Projects
LCCC Visits the Letterpress Studio
LCCC Professor Kim Karshner (Fiction) and Ed Vermue (Special Collections/Letterpress)
Karshner’s Fiction students visited Oberlin’s Special Collections and Letterpress Studios to work on a limited print, emphasizing design choices in relation to written meaning.
The Portrait Project
Oberlin Professor Emily Barton (Creative Writing) and Ryan Corrigan (Fab Lab)
Barton’s advanced writing students began early in the fall semester exploring the characters of real-world people they know and admire, completing exercises in which they write about those people and in the voices of those people. Then they asked each person to give them a piece of fabric, which students took to the Fab Lab, where Ryan helped them create silhouettes of their subjects. With Ryan’s help, they dipped the fabric in resin, allowed it to harden, and mounted it. At that point, they added further text if desired. They displayed the portraits with accompanying text, in StudiOC.
Correspondence Across Campus Project
Oberlin Professor Wendy Kozol (Comparative American Studies) and LCCC Professor Kim Karshner (Creative Writing) (w/support from Ed Vermue and Abby Aresty)
Students enrolled in partner courses taught by Kozol and Karshner traded handmade postcards with pre-assigned prompts designed and printed in Oberlin’s Letterpress Studio. Future iterations may involve hybrid media exploring the old and new modes of communication.
Choreographic/Visual Arts Collaboration through Virtual Reality
Holly Handman Lopez (Choreography/Dance) and Gregory Little (New Media)
Professor Little’s 3-D Animation students traveled to Oberlin to join Professor Handman-Lopez’s Choreography students to experiment with low-tech motion capture technologies. Using a headset and two hand-held wands, students could paint in 3D space with virtual reality. Handman-Lopez's students also experimented with Little's 3D sensors, a 3D camera (Kinect) and traditional video documentation. Professor Little’s students captured and worked with the virtual worlds the dancers created. Click here to learn more about this collaboration.
Prosthetic Listening Devices
Abby Aresty (Music Technology) and Ryan Corrigan (Fab Lab)
Students enrolled in the Reimagining Maker Culture(s) StudiOC learning community visited the Lorain County Community Fab Lab to think about design and disability, and to design their own “hearware” or prosthetic listening devices.
Future Initiatives
While the 2020 global pandemic cut short some of the 4D Liberal Arts initiatives, plans for future initiatives are already underway. A primary initiative is The Crafting Change: Inclusivity in STE(A)M Education Symposium. This symposium, which will be designed to conform to public health guidance, seeks to bring several different populations together for workshops and discussion on themes include craft and technology, inclusivity in STEAM, experiential and integrated learning, and bridging the gap between secondary and higher education.