Jan 27, 2023 Digital Matters Spring 2023, Graduate Fellow Announcement

The beginning of the new semester has brought some new faces within the Digital Matters Lab pursuing compelling research. We welcome two new Graduate Student Fellows: Natalie Slater, an MA candidate from the College of Environmental Humanities, and Laurie Larson, an M.Arch candidate in the College of Architecture and Planning. We are thrilled to have both and look forward to seeing where their research takes them. In their own words both Natalie and Laurie present a summary of the basis exploration below:

During my Digital Matters Graduate Residency, I will create an accessible, web-based archive of the Embodied Ecologies project, a collaborative group for artists working at the thematic intersection of disability and the environment. The archive will consist of images, videos, and descriptions of the artwork created during the yearlong group project. The archive will also feature excerpts from video interviews I conducted with the artists. This project uses digital tools including accessible web design to respond to the exclusion of disabled populations from the archive. The project also speaks to the social and political importance of creating solidarity between the environmental justice and disability justice movements.

My project is focused on the creation of a symbolic artwork through which I am testing a process of designing and fabricating complex biophilic objects. The artwork is intended to be a visual melange and a type of assemblage. Taking the extreme bodies of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem as the subject, this work hopes to express the resilience and beauty of site specific adaptation. The digital and material process which brings forth the artwork will expand into a study of modular architectural units such as evaporative cooling units or facade systems.