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Poskovic, Stiles, and Weaver Selected for Catalyst and Innovation Awards

February 2, 2025

Stamps faculty members Endi Poskovic, Jesse Stiles, and Ricky Weaver have received 2025 Catalyst and Innovation awards. Catalyst and Innovation awards are administered by the Stamps Creative Practice and Research Committee, and funded through a block grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research, with matching funds from Stamps. 

Photograph of Endi Poskovic

Field

Principal investigator: Endi Poskovic, professor of art and design, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

Field is a research project examining the interplay between Endi Poskovic’s creative practice, memory, and the environment. Field will unfold in two phases: a two-month residency at Artica Svalbard in the North Arctic Svalbard archipelago from May to July 2025. The post-residency phase will culminate in studio production in Ann Arbor between July 2025 and September 2026. The cornerstone is the residency at Artica Svalbard, Norway’s leading arts organization dedicated to raising awareness of the Arctic region through A‑I-R programs in Longyearbyen. Poskovic has been selected through a competitive process by the HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation and Artica Svalbard.

Portrait of Jesse Stiles

Open Machine

Principal investigator: Jesse Stiles, associate professor of art and design, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

Open Machine is a multidisciplinary performance blending dance, cutting-edge media technology, and structured improvisation to explore themes of identity, resilience, and the interplay between human experience and technological mediation. Featuring a cast of dancers guided by choreographic prompts and real-time generative media, the performance invites audiences into a richly layered experience where movement, sound, and visuals converge. By juxtaposing embodied storytelling with advanced digital tools, Open Machine examines how we navigate a rapidly changing world. This collaborative work offers a dynamic exploration of creativity, connection, and meaning in an increasingly complex and mediated reality. 

Portrait of Ricky Weaver

Primary Text. Important, (Something Radical) 0 – 100 ‑aka- +/- Infinity Aura

Principal investigator: Ricky Weaver, assistant professor of art and design, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

This multi-disciplinary collaborative is an interrogation of the archetypal aspects of Parietal Art as well as a corrective to the racist exclusions and interpretations of parietal art that downplay the contributions of Black civilizations to prehistoric art and architecture. Parietal art offers us access to a form that combines image and inhabitation (a spatioimage) that precedes the majority of human history and experience. Using the techno-methodologies of Forensic Architecture and AI, the project aims to build the world’s first generative AI model of parietal art from primary data, allowing us to ​“re-indiginize” contemporary concepts, images and topics into something radical and archetypal.

These awards, offered through the Research Catalyst and Innovation Program, are intended to enable tenure-track and tenured faculty or teams to initiate a research project with significant potential for securing external funding in the immediate or near future, and with promise of a high degree of national and international visibility. Fundable activities include Research and Creative Production, Conferences and Convenings, and Publication and Public Dissemination.