Design at Mason Gross

On October 29, 2024, the Rutgers Design Research Spotlight brought together alumni, faculty, and students of the MFA Design program at the Flea Theater in New York City. The event celebrated the innovative research and creative achievements of recent graduates, showcasing diverse approaches to design. Hosted by artist and designer Chat Travieso, the new Tepper Chair in the Department of Art & Design, the evening featured presentations from graduate speakers Corina Coughlan, Rachel Herring, and Melisa Tekin.

The event marked the fifth year of the graduate program, and was an evening of conversation, networking and exchanges about design as a tool for inquiry, critique, speculation, as well as communication. Attendees included alumni, academics, educators, Mason Gross Dean Jason Geary, faculty members Atif Akin, Sue Huang, and Jacqueline Thaw, along with current MFA Design students. The event opened with a welcome speech by MFA in Design Director Professor Gerry Beegan. He introduced the presenters and highlighted the purpose of the spotlight event: to celebrate the creative potential of design as a tool for critical engagement and change.

Chat Travieso began the presentations with a compelling talk on the social impact of design. As co-founder of Yeju & Chat, his work spans community-based urban interventions and public art, fostering inclusivity in cities. Chat examined the engagement of Bronx communities in the research process for a series of Boogie Down Booths produced over a five year period in partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation. The design team sought to address many of the concerns heard from local residents and business owners who participated in community workshops. The Booths provides seating and lighting, and involved music that originated in the Bronx (curated by Bronx Music Heritage Center). The music both celebrated the rich musical heritage of the borough and in some iterations covered up train noise. The various iterations of the Booths involved young and old residents in temporary social interventions driven by community needs. “I want my students to be civically engaged and be conscious of their impact on the world,” he shared, emphasizing the importance of civic awareness in design practice.

Rachel Herring followed with a reflective presentation on her practice as an educator, writer, and designer. Her work explores design ethics, techno-critique, and participatory research, inspired by her background as an art director in Manhattan’s beauty industry. Rachel discussed the collaborative research that resulted in her book Cellular Balance Workbook: Redesign Your Smartphone and Reclaim Your Time. The content and design of the workbook were informed by a series of workshops that included activities, surveys and exit interviews. Through this feedback Rachel realized the book was not just about our phones but about a reclamation of time in our lives. Her participants noted how spending less time on their phones made them more enamored by the physical world. They were generally more content because they weren’t constantly in the aestheticized worlds created in phones. Responding to these themes, her thesis exhibition 53 Days, created an immersive experience that activated the viewer’s sense of sight, sound, touch, and smell. In a world where everything is designed, she hopes to democratize design by creating products with the consumer and allowing them to customize products to best suit their individual needs. Design, she argued, is meant to be used, touched, and redesigned. Rachel’s mission to create customizable products and promote a slower, more intentional approach to life resonated deeply with the audience.

Corina Coughlan’s presentation delved into her exploration of feminist narratives, particularly around the female body and performance data. The talk traced her research journey at Rutgers which started with her using data to track her performance as an Varsity athlete. Over the course of the MFA, Corina expanded these limited data sets to data communication and storytelling that encompassed embodied subjectivity. Her approach was very much Informed by a data feminist approach, in which she used her personal data to question the value of qualitative data in sports performance. One important tool was journaling with allowed her to engage with the subjective factors in performance, listen to her body and adjust her performance and training. Her Training Diary for Menstruating Athletes opened up conversations on her rowing team between the rowers and eventually with the coaches. By humanizing data through visual storytelling and immersive experiences, Corina seeks to bridge the gap between data communication and personal narratives, adding emotional depth to abstract concepts.

Lastly, Melisa Tekin presented her research on housing and placemaking. As the founder of Neighbors design studio and Assistant Professor of Visual Communications at SUNY Farmingdale, Melisa uses design to address critical housing challenges in New York City. Her work invites community participation and emphasizes collectivism in urban spaces, offering innovative solutions to issues of accessibility and transparency.

The evening concluded with a lively Q&A session, where attendees engaged with the speakers and shared reflections on the themes presented. Rachel’s focus on slowing down the pace of modern life particularly struck a chord, inspiring thoughtful discussions. The event wrapped up with warm conversations, leaving attendees energized by the impactful projects and meaningful dialogues that took place.

The Rutgers Design Research Spotlight demonstrated the depth and breadth of the MFA Design program, highlighting how design can address societal challenges, spark dialogue, and foster change.

MFA alum Corina Coughlan gives an overview of the research she will present as part of the Rutgers Design Research Spotlight on October 29 in Tribeca.

For the full picture RSVP: https://forms.gle/NVaWs8mbfwhXdT7VA

When moving to the States from Ireland for my MFA, I intended to focus my design research on sports data in relation to female athletes. I rowed at university level in Ireland and was now a Division One athlete on the Rutgers women’s rowing team. My performance has always been measured by data -collected, monitored, and ranked daily. Rowers spend much more time on specialist rowing machines name than we do on the water. For years, I have been tracking my performance through screenshots of machines and fitness wearables. So, I was deeply immersed in data about my body, yet this was exclusively quantitative, with no qualitative data. Over the course of the MFA, I expanded these limited data sets to data communication and storytelling that encompassed embodied subjectivity. Informed by data feminism, I used my personal data to question the value of qualitative data in sports performance.

  

My way into this was through journaling which allowed me to listen to my body and understand what recovery methods and approaches to training were needed. This inspired me to design a training diary for menstruating athletes, providing them with detailed information on the different phases of the menstrual cycle and its relationship to sports performance. This holistic space enables athletes to give weight equally to qualitative and quantitative data. This galvanized me to have more open conversations with my coaches about how the menstrual cycle affected my training. Other women on the team then started to have these conversations with each other and coaches – which was really inspiring and empowering. Coaches, who are mostly male, rarely have these conversations otherwise. 

 

In my second year, my exhibit Data and the Athlete brought this material together and also sent me in a new direction. As I looked at this piece, the motion graphic on the left side evoked traditional data visualization, but the video on the right side felt more anthropoid, closer to the human experience. This was a transformative moment for me. I started to feel trapped in my data, and I also began to think deeply about what gives me joy in rowing. What fascinates me about the act of rowing is the feeling of synchronized movement, from the connection between people working together in a rhythmic flow to achieve a feeling of weightlessness. The skillful calibration of humans to create forward movement is the essence of rowing and, more broadly, is the essence of human collaboration. Data cannot capture this. Ursula Le Guin’s essay Telling is Listening spoke to what it means to find connection through synchronization and her writing guided me through my practice. Humans use movement to sync up with others in order to find connections and build relationships. We rely on entrainment as we get immersed in a motion or thought once we are in sync – we fall into time with each other without realizing it. Influenced by Le Guin, my research evolved into visual storytelling around synchronous calibration.

   

My senior thesis exhibition to calibrate included sound and video as forms of data visualization, exploring visceral data that we can hear, see, feel, or touch holistically. I also used the labor of synchronization within my own body as a visual metaphor for synchronization more generally. Rowers specialize on one side of the boat and inspired by the synchronization of left and right in rowing I began experimenting, writing with both hands simultaneously, trying to sync my left hand with my right while documenting my thoughts around synchronization and how it feels to be in and out of sync. The video installation of the left-hand annotation in comparison to the right gave a duality of perspective on the pursuit of calibration and synchronization.  
 
Through the development of my research, I have learned that data alone cannot tell a fully human narrative. Moving away from data and focusing on embodied experience allowed me to communicate the poetry of movement that data cannnot. I have allowed myself to incorporate complexity, humanity, and imperfection into my design practice, adapting to different visualization approaches.

All images: Corina Coughlan, 2023-2024

Ryan Kuo is an artist and writer based in New York City. His work uses digital systems and sequences to invoke a person or people arguing. This is not to state an argument about a thing, but to be caught in a state of argument. His projects have been commissioned and shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), M+ (Hong Kong), Queens Museum (NYC), and TRANSFER (LA). He was a 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellow. He is not a programmer.

Those affiliated with Rutgers can watch Ryan Kuo’s lecture recording here.

Kelly Walters is an artist, designer, and founder of the multidisciplinary design studio Bright Polka Dot. Her ongoing design research interrogates identity formation and systems of value embedded in Black visual and material culture. Kelly has curated a number of exhibitions, including Kindred, Open Dialogue: Artists + Designers of Afro-Caribbean Descent and Remix: Activating the Archive andreceived a Graham Foundation award for her exhibition With a Cast of Colored Stars in 2021. Kelly has written about Black American design histories and the impact of colonization on the construction of the Black image.