University of California – Santa Cruz
Open Lab Collaborative Research
Mission:
“OpenLab is a Research Center at the University of California Santa Cruz founded by ProfessorsJennifer Parker and Enrico Rameriz-Ruiz. The Center targets complex education issues of national significance regarding the ability of art and science researchers to collaborate on research endeavors. The goal of the OpenLab is to help change the current status by providing shared research facilities and create a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry.
OpenLab has been pursuing the physical development of new collaborative laboratories as spaces to foster this research and establish networking system for faculty and students to create projects. Laboratories and studios in both the arts and the sciences are accessible to users in the OpenLab Network. Within this immersive environment, we conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between science, education, and the arts while sharing expertise in collaborative research methodologies.
OpenLab facilitates innovative, interdisciplinary and collaborative research with science, art, community, design, and engineering at UCSC.
Research questions include:
(1) How can we strengthen or create new methodologies that truly engage art and science thinking?
(2) Is an interdisciplinary laboratory space for cross-disciplinary and collaborative research more engaging and productive for students and faculty without these resources?”
Facilities:
The casting lab, located behind the Theater Arts Center, near the Shakespeare Santa Cruz glen, is both a foundry and mold-making space. This shop supports sand and investment casting, plaster, wax, rubber, and silicone casting, as well as metal and plastic filing, sanding, and polishing.
- The Super Computer Lab for Undergraduates (SLUG)
- Metal Fabrication Shop
- Digital Imaging
- Photo Studio
- Print Studio
- Woodshop
Summer Programs:
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Nathan Ober is a DANM graduate student developing creative research projects for the Art + Astrophysics Lab in the Digital Arts Research Center this summer at UCSC.
The lab will work closely with OpenLab founding Professors Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and Jennifer Parker with support from the UCSC NSF REU- Lamat Summer Research Program, OpenLab, and the SLUG: Supercomputer lab for Undergrduates. Nathaniel Ober is a new media artist whose work crosses disciplines from installation and performance to video and sound. His interdisciplinary works examine concepts of human perception and natural phenomena, sound as vibration, time and space, and the finite versus the infinite. Working with multiple facets of technology, he creates immersive installations that intend to pervade the viewers senses.
Research Projects and Affiliations:
- UCSC DANM Mechatronics Research Group with OpenLab
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Mechatronics is the functional integration of mechanical, electronic, and information technologies. In Digital Arts and New Media Program at UCSC this framework may be employed for the development and production of physical, systems-based artwork that incorporates elements of robotics, motion control, software engineering, and hardware design. DANM Mechatronics research involves the use of a variety of media including video, performance, and sculpture, for the creation of complex, kinetic, audio-visual systems for the exploration of temporality, materiality, experience, perception at the root of art + science research.
The following works have been created in collaboration with Professor Jennifer Parker Co-founder and Director of OpenLab and Digital Arts and New Media graduate students and undergraduates from across campus.
- Examples of projects include:
- “What do sound waves look like?”
- BioSensing Garden
- Oceanic Scales
- And others
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- OPENLAB AFFILIATED RESEARCH PROJECTS
- Art and Science Mobile Makerspace
- The ArtCrawler has been developed from a re-purposed military vehicle. It has been equipped with a wide range of fabrication tools and lab tools used for both science and digital media art. New inquires of research will be forged by housing the tools of both trades in one mobile studio-lab.
- Art + Astrophysics Lab
- Coactive Systems Lab
- Art + Biosensors + Audiences
- BLUE TRAIL – Imagination + Innovation for Ocean Sustainability
- Mass Transfer in Binary Stars and more!
- Art and Science Mobile Makerspace
Apps:
- Infant-Family program App
- Let’s Talk App for the NICU created in collaboration with the THRIVE Infant-Family Program and OpenLab Artists: Jack O’Neill and Amy Boewer of GirlBoy Media support from Associate Professor Jennifer Parker is now available on iTunes as a working user prototype listed on the developers site. Thrive Infant Family Program has been awarded grants from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation through the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association for our Let’s Talk Smart Phone App for parents while their infants are in the NICU. THRIVE has an affiliation agreement with the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
- Kepler Explorer App
- Kepler Explorer is an exciting new application for the iPad and iPhone, allowing anyone to gain a better understanding of the faraway planetary systems found by NASA’s Kepler Mission.This application was a collaboration of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Digital Arts and New Media Program, OpenLab Research, game developer John Peters, and astrophysicist Jonathan Fortney.