In March this year, we also celebrated the news that the , including Best Motion Picture and Best Cinematography.

The four stories in this issue of Innovatus emphasize the diversity of experiences we are excited to offer AMPD students in interesting ways. In these stories, you can learn about how our students are exploring research methodologies and strategies for building community-driven, site-oriented, collaborative approaches to art production; working with the community to create site-specific pieces in places where women鈥檚 history is often overlooked; developing a project with the creative coding library, p5.js, in tandem with Risograph printing, to challenge assumptions that are baked into the design process; and using visual design to amplify the results of a research project focusing on young women in Toronto, Melbourne and New 91亚色 City. 

Meanwhile, AMPD researchers continue to bring success 鈥� with Tri-Council grants, the Collected Minds initiative, arts council grants and other major awards 鈥� to the classroom. Cinema and media arts Professor鈥�Janine Marchessault鈥痟as been named one of the five for her work in community-based and site-specific public art exhibitions, research creation and public outreach. Music Professor Noam Lemish has been nominated for a . at Cinespace Studios, under the directorship of Professor Ingrid Veninger, continues to thrive as a site of student-led exploration and innovation focusing on film production, performance, immersive environments and virtual production. 

We continue to expand opportunities for experiential education and work-integrated learning with initiatives sponsored by CEWIL, including , an intensive, five-week course offering 30 students valuable experience working with green screen technologies. Our new program in Creative Technologies is set to open with the launch of the Markham Centre Campus in Fall 2024. 

In a world of constant change and amid deep international conflicts, artists, musicians, performers, and designers inspire us to bridge cultural divisions and find new paths to cross-cultural communication. We recognize that creativity continues to empower our stories, translate our histories and bind our communities and cultures. 

Come visit us in AMPD, either in person or through our new .

Best wishes, 

Mike Darroch 
Interim Dean, AMPD 

Faculty, course directors and staff are invited to share their experiences in teaching, learning, internationalization and the student experience through the .

In this issue:

91亚色's Las Nubes Campus is welcoming its first Eco-Arts Residency, where students will immerse themselves in the local community and culture.

Professor Erika Batdorf looks to create experiences where students can bring stories of contemporary women to ancient sites across the globe.

Professor Gabi Schaffzin has pursued a mission to ensure design students not only learn basic computer coding but consider biases baked into code and design.

A group of researchers hired design students taught by Professor Angela Norwood to create data visualization for an important project: Congress 2023.

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91亚色鈥檚 Las Nubes Campus in Costa Rica is serving as a home base for its first-ever Eco-Arts Residency, an intensive, 10-day course being offered by two professors from the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD).

Professor Brandon Vickerd, a sculptor, as well as theatre and performance artist Laura Levin, director of Sensorium 鈥� a 91亚色 research centre for digital arts and technology 鈥� are leading a group of 25 students in research centred on the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor preserve and communities near Las Nubes.

The course focuses on developing research methodologies and strategies for building community-driven, site-oriented, collaborative approaches to art production.

鈥淐urrent studio courses focus on students' artistic skills and don鈥檛 teach them how to go to a community, make connections and respond to the reality of the environment, the politics and the institutions while producing meaningful works,鈥� said Vickerd. 鈥淭his residency-based course provides such an opportunity.鈥�

The students are living with families in the local villages, two per home, and taking part in a curated, daily schedule of activities and exploration. Their experience began in San Jos茅, Costa Rica鈥檚 capital, with two days of visiting theatre companies and museums before travelling to Las Nubes. Once there, they were able to get a sense of the landscape, the people, the economy and politics.

鈥淭hey will engage with the larger questions of the course in a site-specific way,鈥� Levin said. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l visit local farms, and 鈥� informed by their readings on food sovereignty 鈥� they鈥檒l learn first-hand about the challenges of individuals running small farms in the global food system. 

鈥淲e鈥檒l also travel to an Indigenous village that is the home of the Boruca people, a group that has developed over time an intricate mask-making tradition and a youth theatre company that imaginatively incorporates those masks. There will be a lot of hands-on engagement with cultural producers.鈥�

One of the students鈥� other major tasks is to assist with producing ExpoCOBAS, an annual festival organized by the local community designed to celebrate and consolidate identity around the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor. It鈥檚 an exercise that will include everything from making pi帽atas to putting on a student art showcase to brainstorming about activities that will engage young people.

鈥淭here are important lessons we鈥檇 like our students to absorb,鈥� said Vickerd of the residency鈥檚 goals. 鈥淲e want to show them that they can engage with the environment in a variety of ways. We also want them to understand what it means to engage ethically with a community and collaborate, to engage in social action. They need to understand what鈥檚 important about a culture and how they can contribute with support and understanding, meaningfully adding to its health.鈥�

Levin noted that some students had never travelled to Latin America before undertaking this residency, offering an additional opportunity for some.

鈥淲e want them to learn what it means for artists not to be tourists and how to negotiate their experiences in a thoughtful way, rather than viewing the community as a spectacle to be consumed,鈥� Levin said.

Vickerd and Levin are providing the students with creative prompts and exercises to help them engage with the unique landscape, such as participating in outdoor classes or hiking in the rainforest.

鈥淭hey won鈥檛 be able to sit back,鈥� said Vickerd. 鈥淭his course is about engagement.鈥�

Po Kuen Cheung, a graphic designer and mature visual art and art history student who is studying part time for a degree, is one of the students registered for the intensive Las Nubes course.

鈥淚 want to explore the wonderful world of art when I retire, and when I saw the Costa Rica course, it matched exactly what I want to do 鈥� explore what happens elsewhere,鈥� said Cheung. 鈥淚t will be an experience of a lifetime.鈥�

Once he and his fellow students return home, they will have the opportunity to reflect on the experience and translate it into either an essay or artistic output.

鈥淭his experience allows them to think about how to explore and explain the world in a different way,鈥� Vickerd said.

Their responses, whatever form they take, will enrich the understanding of others, giving what they鈥檝e learned a broader impact.

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School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) Professor Gabi Schaffzin has a goal: eradicate the fear that design students feel when they hear the word 鈥渃oding,鈥� while teaching them that they have alternatives to the biases built into the algorithms that govern the standard digital design programs used in the industry.

When it comes to those in his third-year generative design course, Schaffzin has noticed something. 鈥淥ne of the challenges of the class is that only about one of 10 students is comfortable with coding,鈥� he says.

Schaffzin wants his students to lose their fear of basic coding, with its loops, variables, functions and if statements, but he also wants 鈥渢o challenge their assumptions about code being unbiased. For example, who decided that something should be in English or to always place a certain button in a specific spot on the page?鈥�

Schaffzin does a lot of work with user interfaces and data-generated visualization, which can be lucrative, but he wants his students to know that, as artists and design professionals, they have options besides the programs that are automatically assumed to be the only choice for generating designs online.

鈥淚 want to to challenge many of the assumptions that are often baked into the design process," he said. "A class like this provides students with marketable skills, while also being introspective and canon-challenging.

"By exploring user interfaces using code, rather than pixels, designers start to understand how the choices they make about their users鈥� experiences are strongly related to the digital technologies used to build them.鈥�

In other words, there are people behind the algorithms that design programs use and these people are making choices designers simply take for granted.

Schaffzin asks students take on the task of learning p5.js, a creative coding library and platform that has the goal of making coding accessible to a wide variety of people. Their text Aesthetic Programming combines theory and practice and provides weekly exercises for them to complete as they familiarize themselves with the code and learn to use it to create designs.

Once they have become conversant with p5.js, they are asked to print their final design project using a Risograph, an automated version of screen printing that produces images that are less precise than those created with digital printing.

鈥淭hey are used to doing highly curated design using pixels and this [the Risograph] is an imprecise technique 鈥� it produces fuzzy edges, not the crisp ones made by a digital printer 鈥� that creates a lovely sense of the artist being present,鈥� Schaffzin says. 鈥淚n a world of artificial intelligence, anything reminiscent of this is something in its favour.鈥�

By understanding that they have choices, rather than blindly using the most common technology, Schaffzin says students 鈥渁re encouraged to bring a critical eye to each project they undertake going forward, both in the design program and beyond.鈥�

April Dang, a third-year graphic design student who enrolled in the generative design course in Fall 2023, has felt that impact. 鈥淯sing p5.js, I can make things with data manipulation that I normally couldn鈥檛 as a designer 鈥� It broadens my scope.鈥�

She was thrilled to learn how to create dynamic type and images using code rather than a mouse or a trackpad. However, debugging her programs took time.

鈥淚 needed to go through 100 lines of code to see what I鈥檇 typed wrong,鈥� Dang said. 鈥淚t was frustrating, but the end result was very satisfying, and it taught me to embrace mistakes. It鈥檚 important to treat them as a learning experience, because failures may look cooler than expected.鈥�

Dang has a summer internship lined up with a local graphic design firm and is hoping to put her new skills to use there.

It鈥檚 an attitude that Schaffzin heartily embraces as part of AMPD鈥檚 mission that 鈥渋nfuses every level of practice with critical thinking and social critique.鈥�

鈥淎lthough my students won鈥檛 turn into programmers in 12 weeks, I want them to recognize the inherent bias in our technologically-determined lives,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd from a professional standpoint, I want them to feel comfortable interfacing with tech people.鈥�

If Dang is typical of the students who finish the course, mission accomplished.

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When a group of researchers approached Professor Angela Norwood to ask about hiring a few of her 91亚色 design students to provide data visualization for the results of one of their studies, Norwood saw an opportunity to provide the students with a career-enhancing experience.

In anticipation of Congress 2023, the annual meeting of the Federation for the Social Sciences & Humanities hosted by 91亚色, a research team led by 91亚色鈥檚 Laina Bay-Cheng and Sarah Flicker, along with Jen Gilbert, needed some visual help.

Their mixed-methods study looked at the risks to which LGBTQ and racialized young women ages 16 to 22 were exposed during COVID-19 in three cities: Melbourne, New 91亚色 and Toronto. The researchers sent out surveys, conducted interviews and had the participants maintain timelines of their risk-taking behaviours. They wanted the resulting data to be translated into a pop-up display for Congress.

The team approached Norwood, who applied for an Academic Innovation Fund grant and created a special topics course, Representing Risk: A Physical and Virtual Pop-Up Gallery, which would turn students into consultants for the research team.

Twenty-three students registered for the course, which was designed as a vertical studio 鈥� meaning that design students from second to fourth years could enrol.

鈥淚t allowed students to mix with others from different years and offered an opportunity for everyone to contribute,鈥� Norwood said.

鈥淚t was the perfect bridge between the worlds of design and education,鈥� said Helen Han, a 91亚色 master of fine arts graduate working toward a PhD in education, who Norwood hired as her research assistant for the project.

The researchers visited the class to present the data and discuss ways it could be shared with the study participants, other researchers and the public. They collaboratively decided on a website with interactive visuals from the data set and a pop-up gallery that could travel.

The students formed teams to work on various aspects of the project, often resulting in a fruitful mix of perspectives and collaboration.

鈥淭he youth in the class saw things differently than the older principal investigators, and they had to be open to new ways of seeing the data,鈥� Norwood noted as an example.

The project resulted in a significant experiential education opportunity. 鈥淧rofessor Norwood made it possible for students to bring theory to life in class,鈥� said Han.

鈥淲e allowed them space to reach their goal, and the work mirrored real life as professional designers,鈥� said Norwood.

As for the end result? 鈥淭hey came up with totally dynamic, fantastic ideas, and any failures (problems) were just as interesting as the successes, because we learned a lot about collaborating with designers and about the data itself,鈥� praised Gilbert. 鈥淭he students amplified the voices of the young people in our research through their design choices.鈥� 

The pop-up exhibit was featured at Congress 2023 and will be viewed in the other cities involved in the study, too. The researchers held a launch for the exhibit, attended by their design partners, who are grateful for the collaboration.

鈥淲e鈥檒l definitely always build a design element into future research projects,鈥� said Gilbert. 鈥淲e also learned that it would be valuable to collaborate with designers from the beginning, because their design thinking can help us hone our research questions.鈥�

Norwood, too, is open to overseeing future collaborations between her students and researchers.

鈥淚t was very much about the process of getting to the final product,鈥� Norwood said. 鈥淭he students brought all their advanced technical skills to the project and left understanding more about teamwork, peer mentorship and social science methodology.

鈥淭hey know more about themselves as designers and what design can contribute to projects like this.鈥�

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Thanks to 91亚色鈥檚 Profesor Erika Batdorf, attendees at the Bergama Theatre Festival in Asclepieion, Turkey, have a treat in store for them this August: a large, site-specific, immersive event with multiple performers placed on location throughout the grounds, known as an ancient healing site. Its aim: bringing the stories of contemporary women to ancient sites where women鈥檚 history has often been disregarded and forgotten.

Batdorf is the creator of the Batdorf Technique, an embodied physical theatre practice with which she likes to explore a means of bringing women鈥檚 stories back to a site where they have been ignored.

鈥淚n visiting ancient sites, I find there is almost no mention of women,鈥� Batdorf said. 鈥淭he perception is that they are nothing. How do we prevent losing more stories of women?鈥� 

Batdorf, together with master of fine arts graduate Gulce Oral, tested a model of this approach in the summer of 2023 in Troy, an ancient archeological site in Turkey made famous in Greek mythology. For a performance project, they asked students from 脟annakale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey to study their grandmothers to learn about the dreams they had as young women, their understanding of freedom and what symbolizes power to them.

In the process, students soon began to see themselves in their grandmothers and 鈥� with guidance from Batdorf and Oral 鈥� turned these findings into three-minute pieces that they performed live at Troy.

A similar process will unfold in Asclepieion this fall, made possible with funding from the festival and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as actors, musicians, and puppeteers from Istanbul and areas around Bergama, including local female Romany musicians and Kozak women.

鈥淥ur work is devised theatre, rather than text-based,鈥� Batdorf said. 鈥淚鈥檓 not a historian myself; I鈥檓 a contemporary theatre artist, so I know how to devise and create actual, physical theatre that animates a space.鈥�

Among their projects, one will include a piece at Zeus鈥檚 temple, which will incorporate stick games played by local women and music by Romany drummers, as a way of reclaiming that space as their own.

Parchment making is being revived locally, too, and one of the sculptural pieces at the festival will be a giant book that holds Turkish stories, recipes and wisdom shared by women with whom they have been meeting.

While ancient sites are less accessible in Canada, Batdorf has involved 91亚色 students in her performance creation class in a similar project.

In the classroom, for example, she asked her students to each research their mothers and grandmothers before choreographing a piece inspired by their findings 鈥� much like the Troy project.

Similarily, next year Batdorf will be leading a group of students in a site-specific project called Haunted Honeywood, working with tales of paranormal occurrences that have occurred in a small town north of Toronto. Batdorf is mentoring them, not only in creation but in grant writing and outreach, skills that will be useful to them in funding their personal performance work in the future.

Kayla Silvestre, an upper-year theatre student, is one of the participants in the Haunted Honeywood project, because she has been influenced by Batdorf鈥檚 movement classes and is eager to continue learning from her.

鈥淗er movement class has been the most beneficial acting course of my career,鈥� Silvestre said. 鈥淚 use 95 per cent of what I learned in my theatre work.鈥�

She says the Haunted Honeywood project will incorporate some of the same principles that Batdorf is using in her work in Asclepieion, allowing people to wander an outdoor path running through the woods, where they鈥檒l encounter guides and ghosts. A writing team is working on stories based on local history and culture, in addition to creating some new stories. The group is also planning to bring workshops to the schools in the area to promote the arts.

The 2025 debut of Haunted Honeywood is still more than a year away, but each of Batdorf鈥檚 site-specific works requires time to put all the pieces in place. She has been working toward Asclepieion for three years, yet it will be performed for only three days during this highly respected festival.

鈥淲e鈥檒l do the best we can to document the piece,鈥� Batdorf said, 鈥渁nd we hope to have a website to host conversations among local women and others.鈥�

Although the performances are fleeting, for those who participate, either as actors or as visitors, she hopes the experience will be enduring and impactful.

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