Livia Foldes (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based cultural worker exploring the latent space between art, design, technology and activism. Her work asks how and why machines are taught to understand and misunderstand our bodies and the identities they carry and explores the radical potential simmering in the gaps. She writes, holds workshops and events, makes software and websites, and uses emerging tools to make images. As the co-founder and creative director of Decoding Stigma, a collective calling for the inclusion of sex worker voices in all spaces that purport to be designing our future, she brings grassroots research and radical theory to accessible platforms through playful, subversive imagery.
She teaches about AI, typography and extended reality at RISD and holds an MFA in design and technology from Parsons School of Design. Her work is held in Rhizome’s permanent collection, and she has spoken in spaces including Princeton, Gray Area and the Prelinger Library.
Courses
Fall 2024 Courses
GRAPH 3210-04 - DESIGN STUDIO 1
LevelUndergraduate
UnitGraphic Design
Subject Graphic Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
FormatStudio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
GRAPH 3210-04
DESIGN STUDIO 1
LevelUndergraduate
UnitGraphic Design
Subject Graphic Design
PeriodFall 2024
Credits3
FormatStudio
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: T | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Livia FoldesLocation(s): Design Center, Room 206Enrolled / Capacity: 14Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
In the first two semesters of a two-year studio track, students will come into contact with issues and questions that face the contemporary designer. Students will engage with and develop methods to take on these questions: search (formal and intellectual), research, analysis, ideation, and prototyping. Projects will increase in complexity over time, sequenced to evolve from guided inquiry to more open, self-generated methodologies. Some examples of the questions students might work with are: What is graphic? or How are tools shaped by contemporary culture, technology, and convention? or How is a spatial or dimensional experience plotted and communicated? These questions will be accompanied by a mix of precedents, theoretical contexts, readings and presentations, technical and/or formal exercises and working methods.
Please contact the department for permission to register.
Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design
Spring 2025 Courses
CTC 2018-01 - EXTENDED REALITIES AND SHARED FUTURES
In this studio elective, students will explore extended reality (XR) technologies and their implications for our shared spaces and collective futures, from surveillance and smart cities to interfaces and intimacy. Looking far beyond traditional tech canons — which skew heavily institutional, Western, white, and male — we will actively work to broaden and upend existing narratives about XR’s uses, users, and possibilities.This course is ideal for students looking to connect their own research interests with critical approaches to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tools and concepts. Students can expect to leave the course with new technical skills, a body of self-initiated work, and a critical understanding of the promises and perils of extended realities past, present and future. We will focus on beginner-friendly, no- and low-code software, but students who know how to code are welcome to use more advanced techniques in their work. In the class’s first third, workshops and experimental exercises briefly introduce AR/VR tools, photogrammetry, and 3D modeling. Over the rest of the semester, students develop two individual projects. Regular feedback, shared during 1-on-1 meetings and group critiques, will help students define their own process, motivations, and criteria for success. Throughout, in lectures, readings, and discussions, we will analyze diverse work by artists, designers, technologists, and activists who are imagining alternatives to big tech’s constrained visions for our shared futures.
