Okada Design

Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Residency

October 2022-January 2023.

In this residency, Corinne explores the development of a speculative design play kit, the Floating Kīpuka Grow Kit, which blends knowledge across time & cultures to create playful spaces for more voices in the discussions of equitable and just biofutures. The kit aims to be a model for multidirectional learning and sharing and will invite people to imagine new types of playful spaces of trust for collaboratively dreaming with biology with a focus on agricultural futures. The custom assemblies and custom-designed LEGO pieces will blend lab tools, organisms at scales, cultural legends, rituals of gratitude, and agricultural labor stories to bring culture and ethics directly into early bioengineering and sustainability design journeys. This is to empower more people to see themselves as co-shapers of biofutures. The resulting kit will be open source and shared via a website with downloadable activity cards and downloadable custom brick pieces.

https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2022/09/28/introducing-our-2022-creative-resident/

https://www.floatingkipuka.com/

Instagram: #ginkgoplay

BioQuilts, Community Collaborative Biogrown Quilts, a Collaboration with the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Elevating diverse community voices in the storytelling, materials exploration, and questions driving the future of sustainable biodesign. Partnering organizations are: Chopsticks Alley, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose and Veggielution.

Nest Makerspace, a garage lab focused on environmental literacy, biomaking and the smart usage ​of natural resources. https://nestmakerspace.weebly.com/

BioJam Camp is a free full year academic program that includes a two week summer camp which leads into an academic school year program supporting teen development of activities, art, and initiatives for their communities. It is our mission is to engage teens (rising 9th-12th graders) through their own creativity and culture in bioengineering and biomaterial design as pathways for them to share their learning in their communities.​ 2021 program will start with a 2 week program in July. More information soon. https://biojamcamp.weebly.com/

London Design Biennale, Design in an Age of Crisis

Mycelium Grown Face Mask is part of the London Design Biennale as part of the online showcase exhibit. It is included as part of the Environment category. The project is part of the conversation imagining sustainable and compostable PPE. Our time in COVID-19 has increased our use of plastic based PPE ranging from gloves to masks. This submission wants us to reimagine the materials we use. This mask was grown from mycelium in locally sourced cocoa bean husks and grown in a laser cut cardboard mold for six week. Bacterial cellulose top edging.

Battle in the Strawberry Fields This submission proposes a redesign of PPE for the circular economy, with a helmet and mask detailing made of bacterial cellulose. "Armour to combat our invisible foe. Remixing modern PPE with ancestral cultural gear. We must develop distributed manufacturing and blend culture with technology to create effective PPE which fieldworkers wish to wear."

Vision Verde, an East San Jose Teen BioDesign Challenge team. Team CocoBucha

Takara lead a team of four East San Jose teens in the Biodesign Challenge. Over the course of six months they developed a fashion brand concept that used locally sourced feedstock for biogrown materials in fashion. They explored kombucha leather grown from cactus fruit and mycelium grown from cocoa bean husks. https://cocobuchattire.weebly.com/

BioJam

BioJam is a camp that engages teens through their own creativity and culture in bioengineering and biomaterial design as pathways for them to share their learning in their home communities. A teen program of the Stanford Department of Bioengineering, Stanford, CA. Pilot program was 2019-2020. Second year program is 2020-2021. https://biojamcamp.weebly.com/

2019-2020 year supported through a 2019 SVCreates XFactor for the Arts Grant.

Hidden Histories

An art experiment in Japantown San Jose bringing to life treasured community histories in virtual space .The Japanese American Museum of San Jose has recently been awarded a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Immersive Technology and the Arts grant to conduct an augmented reality (AR) art experiment, and we have decided to solicit art work to be created to evoke these unearthed feelings and relationships – art works which will use the entirety of San Jose’s Japantown, the historic Heinleinville Chinatown, and the 6th Street Pinoytown as a virtual gallery, extending the reach of the museum to the neighborhood.  We want to plant some seeds of learning in this powerful art form of AR, to get some experience conceptualizing and creating meaningful art that will educate, energize, and move the people who come here.  We want to find artists, including those who may never have used digital media art tools before, who feel they can convey our deep connection to this historic place in which so many people in our three communities have grown, lived, and passed down their legacies. February through December 2020. http://hiddenhistoriesjtown.org/

Recipient of a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Immersive Technology and the Arts

Sustainability Design and Biomaterial Workshops. 6th-7th grades and after school high school workshops on watertight sustainable packing for long canoe voyages. Workshops draw inspiration from traditional Hawaiian practices and the incorporation of canoe plants and invasive species as materials used. January 2020.

MycoQuilts

Mycelium Grown Assemblies, a BioJam art installation exploring biology, community and culture. Installation posters. Stanford Department of Bioengineering, Stanford, CA. December 2nd through December 20th.

Atlanta International School Da Vinci Fellowship

November 18th-22nd, 2019, Atlanta, GA

Sustainability Design and biomaterial design workshops. Pre-K through 12th grade, and one evening community workshop.

Art and Design Thinking Camp

A teen summer camp in East San Jose focused in making and exploring. Takara is teaching Week 5 (Design Your World) and Week 6 (Sustainability Design).

The Biodesign Challenge Summit

June 20th-21st, 2019, Parsons and MOMA, NYC. Takara led a teen team in this challenge: https://giybiobuddies.weebly.com/ Team won Outstanding Field Research and Runner-Up to Overall Winner. Takara won Outstanding Instructor. https://biodesignchallenge.org/summit-2019

Atlanta International School Da Vinci Fellowship

May 6th-8th, 2019, Atlanta, GA

Material Matters workshops with 3rd grade through 11th grade students, as well as evening community workshops. Event photos

Building with Bio Materials/Mycelium Light Up Broaches and Mini Table Lights

February 5th, 2019, 6:30-8:30 pm, Sunnyvale Library, Sunnyvale, CA

A Make-Her Workshop (for girls 9-12 and their moms): Come explore a bit of circuitry and delve into the world of bio materials! Design a light up broach or a mini standing light using the bio material of mycelium, the root-like structures of a fungus. We will be using a tea mushroom's mycelium that that has been grown in 3D printed molds and then baked to make inert. While exploring this bio material, we will discuss a few other grown materials that will also be important in the future of sustainability design. Registration

Day of Remembrance: Radio Discussion & Community Art Project

Date: Sunday, February 17, 2019
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Place: Japanese American Museum of SJ
535 N. 5th Street, San Jose , CA

This year’s JAMsj Day of Remembrance event will include a hands-on activity inviting participants to create paper illuminated lanterns that cast delicate patterned shadows. These shadows reflect cultural patterns (a Mexican papel picado flower and a Arabic motif), as well as abstracted patterns of barbed wire and chain link fences. Just as the light breaks outside the boundaries of the lantern cage, so does our hope and our drive to seek inclusion for everyone within our American tapestry. This #DontExcludeUs activity will result in small lanterns participants can take with them on the evening Day of Remembrance march in Japantown. Dangling from these lanterns will be replicas of Japanese exclusion processing tags. One side of the tag will be mirrored, reflecting back the viewer as we highlight the continued relevance of this important moment in history.  A large lantern installation will also be included as part of the project. This project is designed by artist Corinne Okada Takara and is made possible by a Knight Foundation Grant and support from De Anza College. More info here: https://www.jamsj.org/upcoming-events/

Box template link

Nest Makerspace Bio Design Challenge Team

https://nestmakerspace.weebly.com/ Bio Design and Environmental Literacy focused workshops in the Nest, a garage makerspace. Explorations include designing structures with fungus, bacterial cellulose, silkworms and explorations into bioplastics. Takara is leading a teen girl team in the 2018-2019 Biodesign Challenge. More info here on the Nest Makerspace team: https://nestmakerspace.weebly.com/bio-challenge-team.html

The Ocean is Calling

This four consecutive Friday nights shadow puppet event is an AYA arts public activation programming. Lead artist is Michele Guieu. Artist Lauren Cage and I are Supporting Artists. My focus was on articulated and wearable shadow puppets. More information here. Process and event images here.

47th NAAEE Annual Conference

North American Association of Environmental Education Conference, Spokane, Washington, October 10th, 2018. Takara will be presenting " Designing with Fungus/ Conversations on Bio Materials and Conservation" in a Bright Spot session. 

Takara is a guest instructor teaching four hours of Design Thinking in Day 1 of this program on August 6th, 2018. Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College, Los Altos, CA. This program is open to residents of California who are women, especially women of color, women who have served in the military, and women with special needs (i.e., learning or physical disabilities). 

Sustainability Prototyping, KCI Summer Tech Camps for Kids

7/23/18- 7/27/18. Take a design thinking journey into the oceans, with artist and educator, Corinne Takara. Engage in CAD focused design challenges related to the Ocean Plastic Community Project while you learn about sustainable prototyping. Campers will learn about plastic, recycling, and 3D design/printing. 3D print real or imagined sea life, fish, marine plants, coral reefs. Campers will explore the beauty of our oceans, how we are treating them, and how we can make them healthier. Campers will prototype with cardboard and other recycled materials using the laser cutter & vinyl cutter, vector tools (Illustrator and Inkscape.) The will  3D print with PLA and exotic materials including Algix algae filament. Register Now

Uchiwa Light-Up Fan Project

Japantown Immersive, May 12th, 5:30pm to 9:30pm, Japantown, San Jose, CA. The Uchiwa Light-Up Fan project is made possible through a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Grant and fiscal sponsorship by the Alum Rock Educational Foundation. The Uchiwa Light-Up Fan Project websites is here: https://lightupfans.weebly.com/

A Taste of Science Art Workshop

April 27th, 7:00-9:30 pm, Gallery House, 320 California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA. Explore fungus as a design material! On display will be a mycelium standing light and other creations made from fungi. These mycelium art pieces reuse agricultural waste and are compostable, making them a sustainable building material of the future. What things do you imagine could be grown from living materials instead of built? Houses? Packing material? Furniture? Come get inspired. (workshop photos)

Building a Shared Urban Future: From Creative Democracy to Participatory Planning

Speaker of presentation: Shared Urban Spaces, Prototyping Public Spaces. Stanford Humanities Center,  Levinthal Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. November 13th, 2017. Sponsored by the Program on Urban Studies and the Stanford Humanities Center.

Teen 3D Printing Knot Workshop

An Unraveling the Knot workshop focused on sculptural knots explored through 3D printing and CAD design using BeetleBlocks. This teen workshop was conducted at Dr. Roberto Cruz Library, San Jose, CA. October 23rd, 2017. 2:30-4:30pm. This workshop is part of a series of youth workshops exploring and reinterpreting cultural knots through a range of media. Photos from this workshop are here.

Mycelium Chandelier Grow Project

A bio-art project exploring fungus as a design medium. It resulted in a fungus light sculpture & in a public workshop.  It was made possible by a 2017 Creative Impact Fund Audience Engagement Project Grant from SVCreates. The public workshop were conducted at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles on June 2nd, 2017. Collaborating organizations are the Tech Museum BioDesign Studio and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Chandelier completed in October, 2017.

Unraveling the Knot

A 2017 San Jose Arts and Cultural Exchange Grant Project . This is an exploration of cultural knotting traditions in a range of mediums.  Workshops will be conducted in San Jose, California and in Dublin, Ireland.

The collaborative exploration of knot art traditions can be a creative way to build connections among communities and to explore the common threads that bind us. By re-interpreting Celtic Knots forms through the lens of modern technology tools and traditional Japanese knot cording, Unraveling the Knot seeks to explore the bonds, and colliding and merging stories that we form as cultures connect. 

Takara collaborated with the Alum Rock Educational Foundation and the Chester Beatty Library to bring this project to life in Summer 2017.

Project website: http://unravelingtheknot.weebly.com/

Rooted Bricks

A 3D print sculptural series imagining subterranean natural structures under the LEGO board.  2016-2018. Project is a work in progress.

• Winner of the 2017 Instructables Untouchable Challenge

• Additional Images

• Instructable Lesson

Exhibited at Works/San Jose Benefit Auction 2016, Works, San Jose CA.  December 2nd-December 10th, 2016. 2018 Solo show in the works. More information coming soon.

Brittle Beauty Series

3D printing sculptural explorations of drought impact in Northern California. Left: Memories of a Thistle. This collection is a work in progress.