smudge studio inc. is a non-profit design studio located in New York. We make designs that give us a context for bringing our passions for art making together with our passions for teaching and learning- in response to emerging media as they evolve right under our feet.
Our primary project is Extreme Media Studies. Extreme Media Studies investigates media phenomena so new, so volatile, that no one can tell what their impacts will be. Landscapes of daily life the size of tectonic plates are shifting right under our feet. Our familiar ways of study no longer work for today’s emerging media phenomena that are extremely hybrid, fluid, and unfamiliar. Traditional modes of scholarship hit the wall when data is perpetually incomplete and experts are so few. What’s needed is a new mix of learning. The time is at hand for shaking up assumptions about who knows what, about how knowledge is gained, and what learning is for. This web site will help us to generate a new, collective intelligence about media – both extreme and normalized. What we make of extreme media studies has potential to tip the field of media studies – and all of us as individuals – into a whole new way of thinking about and making media.
Visit our site: extrememediastudies.org to learn more.smudge studio inc. is a collaboration between artist/educator Elizabeth Ellsworth and artist/designer Jamie Kruse.
Elizabeth Ellsworth
"Our collaboration taps into one of my deepest passions: designing new experiences for learning- non-compliant learning. We take our inspiration from new ways of knowing that are now emerging out of global flows of information and cultural sensibilities. Our big hope for this project is that the media we create both respond to and contribute to new ways of knowing our selves, each other, and the world."
image: Don Hamerman for The New School
Jamie Kruse
"When design and content become responsive towards one another, imagining and inviting new forms of exploration, play, and invention-- powerful experiences result."
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image: elizabeth ellsworth
