Faculty, Students Show Their Colors at Plano Artfest

The second annual Plano Artfest hosted dozens of local craftspeople, exhibits and activities, including a number of faculty and students from the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications.

Several UT Dallas professors and their students were invited to downtown Plano to showcase creative projects based on classroom work and individual study.

Among them were Andrew Scott, associate professor, and the students from his 3D image mapping class. Together they presented the Technicolor Experience inside a darkened room. Visitors admired projected artwork and graphics designed by students specifically for Artfest. Additionally, a camera was set up to allow guests to project themselves within the art and teach them how the process works.

In the back of the technicolor exhibit graduate students showcased a hypnotic light show played among a wall of glass cubes, all synchronized to a music playlist. Several of the students were on hand to talk with visitors about their creative and technical process.

Also participating was xtine Burrough, associate professor, with the LabSynthE exhibit. Along with graduate student Ritwik Kaikini and doctoral candidate Letícia Ferreira, Burrough modified a Bar Aid machine to generate poetry. Visitors were prompted to read the custom poems into a microphone. No longer than two sentences, this One Breath Poem exhibit aimed to show what all is possible in the space of a single breath.

LabSynthE specializes in developing “public participatory projects,” such as previous installations for Holocaust Remembrance and One Hundred Names during HIV/AIDS Awareness Week.

The students of Roxanne Minnish’s Design II class took to the runway Saturday for an outdoor fashion showcase of their already popular cardboard wearables. Constructed primarily — if not completely — from recycled cardboard, the student-designed costumes ran the gamut from medieval warriors to a cascade of roses to Spongebob Squarepants. Immediately afterwards, the attending students paraded along the street so that all in attendance could admire their craftwork.

Also, ATEC’s Public Interactives Research Lab set up inside the ArtCentre of Plano to showcase interactive works produced by artists and students, some of which related to the Aids Memorial Quilt and other previous projects. The Magic Story Table, also inside the ArtCentre, relayed stories specific to Plano locations.

–Chase Carter