Beginning in 1980 with her chart-topping single O Superman to the 2010 release of her critically lauded album Homeland, Anderson has had a prolific and renowned recording career and has toured internationally with shows ranging from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. She has composed music for films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme; dance pieces by Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley and Bill T. Jones; and a theatrical production by Robert LePage.

Anderson’s visual work has been presented in major museums throughout the United States and Europe and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2002, she was appointed the first artist-in-residence for NASA, an experience that culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance, The End of the Moon. On May 11, the day after SVA’s graduation ceremony, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Anderson will open at a gallery space at Greenwich and Leroy streets in New York City; the show is being curated by Vito Schnabel.

Laurie Anderson will join a distinguished group of leaders in the arts, humanities and public service who have spoken at the College’s commencement exercises in past years, including playwrights Edward Albee and Tony Kushner, Governor Mario Cuomo and New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd, Nicholas Kristof and Frank Rich.

The SVA commencement ceremony is a ticketed event and open to students and invited guests only; a live webcast will be streamed on May 10 beginning at 1pm at http://www.sva.edu/student-life/commencement.

Image: © Laurie Anderson.

Often characterized as “midcareer” awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are unrestricted grants awarded to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. The program is designed to provide Fellows with time and resource to devote to completing their creative and scholarly projects. Fellowships are awarded through two annual competitions: one open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada, and the other to citizens and permanent residents of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Foundation receives nearly 4,000 applications each year, from which approximately 220 Fellowships are awarded.

To learn more about the Guggenheim Fellowship, visit its website.

Image: Photo of Lauren Redniss from her website.

The Alumni Society currently administers the Alumni Scholarship Fund, whose programs include Alumni Scholarship Awards, the Housing Scholarship Award, the Merit Award and more than a dozen named scholarship funds. All awards from the Scholarship Fund are supported by generous donations from SVA alumni, friends, family, and other supporters, and one hundred percent of the monies donated to the Society are used to fund student awards.

For the full list of 2012 recipients, visit the Alumni Society.

Image: Nina Frenkel, Fear meets Brave Chicken, 18″ x 24″, Silkscreen Print, 2012.

Motorcity tells the tale of Abraham Kane, overlord of the futuristic, high-tech city of Detroit Deluxe and the Burner gang who fight against his plans to destroy and re-develop it. “Kane hates cars and everything they represent,” Prynoski told GeekDad. “They’ve been forgotten over the years, and they’re illegal, but because this is set in Detroit, there are old car factories and car parts, and [the Burners] can build these cars and fight. It’s kind of like the new Battlestar Galactica … where they pulled all the ships’ [computers] offline. Because cars are essentially mechanical, Kane doesn’t have the ability to tap into them.”

To read the entire post, visit GeekDad.

The Webby Awards presents two honors in each category—The Webby Award and The Webby People’s Voice Award—annually. Members of the Academy select the nominees for both awards, and also select the winners of the Webby Awards. The People’s Voice Award is chosen by popular online vote, with hundreds of thousands of people from across the world making their choice for the site they believe is most innovative on the Web.

SVA was the first college anywhere to launch a gallery on Behance as an exclusive online network where its 30,000 alumni, 1,100 faculty members, and 4,100 degree-seeking students could share work, collaborate and build their own communities. The portfolios are also featured in the larger Behance Network, which attracts over 10 million visitors per month. In addition, Behance offers users services to further enhance their productivity and creative potential including personal portfolio sites, a curated site of artwork, and a blog to jump start the creative process and professional development.

To support SVA Portfolios and cast your vote visit the Webby Awards online. Voting closes Thursday, April 26.

The SVA alumni included in the 10-year retrospective are Michael Bilsborough (MFA 2006 Illustration as Visual Essay), Steven Bindernagel (MFA 2006 Fine Arts), Matthew Craven (MFA 2010 Fine Arts), Brandon Davey (MFA 2009 Fine Arts), Amy Elkins (BFA 2007 Photography), Daniel John Gadd (BFA 2008 Fine Arts), Yuhi Hasegawa (MFA 2009 Fine Arts), Avery McCarthy (BFA 2008 Photography), Cesar Chavez Lechowick (MFA 2007 Photography, Video and Related Media), Dan Perrone (BFA 2005 Photography), Amy Stein (MFA 2006 Photography, Video and Related Media) and Ivar Theorin (BFA 2009 Fine Arts).

Current students participating in the SVA booth this year are Ranya Asmar (BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department), Victoria Batey (MFA Fine Arts Department), Andrew Brischler (MFA Fine Arts Department), Amanda Brown (BFA Fine Arts Department), Travis Brown (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department), Steven Chapman (MFA Fine Arts Department), Azhar Chougle (BFA Photography Department), Jeremy August Haik (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department), M. Benjamin Herndon (BFA Fine Arts Department), Eric Mistretta (MFA Fine Arts Department), Laura Murray (BFA Fine Arts Department) and Pacifico Silano (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department).

On Saturday, April 21, 4pm SVA Project Manager and alumnus Dan Halm (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay; BFA 1994 Illustration), curator of the booth and the retrospective, will moderate Fair Game, a panel discussion between artists, gallerists and collectors. They’ll talk about how art fairs impact emerging artists and how, for collectors in particular, art fairs facilitate the discovery of new talent.

The Affordable Art Fair takes place April 18 – 22 at 7 West New York, located at 7 West 34th Street. Tickets are $12 a day or $10 a day for students and seniors with ID. Free admission is offered to the public on Thursday, April 19, 5 – 9pm. For more information, visit www.affordableartfair.us.

Image: Victoria Batey, Nobody puts Baby in a corner, 2012, spray paint, gouache, pen, and thread on canvas

To read more coverage of the Center for an Urban Future report, visit Dexigner, Metro Focus, New York Daily News and Core77.

“Schools of design, art and media are engaged in all the major challenges that our societies face,” Cumulus President Christian Guellerin told Design 21 last month. “Sustainable cities, aging populations, responsible innovation, ecology and the future of water are featured programs in all the schools. Our role is to promote the exchange of best teaching practices of these social issues.”

Cumulus regularly organizes conferences, seminars, workshops, and exhibitions with industry, NGO and professional organizations. To learn more about Cumulus, visit its website.

The Short Film Corner is an annual event organized by the Festival de Cannes that includes screenings, workshops, meet-and-greets and conferences for filmmakers and industry representatives. For more information or a full list of the films included in the Short Film Corner, please visit the Cannes Court Métrage website.

MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department faculty member Viktor Koen’s long-standing interest in typography is on full display in “Metamorphabets,” his most recent solo exhibition. For the last 15 years, Koen has been integrating images, symbols, and concepts into his graphic design work, a natural extension of his work as an illustrator and artist. Drawing on art from his limited-edition portfolio Funnyfarm (the alphabet of mental disorders) (1998) and work from the exhibition of “Warphabet” (2011), “Metamorphabets” continues Koen’s commitment to social criticism through typographic forms. On view at Type Directors Club, 347 West 36th Street, Suite 603, through April 30.

Matthew Pillsbury’s (MFA 2004 Photography, Video and Related Media) photographs often reveal the truth and beauty in everyday life, moments that usually go unnoticed. By using a long shutter speed on his camera—anywhere from 30 seconds to 45 minutes or more—Pillsbury captures sharp images of stationary elements in his photos while representing movement as a blur, smear, or smudge. New York City is the subject of his latest photographic explorations in “City Stages,” an exhibition where iconic scenes like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the trading floor of the Stock Exchange, and Ground Zero are re-imagined using this long-exposure technique. On view at Bonni Benrubi, 41 East 57 Street, 13th Floor, through April 28.

BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department faculty member Amy Wilson is best known for creating small watercolor paintings that feature young girls serving as her avatars, speaking her thoughts for a better world in text bubbles. For her latest exhibition “We Dream of Starfish and Geodesic Domes,” Wilson’s avatars return, this time through an expansion of media including collage, clay, fabric, and flash animations. With Buckminster Fuller, Murray Bookchin, and other scientists and thinkers as an influence, Wilson allows viewers to imagine and create new utopias alongside her. On view at BravinLee Programs, 526 West 26 Street, #211, through March 24.