MICA presents a public lecture by Zachary Lieberman, a New York-based artist, design technologist and educator dedicated to exploring new modes of expression and play, who was named the 2018 Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence.

As a designer and technologist, Lieberman takes an interdisciplinary approach to art and computation, focusing on how technology can be used to explore and extend what it means to be human. In collaboration with an international team of artists and programmers, he helped create EyeWriter, a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system that allows paralyzed ALS patients to draw using only their eyes.

Lieberman is also co-founder of the School for Poetic Computation (SPC), an artist-run hybrid school founded in 2013, to explore the intersection of code, design, hardware and theory. The school approaches writing code like creative writing, “focusing on the mechanics of programming, the demystification of tools and hacking the conventions of art-making with computation,” according to SPC’s website.

Named after the late MICA alumnus, faculty member and longtime trustee William Steinmetz (1927 – 2016), the Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence program was established in 2009 to enhance MICA’s design culture by bringing outstanding practitioners to campus to share their valuable experiences and perspectives with students, faculty and the public. The residency was created thanks to an endowment fund established by Steinmetz’s spouse, Betty Cooke ‘46 as well as gifts from others in honor of him.

Past Steinmetz Residency recipients include Richard Niessen, Chip Kidd, Karin Fong, Cameron Sinclair and, most recently, Conflict Kitchen co-founders Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski.