Interdisciplinary Approach

artsCatalyst Grants 2022-23

During the 2022-23 academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 58 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. Activities included field trips to Bay Area arts venues, guest speakers (in-person and virtual), and workshops with guest artists. The grants…

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artsCatalyst Grants 2021-22

This past academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 63 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. Activities included a mix of in-person, hybrid, and virtual experiences. 2021-22 artsCatalyst Grant Recipients Absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution in 17th- and 18th-Century…

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artsCatalyst Grants 2020-21

This past academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 58 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. All of the activities took place in the virtual environment. 2020-21 artsCatalyst Grant Recipients An Artist’s Life: Diverse Voices and Changing Contexts…

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artsCatalyst Grants 2019-20

This past academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 33 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. Activities included field trips to Bay Area cultural organizations, workshops with visiting artists, and attending performances. 2019-20 artsCatalyst Grant Recipients Why is Climate Change…

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Composer explores legacy of computer pioneer Ada Lovelace and using AI for musical composition

An exploration of artificial intelligence and musical composition may seem like a modern question, but Dr. Patricia Alessandrini found the beginnings of the idea in the 19th century. “Ada Lovelace is credited with the first published imaginings of AI-assisted composition,” Alessandrini said. She quoted Lovelace: “Numerous fundamental relations of music can be expressed by those…

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Stanford University announces collaboration with Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs designed to heighten creative visibility in underrepresented sectors

Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Fellow Stephanie Dinkins will further develop the “mind” of a learning artificial intelligence entity while on campus.

Stanford’s new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), an interdisciplinary, global hub for artificial intelligence thinkers, learners, researchers, developers, builders and users, co-hosts its first HAI artist resident. The residency is a collaboration with Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab Programs (NFLP) and co-hosts on campus are the Office of the Vice President for the Arts…

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Students minoring in art practice produce a major work of art at the new Stanford Hospital

Two Stanford undergraduates helped paint a mural based on the drawings of the artist Sol LeWitt. The process provided the students with insight into how the visual environment can influence health.

Students Noah DeWald and Savannah Mohacsi were not exactly sure what their summer internship at Stanford Health Care would entail. Apprenticing with master painters to bring to life a conceptual work of art by an iconic 20th-century American artist that will be seen by thousands was beyond their imagination, as was the profound realization that…

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Stanford Live presents a genre-bending musical performance exploring beauty and aesthetics in Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography

"Triptych (Eyes of One on Another)" Oct. 3, 2019, in Memorial Auditorium

Marking 30 years since the death of groundbreaking photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) explores the origins and impact of Mapplethorpe’s controversial photography. This staged musical work produced by ArKtype / Thomas O. Kriegsmann combines orchestra, vocal ensembles, theater, poetry, and photography to re-examine notions of obscenity, race, and aesthetics that Mapplethorpe himself challenged…

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artsCatalyst Grants 2018-19

This past academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 27 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. Activities included field trips to Bay Area cultural organizations, workshops with visiting artists, and attending performances. 2018-19 artsCatalyst Grant Recipients Interpreting Art (ITALIC 92), Karla…

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Perspectives on “Hamilton”

Last year Allyson Hobbs taught a one-unit interdisciplinary undergraduate course “Hamilton: An American Musical” that explored why Alexander Hamilton and the contemporary musical based on his life resonate so profoundly with the American public.

Hamilton is one the most popular and most celebrated musicals in American history. It has essentially redefined the American musical by drawing on the language and rhythms of hip-hop and R & B, genres that are underrepresented in the musical theater tradition. Last year Allyson Hobbs, associate professor of history in the School of the…

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The first two VAF artists are Turkish ud player and composer Necati Çelik and Indian photographer Gauri Gill

New Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning (VAF) brings international artists into Stanford classrooms across campus.

The Office of the Vice President for the Arts at Stanford University announces the first two artists in the new Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning (VAF). The program brings international artists into Stanford classrooms in order to provide a stimulus in artistic thinking and aesthetic perspectives to disciplines across the university.…

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Science meets art at Stanford

Science and art are often regarded as distinct – either a person can’t be serious about both or an interest in one must relate somehow to work in the other. In reality, many scientists participate in and produce art at all levels and in every medium. Here are just a few of these people –…

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Stanford polymath blazes a new trail with his design manifesto

Written as a photo comic book, Ge Wang’s publication charts new ethical and aesthetic territory.

Stanford scholar Ge Wang has chosen an unconventional medium for a manifesto about why technology and design needs to reflect human values: a comic book. “It’s nerdy. It’s philosophical. It’s a core dump of my brain in comic form,” said Wang, an associate professor of music in the School of Humanities and Science, who has…

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Literature professor collaborates with students and artist on poetry project

Amir Eshel teaches that art is a way to react to life’s most challenging circumstances.

When poet and Stanford Professor Amir Eshel saw a series of drawings in the studio of German artist Gerhard Richter, he had an experience many would describe as spiritual. Eshel was in Cologne, Germany to interview Richter for his forthcoming book Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019). He wanted to learn more about the artist’s four-part…

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Stanford course teaches students the science of art materials

Science informs art and vice versa in this class that aims to encourage students to look at art – and materials found elsewhere – with fresh eyes.

If you walked the first floor of the Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University in early September, you may have peered in on a lab full of students, decked out in lab coats, gloves, face masks and goggles. This would be no unusual sight in a chemistry lab, save for what the students…

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