Grace Converse
Adjunct Instructor of Art History
Purchase College, SUNY
St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn

In the years leading up to the 1968 exhibition PLASTIC as Plastic at the Museum ofContemporary Crafts, curator Paul J. Smith and the MCC staff asked: “Can industry andthe arts join forces?” In the context of PLASTIC as Plastic, the question refers to Smith’s efforts to find a corporate partner from the plastics industry, but asking “can?” invokes variations on the question: “How and why can industry and the arts join forces?” And going deeper still, “Why would industry and the arts join forces, and what could be gained?”

These questions were asked of the many instances when major chemical companies “joined forces” with the arts in the 1960s and early 1970s: numerous partnerships were forged between designers, artist, curators, and architects and specific companies including Eastman Chemical Products Inc., Hastings Plastics Company, Hooker Chemical Company, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Inc., Philip Morris and its subsidiaries, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, and Rohm and Haas Company. Researching these collaborations has illuminated a historic rise in support for the arts from the plastics industry. A brief discussion of these examples will illustrate how, despite clear benefits to industry and the arts collaborating, the definition of “benefit” was subjective and open to dispute. Companies were resistant to give support because
exhibitions and projects could not guarantee a financial return, while critics were apt to spurn exhibitions and works of art that too readily announced their affiliations with industry and corporations. Artists, architects, and designers chose plastic for reasons
specific to their work, and rarely were these creators’ positions in perfect accord with critical opinion or a company’s public image. The quality for which plastic is named—its mutability—was echoed in the manifold conflicting views on its use in art and design.

Grace Moon
Adjunct Professor
Graphic Design, Dept of Art
Queens College, CUNY

As many artists and designers are moved to take up social practice in their works, considering social, environmental and economic inequalities, have we paused to consider the very materials used to express our values? Our printing ink, paints, and dyes are products produced and sourced through a vast international supply chain controlled by the colorant industry with raw materials often originating in conflict zones. Many of these raw materials are considered by the U.S. State Department, “conflict minerals” (Section 1502 Dodd-Frank Act).

The colorant industry, run by multinational corporations in the developed world, profit from unregulated mining practices in developing countries. Much like “blood diamonds”, “conflict minerals” originate in destabilized war zones, in which corrupt local governments and/or armed militias control and profit form the mineral trade, exacting human rights abuses and perpetuating extreme poverty. Nowhere is this scenario starker than in Africa, host to the largest mineral industry in the world, yet home to ten of the poorest countries whose extreme poverty index runs between 57% – 88%.

While Artist colors make up a tiny fraction of the overall colorant market, these very colors are procured from the same chemical corporations that supply the automotive, plastics, coatings, pharmaceutical, and textiles industries. The following is a very brief description of a few minerals used in color making and where they are mined. Cobalt, used to make blue and violet colors, and Tin, used as a mordant in dyes are mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rutile the ore, which makes Titanium Dioxide is mined in Sierra Leone. Copper mined in the Congo and Zambia is the chemical base for phthalocyanine colors. Zinc mined in Namibia is used to make white pigment and its by-product, cadmium, is the basis for reds and yellows.

While I focus here on color, “conflict minerals” are used in digital devices, and almost everything in our fabricated industrial world. As social practice becomes more important for artists and designers who are moving toward environmental, social and communal concerns, the key ingredients of our very materials must also be take into consideration.

• That there is more to learning how to teach interactive design than simply mastering technology.
• Various terminology from different disciplines, with a cross-comparison to interactive design processes.
• How to use this new terminology to enhance their interactive design point of view.
• How to learn more about this topic (as there’s much more to explore).