Qatar Week 2025: Pecha Kucha

Presentation by Roberto Ventura

In the Artificial Intelligence (AI) deluge on higher education in 2023-24, IDES needed to understand three things: how its students were engaging with AI; how to establish an internal pedagogical ethos for AI; and how to begin to grasp AI’s potential.

The department explored these ideas through a week-long Common Project (CP). IDES surveyed its students (and faculty) on attitudes regarding AI before and after they participated in the CP. Students developed found-material sketch models and photographed them before elaborating the images using Midjourney and/or Vizcom. Participants transformed these AI generated images into three-dimensional analog collages.

Student work displayed vibrant explorations. Faculty expected student enthusiasm for using AI in design work, but few students saw AI as critical in becoming excellent designers.

Students felt using AI in their studies was acceptable, but they used it less frequently over time, citing intellectual property (IP) concerns, unfamiliarity and lack of control. Although many saw AI as a tool to augment creativity, prioritizing human agency remained paramount.

Concern over IP theft suggests that future use might employ closed-loop or bare-bones generators based on private data sets. The lack of control might actually be celebrated as a way to introduce uncertainty as a disruptive agent in an integrated design process.

“DUBIOUS” by Simone Carena

To be “dubious” suggests a reaction to polarized opinions.
DUB, as in dub music, dubbing movies, interpretation.
IO (or BIO), Italian of “I”, as myself, my life and my personal perception.
US, as in a group and the effect on others.

If there are two sides of the coin, the DUBIOUS MÖBIUS is a twisted coin that connects both sides. The slideshow will DUB and mix Marley & Korean Uprisings, Lamborghinis, Egypt, Qatar, a Panda, and 30,000 handcrafted Roman coins.

Presentation by Michael Royce

In this presentation, I will discuss my painting practice as one shaped predominantly by improvisation. Each painting unfolds slowly over the course of months or years, enabling the gradual revelation of subject matter through cycles of destruction that test the endurance of the image. This process draws on intuitive responses, informed in part by Jungian psychoanalytic thought and experimental fiction.

I will discuss how the paintings draw from a wide range of sources, including art history, popular culture, fragments of daily experience, and imagery drawn from the Catholic pictorial tradition. Within this vocabulary, recurring animal figures frequently appear in distorted or transformed forms, functioning as proxies for human subjects. Although tension arises from collaging disparate sources, the paintings attempt to retain an internal cohesion and logic.

The presentation will consider my three most recent solo exhibitions, tracing connections among them while highlighting shifts in form, process, and imagery.

Presentation by Nathan Ross Davis

Water With Water is an experimental publishing platform founded in Doha that explores the possibilities of print and design beyond commercial constraints. Through zines, artist books, apparel, and collaborative projects, the studio engages with cultural remixing, speculative typography, and the aesthetics of everyday life in the Gulf. Works circulate internationally, appearing in collections such as the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while maintaining a strong local grounding in collaboration, teaching, and community. This presentation traces how Water With Water has grown as both a research practice and a creative network, using publishing as a tool for experimentation, exchange, and cultural dialogue.

Presentation by Luiza Dale 

In this presentation, Luiza will speak about her work over the past year—her first as full-time tenure-track faculty at VCUarts. She will share design commissions encompassing publications and graphic identities as well as interdisciplinary work that explores playwriting and performance. The talk will be split into three parts: graphic design, theater, and finally teaching, which will incorporate the first two. The start will focus on booklets and exhibition graphics for The Institute for Studies of Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York. Luiza will speak about working in the US as a naturalized American designer originally from Brazil, drawing a parallel with the Brazilian designer Mary Vieira who she’s been researching since 2023. This section will also include a quick look into commissions Luiza tackles as part of The Aliens, the studio she co-leads alongside Tuan Quoc Pham and Laura Tolomelli. Theater will cover two independent courses Luiza taught over the summer including The Play Class, a DIY devised theater project in collaboration with VCU 2019 alum Cassie Works. To close, Luiza will link graphic design and theater to talk about how the combination makes its way into the classroom as a pedagogical strategy that helps students learn with their bodies, feel connected to each other, and take risks with their work.

“Impact of Color Temperature on Cognitive Processes for Autistic Subject” by Cherif M. Amor, Ph.D.

This line of inquiry is based on a collaborative pilot exploratory study that sits at the intersection of design, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology.

This funded pilot study aims to investigate the behavioral and neural brainwave responses of three autistic participants when exposed to four color themes: three chromatic lighting conditions—Warm White (WW, 2700 CCT), Cool White (CW, 4100 CCT), and Daylight (DX, 5500 CCT)—and one achromatic theme (black, white, and gray). The study incorporates three cognitive test applications—numerical reasoning, reading comprehension, and problem-solving—with a focus on color-related effects. Particular attention is given to the activation of the ventral occipital cortex, associated with color perception, and the prefrontal cortex, associated with higher cognitive processes.

Participants undergo neural and behavioral experiments including 12 conditions: 4 CCT’s (three *chromatic colors and one **achromatic) and three test cognitive applications, using an immersive virtual environment (HTC VIVE Focus V3) and the EMOTIV EPOC+ (14-channel wireless EEG headset), whereby neural brain waves are recorded.

This research aims to provide behavioral and neural benchmark data relative to lighting\color temperature that facilitates or inhibits cognitive skills for autistic subjects.

Presentation by Kate Sicchio, Ph.D.

Bridging choreography, visual notation, and computational thinking, my current work investigates how marks—whether hand-drawn, digitally generated, or algorithmically produced—can function as instructions, scores, and provocations for both human and non-human performers. These marks are not static representations but dynamic systems that guide movement, shape interaction, and foster collaboration across disciplines. By treating drawing as a choreographic tool and code as a performative gesture, I explore how embodied knowledge and computational logic can coexist and co-create. This approach opens up new possibilities for how we understand authorship, agency, and the aesthetics of instruction—whether in a dancer’s improvisation, a robot’s response, or a generative visual system.