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CODAhorizons is a series of virtual events that bring together creative professionals to discuss how we impact needed and necessary change in the world.  Topics feature leading international artists and their collaborators who are tackling difficult issues of a social, political, or environmental nature – as well as pioneers who are leading the way in using new technological tools and materials that allow for the creation of artwork that facilitates empathy and engagement.

Join the dialogue! 

CODAhorizons events are completely free to attend.

Recorded Events:

Public Art, Renewal, and Nature: How Buffalo Bayou Partnership Impacts Houston

Karen Farber, Vice President for External Affairs at Buffalo Bayou Partnership, presents a virtual case study about how art has changed the 4th most populous city in the United States. Farber's presentation was one of the most highly-rated at CODAsummit: Experience!

Featuring:

Karen Farber

Vice President of External Affairs, Buffalo Bayou Partnership

Karen Farber serves as Vice President for External Affairs at the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, overseeing public art, programming, communications, and visitor services. From 2005-2020, she served as Director of the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, which is dedicated to connecting the performing, visual, and literary arts. Farber was a 2002-3 arts management fellow at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and started her career in nonprofit and arts organizations in New York City, where she was born and raised. She has been a consultant, panelist, and board member for many cultural organizations nationally. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with an M.A. in Performance Studies and a B.F.A. in Experimental Theater.

Karen Farber - Vice President of External Affairs, Buffalo Bayou Partnership
WATCH NOW

Originally aired July 20th, 2022

Art + Sensory Perception: Sound, Light and Motion

Four creative thought leaders help us explore how artworks engage with our perceptions, going beyond simply the visual, through the incorporation of sound, light, and motion.

Featuring:

Anthony Rowe

Anthony Rowe is an installation artist. He founded international arts group Squidsoup in 1997, with the aim of creating immersive and emotive experiences that merge the physical and the virtual. Squidsoup’s work has been seen by millions of people on six continents, at institutions and events as varied as Burning Man (USA), Sydney Opera House (AUS), Salisbury Cathedral (UK), SIGGRAPH (USA) and Ars Electronica (AU). He was Associate Professor of Interaction Design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (2009-14), the same institute that awarded his PhD (2015). 

Rowe was co-awarded an honorary mention in the Ars Electronica Awards (2017) and won a CODAAward with Squidsoup (2021). His Squidsoup collaboration with renowned DJ Four Tet, merging performance and installation, culminated in massive sell-out events at London’s Alexandra Palace and was named ‘the best live show in the world’ (Mixmag, 2018).

In a previous existence he worked as an illustrator, photographer and sailor, crossing the Atlantic solo in 1988.

Anthony Rowe – Founder, Squidsoup

Alexandre Lemieux

Alexandre is a young entrepreneur and founding member of Creos. His curiosity and ingenuity ensure the company is prospering and making inroads across the world. He is quickly becoming the company’s spokesperson, thereby promoting his talents as a speaker, but also his contagious passion for Creos.

His innate understanding of sales allows the company to reach a beautiful growth curve without ever losing sight of the satisfaction of local promoters. As the Director of Business Development, he firmly believes that compassion and problem-solving are what create lasting relationships.

Alexandre studied at McGill University where he strengthened his organizational knowledge, learning from well-known professionals from around the world. In fact, this is what motivates his involvement in the development of the company.

About Creos

Leading agency for temporary public interactive installations, Creos connects owners, creators, and distributors of public art around the world. Creos works with clients to design and develop projects that reclaim their public spaces for artistic purposes.

Alexandre Lemieux – Business Development Director and Co-Founder, Creos

Christopher Janney

Christopher Janney was trained as an architect (Princeton University , B.A. Architecture, 1972, magna cum laude/ MIT -M.S. Environmental Art, 1978) and a jazz musician (private studies, 1963-1976, Dalcroze School, 1974-75). He has created numerous permanent interactive sound/light installations, attempting, on the one hand, to make architecture more "spontaneous" (Harmonic Runway, Miami Airport; REACH:NY, 34th St. subway, New York) and, on the other hand, to make music more physical (HeartBeat:mb with S. Rudner, M. Baryshnikov). 

      Architectural projects include the interactive sculptural scoreboard for the Miami Arena, in Miami, FL; Rainbow Cove at Logan Airport, Boston, MA, A House is a Musical Instrument: Kona, an 8000 square foot private residence in Kona, HI based on Hawaiian cosmological principles, Harmonic Convergnce, an interactive sound/light environment in the Miami International Airport; Touch My Building:Charlotte, the façade of an 8-story garage for Bank of America, Chalotte, NC for ; and five US/UK tours of Sonic Forest  to major music festivals including “Bonnaroo,” “Coachella,” “Wireless,” “Electric Daisy Carnival” and “Glastonbury.” 

     Projects recently completed include “Sonic Fireflies” for the new REVEL resort in Atlantic City, NJ; “Parking in Color”, the entire exterior of a 7-story parking structure in Ft. Worth, TX  and a special-feature screening of “What Is A Heart?” at Art Basil Miami, a film on Janney’s HeartBeat project with an opening live set by The Persuasions. 

    Believing also that architecture is about a manifestation of the “public spirit”, he has been a Visiting Professor at Cooper Union's Irwin Chanin School of Architecture and Pratt Institute where he taught his seminar "Sound As A Visual Medium."  

   Janney has directed his own multi-media studio, PhenomenArts, Inc. since 1980.  PhenomenArts, Inc. has studios in both Lexington, MA and London, UK. A book on Christopher Janney, titled “Architecture of the Air”, was published in 2006 and is available through Amazon.com and Janney’s website.

For more information, go to- www.janneysound.com

Christopher Janney – Composer, Artist, Architect, JanneySound

Maria Finkelmeier

Maria Finkelmeier believes that an artist’s mind is deeply connected to innovation. Named a “one-woman dynamo” by the Boston Globe, and Boston’s Best 2018 "Creative Catalyst” by the Improper Bostonian, Maria is a percussionist, composer, educator, and public artist. As owner of MF Dynamics, an experimental studio creating large-scale performative art works in public spaces and multimedia experiences at art and concert venues, she leads a team of collaborators in designing and producing work that is narrative driven and socially responsive. 

Empowered by sonic exploration, her projects have been staged and installed in unexpected spaces, such as Fenway Park’s Green Monster, the Treehotel in Harads, Sweden, Boston Center for the Arts’ historic Cyclorama, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston’s Hatch Memorial Shell, Cincinnati’s Roebling Bridge, the Goethe Institute, and Frost Ice Bar. Dedicated to building community and shaping the next generation of creators, she is an Neighborhood Artist for the Celebrity Series of Boston and Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music.

Maria Finkelmeier – Artist + Founder, MF Dynamics
WATCH NOW

Originally aired December 14th, 2021

Art + Active Public Engagement

Art that impacts its viewers changes the participants as well as the world. Here we celebrate artwork that shapes its impression through direct participation, creating unique, playful, and personal experiences that are both ephemeral and timeless.

Featuring:

Ryan Swanson

Ryan Swanson is a designer, lecturer, and founder / creative director of The Urban Conga, an international award-winning multidisciplinary design studio based in Brooklyn, NY.  Ryan’s work is focused on exploring the idea of a “Playable City” as an ecosystem of multiscale playable opportunities intertwined within the existing urban infrastructure. His work investigates how these often once overlooked or underutilized situations can turn into inclusive, stimulating creative outlets for all demographics sparking creativity, exploration, and free-choice learning within the built environment. The work becomes more than just a photogenic monument in time, and develops into an ever-changing, open-ended platform showcasing the impact play has on the health, identity, social, and economic value of our cities and neighborhoods. To achieve this, The Urban Conga was developed to become a tool for communities and stakeholders to create opportunities within the public realm that they feel represent them. Utilizing various participatory design methods that employ play methodologies to ensure the community is represented within the work. Through this work, Ryan has collaborated with communities, organizations, businesses, governments, and universities worldwide, delivering public art, playable interventions, workshops, lectures, development plans, and public policy recommendations. The Urban Conga was recently named one of the 2021 Architizer A+Firms of the Year and 2020 ArchDaily Best Young Practices.

Ryan Swanson - Founder/Creative Director, The Urban Conga

Julia Vogl

Julia Vogl is American & British with an international practice. 

She is guided by her manifesto:

THE ART MUST RESPOND TO SITE OR COMMUNITY

THE ART WORK MUST INVOLVE OR ENGAGE OTHERS

THE ART WORK MUST EMPLOY A STRATEGY OF DECOR

She makes social sculptures and installations that engage with sites and colourfully form communities. Her work primarily focuses on what things do we, as humans, share and what makes us distinct. She has been commissioned by Tate, ITV, Facebook, Hull 2017 City of Culture, Jewish Arts Collaborative in Boston Common, and recently Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History. Her projects have been recognised by the American for the Arts Public Year in Review in 2012, 2016 and 2019. All her art aims to represent the individual that participates as well as the collective, as beautiful installations that foster a greater conversation. 

More at www.juliavogl.com

Julia Vogl - Artist

Matthew Geller

In the 1980s, Matthew Geller switched his studio practice from primarily sculpture to the production of video works, reworking the structure and style of television storytelling with comic narratives that played off conventional genres—documentary, fairytale, melodrama. Employing fragmentation and disjunction as storytelling devices, Geller intercut several seemingly unrelated anecdotal stories into cohesive, if nonlinear, narratives. Beginning with his fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, he integrated his skills as a storyteller and sculptor by creating intimately observed worlds in miniature. For the past 18 years, he has taken these ideas, changed the scale, and extended the possibilities for site and a chaotic viewership by producing temporary and permanent public art, which has been described in various ways, from "urban earth-works" to "industrial baroque settees."

Geller has created public artworks throughout the United States and in Canada. He has exhibited at the: Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, New Museum, Kunst Kanaal—Amsterdam, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum—Eindhoven, Witte de With—Rotterdam, Smithsonian Institute, Los Angeles Contemporary Art, Queens Museum, Boston ICA, Chicago MCA, Moderna Musset—Stockholm, among others.

Matthew Geller - Artist

Margaret Johnson

As Senior Associate & Curator at UAP, Margaret Johnson delivers creative visions, art strategies, and master plans for a diverse range of clients and projects across the US, China, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. With a background in art history, education, and studio art, Margaret brings a strong understanding of art and storytelling and a passion for unique cultural placemaking. Before joining UAP in 2015, she managed a Shanghai new-media art collective and served as an educational coordinator at one of China’s first contemporary art museums.

Margaret Johnson - Senior Associate & Curator at UAP
WATCH NOW

Originally aired August 10th, 2021

Art + Sustainability

CODAworx brings together four creative thought-leaders to greet us at the intersection of art + sustainability. They help us explore how artists and their artwork can help raise awareness about this critical and urgent issue. Through the use of recycled or repurposed materials, and the use of environmentally sound production processes, artists and their collaborators lead the way in the creation of a responsible and joyful future for the planet.

Featuring:

Gilbert Guaring

Gilbert is an idea peddler, a cohort of responsible and strategic marketing and communications with sustainability at its core. He believes that marketing is one reason we are experiencing the climate crisis; therefore, it is a problem every marketer needs to fix. Gilbert is Global Head of Marketing and Communications at UAP, an organisation collaborating with the world’s best artists, architects and designers to deliver creative outcomes for the private and public realm. He created and leads Project One Earth, UAP’s strategy and commitment to become a Future Normal organisation.

Apart from UAP, Gilbert founded Be Extraordinary, a not-for-profit he founded in 2017 to inspire SMEs with the importance of sustainability and systems thinking at the core of any marketing strategy and communication. With over 20 years of experience, Gilbert has lived and worked in Manila, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai, and Brisbane, partnering with influential creative industries and clients. His extensive work experience proves his strength with global, regional and local business developments.

Gilbert Guaring – Head of Marketing + Communications, UAP

Vivian Kuan

Vivian Kuan is Executive Director of Terreform ONE, a non-profit architecture and urban design think tank focused on ecological design solutions for cities.  Vivian has also served as adjunct faculty at Parsons in the Strategic Design and Management graduate program.  Before Terreform, Vivian designed and managed large scale architecture projects in the U.S. and Asia for Kohn, Pederson, Fox Associates, and for Sun Hung Kai Properties. Vivian currently serves on the Advisory Council of Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, on the Dean’s Council of the Yale School of Architecture, and as a board member of the Cue Art Foundation. Vivian earned an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA from the Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and a B.Arch. from Cornell University.

Vivian Kuan – Executive Director, Terreform ONE

Colin Selig

Raised in an ecologically conscious household he learned the importance of conserving our planet’s resources from an early age. He studied metal sculpting at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston while earning a degree in Philosophy from Tufts University in 1987.  His education from that time included apprenticeships with a machinist, a race car fabricator, and a public art sculptor. For the past 25 years he has resided and had his studio within an intentional community in the San Francisco Bay Area where a progressive milieu and bucolic environment provide not only the context for my creativity to flourish but a model for a sustainable ecological, economic and social existence.

Colin Selig – Metal Artist

Michelle Stitzlein

Michelle Stitzlein maintains a studio in a former grange hall in the community of Baltimore, Ohio, and is a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design. Her large scale sculptures and installations created with repurposed materials have traveled nationally in solo exhibitions titled Industrial Nature to the Desert Botanical Garden, AZ; Saugatuck Center of the Arts, MI; Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, NY; Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, PA; and Springfield Museum of Art, OH. Her work is represented in collections such as COSI - Center of Science & Industry, OH; Domino’s Pizza, MI; Erie Insurance, PA; and the Dayton Main Library, OH. Stitzlein has been an artist-in-residence at Denali National Park, AK, and the Millay Colony of Arts, NY. Additionally, she has been awarded two Individual Excellence Grants from the Ohio Arts Council as well as the Charley Harper Award from the Environmental Education Council of Ohio.

Michelle Stitzlein – Founder, Art Grange
WATCH NOW

Originally aired June 15th, 2021

Art + Emotion: Wonder, Joy, and Inspiration

CODAworx brings together four creative thought-leaders to greet us at the intersection of art + emotion. They help us explore emotion as the currency of art.  How and why does art impact our emotions, and thus help us to connect with one another?  Ultimately, can art foster empathy and compassion?

Featuring:

Julia Beabout

CEO, Creative Director of Novaby

Julia is CEO and Creative Director of Novaby, an award-winning digital art production studio specializing in Augmented Reality (AR) Placemaking, space activations and tours. She and her team of artists, designers and creative technologists love transforming spaces into Places using AR, the arts, humanities and social science. Their landmark projects can be found in Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Richmond and Europe.

She has 25+ years experience leading clients, teams and organizations through highly technical, creative projects up to $200 million in the virtual and real worlds. As a respected leader in AR Placemaking, she has spoken on the subject at the MIT Media Lab, the U.S. State Department, the Architects Institute of America, the University of Washington, the VRAR Association and the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking. She has a BS in Architectural Engineering from Penn State University and an MA in Asian Studies from the Florida International University (2013). She is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) and LEED Accredited Professional.

Julia Beabout – CEO and Creative Director at Novaby

Guto Requena

Estudio Guto Requena reflects on memory, culture and poetic narratives in different design scales: objects, spaces and cities. At the core of the studio’s projects is an obsession to experiment with digital technologies in an emotional way. Interactive Public Furniture and Urban Art are the studio’s most recent focus.

Guto Requena was born in Sorocaba, Sao Paulo State in 1979. He is an architect with a Master in Architecture & Urban Planning from USP - University of São Paulo. For nine years, he was a researcher at NOMADS.USP – Center for Interactive Living Studies of the University of São Paulo. In 2007 he presented his master’s dissertation, “Hybrid Habitation: Interactivity and Experience in the Cyberculture Era”. 

In 2008, Guto founded Estudio Guto Requena. Since then, he has won several awards, and lectured and exhibited in more than 20 countries worldwide. Between 2012 and 2015, Guto wrote a column about design, architecture and urbanism at Folha de São Paulo, one of the major Brazilian newspapers, and collaborated as well with several magazines. Since 2011, Guto has been creating, screenwriting and hosting TV, web and cinema series. 

Guto Requena – Estudio Guto Requena

Ricardo Rivera

A visual artist, filmmaker and true pioneer of projection mapping, Rivera uses a unique synthesis of projection mapping, lighting, and sound design to create captivating, immersive sensory explorations of perception and imagination. By interpreting and transforming architecture, landscape and objects into active canvases framed by the dark of night, Rivera aims to re-shape the reality of a space.

Ricardo Rivera – Video Artist and Creative Director at Klip Collective

Cheryl Maeder

Cheryl Maeder was born in New Jersey, & in her 20s moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where she studied at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.  After 8 years in Switzerland, she returned to U.S. & opened her studio in San Francisco.  Her photography work was the inspiration for the Dove Campaign on Real Women, Real Beauty transforming the way women are viewed in the global media today.  In 2005, she relocated her studio to the Miami area & immersed herself into fine art photography & filmmaking.  Investigations into video & large-scale installations have expanded her visual world. By immersing herself into new technologies, opportunities for rewarding & creative collaborations have occurred for large-scale installations.  Maeder’s video installations have been exhibited in public art platforms on Climate Change & the Environment in US, South America & Europe.  Her work is in permanent museum, corporate & private collections, exhibited internationally-The Louvre Museum/Paris & Museum of Contemporary Art/Rome. Cheryl was selected by PBS for Project Filmmaker, where her film was televised nationally, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cheryl Maeder – Video Installation Artist
WATCH NOW

Originally aired April 27th, 2021

Art + the Future of Cities

Four visionary professionals in the commissioned art industry provide different perspectives on the role that artists and other creatives can play in helping us to reimagine our cities and communities.  Discussions center around how art can impact our interactions with one another and our physical surroundings in the places where we live and work.

Featuring:

Natasha Smith

Principal Art + Design / Curatorial Leader at UAP

With degrees in Fine Arts with Art History and postgraduate studies in Art Curatorship and Museum Studies, Natasha worked in the commercial and public arts sectors within the Asia Pacific region before joining UAP in 2009.

Highly skilled in curating art for the public realm, Natasha has master-planned art for cities and community spaces across Australia, the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and Europe. Natasha leads the UAP curatorial teams globally, with team members located in Brisbane, Melbourne, Australia, Shanghai and New York.

Natasha has worked with leading curatorial collaborators and artists respectively including Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief Curator, Public Art Fund, New York; Mona Khazindar (previous Director General of L’Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris); Aaron Seeto, Director of Museum MACAN, Jakarta; and artists Jeppe Hein, Arne Quinze, Katharina Grosse, Timo Nasseri, Lindy Lee, Brook Andrew and Ruben Patterson.

Natasha Smith – Principal at UAP

Philippe Demers

Representing a new breed of producers and curators, Philippe Demers, Founding Partner and CEO of MASSIVart, runs an international art consultancy agency in Montreal, Toronto, Mexico City, Shanghai, Paris, Dubai and Los Angeles. Working at the intersection of art and commerce, he collaborates with emerging and established artists, architects, developers, designers and other creatives on architectural design, original works of art, and art-driven cultural programs. His passionate support of innovative art programs have brought MASSIVart a who’s who of high-profile clients.

Philippe Demers – Founding Partner and CEO of MASSIvart

Piper Faust

Piper Faust launched her firm, Piper Faust Public Art, in 2020, the year when the world became more aligned with the need for nature and embraced the potential for art, especially that in the public realm, to transform and engage audiences.

Faust’s focus throughout her two-decade career has been on the dynamic, inspiring role public art can play in fostering a sense of place and activating community. With 15 years as curator, advisor, and project manager for a wide range of public art projects and initiatives — from park spaces and downtown streetscapes, to public libraries and retail clients — her expertise also encompasses advisory services and project management.

Faust’s latest endeavor is Haystack Projects, a charitable organization which aims to activate the Texas countryside through temporary site-specific public art installations by Texas, national, and international artists.

Piper Faust – Public Art Consultant

Peter Fink

Motivated by the belief that art can become a core ingredient in urban design as well as a primary catalyst for change, London-based Peter Fink highlights the role of artistic creativity in cityscapes. His work fuses art with architecture, urbanism, engineering, ecology and environmental design. Fink’s signature style uses color to evoke emotion. The 2017 Colorful City project (Moscow) involved twelve structures evocative of architectural volumes, gateways, streets and public spaces. The installation transformed the soulless space into a world of color and stimulation. Fink has taught architecture, co-written several books on public art, and consulted on the design and management of public spaces

Peter Fink – Artist
WATCH NOW

Originally aired Feb 16th, 2021

Welcome to the Creative Revolution!

Early this year, CODAworx named 25 exemplary leaders of positive change in the field of commissioned art - our “Creative Revolutionaries” - to celebrate, to learn from, to set the bar. Heading into 2021, the task of demonstrating what this role signifies is even more essential, as the stakes are higher. It’s what led us to host this dialogue, to flesh out the lens from which we might view the terms of “creative revolution.”

CODAhorizons kicks off its debut event with a focus on Creative Revolutionaries. Four panelists, representing some of the most fiercely visionary cultural creatives in the commissioned art industry, discuss what it means to be a creative revolutionary during this time when the world is in such great distress.

Panelists:
Carolina Aragon - Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Zolty - Co-Founder and Co-Director, BREAKFAST
Gill Gatfield - Studio Founder, Gatfield Studios
Jamie Perrow - Senior Principal Art and Design, UAP

WATCH NOW

Originally aired Dec 8th, 2020

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