Mark Baskinger
Professor | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Mark Baskinger's research interests include new paradigms for interactive objects, durational design, and methodologies for visual thinking.
Biography
Mark Baskinger serves as Professor, Chair of Product Design, and Director of the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion in the School of Design, and Director of the Moon Arts Group at CMU. His research interests include tangible interaction design (tangible AI), deep time artifacts, durational design and material culture, spacecraft, landers and probes, and methodologies for visual thinking.
His work has been featured in design publications and international magazines and exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art, I-Space Gallery, Krannert Art Museum, Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Galeria Miejska bwa w Bydgoszczy, Vasarely Museum, Tojo House, Supercollider, among others. His work is also included in the permanent art collections of the University of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. His work has been featured by CNN, NPR, Popular Science, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Vice, and Wired, among others.
Mark is co-author of Drawing Ideas®: a hand-drawn approach for better design published in 2013 which has become a staple textbook for visual thinking methods that foster collaboration, creative agency, and innovation. As Director of the Moon Arts Group and former fellow in The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a laboratory for research at the intersections of arts, science, technology and culture, he co-directed the MoonArk project (@CMU_MoonArk), cultural payload on the first commercial lunar lander which spent 10 days in space before a mechanical anomaly forced the spacecraft back to Earth. Designed to endure the harsh lunar conditions for thousands of years, the MoonArk is a massively collaborative object intended to spark wonderment through poetically entangled narratives of the arts, humanities, sciences, and technologies. Fabrication of the MoonArk instigated innovation in digital fabrication techniques and ultra-high resolution imaging, and many developments in material science, technology, and the arts, engaging colleagues across the world in inspiring ways. The project brought together 18 universities and organizations, 11 units / 27 faculty and staff / 97 CMU alumni and students, and collectively over 300 artists, designers, educators, scientists, technologists, choreographers, poets, writers and musicians across 20 countries. MoonArk 2 and a new project called Lunarglyphs are now in development for future lunar delivery.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Product Design
Methodologies for Visual Thinking
Paradigms for Interactive Objects
Durational Design
Space
Media Appearances (5)
Alumni create MoonArk, a tiny museum bound for moon
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign online
2023-04-17
The MoonArk project has been led by a team of Carnegie Mellon University faculty members that include Illinois alums of the College of Fine and Applied Arts: Mark Baskinger (MFA ’01 Industrial Design), who is the project director, and Matt Zywica (BFA, ’02) and another Illinois alum, Mark Rooker (BFA ’92 Graphic Design; MFA ’99 Metals; MFA ’00 Graphic Design), who is a faculty member at James Madison University.
MoonArk will be a philosophical mini-museum, left on the moon for future explorers to discover
CBS 58 online
2020-02-20
Lowry Burgess, NASA space artist and professor emeritus at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, came up with the original concept for MoonArk. Burgess, along with Carnegie Mellon faculty members Mark Baskinger, Matt Zywica, Dylan Vitone and James Madison University professor Mark Rooker, have been on a journey together ever since. They're not just creators of the MoonArk, but caregivers as well.
CMU To Send Mini-Time Capsule of Humankind to the Moon
Carnegie Mellon University News online
2019-07-17
Mark Baskinger, associate professor in Carnegie Mellon's School of Design and project director for MoonArk, likes to say his team set out to create a fossil object.
What’s Inside this Artistic Capsule Headed to the Moon?
Smithsonian Magazine online
2016-01-08
The project, which is designed to last billions of years, serves as a meditation toward which artifacts humans choose to send up into space. “We think it should be different than sticking a flag in the soil and claiming territory ... maybe we're leaving breadcrumbs for someone else to find their way back here," says Mark Baskinger, another contributor, about the project. "It's an attempt to communicate forward in time—it's an attempt to communicate outward."
An Artistic Time Capsule Prepares To Hitch A Ride To The Moon
NPR online
2016-01-03
Unlike some earlier space art, like the Golden Records on the Voyager craft floating beyond the solar system, the Ark will stay in one place. But Mark Baskinger, one of the artists on the project, says the point is not to conquer. "We think it should be different than sticking a flag in the soil and claiming territory ... maybe we're leaving breadcrumbs for someone else to find their way back here," he says. "It's an attempt to communicate forward in time — it's an attempt to communicate outward."
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Industry Expertise (3)
Research
Education/Learning
Design
Education (3)
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology: Ph.D., Industrial Design
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: M.F.A., Industrial Design
Carnegie Mellon University: B.F.A., Graphic Design
Affiliations (3)
- Carnegie Mellon's Tartans : Assistant Coach and Faculty Advisor
- The Letter Thirteen Design Agency : Co-director
- EcoDesigners Guild of Pittsburgh : Founding Member
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