Self Driving Car: CMU MFA Exhibition

"Travellers’ Tales

The unpredictability of the MFA program at CMU is one of its strengths and joys. It is a three year journey of exploration led by student curiosity, experiment and adventure.

In this final year MFA exhibition, we will experience: a belly aching performance full of gut wrenching bathos; a heartfelt search for identity within and beyond ethnicity; concern with exile, diaspora, displacement and virtuality; the body in extremis, biologically, physically and philosophically; intellectual gamesmanship, exploring the relationship between technology and craft; surprising collisions between human culture and animal behavior; and the interface between personal and technological histories, emotional and artificial intelligence.

All of this with depth and intensity, approached variously with humor and candor, passion and politics, deliberation and determination. This group of young artists have been test driving ideas on a tough course. Students bring ideas, hopes, enthusiasms, expectations and practices which are challenged, examined and developed through intense discussion and debate with faculty and peers.

Having had attentive instructors over the last three years, they have ultimately found their own sense of direction, and are now totally into self-driving mode. I am sure that the road ahead is filled with wonder and discovery, and I look forward to the travellers’ tales, which will come back over the years. Congratulations and bon voyage to the MFA class of 2016."

- John Carson, Regina and Marlin Miller Professor, Head of the School of Art