Courtesy of UWM Peck School of the Arts
On Saturday, April 18, Prospect Avenue’s Kenilworth Building will open its doors to the public for its annual family friendly, interactive show-and-tell event, Kenilworth Open Studios (KOS). From 11 a.m.-2 p.m., all six floors will be teeming with 100-plus of UW-Milwaukee’s best and brightest eager to share the ways they are changing the world with art and technology.
Built by the Ford Motor Company in 1914, the Kenilworth Building passed into Uncle Sam’s hands during World War II to function as a munitions factory. Later, after a stint as General Motors’ Spark Plug Division, the building was acquired by UWM and served primarily as a storage warehouse until being refurbished and repurposed in 2006: half to be used as dorms and half to house faculty and graduate students studying art and design, theater, dance, film and music.
According to Frankie Flood, associate professor and director of the Digital Craft Research Lab, the history of the Kenilworth Building mirrors Milwaukee’s own. “Back in the day when industrial production left, the city had to redefine itself,” explains Flood, “It’s great that the building is once again involved in the production of creative arts and practical devices.” Since its reinvention in 2006, the Kenilworth Building has become an internationally recognized bastion of what Scott Emmons, dean of the Peck School of the Arts, proudly calls “non-traditional artistic problem solving.”
Flood’s own work illustrates the problem-solving potential of the marriage between art and industry. Flood and his Digital Craft Research Lab (DCRL) are spearheading the use of 3D printing to create prostheses for children with congenital hand deformities. This work has yielded affordable adaptive devices for children as distant as Scotland and as close as the Brookfield boy who is now able to realize his dream of learning the trumpet. During the Open Studios, the DCRL will be showcasing its 3D printers, 3D scanners and other “Machines that Make” (the title of Flood’s current course).
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The music department is also assisting in the birth of new music, although it may not always appear that way. “Sometimes it looks like we’re just checking our email on stage,” chuckles Kevin Schlei, who teaches computer music at UWM. In truth, this composer/performer/software developer/founding member of the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra is at the technological and artistic forefront of work being done with synthesized and electronic sound. His TC-11, a multi-touch iPad interface that will be available for experimentation at KOS, responds to contact with bursts of sound and constellations of light at contact points like an iTunes visualizer on acid.
The Film Department is also poised to make a strong showing at KOS. “There’ll be lots of projected light, lots of projected imagery,” assures Carl Bogner, senior lecturer in the Peck School of the Arts and Director of Milwaukee’s LGBT Film/Video Festival. Among the projections will be One Money, a documentary by UWM’s Emir Cakaroz, which was recently screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison. Bogner also promises detailed information for prospective students and activities revealing the secrets of how Foley artists use unusual objects to render sound effects for films.
Each year Kenilworth Open Studios confirms that the building houses more creativity per square foot than any other location in Milwaukee. Family friendly activities including screen-printing (bring articles of clothing!), button making and casting keychains out of pewter offer the opportunity to participate in the creativity, while information for prospective students offers the temptation to make it a way of life.
