During the Covid pandemic multiple designs for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were developed and deployed with the University of Wisconsin Hospital to respond to material shortages and 24 hour working conditions. Pictured here, specialty face shields for speech pathologist and surgeons and alternate powered air-purifying respirators (PAPR).
Karl Williamson is a designer, artist, and educator. He studied Industrial Design at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Design for Emerging Technologies in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Design MFA program. Karl has worked in the fields of Industrial Design, Exhibition Design, Design Strategy and Fine Art. Before joining the MICA faculty he was the first Product Design program coordinator at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala (2014) and led the development of a 25,000 square foot prototyping lab in the University of Wisconsin's College of Engineering (2017).
In his teaching, Karl supports developing designers engaging in a plurality of roles that product design students may find themselves; from consumer products to speculative futures, responsible user-centered design to experimental work with materials and process.
In his studio practice he takes an experimental approach to product design creating custom tools and processes that explore how technology mediates skill, manifests materiality, and enacts non-human agency. Within this practice Karl collaborates with his partner and weaver Hellen Ascoli. Their work looks at affordances and tooling in the spaces between art, craft, and technology. Together they have exhibited domestically and internationally at Sol Del Rio (Guatemala), Frieze (London), ARCO (Madrid), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) and the Sharjah Biennial 16 (UAE).