News, Events, and Opportunities
Organized by the Center for Complexity and RISD ISE, this panel discussed new directions in social practice through community-engaged art and design.
In collaboration with RISD faculty member Marisa Mazria Katz (Digital + Media), Center for Complexity welcomes Steve Lambert for a lecture and conversation about arts activism titled The Reality Is That You Haven’t Made New Work in 7 Years.
In collaboration with RISD faculty member Tom Weis (Industrial Design), Center for Complexity welcomes Leo Blanken for a lecture and conversation about global cultural flows titled How Reggae Shaped the Modern World: Systems of Culture, Technology, and Political Economy.
In collaboration with RISD faculty members Andrea Johnson (Landscape Architecture) and Laura Briggs (Architecture), Center for Complexity welcomes Samantha MacBride for a lecture and conversation about waste in creative practice, titled Discards and Material Practice: Individual and Systemic Perspectives on Wastes in Worlds of Arts, Crafts, and Design.
Center for Complexity (CfC) held its 4th annual symposium at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) September 21-23, 2022. Hundreds of participants including students, faculty, staff and members of the public joined in workshops, conversations, making, and gallery talks over the three days. Engagements with scholars, artists, and peers explored the phenomenon of collapse in order to collectively confront the precarity of natural and human-made systems to consider how might we collapse the spaces that divide us to identify the insights, mindsets, and practices needed to move beyond collapse and achieve a sustainable, equitable and just future.
We are pleased to announce plans for our fourth annual symposium. Once again live on RISD’s campus after two years of COVID-necessitated virtual events, the 2022 symposium will focus on collapse in relation to the dynamic and static forces of systems change. Speakers, panel discussions and group inquiry will advance a collective understanding of the meaning and consequences of collapse. From September 21–23 10:00am–5:00pm. Free and open to the public.
CfC seeks 5-6 scholars/authors and 5-6 artists, designers, and/or makers from the RISD faculty and staff to explore collapse from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of media, producing either a 2,500 to 3,000 word essay, an original artwork, a prototype, a set of architectural drawings or plans, a film, or a creative proposition of any kind. Deadline: June 20, 2022
Read about some of our current efforts on opioids, addiction, equity and systemic change.
RISD’s Center for Complexity uses the studio process of inquiry, iteration and innovation to envision novel solutions to the nationwide problem.
Read through the brilliant ideas and questions discussed at our 2020 Complexity Symposium – Generation C.
Please join us from June 14-16, 2021, for this year's Complexity Symposium titled 'Carry Forward'.
We are hiring 2 positions for Spring 2021. Open to all graduate students. Apply by Monday, March 1, 2021.
RISD’s Center for Complexity launches Horizon 2045, a 25-year project aimed at eliminating the threat of nuclear war.
The Center for Complexity led a six-day strategic design studio undertaken for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH). The studio – alongside practitioners working in the field – explored what a “Center for Arts and Health” should be for communities in Rhode Island and beyond.
Researchers at RISD's Center for Complexity share insights from a symposium focused on the far-reaching impacts of COVID-19.
A five-day virtual symposium to share ideas about the critical work of charting pathways forward
Judah Armani shares his insights and practices from 15 years of work in design for social change. He presents his experience applying co-creation and service design, to support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the UK improve the quality of their lives.
We send our kids to school to prepare them for the future. But for which future should schools prepare?
It can be hard for artists, designers and scientists to work together. Experts in their own domains, they often discover that the same words mean very different things in new contexts. Yet, sometimes this discovery fails to be recognized at all, resulting in circular arguments, confusion, and missed opportunities for shared discovery. With that in mind, this talk will present our experience and current lines of inquiry about working with evidence. What counts as evidence? What kind of evidence challenges evidence?
In collaboration with PopTech, the Center for Complexity (CfC) hosted a two day convening in March 2019 to discuss the future of food
“A Practice of Uncertainty: How Design Embraces Contingency” Lecture by: Justin W. Cook at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities
Marking the completion of N Square Innovation Network cohort one and the launch of cohort two, N Square and RISD co-hosted the intensive program with longtime partners PopTech and Nucleus.
Focusing on the role of design in today’s society, Dan Hill shares a range of methods for bringing possible futures into reality, tools for decision-making, and the structuring of teams to work on complex challenges.
