Archive for the ‘Collaboration’Category

“We’re A Culture” Campaign Creates Good Citizen Designers

 

In a wonderful article published on the COLORLINES blog the writer Jorge Rivas shares the critical stance taken by “We’re A Culture, Not A Costume,”  poster campaign initiated by determined group of good citizen design students from Ohio University willingness to tackle such a severe subject surrounding the commodification and objectification of race and identity. This campaign challenges who possesses the cultural ownership of ethnic groups. Apparently, sporting Halloween costumes mocking African, Mexicans, Asians, Native Indians, and Blacks by white college students who in turn post disparaging images on Facebook pages has become the norm. But, these Ohio University design students offer us a refreshing directive that challenge stereotypical perceptions and encourages positive solutions aimed at college population are building brand reflective of social and global design. Who will you be this Halloween? Click here to learn more aboutSTARS students endeavors at Ohio University.

Also featured on the COLORLINES blog, UrbanOutfitters’ Indian Chic, addresses Native Peoples outrage over having their culture pimped by major retailer. As a designer of color who has takes issue with major brands continuously pimping off the ethos ethnic cultures feeling it’s okay to hack scarced symbols and patterns to produce new line of products like flash lighter, tee-shirts, handbags and trash cans. Another major culprit of commodification is Urban OutFitters introduction of products ripping off the iconography from Native American culture. More fuel on “UrbanOutfitters’ Indian Chic.” Please share your thoughts on both Colorlines articles. Make sure to read  Sasha Houston Brown, 24 year old Native American living in Minneapolis published a scathing open letter on Racialicious addressed to Glen T. Senk, CEO of Urban Outfitters, Inc. I’d be interested to find out what you think about both articles, and why people freely feel it’s okay to appropriate another culture.

Media Review of GLIDE’10: Global Interaction in Design


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 presentationsblogging 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.

GLIDE'10: Presenters and Topic DescriptionsTable 1: Presenters and Topic Descriptions of GLIDE’10

CONFERENCE FACTS
GLIDE biennial virtual conferences disseminate cutting-edge research on global interaction in design. The virtual format bridges cultural and geographic divides in an eco-friendly manner. Truly interdisciplinary, GLIDE’s review committee invite submissions from design and design-related disciplines including: art, architecture, human-computer interaction, communication, information technology, computer science, and STEM disciplines. The first GLIDE’08 conference was held on October 22, 2008 and details can be found at http://www.glide08.org/.

For more click:  Indigo Design Network

 

STEM Education from Life

 

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.
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OpenInvo Wants YOUR Ideas

Fellow SVA Alumni Emily Lutzker has launched OPENINVO an innovative  online community for businesses that bridges people from the arts and creative fields with corporations.


If you have a brilliant idea for a new product or service, then join as an Idea Provider. We then present your ideas to corporations looking to innovate. The system protects your intellectual property along the way and we make it our job to get you the best compensation for your ideas. OpenInvo is an R&D resource for open innovation where individuals submit ideas for new products and services and companies gain access to those ideas for innovative new solutions

For more information link to: OpenInvo: unexpected innovation. unexpected opportunity. openinvo.com

 

 

15

04 2011

THIS WEEK’S HAPPENING: Fran Lebowitz and Toni Morrison Are Witty and Authorative

After following these writers since my college days, I can’t  wait to see this conversational duo, Fran Lebowitz and Toni Morrison, featured Monday, 22 November on HBO, in ‘Public Speaking,’ directed by Martin Scorsese.

as posted on TVSquad.com

There aren’t a whole lot of job openings these days for philosophers, public wits and raconteurs. Fran Lebowitz pretty much has the monopoly to herself.

As recorded by no less than director Martin Scorsese in his new HBO documentary ‘Public Speaking’ (which debuts Nov. 22), Lebowitz is the last of a breed that once included such sparkling conversationalists as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Oscar Levant, Jack Paar, Truman Capote, William F. Buckley, James Baldwin and others who could dine out on their witticisms and pontifications. read more on TVSQUAD.com

20

11 2010

This Week’s Happening: Apple Pie Contest

I could not resist posting this contest, since I have some lovely some delicious memories of those sweet smells or cinnamon flavor waifing through the air as I patiently waited for my grandmother and mother to dish me out huge slice of apple pie.

Pie Contest in a Box To celebrate the publication of One Big Table: The Book (which looks terrific) and launch an ongoing effort to collect and preserve American recipes and food stories, Molly O’Neill is throwing an online apple pie bake-off. Entry deadline: Nov. 31.

11

11 2010

GLIDE10: Ron Eglash Bridges The Gap Between Vernacular and Indigenous Cultures


Ron Eglash computations

by Michele Y. Washington
Click to hear Ron Eglash’s presentation.
Our final keynote speaker brilliantly closed out GLIDE10 on his continuous investigation on Culture and Science in the sphere of indigenous and vernacular cultures existing within the United States ethnic communities such as Asian, Latin American and African American. Ron gives an in-depth explanation of global indigenous cultures to dispel numerous myths that exist of such groups as being backwards, primitive and illiterate.  This raises several fundamental issues of cultural sensitivity, and he provides specific examples from one project featured on his website on the process of mapping out Native American asymmetrical and symmetrical beading systems. For another project you can sample an example of African Architectural typology replicated through the application of African Fractals, an organic branching structure referencing nature.

This African Fractals project offers clear cut examples of his teaching methods applied in the cultural significance of the ancestral origins of cornrows for Black American students in high schools. His goal was to challenge the students to investigate the issues that surrounded the Black Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and Caribbean, students were able to identify hygiene, resistance, retaining ones culture identity linking their own cornrow hairstyles to its origins. Other examples of paring the musicality of Hip-hop provide a broader sensibility of the connection as to why they wear this hairstyle. He’s developed a computation where he feeds in various iterations of how many plaits are in one braid. According to Ron, such concepts can be applied to other ethnic groups to gain a better understanding of the ancestral heritage. The Cultural expression opens the door to engage students to consider the various modalities of the design patterns replicated by cornrow hairstyles, which blurs the line between indigenous and vernacular design. He also looks at graffiti as a form of vernacular stereotyping. Ends his talk on Puerto Rican youth rooted to challenge the students through mathematical computation of Spanish music through rhythms and beats of the music. Summary of what limits racial intelligence, he states, while no one wants to talk about it, the thoughts loom in the back of many educators and peoples mind.

What part of collective memory fuels some of this iconic bead work, rug design, totems that are also evident in other global cultures such as Africans, Aboriginal, India, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries?

Defeating myths of cultural determinism
Using mathematics to bridge cultural gaps
Making cultural capital more available to its owners (individuals) Educational capital
Looking at new forms of hybridity for learning Peace and social justice efforts
Environmental sustainability

Making contributions to mathematics, and inspirations Challenges:

Not all modeling of culture involves translation of indigenous or vernacular knowledge. Ethnomath: provide more evidences of application of knowledge Interesting concept over cultural ownership of whose holds on to authentic cultural heritage for example, Shawnee Native Americans. Alternative methods for kids to go from consumers to producers, makers by apply the discovery as a learning method.

Take a look at Ron presentation at TED.COM

GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design.

GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design presenters brings us up-to-date on Parsons School of Design ongoing mission of incorporating social responsibility in to learning processes as applied to several design disciplines such as product, architecture and more.

One great aspect of Parsons School of Design  program is there hybridity of bringing students together from various disciplines to share information to build stronger coherent knowledge bases. The challenge is instructors function as facilitators, this mode of teaching forces the students to take a more interactive role to immerse themselves fully in there projects, and learn new platforms of studying beyond formal and informal methods of learning.  Students also have the opportunity to acquire primary research through traveling to developing/emerging  countries and explore various modes of practices while interacting with local people,  investigating new materials and methods to enhance new ways of design thinking. This provides the student with practical and hands-on experiences to build a diverse dialog rooted  in social and cultural constructs not available by just sitting in a classroom or surfing the internet.

 

Questions:
I’m curious how the outcomes are measured by the students each semester? When the students interact with other cultures through travels, how does this figure into the collaborative process? How do these other ethnic cultures respond to the presences of your students?

I love the concept of students taking on the role of facilitators as a shared experience with this projects. How does this method evolve from semester to semester? Do the students view themselves as real agents of change? If so what are some of the outcomes?

What are the draws backs of the participatory process in this model of learning?

For more information click on: deed.parsons.edu

GlIDE10: Justine Hsueh/integration of green design and visual typography

Justine presents signboard communication in Asia. Objective is to improve technology design in the future, through better design and visual typography by integrating green design concepts.

What is phenomenology and phenomenography?

How will Justine apply theories of postmodernism to her research? Last year while visiting Macao, and Hong Kong, Beijing I was able to experience the density of signboards on many streets.

How are signboards in Asian countries different than the busy exterior signage in NYCs Time Square?

Below images from my travels last January to Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao the streets are brilliantly lite-up with signboards. One thing to consider is the amount of energy generated to keep these signs glowing day and night. Brilliant concept Justine’s offers alternative materials such as legos parts, old computer boards, and small car toys to develop more efficient signboards.

She offers interesting keyword: bricolage as main methodology.

Macau

Hong Kong

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FIT Exhibition Design Project: Food Opera

In my classroom I challenge my students to think beyond there own cultural beliefs and to expand the dialog of what globalization and culture means as applied to their ideation and design thinking. Here are a few examples of mindmapping/billboarding techniques used to jump start there projects. Below are several examples of students finished projects, billboarding presentations and team interactions.

Isabeal Maryland Crab presentation

Roni, Sarah and Sparky deep in thought

Dominka Polish Food expo, she incorporated poetic verses.