The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry is a center for experimental and interdisciplinary arts in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Founded in 1989, the STUDIO connects artistic enterprises to academic disciplines across the Carnegie Mellon campus, to the community of Pittsburgh and beyond. The STUDIO’s mission is to support creation and exploration in the arts, especially interdisciplinary projects that bring together the arts, sciences, technology, and the humanities, and impact local and global communities. It carries out this mission by:

Providing artist residencies with stipends, commissions and facilities.
Maintaining a work environment populated by a broad range of practitioners, including resident fellows, Carnegie Mellon faculty and students, and other associates.
Facilitating access to human and technical resources at Carnegie Mellon and throughout the Pittsburgh community.
Developing public venues for presenting innovative work.

All STUDIO projects are artist-generated. Fellows are selected by invitation and by application, using criteria based on furthering the STUDIO’s mission. Work carried out over the years by the STUDIO has typically engaged contemporary science and technology, through projects incorporating disciplines from cell biology to robotics to neuroscience to imaging technology. The generative process utilized by the STUDIO seeds artistic experimentation through artist residencies. Several seeded projects have evolved into major collaborative efforts by interdisciplinary teams.

Within the broad framework of the STUDIO, a locus of activity has emerged which includes work in three interrelated areas:

Biology
The relationship of biological science and cognitive science with the human being.

Ecology
The connection of humanity with the larger environment.

Robotics
The relationship of the intelligent machine with the human being.

This activity takes advantage of the extensive technological and artistic capabilities of Carnegie Mellon. Of overall interest is the BIO-ECO-ROBO synergy. This framework is considered inclusive rather than exclusive.