RISD studio introduces new ways of thinking

Artists and scientists are breaking educational ground by uniting their respective disciplines through Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

During the 2014 spring semester at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a new course, Marine Duck Studio: The Art and Science of Ecocentric Practices, turned students loose from multiple fields of study and the confines of a traditional classroom.

Open to students from RISD and Brown University, both EPSCoR partner institutions, the studio stems from the studio philosophy that a collaborative learning environment that pairs artists and designers with scientists opens the door to multiple perspectives and leads to new ways of thinking and problem-solving.

“Part of it is the practice of art for the generation of knowledge,” explained Brian House, a RISD adjunct professor and digital media artist. “We bring an artistic or design mindset to this practice of marine duck research. What can we uncover? What new light, new perspective, can we bring? We want to make sure it’s not just art communicating what scientists are doing.”

House co-taught the studio with Bryan Quinn, an adjunct professor in environmental consulting and design. Since the RISD undergraduate students typically do not have substantial research experience, House and Quinn collaborated with Associate Professor Jameson Chace, Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Salve Regina University, and Professor Peter Paton, Wildlife Ecology, University of Rhode Island. The scientists joined the studio at various points throughout the semester, both in the classroom or out in the field.

Counting along the cliff walk

At the start of the semester, Chace, speaking to students at the RISD Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, explained, “We’re using birds as a tool to look at how landscape changes or environmental changes are taking place. It’s the classic canary in mine – what’s going on in the environment? We collect information, analyze data, and see if patterns emerge.”

Chace described the varieties of marine ducks that migrate through the Aquidneck Island area, nesting along the Newport Cliff Walk, where he, his students and volunteers conduct annual bird counts and map breeding. The crew gets trained in October and starts in November, going out at low tide, broken into specific sections of the cliff walk, from Easton’s Beach to the end of the walk, and recording birds seen within a quarter mile of the walk.

“We identify by species, age, sex when possible, where foraging, and what they’re actually doing when they’re counted,” Chace said.

A lot of the birds arrive in December and head home by March, he added: “There’s a lot of variation; the birds are using the whole East Coast. Why they’re using Newport, it’s hard to tell. Probably the amount of food.”

Chace also explained the different habits. Some birds are territorial. The loons hang out in big rafts during the day until it’s time to forage, and they spread out. When they’re done, they group back together.

Scientists also find variation in seaduck abundance throughout the winter at different sections of the cliff walk. For example, bufflehead flocks tend to form in the coves at Easton’s Beach, Ruggles Beach, and Bailey’s Beach, while
common eider are most abundant along the rock outcrops at low tide. Chace explained, what looks like a uniform, rocky shore environment to us is quite distinctly different to them.

“The grebes always seem to be in pairs, but there are fewer of them,” he noted. “They also tend to avoid the loons. The loons are pretty evenly distributed.”

Along with counting the birds, Chace said he also conducts prey base sampling — counting crabs in lobster traps, setting fish traps — to gain an idea of abundance levels.

Experience and exploration

RISD senior Kendall Gremillion, 25, from Houston, Texas, arrived at the marine duck studio from her industrial design major.

“I’m very interested in science, and especially biology, so I figured this would be a great non-major studio to take,” she said. “And, I love ducks.”

For her final project, Gremillion designed a poster that featured a three-dimensional model of an interactive exhibit that might be found at a children’s museum. Geared toward youngsters ages 5-9, the exhibit teaches how ducks use three methods to reach specific prey.

Diving ducks use their beaks to reach mussels close to the surface. They engage their wings to reach fish lower down. And, the feet kick in when going after plant matter at the deepest point of the intertidal zone.

Gremillion designed three bowls of differing depths to represent the three depths of water, with rubber gloves to match the varying lengths, allowing children to physically experience and learn about the ducks’ eating methods.

Not one of the studio projects resembled any other.

Lydia Chang, an architecture major who graduated this spring, mapped the influx of sewer pollution into Providence Harbor with a wood and acrylic overlay to symbolize building locations. Syringes, placed upside down in the wood buildings, were filled with different colors of acrylic paint to depict the different toxins that flow into the water.

By pressing down on the syringes, Chang injected the chemicals into the water, creating a colorful, yet toxic mix.

Ye Wang just finished his first year in the Digital+Media graduate program. He took imagery from the federal government duck stamp collection, going back to 1934 and up to the present, and designed a database that used an algorithm to create duck stamp pixels for a collage that depicted a scene for the 1980s video game Duck Hunt.

But more than merely a picture, Wang explained, the larger than life-sized collage of duck stamp art raised the issue of wetlands conservation and explored the intertwined relationships between the government, hunters and conservationists. Of each dollar generated by the sale of Federal Duck Stamps, 98 cents go directly to purchase or lease wetland habitat for protection in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

Prithvi Dev, a junior in Industrial Design, used his project to compare the vision systems of humans and ducks, both in terms of the different spectrums of light that they can see and the different ways in which the respective brains process the information.

The power of perspective

At the start of the semester, House said he wasn’t sure what to expect. The hope was that everyone — undergraduates, graduate students and faculty — would learn from each other.

With the studio concluded and projects presented, House said he was pleased with the variety of approaches and the ability of students to take conversations in the course back to their home disciplines.

“Ostensibly, it was all about ducks,” said House, “but they allowed us to bring in such a diverse set of ideas, to talk about offshore wind farms and systems modeling, choreography, and early childhood education, that I think everyone, including myself, will be chewing on things for awhile to come.”

Although a single semester was not enough to draw any firm conclusions, House said he found the encounter between disciplines, between species, and between artists and scientists a thoroughly worthwhile experience. And, he added, he hoped there would be more opportunities for such experimental courses.

Paton joined the studio for the project presentation, and said the RISD students tackled complex material and did an excellent job communicating their understanding of seaduck ecology to the general public by using art.

He added that he was used to science students collecting and summarizing data to help biologists tease apart patterns of avian ecology: “The RISD students take an entirely different approach and create stunning visual images to help people understand seaduck ecology — I was impressed.”

Paton said his favorite exhibit was an auditory project, where the student used calls of different ducks to express the annual phenology, or timing, of ducks moving through Rhode Island.  The most abundant species had the loudest calls, and the sequences of calls mirrored the migration phenology of waterfowl in southern New England.

He also was struck by the project of a student who created a rope with feathers and took her art into the field near the Cliff Walk, with the rope pointing toward the North.

“The exhibit was meant to make people aware of seaducks using the area and get them to think about their migration ecology,” Paton said. “I was impressed by the fact that this student was not aware of seaducks before this class, and the class made her realize that there were large numbers of seaducks using coastal Rhode Island that she never knew existed.”

Story by Amy Dunkle