culturalboundaries

as featured on FC by EXPERT BLOGGER DREW NEISSER, he weighs in on who will be the next major leaders in social business and whether these new initiatives can replace social media. What’s your take on social business and what does this mean to you?

Shortly after 11PM Monday, the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation announced this years 2011 MacArthur Grant Fellows, each of the 22 recipients will receive a staggering $500,000 — no strings attached over the next five years. This is a highlight videos features a few fellows selected include: Jad Abumrad a radio host and producer of the nationally syndicated program Radiolab. Abumrad is known for infusing his background as a composer to orchestrate dialogue, music, and sound effects into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics, such as the nature of numbers, the evolution of altruism, or the science of emergent phenomena within ant colonies and other complex systems.

Anther exceptional fellow is Chicago Architect Jeanne Gang. As a MacArthur fellow, Gang’s firm Studio Gang Architects designed the 82-story Aqua Tower at Columbus near Randolph among other works, like all the other fellow will receive $500,000 – no strings attached – over the next five years. Informally dubbed the “genius grant,” the foundation has awarded individuals with exceptional creativity and promise. Gang was cited for “integrating conventional materials, bold yet functional designs, and ecological technology in a wide range of striking structures.”

GLIDE’12  rev’s up planning for the next symposium promises to surely be loaded with stellar presenters and topics. If you are interested in receiving information just leave me a comment, I’ll add you to our contact database. For now you’ll just have to settle for reading advisory board member Gloria Gomez’s review on GLIDE’10. The compelling and exciting work that was presented at GLIDE’10 can make designers feel proud of the powerful design contributions we can make to society on a global scale. The presentations mainly represented work on the facilitation, consequences, and challenges of cross-cultural collaboration in indigenous and underserved communities, and the effect of such on human/user experience. This review summarizes the conference facts, the conference schedule as well as discusses the presentations, blogging comments, and the virtual conference format. The review ends with concluding remarks and a summary of each presentation, photographs, and a hyperlink to the video recording published on YouTube –http://www.youtube.com/user/glideconference.

You will be moved by this new film, The Black Power Mixtape an award winning compilation feature documentary that displays the story of the African-American community 1967-1975, the people, the society and the style that fueled a change. Told with sparkling, beautiful and deep footage, lost in the archives in Sweden for 30 years. Check out the website for Screenings.

HELLO SUNSHINE

You might have noticed that I haven’t updated my blog at all this month. It’s that time in August, when I usually tell all my friends, I’m going fishin’ or maybe wading in a dumpster pool. Whether I’m heading off to Maine, Salvador de Bahia or Paris. I’m taking a much needed break, just to do a little wanderlustin’!  I’ll be back soon.

By Michele Y. Washington design critic and friend

photo credit: george larkins

The process of paying tribute to the passing of my dear friend Sylvia Harris is an honor, but at the same time it’s perplexing. It is with profound sadness that the design community mourns the lost of Sylvia who passed away on July 24^th at the age of 57. On Thursday, July 21st, she collapsed during a meeting in Washington, was rushed to George Washington University Hospital where doctors put her on life support. Surrounded by a host of family members and heartfelt friends who rallied by her side, she later passed due to heart complications.

Sylvia was a beacon, one of those luminous stars whose brilliance encapsulated the design profession at a time when black women designers were few in numbers. I first stumbled upon an article in either Print Magazine of Communication Arts featuring Sylvia with her partners at Two Twelve Associates, a firm she helped cofound with several classmates from Yale Graduate School of Design. It was her smiling face beaming from the photo, a fluke phone call that lead to us meeting. And thus our 20-year friendship blossomed.

Her vibrant career spans more than 25 years. Sylvia functioned in the design community more like a cultural ambassador, serving on the AIGA national board, the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, and was the recipient of a Design Trust Fellowship for Taxi 07.  Much like that fluke phone of us meeting planted the seeds of friendship, the same scenario replayed when Sylvia joined forces with a group of designers that ignited the charge for the first OBD conference,“Dogon to Digital,” held in Chicago. Known as a kind-spirited person, Sylvia could always be called upon to mentor and inspire numerous designers, whom she counseled to keep forging ahead and they too could make inroads in the design profession.

Gail Anderson, Michele Y. Washington and Sylvia Harris

Recently, Sylvia rebranded her firm from Sylvia Harris LLC to Citizen Research & Design a name befitting of her commitment in communicating the needs of public programming and design policy for government, educational and non-profit institutions. Last summer 2010, Sylvia participated in Design Journey: You Are Here, exhibit held at the AIGA national headquarters in NYC. (click this link: http://www.aiga.org/design-journeys-sylvia-harris/)

Yes, I can boast of the mountainous accolades and awards as an acclaimed information designer, however her biggest rewards were being a loving wife to Gary, an attentive mother to a teenage daughter Thai, and fabulous sister to Juliette Harris, and a gracious friend to many. We will all miss Sylvia’s fortitude for life, her spirited walk, sparkling smile, inquisitive chats, and her brilliant mind. (Above image from AIGA Design Journey opening, Spring 2010).

Please share your blessings as Sylvia’s spirit walks through the starry night skies along her journey.

Details for a memorial service will be posted during the fall on http://citizenrd.com/

Citizen R&D BCAT Feature from CitizenRD on Vimeo.

The International Review of African American Art just published a special issue which shows how aesthetic, scientific and mathematical configurations can be perceived in everything and experienced in many ways. This full seeing and being is a spark for innovation in art, science, technology, engineering, architecture and mathematics and, more broadly, in education and business… and life!

This Spring issue features a spectacular group of design and cultural critics, and theorist writing on science, Afro Futurism, STEM Education and the Interplay of Patterns are just a few of the amazing features highlighted in this issue. Pick up a copy and delve into creative intelligence!

Article from IRAAA Special Issue on Science, Technology and Art
By Michele Y. Washington

A dynamic husband-and-wife team is creating innovative, technology-based projects that merge design, art, computing, and social justice. Both work at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Ron Eglash is a professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, and Audrey Bennett is an associate professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Communication.

Audrey Bennett’s efforts span scholarly research (in communication design theory); social activism (in participatory design that involves users in the design process); professional design for clients; and creative, graphic arts that reflects her Dartmouth College studio art background. She has an M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale University. Her work in participatory design led to a book, Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design (Princeton Architectural Press), and the development of GLIDE: Global Interaction in Design, a biennial, virtual forum and research hub on our ever-changing world of design and technology.

The October 2010 virtual conference brought together a distinguished group of design educators, graduate students and researchers from across the globe in real time communication. Covering a broad range, the topics included the use of design solutions to help the indigenous, marginalized people of southern Mexico build business capacity; green design concepts in Asia; and the use of digital technologies in teaching and research in Pacific communities.

During the GLIDE 10, keynote presentation, Ron Eglash discussed his research on the vernacular knowledge systems of global, indigenous cultures and the need to dispel myths about these groups as being backwards, “primitive,” illiterate. He also discussed his world with African American, Puerto Rican and Native American cultures in the United States. In applying these systems for use in design and education. Eglash cautioned that sensitivity is required to make sure that these users are beneficial to the people who created them.
Read the rest of this entry →

Present Tense: The 2011 D-Crit Conference: Michele Washington, Untangling the Naps: The Afro Talks Back from D-Crit on Vimeo.

“Untangling the Naps” investigates the cultural and historical significance of the Afro, and how the afro is expressed today. I explore images of the Afro/’fro/Natural and how they were used to define blackness, racial pride, and ultimately, the black design aesthetic.

The themes for this work focus on identity, hair, blackness and power, ideas expressed in the statement by Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC College.

“No matter what we might think about culture and style as a terrain of struggle, hairstyle politics, particularly in the Black community, reveal a great deal about power—the power of white over black, men over women, employer over workers, state over citizens.” — By Robin D. G. Kelley, Nap Time: Historicizing the Afro

My field of enquiry is based on my long-term research into the black aesthetic influence on graphic design in the twentieth century. The title, “Untangling the Naps,” suggests how I have used the Afro as a graphic narrative, in the next phase of my quest to understand the black aesthetic. In my research I investigate the historical and cultural significance of the Afro in the past, and in its current expressions. I have also researched the struggles that describe the “politics of style,” and explore the images and signifiers of the Afro/’fro/Natural that are used to define blackness, racial pride, and the new black design aesthetic of hip. My objective is to illustrate the ways this natural hairstyle has been used as a significant graphic element in the black vernacular narrative and in social media to brand black hipness.

Living in NYC ones days tend to be overloaded, so this weekend was no different with events from ICFF (International Furniture Fair) to Socialmedia weekend at Columbia School of Journalism organized by Sree Sreenivasan the dean of the School of Journalism and host of volunteers. And this event was organized in just two weeks. At first I wanted to play spin the bottle to choose, but  instead opted to try something new after all I’ve attended numerous ICFF’s over the years. Despite recouping from tumltous two weeks of finishing my second Masters in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts, I managed to stay alert through several informative sessions, chat up lots of exciting new people, and tweet about the proceedings throughout the two days. Luckily, things paid off, Doug Cret one of the attendees followed my tweets, wrote an article on Fastcompany blog about Socialmedia Weekend and mentioned my culturalboundaries blog. Totally unexpected, but much appreciated hit from Douglas Cret. More on the wonders of tweeting.

Here’s an excerpt by FC expert Blogger Douglas Cret.

We Are Content. We Are Curation. Open the Doors And
See All the People
Does the headline sound familiar? It’s a play on that funny nursery allegory they used to do with their hands when you were in day school. “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, see all the people.” It amazes me that as a tow-headed latchkey kid, I thought that little rhetorical device was magical.

The tools of discovery really are multiple on the web, and in a real way, the tools are its people.

After spending hours tweeting, listening in on social media forums and connecting with some really intelligent media people, I spent a few minutes inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Saturday evening and contemplated the full day’s data stream.

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