I’m piloting a new course on creative code for Fall 2025 in the Department of Visual Arts: VIS42 Intro to Creative Code. This will replace our existing Computer Science (CS) requirement for Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM) Majors.
Description This course provides students with a foundation in programming and computational thinking, and their application in creative projects. Topics covered may include generative graphics and sound, interactive media, and others. Students will gain practical skills through hands-on experience and experimentation, learning to integrate computing into artistic practices. No prior programming experience is required.
Installation View of Negotiated Differences in Stakes and Holders, 2020. M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong. Commissioned by M+. Photo: Ringo Cheung
As part of the Department of Visual Arts Guest Speaker Series I hosted Shirley Tse for a remote artist talk on Thursday May 8, 2025.
About Shirley Tse
Los Angeles-based artist Shirley Tse (b.1968) works in sculpture, installation, photography, and text. She deconstructs our world of synthetic objects that carry paradoxical meanings and constructs different models in which differences might come together. Various strategies of visualising heterogeneity are used: conflating different scales, fusing the organic with the industrial, crossing between the literal and the metaphorical, merging different narratives, and collapsing the subject and object relationship. Tse received a Master of Fine Arts from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena and Bachelor of Arts degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Fine Arts. Tse represented Hong Kong at the 58th Venice Biennale. Her work is featured in many articles, catalogues, and publications including Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life (2015) and Sculpture Today (2007). Tse received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and is on faculty at California Institute of the Arts since 2001 where she is Robert Fitzpatrick Chair in Art. Her work is exhibited at venues including: Pasadena Museum of California Art (2004/2017); Osage, Hong Kong (2010/2011); K11, Hong Kong (2009); Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge (2009); Museum of Modern Fine Art, Minsk (2006); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (2005); Para Site, Hong Kong (2000/2005); Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (2003); Art Gallery of Ontario (2002); Bienal Ceará América, Fortaleza (2002); Biennale of Sydney (2002); Capp Street Project, San Francisco (2002); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2002); MoMA PS1 (2002); New Museum (2002); Palazzo dell’Arengo, Rimini (2002); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2001); TENT, Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam (2001); and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2000).
It was a pleasure to host Mendi + Keith Obadike at UCSD this past week on the occasion of their show “The Skeuomorph” at the Gallery QI. Talk and panel discussion embedded below.
I served as a guest judge for the Triton XR hackathon held at the Design Innovation Building on March 1-2, 2025. Triton XR is the UCSD VR/AR/XR student organization I am faculty advisor for. The theme was Mindfulness, and I judged along with with Trish and Joe from Maveric Studio, Cassie Vietan from the Stanford Compassion Institute/Center for Mindfulness, Jessica D’Elena Tweed, and external guests from Unity.
I’ll be giving a talk and serving on a round-table discussion at the Sixth National Research Platform (6NRP) Workshop at the Qualcomm Institute, La Jolla, CA on Tuesday, January 28 – Thursday, January 30, 2025.
The Workshop will cover both the current state of NRP as well as its future direction and long-term viability and success. Several tutorials will be offered on Tuesday, January 28th that will help attendees learn how to access NRP’s distributed campus-owned compute cloud and allied resources. Find more information here: https://na.eventscloud.com/website/79913/home/
Ash Eliza Smith, Sam Bendix, Reid Brockmeier and I are running a workshop and performance on January 23rd, 2025 to coincide with the launch of the Ken Burns Leonardo Da Vinci documentary. Our half day workshop with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will work through the fundamentals of co-creation with generative AI, producing an immersive theater production performed in the evening at the Sheldon Museum of Art.
I was an invited speaker at the UNL CreatiViz Team’s Data Storytelling Workshop and Data Art Jam on January 13th. It was great to speak alongside Rahul Barghava, Laura Guertin, and Matt Waite.
I have created a portable version of our Fish Phone Booth for the 17th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS) in Baranquilla, Colombia December 2-6, 2024. The piece is in the art exhibition STREAMS ~ CORRIENTES online and in the Museuo MAPUKA.
The Fish Phone Sound Bath invites participants into a contemplative, immersive sound bath connecting human and ocean life through interactive audio and AI. Blending scientific data and speculative design, the piece allows users to experience underwater acoustics and explore interspecies connections. By engaging with fish behavior and ocean sounds, participants reflect on our shared intersubjectivity across species and environments.
Fish Phone Sound Bath is a project of Ash Eliza Smith + Robert Twomey (A Speculative Devices x Cohab Labs Production). Production, Graphic and Experience Design support: Sam Bendix. Developer, Design support: Reid Brockmeier. Dramaturgy: Michal Stankiewicz. Developed with support from the La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Festival, Worlds In Play, the Birch Aquarium, and The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts.
I collaborated with Trisha Williams, Joe Unger (Maveric Studio), Hortense Gerardo, and Amy Eguchi for a new performance with robots in VR for ON DISPLAY GLOBAL 2024.
I was an invited participant in the 2024 World Imagination Network meetup at ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination October 23-25 2024. Over the course of three days we did intense workshopping of scholarship, development plans, and curricula and toolkits in the area of imagination studies. Guests included Robert Alexander, Stephen Asma, Bob Beard, Ron Beghetto, Fabrice Guerrier, Amy Kind, Peter Langland-Hassan, Karcher Morris, Brendan Bo O’Connor, Robert Sinclair, Laurne Keeler, Clinton Tolley, Cassi Vietan. Thank you Ed Finn, Ruth Wylie, Bob Beard, Nina Miller, and Linsey Wilt from CSI for hosting us! Nice to see our sister institution for the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.
