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FRC funding is available to all full-time faculty members within the College of Fine Arts. Once a year, the FRC committee evaluates applications and can distribute up to $40,000 in awards.

Selection Criteria

Proposals are competitively evaluated upon:

• The vision, originality, quality and potential impact of the proposed project
• The professional, artistic and/or technical capabilities of the applicant(s)
• The feasibility of the project
• The potential impact of our funding and services on the project and for the artist(s) or researcher(s)
• The extent to which the proposed work is unable to secure funding from traditional sources (e.g., private foundations, government agencies, corporations or private individuals), as argued by the applicant(s). In this case the applicant(s) are asked to explain the attempts made to seek funding from other sources and why there is difficulty in securing funding for the proposed project.

Your application is your chance to tell us about your proposed project, why it's interesting and how you plan to use the grant. 

Your finished application will include:

• A full proposal, following the criteria provided (provide a proposal that is written in clear layman's language (i.e., for someone with no knowledge of your project and area of academic pursuit)
• A detailed budget for the project
• Pertinent supporting materials, including prior work samples, preliminary research, etc.

before the March 22, 2023 deadline. If you have any questions about your application, please reach out to Jenn Joy Wilson, Associate Dean for Research.

Applicants can request FRC support to obtain research materials, hire student assistants or outside contractors, purchase equipment, rent time in a recording studio, etc., as required to create the work. Collaborative projects are welcome, and partnerships across disciplines are encouraged. Projects are to be primarily faculty research projects. This grant is NOT intended to support:

• Student research that is being overseen by faculty
• Initiatives that are primarily pedagogical in nature. Research projects that have a pedagogical element are welcome, but if your project is primarily aimed at course development or classroom innovation, then the Wimmer Faculty Fellows Grant and other resources aimed at teaching would be more appropriate funding sources
• Symposia, conference or lecture series development
• Conference fees or travel expenses, except where such travel is an integral part of making and/or realizing a project supported by the fund
• Computer hardware or equipment that can be obtained through other funding venues such as departmental funds, startup accounts or external sources of funding. If you are requesting funding for computer hardware or equipment, you must clearly explain the need and use related to your proposal and what becomes of the computer hardware/equipment after your project has concluded.

Grants are given as cash awards for materials and supplies related to your project only, and will not affect the financial aid of students employed on the project. The IP rights of finished work will remain with the scholar(s) or artist(s).

The award is a one-year award: the expected period of performance is one year. Awards are cost-reimbursable. Funds not allocated toward completion of the project at the end of the period of performance will be returned to the FRC. If the project is not complete at the end of the period of performance, the awardee may apply for an extension of up to one year. After that additional year, the funds revert to the FRC.

Recipients of FRC grants from previous award cycles are eligible to apply for new or repeat funding, on the strict condition that all reporting requirements for prior support have been satisfactorily met.

Reporting Requirements

Final reports are due within three months of project completion and should include the following:

• A narrative summarizing the project's process and outcome
• Documentation of the supported project, which could include any combination of photographs, video and/or audio recordings. Please note that videos should be delivered as high-resolution movie files (.mov, .avi, .mp4, etc.) and not as links to streaming services such as YouTube or Vimeo.
• A financial report itemizing all income and expenses for the project

Wherever the works are exhibited, it is to be noted that "The work was supported in part by funding from the College of Fine Arts Fund for Research and Creativity" as part of the work's provenance.

A request for a public presentation or exhibition of your work during the academic year may be made upon its completion. It is the intention for these outcomes to live on a CFA website to celebrate the ongoing work of faculty recipients of the grant.

FRC standing committee members

• Chair: Associate Dean for Research, Jenn Joy Wilson
• Associate Head of Architecture, Mary-Lou Arscott*
• Director, Undergraduate Program, School of Design, Wayne Chung
• Associate Head of Drama, Richard Block*
• Associate Head of Music, Ken Keeling*
• Director of Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Nica Ross

Appointed faculty member from each school:

• Architecture, Joshua Bard (2023)
• Art, Lyndon Barrois (2021, 2023)
• Design, Stacie Rohrbach (2023)
• Drama, Wendy Arons (2023)
• Music, Frederic Chiu (2021, 2023)

Past committee members:

• Architecture
  • Daragh Byrne (2020, 2021)
  • Gerard Damiani (2018, 2019)
  • Jeremy Ficca* (2016, 2017)
• Art
  • Clayton Merrell* Faculty Administrative Rep (2016, 2017, 2018)
  • Paolo Pedercini (2018)
  • Suzie Silver* (2016, 2017)
  • Jongwoo Jeremy Kim (2019, 2020)
• Design
  • Stuart Candy (2020, 2021)
  • Eric Anderson (founding chair, 2016–2020)*
  • Peter Scupelli* (2016, 2017)
  • Kyuha Shim (2018, 2019)
• Drama
  • Lisa Velten Smith (2020, 2021)
  • Rob Thomson* (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)
  • Jennifer Aylmer (2019, 2020)
• Music, Daniel Teadt* (2016, 2017, 2018)

*Inaugural committee members

For questions, contact Jenn Joy Wilson: jjwilson@andrew.cmu.edu

Daniel Cardoso Llach
School of Architecture
Molecular Tectonics: A Computational Investigation into Materials and Space

This investigation leverages mathematical research into crystals and molecular bonds, and recent advances in computational design and manufacturing, to develop new types of material assembly and spatial organization. An installation inspired by the Wearie-Phelan structure —a mathematical construct that approximates the geometry of foam bubbles— is proposed. The installation comprises eight digitally fabricated polyhedra assembled without nails or glue. Evoking a crystalline structure, it illustrates how molecular tectonics may yield an unlimited range of ordered three-dimensional structures.

Johannes DeYoung
School of Art
The Van Dyke Dick Show

The Van Dyke Dick Show is a neo-noir animated short film that reflects upon the absurdities, solipsisms, and gritty underbellies of contemporary civic life amidst a period of exaggerated cultural anomie. Created in collaboration with a neural network that’s trained on language from film noir and beat poetry — and a stylized visual synthesis of German Expressionism, Cubism, and Dada collage — this film explores resonances between contemporary civic discords and the historical threads that bind them to the past.

Clayton Merrell
School of Art
Altered Landscapes

I am currently developing a body of work that visualizes aspects of our dire global ecological situation by transforming images of classical landscapes. I have begun to expand on this series by rapidly prototyping ideas through a process of painting over my own etchings, then using those images as starting points for large paintings. An upcoming residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice will facilitate the production of higher-quality prints, amplifying the visual power and sense of effacement and loss that I am trying to convey through the work.

Paolo Pedercini
School of Art
Solarpunk Game

Untitled Solarpunk Game is a narrative-driven videogame about the last day in the life of a baby boomer. The game is set in the year 2040, and presents a reasonably utopian future of Pittsburgh in which techno-political innovation is tied to an increasing democratic participation and environmental remediation. The project draws from utopian literary traditions of the past as well as the contemporary trends of accelerationism and solarpunk.

Suzie Silver
School of Art
Better Out Than In

Better Out than In (BOTI) is a queer folk tale video about a lovely ingénue whose thunderous flatulence proves to be a mighty super-power. The story challenges expectations of femme/female behavior while celebrating the taboo but universal love for flatulence and fart humor. BOTI is the third video in the queer folk tale series, “Fairy Fantastic!” (FF!) which reimagines the folk-past of traditional tales to include queer, trans, and gender-fluid characters. Through these stories we seek to convene a mixed-ages, queer audience to recognize with joy the primordial and perennial queer body.

Jon Rubin
School of Art
The Department of Water

The Department of Water is an installation that occurs in two sites simultaneously: an apartment/artspace in Tehran, Iran, and an exact replica of that apartment in the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh. This project creates a collaborative space between the U.S. and Iran that ingeniously works around geographic distance, economic sanctions, and political discord. For 9 months, artists Jon Rubin (U.S.) and Sohrab Kashani (Iran) will operate both versions of the same space as if they were one, producing exhibitions where every object, video, and event made for one space is duplicated for the other.

Andrew Smith
School of Drama
The Women in Theatre Festival

The Women in Theatre Festival seeks to broaden the opportunities for women in the entertainment industry by producing new work by women with more than 50% female representation of all artists involved. The 5-week Women in Theatre Festival will be curated by Project Y Theatre Company at the ART/NY Theaters in New York City in June 2019, and will prominently feature the world premiere production of Three Musketeers 1941, by Megan Rivas, a modern adaptation that places the action into the hands of all- female crew of musketeers.

Susan Tsu
School of Drama
Innovative Costume of the 21st Century: The Next Generation

As Chief Curator for INNOVATIVE COSTUME -- premiering at Moscow’s State Historical Museum, I have engaged 112 National curators, created the submission website, and from 1323 submissions by 938 designers, chose 300 works from 250 designers, prepared panel discussions, and curated a parade of costumes to appear in Red Square. 50 nations of the world are represented. We hope to document the artistic vocabulary of the next generation of designers, generating a platform by which dialogue on the issues of the day may be explored. This project, generously funded by an FRC in 2017, is ongoing.

Reza Vali
School of Music
Four Persian Mystic Poems
Four Persian Mystic Poems is a chamber music composition project. Reza Vali will be composing two versions a chamber work titled "Four Persian Mystic Poems" for the New York based ensemble Alba Consort, and the Pittsburgh based contemporary music ensemble NAT 28.

Alexa Woloshyn
School of Music
Indigenous Musicians in Pittsburgh: Thunder Nation and its Creative Network 

“Indigenous Musicians in Pittsburgh” documents, analyzes, and contextualizes the sound worlds of powwow drum group Thunder Nation and its creative network based in and around Pittsburgh. The project documents the oral histories of these musicians and, with the help of experts and archival sources, pairs them with the larger histories of Indigenous presence and migration. The project will produce archival audio-video recordings and interviews as well as a studio album and a book chapter. As a result, the project will challenge the prevailing erasure of Indigenous peoples in our region.

Imin Yeh
School of Art
I'm in Ya

I’M IN YA is a 150 page artist publication. It features color pencil drawings of 75 facebook profile pictures and messages, documenting the 10 days when I received 75 facebook messages from complete strangers who decided to make fun of my name, Imin Yeh.

Kim Beck, School of Art
Title: Invasive Species

Super Invaders is a new collaboration with Nicole Heller, an ecologist and curator of the Anthropocene at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I have long used weeds and landscape in my drawings, prints and installations; with Dr. Heller, the museum's botanical, invertebrate and vertebrate collections will form the basis of new work on invasive species. Together, we will lead a series of experimental tours in the landscape as well as create a portfolio of etchings and letterpress prints. Our project considers how we coexist with other creatures and plants and the ways we change each other. With Nicole Heller, museum fellow; curator of the Anthropocene at Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Dana Cupkova and Daragh Byrne, School of Architecture
Title: Towards Sentient Matter: Architecture as a Mood Ring

This research explores interactions between material form and its embedded electromechanical controls, while using human emotiveness as an activation of change in material and spatial character. Contemporary advances in technology shape interactions between organic and inorganic systems and their mutual formation. Both physical and human matter are open to design. Based on last year's work, we propose to build a full-scale functioning prototype using thermal, tactile and thermochromic responses guided by embedded distributed control systems that change in response to human physiology and thought.

James Duesing, School of Art
Title: Snob Bog

Snob Bog is a series of interconnected site-specific animations. It will interpret ideas put forward in William A Gamson's "Simulated Societies" to create pointedly humorous, animated vignettes that reveal social and political hierarchies in contemporary life. Visual recognition software will be used to identify common locations in grocery stores that will trigger animated events for the viewer using a cell phone or other mobile device. With Jessica Hodgins, Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë School of Computer Science

Stefan Gruber, School of Architecture
Title: Web Platform for an Atlas of Commoning

"An Atlas of Commoning" is a traveling exhibition co-curated by Stefan Gruber and ARCH+ magazine for ifa. The requested funding is for developing a web platform that will make the Atlas of case studies featured in the exhibition accessible to a global audience. The platform is conceived as growing and open knowledge archive, producing an invaluable documentation of local grassroots projects from all over the world. It will serve as a site for international exchange and reciprocal knowledge production, in short, a space of commoning. With Anh-Linh Ngo, Editor-in-Chief,  ARCH+ magazine; and Sabina Klemm, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)

Rob Handel, School of Drama
Title: Looking at You

LOOKING AT YOU is an immersive techno-noir music theater piece confronting the issue of privacy in a digitized age and the question of how loss of privacy could transform us as a global culture. Born of a collaboration between faculty from the Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë School of Drama and the Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, it tells a story of government surveillance and whistleblowing while using digital tools created to data-mine the information of spectators during the show and feed it back to them in real time. With Alessandro Acquisti, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy

Stephen Neely, School of Music
Title: The Haptic Enviro-Sensing Metronome: An Exploration into the Felt Experience

The Haptic Enviro-Sensing Metronome (HESM) is an exploration into the felt experience and the 'nudgability' of the participating actor. Using touch over sound or sight, we intend to lead the user through an event with a pulse that will ebb and flow in reaction to the environment by using environmental sensing, machine learning and refined human-computer interaction. The HESM is an investigation into the power of touch, the human desire for harmony with our surroundings, and the challenge to machine learning to anticipate and foster this ideal. With Gus Xia, Ph.D., Co-PI, Computer Science NYU Shanghai; Andrea Weinstein, Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh; Curtis Boirum, Robotics Institute Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë; Nicholas Pourazima, master's student in Music Technology

Richard Pell, School of Art
Title: The Mermaid Genome Project

Mermaids have historically represented the edge of what is knowable. They appear in times of uncertainty when our capacity to act on the world outpaces our understanding of it, whether we sail too far out to sea, or choose to believe beyond the bounds of evidence. I will use contemporary genomic techniques to create a plausible, though ultimately flawed, complete DNA sequence of a mermaid: a hallucination designed to be viewed with the tools of 21st century science. It will engage viewers in a conversation about how we evaluate truth. With: Benjamin Vernot, Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Fred Gould, professor of Agriculture, North Carolina State University, Center for Genomics and Society

Jesse Stiles, School of Music
Tittle: The Bear with a Boy's Shadow: Experimental Narratives in Spatial Cinema

The Poyais Group is creating an immersive cinemagraphic narrative that tells the story of a town in an unknown time and place. In this town, the citizenry is terrorized by a bear. Someone notices that the bear has the shadow of a boy. Then they must track down which boy it is and reason with him. This story will be experienced by audiences in both real and virtual spaces using the technology of spatial cinema. It will be presented in galleries using multi-channel video projection systems and in virtual spaces using Virtual Reality (VR) systems. With Olivia Robinson, Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë (IDeATe adjunct instructor); Jesse Ball, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Jon Rubin, School of Art
Title: The Edge of the Field (Carnegie International)

This collaborative art project will occur during the upcoming 57th edition of the Carnegie International. We will use our invitation to this highly selective exhibition as a loophole to invert the usual system of selection and inclusion. Throughout the exhibition we will utilize the museum as a studio for the manifestation and distribution of approximately 10,000 artworks that have been recorded to be rejected from prior Carnegie International exhibitions. The project imagines and enacts the invisible mountain of labor that lies below the tip what enters through the gates of high culture. With Lenka Clayton, artist

Soft reconstruction proposes a series of software reconstructions of some of the earliest algorithms used in design, including the "Coons Patch" and Bezier's B-Spline curves. Beyond visual representations, these interactive objects will offer access to forgotten sensual, material and technical aspects of early computational design techniques and interfaces. The interactive pieces will be displayed in the exhibition "Designing the Computational Image / Imagining Computational Design" in the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon in the fall of 2017.

Dana Cupkova and Daragh Byrne
Title: Mind-Controlling Sentience: Non-deformable Responsiveness to Human Physiology

This research explores interactions between material form and its embedded electromechanical controls, while using human physiology and emotiveness as an activation of change in material character. Contemporary advances in technology shape interactions between organic and inorganic systems and their mutual formation. Both physical and human matter are open to design. We will build series of complex architectural forms — using thermal, tactile and thermochromic responses guided by embedded distributed control system — that change their effect and microclimate in response to human thought.

Dan Lockton
Title:

What does energy sound like? Electric Acoustic proposes a mobile, interactive, ambient installation that sonifies, in real time, electricity use of appliances in the built environment, and the current electricity generation mix based on location. Initial investigations of people's imaginaries around energy, fossil fuels and renewables, and how these might translate into sound, will feed into the development of the exhibit, which aims to explore the potential of increasing public understanding of energy and its impacts through turning 'invisible' everyday phenomena into something audible.

Kyuha Shim and Eddy Man Kim
Title: Dimentional Typography in Virtual Reality

There is a significant amount of research from creative disciplines on Virtual Reality (VR), yet there has not been any practice-based research that focuses on finding a methodology for communication design that is applicable to the subject environment. The project explores immersive typography and aims to contribute to scholarship about the implications of virtual reality technologies on design for computing platforms. The outcomes include literature review, interviews and an exhibition of work, and a comprehensive publication online and in print.

Lawrence Shea
Title: Ghosts in the Machine

Ghosts in the Machine is a project exploring how rapidly developing phone-based technologies such as augmented reality and location based interactivity can be used to create unique, historically rich and artistically engaging experiences at multiple sites across the city. The project's hypothesis is that these tools allow higher levels of complexity in storytelling, ideally merging content-rich information with a place to create a new spatialized narrative form. This project earnestly strives to turn mere "information" back into meaning through our innate wayfinding and placemaking capacities.

Susan Tsu
Title: Innovative Costume: The Next Generation ,An Exhibition and Chronicle of Costume D

I am chief international curator for a major international exhibition of student and emerging designers' work entitled Innovative Costume: The Next Generation, working with Igor Roussanoff; artistic director; and the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum in Moscow, Russia. The exhibition will premiere in Moscow in June 2019, and tour the world. It will be the first exhibition of its kind chronicling and documenting the work of the world's most creative young designers. A website and comprehensive exhibition catalogue will be developed to share and preserve the work as a record and teaching tool.

Reza Vali
Title: The Isfahân Project

The Isfahân Project is a CD production project of the recordings of recent chamber works for string quartet by Reza Vali. The compositions on the CD will be recorded in Pittsburgh by Carpe Diem String Quartet.

Joshua Bard and Richard Tursky
Title: Through Thick and Thin: Recovering the Craft of Architectural Plaster

Through Thick and Thin proposes the design, fabrication and installation of a robotically plastered exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art's Hall of Architecture, pending final CMoA approval. The Carnegie Museum curates one of the country's few remaining collections of cast plaster antiquities and provides a unique venue to exhibit contemporary uses of robotic technology to augment the nearly forgotten craft of applied architectural plaster.

Manson Caden
Title: Opacity

Opacity is a research project and live mediated performance developed around the conceptual framework of the "interface," specifically the threat of increasing occultation of the interface and the intermediation of algorithms between the real and the experienced. Opacity investigates topics of representation, liberty, control, surveillance, liveness, networks and political resistance.

Ali Momeni
Title: Transforming Mobile Phones into Personal Electroacoustic Musical Instruments

This proposal intends to create four exemplar functional prototypes of musical instruments that combine an acoustically functional sculptural object, with real-time interactive software running on a mobile phone. Each instrument is based on a distinct mode of gestural interaction: tapping, rubbing, plucking and blowing. All instruments will be low cost, reproducible by anyone with access to a maker space, and built around the pervasive iOS and Android mobile computing platforms. These prototypes will allow Momeni to secure further funding through crowdsourcing and the Technology Transfer Office.

Sarah Pickett
Title: The Roots of Music and Sound in Shakespeare: An Interactive Installation

This project will involve research into the early use of sound and music in Shakespeare's plays during the Elizabethan era. The project will also include a performance/installation component utilizing the First Folio text of Hamlet that will allow the user to interact with the text and sound in a live setting. I hope to bring sound to life in a way that ignites the audience’s imagination and gives a sense of what the experience might have been. In addition to highlighting the historical importance of sound, the project will also show how this translates to contemporary productions.

Reza Vali
Title: The Arghonoon Project

The main objective of the Arghonoon Project is to develop a computer-based keyboard instrument with the following capabilities:

• Able to produce the sounds of Persian traditional instruments.
• Able to produce the sounds of Persian folk instruments.
• Precisely employs the Pythagorean tuning system of Persian and Middle Eastern music, with support for alternate tuning systems.
• Provide the ability to use existing sound libraries of Western European instruments tuned to Persian/Middle Eastern tuning systems with support for alternate tuning systems.

Angela Washko
Title:

The Game: The Game will be an independent video game that dives deeper into the breadth of different seduction communities, looking specifically at the five most well-known pick-up artists to create characters that will attempt to seduce the player using their signature techniques (taken directly from their instructional books). Players will explore the complexity of the construction of social behaviors around dating as well as the experience of being a woman navigating this complicated terrain. The game will be installed in an immersive environment for my solo exhibition at TRANSFER in NYC.