Taubman College The 2021 Detroit Month of Design, organized by Design Core Detroit, features exhibitions by two groups of Taubman College faculty.
Now in its 11th year, Detroit Month of Design is a citywide celebration of creativity that gathers designers and the greater community to celebrate Detroit’s role as a national and global design capital. Every September, partners across Detroit — from emerging studios to established companies and educational institutions — come together to show off their latest works and ideas. These cross-disciplinary events take place in all corners of the city, highlighting the talent and innovation that makes Detroit a UNESCO City of Design.
Taubman College participants in the 2021 Detroit Month of Design are:
Laida Aguire, Laura Peterson, and De Peter Yi
How to Build* Our Own Living Structures
How to Build* Our Own Living Structures is a celebration and deployment of structures, tools and building methods that deeply considers connections between human and non-human beings, empowering Detroiters to imagine and build their own living structures across the city. Sited at 9 Lots in Detroit’s Chadsey Condon neighborhood, this outdoor exhibition features installations by eight designers and architects committed to re-thinking scales of interconnectedness, community, and kinship from the ground up. Those designers include 1+1+Architects (Laura Peterson and De Peter Yi, both lecturers in architecture), stock-a-studio (Laida Aguirre, assistant professor of architecture), and Cadaster (Gabriel Cuellar, Taubman College’s 2018–2019 Oberdick Fellow).
Learn more about How to Build* Our Own Living Structures.
The exhibition will take place on September 25, 2021 (register).
Bryan Boyer and Anthony Vanky
Face:Detector
Face:Detector, hosted at Milk & Froth, is an interactive installation that invites you to explore the computation, hidden assumptions, statistical calculations, and potential biases of artificial intelligence by, well, making you smile. Happy? Surprised? Angry? This experimental installation using facial recognition* technology and algorithms to measure your affect and respond to your emotions in real time. Based on your mood, various interactions will take place while you enjoy your scoop of ice cream. Yet, behind the sweet outer facade of this installation, we engage with the moral questions of the use of this type of data. We reveal the different ways facial recognition technology can be used to measure and profile individuals and the ambiguities involved in their use. 
Through this experiment, Bryan Boyer and Anthony Vanky hope to engage visitors in a conversation about the opportunities, biases, and ethical questions around the public use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition. Boyer is the director of Taubman College’s Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology and an assistant professor of practice in architecture. Vanky is an assistant professor of urban and regional planning.
Learn more about Face:Detector.
Learn more about Detroit Month of Design.
