ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
June 14-28, 2021
Carla Diana
Carla Diana is an artist, designer and educator who explores the impact of future technologies through hands-on experiments in form, code and electronics. She has designed a range of products from robots to connected home appliances, and her work has appeared on the covers of Popular Science, Technology Review and The New York Times Sunday Review.
Carla is the creator and head of the 4D Design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She writes and lectures frequently on the social impact of emerging technology, and created the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince: Journey in 3D Printing. She also cohosts the Robopsych Podcast, a biweekly discussion around design and the psychological impact of human-robot interaction. Her latest book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human, out in March 2021, was published by Harvard Business Review Press.
Carla holds an M.F.A. in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Cooper Union. She was previously awarded residencies at the Museum of Fine Art Houston’s Dora Maar House and the Museum of Art and Design’s Open Studio program.
Artist Statement
As an artist/designer working on creative applications of electronics and robotics, I am interested in understanding the nature of the relationships people build with the products around them. My most recent work explores how objects can be expressive, offering a shorthand abstraction for emotional messages the way color or material choices might be used in more traditional art making practices. During my residency time, I plan to tinker with electronics to reflect on the relationship among humans, nature, and our artifacts, seeking inspiration from the serene environment surrounding Good Hart to think about ways that natural and constructed systems can be in harmony.
Community Event
Post Residency Feedback
It is with the absurdity of human hubris that I believe that the universe scheduled these two weeks to happen at the precise moment when it would be most needed, yet that is precisely how it feels. On the heels of two of the biggest, most psychologically demanding products of my career and smack in the midst of the most profound loss of my personal life, I found Good Hart a place to look inwards and outwards, a reminder of the vast openness before me, and a turning point for the start of the next chapter.