Lab Notes

A final reflection from Shapiro Design Lab Resident Maggie Cease on her experience being part of the Residency, and her podcast project, Michigan Time.

Ever since reading Plato’s Symposium and studying the life and works of Gertrude Stein in undergraduate school, I have been obsessed with the idea of cultivating or participating in my own Greek symposium or French salon, a space for academics to express themselves and their research outside of the confines of traditional academia, a community of artists, scientists, intellectuals, where walls between disciplines and positionalities seem to crumble, a space to break bread together and unabashedly share ideas, and a space in which the resources to cultivate and manifest such ideas are made available.

When I think about my time in the design lab, I am struck by all that I have learned about the resources and fields of study at this University. I’m a School of Information undergraduate senior, and the network I am surrounded by at the Lab is the most academically diverse I have encountered in college. Every week, I meet and work with librarians, PhD students, master’s students and undergraduates in an environment where we are all equals who learn from one another.

Throughout my time in the Design Lab, I have embarked upon a journey—a continuation of my quest to better understand various online community spaces and the potential connection between social media and healing. Specifically, I have been interested in how social media impacts Black women’s mental health and well-being, and thus, are Black women potentially curating self-definitions, online, through cultivating healing, affirming, and authentic social media spaces?

As I think back to my experiences in the Design Lab, I am struck by the community we have created in just a few months. Being in graduate school can sometimes, perhaps surprisingly, be a somewhat isolating experience. Having a narrow, specific area of study can mean that graduate students are often interacting with, and learning from, a relatively small group of people throughout much of our educational experience. As a result of this, there can be a lack of shared knowledge between students in different disciplines, and the knowledge of these different disciplines can become siloed.

In order to test the capabilities of the Design Labs' new machine, Carvey, Isaac Levine and I have completed a series of projects that have allowed us to explore the different ways in which this machine interacts with various materials.

Hello! My name is Brianna Hutchison. For a brief introduction, I am a Design Lab Resident, Electrical Engineer in training, and a martial artist who recently had knee (ACL reconstruction) surgery. I love spending time in nature, going on adventures, and learning new things.

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L2P Project (Lead to Pixels): Dr. Rebecca M. Chung

If someone sees a book image on a screen, are they truly reading a book? If not, then how can digitization be used to transmit the material and historical features of reading? The materiality of the text connects the creation of that text to its historical moment. Historical context is as much about paper composition, assembly techniques, enclosure styles, and chemical composition—as about dates or places or names. The L2P project works on reconstructing the material characteristics of a text embedded in its historical moment—both type and ornaments, by combining book history research, digital images, and printing technologies from letterpress to electronic.

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A quick look into what was happening in Design Lab 1 on the morning of January 24, featuring a course offered through the Living Arts program.

RJ speaks about his first semester as a Design Lab Resident.