Instructor Spotlight: Johannes DeYoung

Within the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) network at Carnegie Mellon, talented instructors come together from departments across campus to build a collaborative atmosphere and grow interdisciplinary expertise and creative inquiry through making. We asked Associate Professor of Art Johannes DeYoung a few questions about his work, to find out more about the ways he inspires students to innovate beyond the traditional boundaries of their primary majors.

Q: In your own words, give us an overview of the classes you teach for IDeATe.

A: I teach classes in animation and electronic time-based media. My classes combine studio practice, history and theory, with topics ranging from stop-motion and real-time animation, to Expanded Cinema and interactive media.

Q: Students from all disciplines, not just those with an art background, can take your class. How can learning about animation and special effects elevate any academic experience? What lessons might translate to other disciplines?

A: Animation principally concerns relationships between movement, form, and time. As a practice and a field of study, its philosophical and theoretical underpinnings overlap many discourses. This makes relevant and dynamic space for interaction between disciplines. Practical applications of animation touch nearly every aspect of media culture today: diverse material inquiries, public and private spaces, screens large and small, architectural surfaces, robotics and user-interfaces, interactive and immersive media experiences, and cinematic storytelling. While my classes approach animation and time-based media as artistic practice, I’m thrilled when students from other disciplines enroll. Variety adds flavor to the roux and the courses become multi-dimensional. I hope students on all sides learn from each other as much as from the subjects we approach, and I hope the processes of animation cultivate greater sensitivities in the world, or at least in how students relate to what’s around them.

Q: Within IDeATe, students have the chance to work on projects with other students from across campus. What opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration does your class offer? Why is that important?

A: Students in my classes commonly have opportunities to collaborate with peers across campus, realizing ambitious projects at prominent public venues. Some examples include installations or performances at MuseumLab, the Pittsburgh Public Library, and WQED Studios. These collaborations involve ongoing partnerships with other classes and neighboring institutions, and in many cases have helped establish future opportunities for students. Students participating in these intermedia events often go on to enroll in our partnering courses, such as Experimental Sound Synthesis or Inflatables, or use work produced for these events to apply for grants, internships, or graduate studies. I emphasize the uniqueness of these opportunities to make meaningful collaborations, or to realize something beyond the scope of what’s possible within a single class, or sometimes within a single school. Such interdisciplinary collaboration is truly a unique aspect of study at this university, facilitated particularly well by the IDeATe program.

Q: Share a bit about your own work outside the classroom. What projects are you working on? How do they inform your teaching?

A: My work blends traditional practices in animation and material arts with interactive computational techniques, often resulting in improvisational events, performances, and kinetic installations. While there’s an abiding relationship to cinema throughout my practice, I’m particularly drawn to expanded forms of cinematic experience, beyond the singular frame of narrative storytelling. I think this is an especially interesting and increasingly relevant space to investigate at this particular cultural and technological moment. 

The underlying ideas in my practice inform the core philosophical questions that I ask throughout my teaching. Do we live in a world of forms or events? Do we understand our environments, or ourselves, through notions of being or becoming? My courses explore themes of time and process, the apparatus of media and its cultural affects. Through hands-on studio work, theoretical discourse, and critical reflection, I am interested in the studio as an incubator to metabolize and make new sense of art historical forms, culture, electronic media, and computational techniques. Altogether, I’m interested in the expressive potential for animation and electronic time-based media to make discoveries, provoke thoughts, and support unique peculiarities in the world, for my students and for me.

Q: What do you find most meaningful or impactful about teaching with IDeATe?

A: The people of IDeATe are what’s most meaningful to me. IDeATe hosts a diverse assembly of experiences, knowledge, and ideas, embodied by a wonderful bunch of students, faculty, and staff. The staff are extraordinarily generous and supportive of wildly outlandish ideas; they make every effort to welcome students and faculty of all walks, cultivating creative happenings throughout campus. The range of collaborations and public events that I’ve been involved with during my time at this university would not have been possible without the people of IDeATe.

Q: What’s one key takeaway you hope students in your class have learned by the end of the semester?

A: I hope my students realize something extraordinary in themselves that will sustain them as creative individuals throughout their lives.