After a few false starts I finally figured out how to post podcasts on iTunes. So if you’re on your iPhone somewhere in the world and you’d like to hear about what’s happening at RISD, just search for ‘maeda’ in your iTunes app and the free podcasts should pop up there for easy download. Podcasts seem like an easier way to access information on the Web instead of clicking and reading. I’ll try to develop this direction further as a way to disseminate emerging info about our RISD.

Michael Riley GD ‘91 and his studio, Shine, have conceived, designed and produced two music videos for Dreamworks Animation’s new film, “Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa”. The music videos were created for use on MTV.com, Nickelodeon, and as bonus features with the movie’s soundtrack which was released by Interscope Records. Take a peek at the videos here.

Shine is a creative design and production studio specializing in branding and storytelling for the entertainment and advertising industries. They produced the opening sequence for Kung Fu Panda, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and garnered an Emmy Nomination for outstanding mail title design for Standoff, a one hour drama produced for Fox TV. 

As we count through our many blessings this holiday week, I wonder how many of us will think to give thanks for the light around us? And yet, that is just what I found myself doing once I read about the Portable Light Project: Sloan Kulper MID ‘06 was one of the project’s leaders.

Portable Light is a non-profit initiative established by Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd. (KVAmatX) in Boston that creates new ways to deliver power and light to developing impoverished communities by embedding flexible solar nano-technology into textiles that can harvest energy and generate light, an alternative to large glass-based solar panels which are too expensive to manufacture and transport over rough terrain. The Portable Light Project team created a lightweight, portable solar textile kit, allowing people to use traditional weaving and sewing techniques to create clothing, blankets, and bags that harvest energy. View this video for more about the project, and the semi-nomadic Huichol people of Mexico who are benefiting from this technology.

This project was recently chosen as a winner of one of this years Tech Awards, an international awards program that honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity, and was  featured in the Museum of Modern Art  show “Design and the Elastic Mind” as well as the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum show “Design for the Other 90%.”

Sloan and his team are currently at work on a new project at KVA centered on bringing Portable Light to rural South Africa.  This is powerful stuff.  RISD Alumni are changing the world.

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and expressed their errrr … complex … feelings about our main website here at RISD, which hasn’t been given real love in many many many years. I’m proud to say that we’ve been getting swimmingly positive feedback on the new RISD Online Viewbook microsite — it’s a small sign of things to come in the future for RISD’s online presence. Thanks to the RISD Media+Partners team for lighting this important beacon of digital hope. And be sure to click on the VIDEO button — it’s quite satisfying. Happy upcoming Turkey Day to all!

A few nights ago I received a message from one of our students here at RISD — Aaron Perry-Zucker. He had just gotten off the phone with director Spike Lee who had expressed excitement to Aaron about a project that I was carefully watching just a few months back when it first launched. Regardless of whether you agree with the topic matter that Aaron has chosen for his site, what is important to recognize is the new level of empowerment by everyday people in the world.

Two RISD students get together and launch a website. A few people start to engage it, and then another, and then another. And then the world comes in. Everyone is a supporter or a critic or both. Note my emphasis on everyone.

Provost Jessie Shefrin came to me yesterday and spoke of a conversation she had with Aaron about how much he believes in “open engagement” as the ethos of his generation. We live in troubled financial times, yet we also live in times of extraordinary hope to engage world issues head-on at personal levels that were before impossible.

We all matter. We can all be increasingly heard. Democracy is gaining momentum not as a directive from powers that are from “higher above,” but is being led by the “we” of the world. We the people, matter. In every way – when we choose to care and become intimately engaged with the issues at hand. Traditionally passive followership … is giving way to new forms of leadership that are truly organic and living. Breathing.

So today and tomorrow we breathe in the possibilities of our new world. Can you feel it? I certainly do. As the long-running vanguard of artistic integrity and impassioned creativity here in the US, RISD has an important role and responsibility to lead, and follow, this renewed generation of hope in our world. Thank you for continuing to be an integral part of our world’s hope, and our RISD.

The “Cradle Chair,” designed by Katrina Vonnegut ‘09 FD, has won first place in the Billes Products International Design Contest for new designs in furnishings and accessories. “It has an amazing wow factor,” jurors from the New Orleans-based company said. “It will fold up very neatly and can be made stackable.” Katrina designed the chair to engage the user in the simple gesture and movement of the seat, using laminated pieces to form sections that move freely and are tightened by knobs on either side of the chair. The base is a continuous steel frame. Katrina’s competition included students from Art Center, Pratt and MIT. Congratulations, Katrina!

Last night I was able to catch Provost Jessie Shefrin presenting works and introspections developed during three faculty and curatorial sabbaticals: Prof. Paola Dematté, Prof. Ellen Driscoll, and Curator Jan Howard. Ms. Howard presented a history of educating artists on how to draw within the context of pieces in the RISD Museum collection; Prof. DeMatté presented her work in the countryside of China studying a large Buddha and the community in its surrounds; and Prof. Driscoll spoke of the large sculptural works she created as derived from discarded water bottles and thoughts about major environmental shifts in the world. My favorite line from Prof. Driscoll’s talk was where she spoke of how thought is always embodied by the artist’s hands,

… to make that knowledge [of the world] pass through the intimacy of my fingertips [as the drawings she would create]

It made me think of the brain in our head, our heart, and in our fingertips. An artist thinks with all parts of herself.

Ever since I’ve become aware of RISD alum Stuart Karten’s ultra-tiny hearing aid design, I’ve noted this svelte device in the ear of one of the world’s authorities on sustainable design and also in the ear of a prominent US politician. Karten’s elegant design has clearly transformed the image of a “hearing aid” from one of debilitation to empowerment for many.

On the left pictured here is RISD alum Ann Harakawa ‘78 GL, principal of Two Twelve Associates at the National Design Awards ceremony.

I had the chance to stop by Prof. Susan Doyle’s course on printmaking in the RISD ISB (Illustration Studies Building). She was describing the special kind of hand-and-ink coordination necessary when working with the intaglio printmaking process. My takeaway was the kind of “you get one chance” confidence necessary in many of the manual processes for art-making I’ve seen at RISD. Such confidence, and an inherent belief in oneself, can be applied to so many aspects of one’s life.

Michele Zager, a RISD Residence Life Coordinator, has helped organize an exhibition of sections of the internationally celebrated AIDS Memorial Quilt, the handmade tapestry constructed in memory of the more than 91,000 lives lost to AIDS. The exhibition is on view through November 22, 2008 at 10 Westminster Street in Providence. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is an effective visual tool that helps educate against the lethal threat of AIDS. By revealing the humanity behind the statistics, the quilt helps teach compassion, triumphs over taboo, stigma and phobia and inspires individuals to take responsibility for their own well-being and that of their family, friends and community.

Thank you, Michele, for helping RISD mark World AIDS Day (December 1, 2008).