Shona Kitchen

Professor
Image
a photo portrait of RISD faculty member Shona Kitchen
MA, Royal College of Art

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art (London) with an MFA in Architecture in 1997, internationally recognized artist, designer and educator Shona Kitchen has divided her time between creative practice and teaching. Her work spans public art, conceptual narrative proposals, book works, exhibitions and interactive sculpture/installation. Her practice is frequently collaborative, research-based and site-specific.

Using digital, analog, and biological elements, Kitchen creates work that allows physical and virtual, natural and artificial, and real and imagined to playfully and poetically co-exist. She explores the psychological, social and environmental consequences of technological advancement and failure. Her projects often function as imagined propositions, alternate or future histories that reveal and subvert the unseen technological forces in the world around us and expose our shifting role as creators, consumers and unwitting victims of technology.

Kitchen frequently collaborates with scientists, engineers, writers and software developers. Whether creating a surveillance system for a school of fish or a tidal monitoring sign for a creek-bed, she uses her work to provocatively critique our relationship with the typically siloed natural and technological worlds and to speculate about what could be.

Kitchen has taught at Stanford’s Institute for Creativity and the Arts, California College of the Arts, Art Center College of Design and the Royal College of Art and has lectured at MIT Media Lab and Leonardo International Society for Art, Sciences and Technology, among others. She was a research fellow at the Royal College of Art in the Computer Related Design Studio from 1997–2002. From 1997–2004 she had a successful interaction design practice as part of Kitchen Rogers Design, London. She has worked with clients such as Comme des Garçons, BMW, Science Museum (London) and Samsung. In 2013 she founded the Technological Landscapes Research Group at RISD.

In 2015, Kitchen was one of apexart’s Unsolicited Proposal Winners. Additional honors include an American for the Arts, Public Art Network in recognition of Dreaming FIDS at San Jose Airport, a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Award for The Minotaur maze and a D&AD Silver Award.

Kitchen’s work has been exhibited internationally at such venues as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Kelvingrove Museum, Vitra Museum, Montalvo Arts Center, Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Zero1 San Jose and the International Symposium on Electronic Art. She has completed a number of public art projects at such venues as the San Jose Mineta Airport; Kielder Castle, Northumberland; the Science Museum, London and Deptford Creek, London.

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

DM 7108-01 - DM GRADUATE STUDIO/SEMINAR 3
Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Fall 2023
Credits 9
Format Combination
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

DM 7108-01

DM GRADUATE STUDIO/SEMINAR 3

Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Fall 2023
Credits 9
Format Combination
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: TH | 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM Instructor(s): Shona Kitchen Location(s): Center for Integrative Technologies, Room 402 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

The course supports the exploration of theoretical, social, material, technical, and contextual research and concerns in new media arts practice during the final semester of the DM MFA program. It is a combined studio and seminar forum for Digital + Media second-year students. (Students conceptualize and discuss their work and their ongoing practice and thesis process). The course is a mix of individual meetings, group discussions and group critiques. Guest lecturers and visiting critics will also become involved with this class in terms of critical/research aspects. Each student will practice articulating their art process and work towards their thesis and will contribute to the dialogue concerning the research and work of their classmates.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00 - $300.00

Open to Digital + Media Students only.
Registration by the Digital + Media Department; this course is not available via web registration. Please contact the department for permission to register.


Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

DM 7152-01 - RESEARCH STUDIO: TECHLANDS
Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

DM 7152-01

RESEARCH STUDIO: TECHLANDS

Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: W | 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM Instructor(s): Felipe Leonardo Santos Shibuya, Shona Kitchen Location(s): Center for Integrative Technologies, Room 402 Enrolled / Capacity: 10 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Participants in the Technological Landscapes research group are passionate but critical observers of today's living environment in relation to ubiquitous, integrated, and emerging technologies. It is important that we draw inspiration not necessarily just from art, design, but from real-world events influenced or caused by technological advancement and/or failure. This research group will foster a dynamic, and highly collaborative environment through discussions, readings and excursions. Participants are expected to drive and determine the focus and interests of the group through conversations and consensus. In turn this will feed each participant's artistic sensibility and will form the conceptual foundations necessary for building a strong critical art work. Participants will explore research methodologies and various forms of research as material, social, and symbolic creative practice. The projects, individual or collaborative, should be thought of on a scale of landscape physical or virtual. One is encouraged to exploit the imaginative, speculate possible near futures and position them where the poetic crosses between science fiction and the built reality. Each year the group works together to locate and secure an exhibition space and or develop a site-specific work within the site/topic of study for that year. Each year the site/topic of focus changes, please contact faculty for current information.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00 - $200.00

Please contact the instructor for permission to register; registration is not available in Workday. 
Preference is given to Graduate Students and upper level undergraduates from the Divisions of Architecture + Design and Fine Arts.


Elective

Spring 2024 Courses

DM 7199-01 - THESIS PROJECT
Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Spring 2024
Credits 12
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

DM 7199-01

THESIS PROJECT

Level Graduate
Unit Digital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Spring 2024
Credits 12
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: TH | 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Instructor(s): Shona Kitchen, Stephen Cooke Location(s): Center for Integrative Technologies, Room 402 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This course supports the practical, conceptual, theoretical and historical development of the M.F.A. thesis (exhibition and written document). Students are required to work independently and in individual consultation with their thesis committee to develop and finalize the thesis exhibition and written document for presentation at the end of the year. The exhibition and written thesis should articulate one's personal studio art / design practice in an historically and theoretically informed context. Formal group critiques are required at the midterm and end of the semester. A major final critique with visiting critics is held in the context of the final MFA Exhibition. The accompanying written thesis is expected to be of publishable quality and is also placed within the public sphere through electronic publication and filing with the RISD Library. Final submissions for this course include the presentation of a final exhibition, submission of the final written thesis, and timely completion of work for preliminary deadlines throughout the semester (draft theses, exhibition plans and press materials). Please see Digital + Media Thesis Timeline for a clear sequence of required deadlines. Please refer to the DM Thesis Guidelines and Policies for clarification of the goals and expectations of the RISD DM MFA.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.


Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

Image
a photo portrait of RISD faculty member Shona Kitchen
MA, Royal College of Art