Generative Systems, 1973, 1 slide: col.; 35 mm. The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, Sonia Landy Sheridan fonds. 0501-110.
Generative Systems, 1973, 1 slide: col.; 35 mm. The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, Sonia Landy Sheridan fonds. 0501-110.
As this letter from Mr. Irving indicates
(e), beginning in 1970, 3M granted participants in Generative Systems classes access to a
Color-in-Color copy machine, the first full-colour duplication device of its kind on the market.
(1) A few years later, Sheridan rented two Xerox desktop copiers for the purposes of classroom instruction and acquired a Haloid imaging system manufactured by the company.
Haloid Xerox technology represented a high-end photographic format. In 1974, she purchased a
VQC from 3M, a machine fusing different energies together to produce imagery. Towards the end of the decade, she began to employ a computer graphics system in her courses that had been developed by John Dunn, a graduate teaching assistant affiliated with the program.
Following the arrangement of technology in a laboratory environment, Sheridan opted to place equipment along the outer perimeter of the classroom, leaving ample space for workstations to be built in centre and peripheral locations. As she recalls in this interview, the decisions that she made regarding the configuration and placement of equipment in the learning environment were based on an open-floor concept of teaching.
(d) As the program grew in size and scope, however, the need for a larger and more flexible workspace became evident. In 1973, Sheridan submitted an extensive plan for expansion to school administrators that designated separate areas for distinct classroom activities. Though the plans were never executed, they point to Sheridan’s ambition to configure a classroom space that was able to meet the interests and needs of her students.