Two Cultures

  Business Marketing: Art & Science Business leader Kathy Kartalis has built a 30-year career at the footwear company Skechers. As Senior Vice President of Global Product, she oversees footwear and apparel design, product development and sourcing, and leads a staff of over 500 people world-wide. Kathy Kartalis  In a presentation where she spoke about her business experience, she described her work succinctly as a cycle of designing product, developing it, and selling it. It is in this cycle that the relationship between science and art can be appreciated through the lens of business marketing. Although marketing is largely dependent on creativity and expression, it is also highly dependent on data-driven insights. Is Marketing Science or Art Kartalis speaks to how both of these elements served crucial roles when Skechers was confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic. The science aspect of marketing was pivotal in collecting and analyzing consumer data to assess what timelines ...

Fundamentals of Game Design: Math & Art In order to produce interactive worlds that engage users through problem-solving, game design must draw from the fields of computer science/programming, creative writing, and graphic design. It is at the junction of math and art that this form of play can be constructed. Professor and Director of Film & Media Studies and Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, Ian Bogost, is an award-winning game designer. In a presentation where he explores the theory and concepts of play and games, he shares that play is paradoxical. Play produces a feeling of freedom through the reducing, rather than expanding, of opportunities. This is devised through the implementation of constraints and limitations. He explains this core theory, at the root of all game design, with the nine dot puzzle.  Nine Dot Puzzle The problem is to connect the dots with no more than 4 straight lines without lifting your hand from the paper. Initially, the puzzle se...

Hox Zodiac Our planet’s environmental crisis is intensifying at an exponential rate. As air pollution, waste disposal, climate change, and the greenhouse effect drastically worsen, it is imperative that we reflect on the sources of these issues. This environmental degeneration can be attributed to decisions made by humans at both a small and large scale. Whether it be the small action of tossing a recyclable can in the waste bin, the habitual partaking in fast fashion trends, or the poor decision making of those in leadership positions, all of these factors can be traced back to the root of our environmental crisis: egocentrism. To begin to heal the Earth, we must first change the way we understand and relate to it. Humans are not the only organisms to live off of Earth’s natural resources. We are only one of the species in this multi-organismal world. During the Hox Zodiac event, various artists and neuroscientists spoke on horses, and the human relationship with them as companions, f...