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Katherine Moriwaki

Assistant Professor of Media Design, School of Art, Media and Technology, Parsons the New School for Design
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Katherine Moriwaki is an Assistant Professor of Media Design in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons School of Design in New York. As faculty at Parsons, Katherine’s focus is on interaction design and artistic practice. She teaches core curriculum classes in the M.F.A. Design + Technology Program, in which students engage a broad range of creative methodologies to realize new possibilities in interactive media. Katherine is currently completing a Ph.D. in the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group at Trinity College Dublin, which examines the intersection between fashion, technology, and creative practice.

Highlighted project
The Scrapyard Challenge is a series of intensive workshops where participants build simple interactive electronic objects out of found materials and discarded “junk.” The workshopsintroduce interaction design and hacking with minimal to no experience and knowledge needed. Materials are sourced locally and cheaply (often for free as the result of scavenging the host institution and city waste streams) and are often unpredictable. The Scrapyard Challenge encourages experimentation and learning through teaching simple electrical principles and asking participants to respond creatively to the material affordances of the objects at hand.

Work environment and institutional setting
Parsons the New School for Design is a division of the New School University in New York City. Based in the School of Art, Media and Technology, she teaches primarily in the MFA Design + Technology Program. Her work environment consists of a vibrant and diverse community of designers, artists, and creative technologists, all of whom explore the social and cultural dimensions of technological change through the creation of interactive and computationally driven artifacts.