Research Experiences for Undergraduates - Funded by the National Science Foundation
I was a co-principal investigator (Co-PI) for a collaborative grant. I, along with nine other faculty members from various departments at the University of Texas at Arlington, were awarded a three-year research experience for undergraduates (REU) totaling $402,181.26 from the National Science Foundation. This maker-centered REU served as a site for students from diverse and interdisciplinary backgrounds to participate in developing smart material toolkits, AI-assisted and sensor-driven tools, and smart creative environments.
The general overview of the REU grant focused on democratizing access to advanced materials and fabrication techniques across a diverse range of underdeveloped materials within digital fabrication, including clay, silicone, glass, biomaterials, and textiles. Participants benefited from professional development in design thinking, additive and subtractive fabrication, and human subjects research. The interdisciplinary research experience and training helped REU participants, including myself, develop a high-demand research skill set that is transferrable to various science and technology disciplines. Each research project was situated within a community of practice and designed to encourage REU participants to engage with stakeholders and peer researchers, including external mentors from internationally recognized human-computer interaction programs.
My project recognized that glassworking presents a unique opportunity to computationally document user interactions with material and is well-suited for implementing sensing techniques. Molten glass relies heavily on external forces that are in constant conversation with the maker’s manipulations (e.g., gravity, centripetal motion, and the centrifugal motion of a turning rod). These actions inherently present a choreographed dance of complex, nuanced motions that are individualized to the specific maker and vary drastically as delineated by skill or artistic process. I presented the candidates with a series of questions such as this one: How might we understand patterns and motifs in these actions and support skill transfer?
The Maker - REU - Developing Creative Technologies
Presenter with Dr. Cesar Torres at The Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at Urban Glass, New York, NY, November 2-4, 2023
Link to the hybrid atelier
While a core advantage of technology is automation and abstraction, it has also contributed to removing practitioners from directly interacting with materials. These material-based interactions are central to how experiential knowledge develops and are core contributors of creative cognition. In this talk, we explore how creative technologies could instead enhance our relationship with physical materials. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this presentation shares the positive results of collaborative art and technology Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU). In the course of making smart punty rods and designing artificial intelligence (AI) models to support expert and amateur glassblowers, we’ll show how these research activities also established a graduate pathway to STEAM fields, developed positive coping mechanisms around open-ended research questions, reinforced maker competencies through experiential learning; and improved feelings of inclusion within maker-research communities.
Justin Ginsberg was born and raised in Dallas Texas, before traveling nationally and internationally learning from practicing artists. Since 2013, he has been the head of the glass area and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and is now the Assistant Chair of the Art and Art History Department. His personal creative practice and research focus on the systems and structures we use to understand the world around us. He questions the known and orderliness, while also bringing context to the unknown and chaotic. He considers process and action as he explores the perceived boundaries of materials and the presumed nature of things. Recently, he has focused his practice on collaborative work with a focus on the politics of attention, as well as the implications of new technologies. He is currently represented by the Traver Gallery in Seattle, Washington.
Cesar Torres is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research and teaching explore the intersection of digital fabrication and craft practices to examine the dialectical relationship between the digital and physical, the material and immaterial, theory and practice, the academic space and the community space, and the professional and the amateur. As a design technologist, he synthesizes new media and craft theory into the design of software and hardware systems and tangible user interfaces. He has received multiple best paper awards at top-tier venues within Human-Computer Interaction and is the recipient of the NSF CRII and REU Site grants.