Dori's Moblog

Groundedness: Lack of in Chicago

One of the things that was most remarkable about my experience in Santa Fe was how relaxed I was. I mean I worked really hard on writing the book, misc. essays, tenure papers, letters of recommendations, conducting research while there, but I just did not feel as stressed as I do now back in Chicago.

The difference I think has to do with the groundedness of Santa Fe because of its earthiness and human scale of things. Jerry and I walk to the Chicago River, mirroring our walks to the Santa Fe River. During this walk, we pass by large industrial buildings, sidewalks and parking lots overgrown with weeds (the Queen Anne's lace is in bloom) and broken glass bottles, freeway overpasses, the train tracks, and there is not a patch of earth on the river walk.

When we did the Emergency and Evacuation Design project at UIC, we talked about natural and man-made elements. For earth/dirt, the man-made equivalents were glass, concrete, and steel. I am realizing that glass, concrete, and steel do not have the same grounding forces as earth/dirt.

So I will have to practice doubly hard my Tai Chi to ground myself. Now all the Taoist meditations about needing to get out of the city seems more true.

Meeting Cultures in Santa Fe

Just some quick notes on the past couple of days... My aunt, Jillane Tunstall, has come to visit me in Santa Fe. She arrived on Thursday, which has provided the perfect opportunity for me to play tourist on my last week in Santa Fe. Saturday, we attended the Taos Pow Wow. This was a really amazing and educational experience. I'll describe it in detail more when I have more time. It sounds like a cliche, but it was a very spiritual and material experience. Material in seeing all the regalia and stuff that is used to create the experience of the Pow Wow. Spiritual, because although I did not speak any of the Native American languages, they made it clear that the event was about offering prayers to the Creator and showing honor to their warriors and their communities. I really want to talk about this in more depth, but here is just a teaser of some of the images. I'll post the rest on Flickr later.

This is Bruce (Apache), who explained a lot about what the dances meant. He has been dancing at Pow Wows for a long time and is probably one of the best Traditional dancers at the Pow Wow. In the pictures we took of him, he posed so stoic, but he was smiling and joking with us the entire time.

There are several types of dances at the Pow Wow. For the men, there were the gourd, traditional, grass, and fancy feather dances. For the women, there were the traditional, jiggle dress, and fancy shawl dances.

Today, we went to the International Folk Arts Festival, which was overwhelming in the number of global vendors. We have to thank Tina, a volunteer for the Festival, for introducing us to the 5-6 vendors whom she knew. It made the experience more personal and less overwhelming for us. It also guaranteed that we bought things because its more difficult not to purchase something from someone when you feel you've made a personal connection with them.  Aunt Jill is posing with Elizabeth Savanhu of Zimbabwe. She was very warm, open, and loving with everyone.

Anyway, more later. I have to go to bed because we have a trip to Bandalier National Park tomorrow.

More than 15 minutes fame: ID@IIT student video

Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel, graduating students at ID @ IIT just released their video, starring me (way too much of me, I should have wore more make-up) on ethnography and interviewing called, "Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography and Interviewing Primer"

They did a really good job. It very funny. What makes me most happy is that they adopted my view of ethnography as a philosophical orientation not just a set of techniques:

The IIT Institute of Design is a graduate school of design dedicated to advancing the methods and practice of human-centered innovation. We believe that real innovation starts with users' needs and employs a set of reliable methods, theories, and tools to create solutions to their problems. Ethnography and interviewing are how we, as designers, see the world through other people's eyes and get them to tell us their stories. In the spring of 2008, we talked to professors, experts, and students about this philosophical orientation and how to actually get people to talk. To ground things a bit, we took a look at a truly universal article of clothing – denim jeans – and set out to understand: "Who's buying premium denim and why?"

So check out the video:

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.

Paint by number

The last couple of days I've been helping Sister Max at the Santa Fe Antiques Show. It was really eclectic from Indian antiques, Polish film and music posters, to my favorite items in the show- these paint by number paintings. Until you've seen a whole wall of PBN's you never realize what its own aesthetic it is. Everyone kept stopping and reminiscing about it.

Oldest house in the US

This is the oldest house in the US. It's cool to see the Adobe brick. It was built around 1610. Of course the caveat is that the Native American's had "houses" older than that. This is on DeVargas street in Santa Fe around St. Miguel's, which was built on Native American slave labor for the Mexicans. Where the Nine Graces Hotel is were the quarters for the first Spanish/Mexican inhabitants of the area.

Declaration of Independence: Rights and Values

One of the things that I am finding most interesting about my research on the values of democracy and design is how the process of the Declaration of Independence came about. This is documented in Pauline Maier's American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Vintage Books, 1997) but also in Zinn and Arnove's Voices of A People's History of the US (Seven Stories, 2004).

The final Jefferson Declaration was really one of many that proceeded it. Many of the individual states (Virginia, Pennsylvania) and even labor unions (NY Mechanics Union) had declared Independence from Great Britain. One of the things that I talk about in the intro chapter of my book is the implicit and explicit values of American democracy represented in the Declaration of Independence. It really complicates the story:

To define the values of American democratic government myself, I went back to many of the documents of the founding of the United States government in their draft and final forms: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of the Confederation, the Constitution, Jefferson’s Notes on the Congress Proceedings, the Federalist Papers, the and the Bill of Rights. In the mark outs and additions found in the draft forms of these documents, I came upon probably the most defining American democratic value – the right to acquire and possess property.  While “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property” appears explicitly in the Virginia Declarations of Rights,  Thomas Jefferson edited the reference to property from his draft of the Declaration of Independence. Historian, Pauline Maier notes that for Jefferson and his contemporaries, happiness would include the acquiring and possession of property, and thus Jefferson’s editorial decisions “perhaps sacrificed the clarity of meaning for the grace of language.”  I propose that, in fact, the story of American democracy is the contradictions between the values of the rights of of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the right to acquire and possess property.

Reading the drafts and debates reminds you that all of these democratic values were contested in one way or another. Its  important to remember this contestedness as we address our own contemporary American democracy. 

Santa Fe Sunflowers

The sunflowers in the front garden of my house are in bloom. I wake up and walk Jerry every morning and just feel happy seeing them. My favorite flowers are sun flowers and Gerbera daisies.

XXX from SITE Santa Fe

First time seeing it at night.

Six shooter and the right to own guns

I have an essay for the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference due, so I have to keep it short. I just wanted to ponder the Supreme Court's 2nd Amendment decision on the individual's right to own guns.

Now gun ownership is one of those areas in which I agree with Chris Rock, "No normal decent person is one thing. OK!?! I got some shit I'm conservative about, I got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime - I'm conservative. Prostitution - I'm liberal."

Gun ownership is one of those areas that in spite of viewing Bowling for Columbine 1000 times, I'm "conservative" about, but for liberal reasons and with some caveats. First the caveats, I believe in the individual right to own guns, but there should be restrictions on the types of guns. I do not think semi-automatic or automatic weapons of any kind are valid weapons for hunting or home self-defense, and thus such be banned. I believe that every gun owner should have a license and have required training or be able to pass a "shooting" test in the way that you have to pass a driving test to get a drivers license.

Now the Constitutional issue of the 2nd Amendment hinges on whether gun ownership is permissible for those only part of a militia. The 5-4 split vote was that individuals could own guns without being part of a militia. I agree with this decision because of the underlying assumption behind the 2nd Amendment is that you cannot trust the government to protect you (i.e. Redcoats in your house), thus need to have means of self-defense of the home, community, etc. Granted this was before the standing army, but due to US history with the African-American community (and other communities as well), I do not think it is prudent to trust the government so much that you give up the means to defend your community against potential abuse of power.

The first action of any totalitarian regime is to disarm any oppositional factions. Yes, I might trust an Obama administration, but if for some reason it becomes a totalitarian regime, I want to be able to defend myself against the National Guard or US Military if it rolls tanks down my street.

But you might say, most of the weapons are being used to kill innocent children in drive by shootings. This is where the caveats become important from a policy perspective although I understand the reality of gun theft and running, so that requiring licenses and training does not help the situation. I get it. But, one of the important messages of Bowling for Columbine was that it was not the amount of guns on the streets that caused the rates of homicide in the US, but rather the culture of fear propagated by the media and unscrupulous politicians. Eliminating individual gun ownership may seem to be the most practical solution to gun-related violence, but I would want to approach things from a different perspective. I'd make policies that would require broadcasters to make sure that 50% of their content covered "positive" news. If the FCC can regulate sex, it should regulate violence in the media by saying "Okay, you can have your Murder/Death/Kill, but you have to give equal time to Compassion/Life/Alturism."

Now the irony of all this is that I do not own a gun, nor do I desire to own one.

Photos of plastic bottle sculptures on Flickr

I've posted the images from the plastic bottle sculptures at SITE Santa Fe on Flickr. Check them out. Here is my (and Dakota's) final sculpture at the Santa Fe Opera site.

Feelin' better

Jerry is back to his old self today. I am at 75%. Last night I volunteered for the Biennial gala. It was very beautiful and fascinating to see Santa Fe's art glitteroti.

It was shockingly lacking in diversity. Besides myself and the artist Nadine, there were no other African-Americans. There were only a hand full of Native Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, and Asians.

Today, I am hanging out at the Santa Fe Opera, telling people when the next bus is coming. I'll make sure to bring a book and my camera to take pictures of the sculptures there.

Now, I'm off to the farmer's market.

Ain't no cure for the summertime flu

So today, Jerry and I are sick. Jerry won't eat and was lethargic during his walk this morning. I'm trying to figure out if his teeth are bothering him, but he won't even eat the yogurt this morning.

I have a flu or at least checking my symptomology it is the flu, not a cold:

1. Fever: didn't check but I've been having the sweats, which are indicative of a fever
2. Headache, big time. I though I was going to die yesterday until I took two Advils
3. Aches and pains, all over.
4. Fatigue/weakness, I feel super weak. All I want to do is lie down and watch Law and Order reruns.
5. Extreme exhaustion, walking Jerry this morning was so difficult.
6. Stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat: yep, but these are more often cold symptoms
7. Chest discomfort, just started today.

Tonight is the gala for the opening of SITE Santa Fe Biennial. I am supposed to be working tonight, but I think I will have to skip the after party and go to bed.

SITE Santa Fe Biennial

Experimentation, Ephemeral, Experience, Collaboration, and Community. These are the five words that Lance Fung, curator of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Lucky Number Seven, used to describe the essence of the art experiences.

Yesterday, I attended a walk-thru and lecture given by Lance to prepare the guides and docents. I believe the hype that this is a totally different framework for an artistic experience for artists, communities, and the art world. In order to free the artists from the constrains of market driven pressures, the works commissioned from the 22 emerging artists had to be hand-made and ephemeral. The idea is that if the artist knows that the work will never go to market because it is recycled, reused, destroyed, or in some very special cases, gifted to children or a community; he or she will produce more experimental art.

What most impresses me, as an anthropologist, was Lance's desire to make the Biennial a collaborative experience. All the work had to be site-specific to Santa Fe. So the artists were brought all together last April to visit Santa Fe and get to learn about one another. They spoke with community members and everyday Santa Feans. They visited museums, pueblos, Los Alamos, Roswell, etc.  These experience resulted in not just community among the artists (which as he narrated is very rare for an art exhibit) but also community between the artists and Santa Fe's multiple communities (Anglo, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, etc.) Much of the work, such as the Hiroshi FujiSan's project with the recycled bottles, were local + artist collaborations, including a slew of interns from all over.

The Biennial is going to be an amazing experience of art, but my experience of participating as a volunteer really reflects the essence of what it is about. Through my participation, I've experimented with new forms of expression (plastic bottle sculptures), my presence is ephemeral (I leave in five weeks), I've had and shared amazing experiences with people through collaboration, and most important, I've found a community. It will probably be Diasporic, but I will share a bond with everyone who I met.

The Biennial opens this Friday, if you are in the area, do come.  Here is the link to the Biennial documentary, check out Lance's video and the video's of the artists.

NYC Last Week

So I was in NYC last week for the Mellon-Mays SSRC 20th anniversary gala. The Mellon-Mays SSRC program takes underrepresented college students and prepares them for professorial academic careers, mostly in the humanities and social sciences. They provide lots of funding, including research grants and pay off up to $10K in undergraduate and graduate college loans. The hold annual conferences and workshops for networking and mentorship.

This was the first conference that I had attended and I probably will not attend another one. The conference itself was great, but since I'd never attended previous ones, I did not have a clique to join. And the groups were extremely cliquish. But it was cool to be around really intelligent and accomplished people of color and be able to have spontaneous conversations about middle class black masculinity and the performance of law. I did get to meet some people from Bryn Mawr College at the reception and that was cool.

The Mellon-Mays SSRC program is a great model for increasing diversity in academia, which makes me think about what it would take to do this sort of program for the field of design.

The rest of NYC was a social whirlwind as usual. I got in on Wednesday afternoon and checked into one of the dorms at Columbia University. I had never spent time on the Upper West Side/Harlem. The area is really nice with the river and the parks. There is a good vibe and it doesn't feel as crowded as Mid-town. I met with Manual on 125th Street in Harlem where he treated me to some really good vegetarian Jamaican food and ginger brew. I had the beans and rice, fake chicken curry, and collard greens. We then went to see Amateur Night at the Apollo. That was hellva fun. The audience was about 1/3 white and 2/3rds of color (mostly black and latino), which led to some interesting dynamics with the MC. Most of the jokes were about making fun of blacks, latinos, and dissin on whites. It feels awkward to diss on whites when they are in the audience. Anyway, most of the talent were mediocre (not exceptional but not bad enough to boo of the stage). About three performers were really great.

Thursday before the Mellon Mays SSRC program, I took the 1 Train from Columbia U to 22nd street to make a 9AM conference call with Leilah and Leah Rico of AIGA at AIGA headquarters. We went over a design and strategy project we are doing for them.  Then, I took the F Train from 23rd to the MoMA where I had a meeting 10:30 AM with Ric Grefe.

He knows a lot about art, which makes sense considering his wife is an artist. It's just that one rarely gets to interact with him outside of work projects and strategy. There was some work in terms of asking follow up questions to the design and strategy project and he was doing a hard sell on some design policy stuff that he wanted me to get involved with, but I said no.  It was sooo hard to say no, but it was the best thing for me to do.

He had a call at noon and I had to get back uptown for the MM-SSRC stuff. Then Friday AM, I had breakfast with Saki Mafundikwa, the Zimbabwean director of ZIVA, and his 6-year old son, about his participation in a Black Designers Forum we are holding at the UIC -Motorola Innovation Center in August.

I then caught my plane to Denver, which ended up being late so I missed my connecting flight at 5:30pm MT. They rebooked me on the 9:30pm MT flight which was delayed until 11:00 PM, which meant that I missed the last Sandia Shuttle from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, which meant I had to pay $200 for a private limo. I got in at 2:00AM MT and Jerry kept me up all night because he was both excited I was back and pissed off that I had left him for 3 days.

Everyone at Casa Del Toros took care of him, so he had a good time without me. He was taken on long walks to the river and given lots of petting and treats. I really love Santa Fe.

So now I finished the introductory chapter of my book, In Design We Trust, yippeee!!! But that's another post.

Final Sculpture for SITE Santa Fe

So today I spent all day finishing my sculpture.

Here is the view from below, which is what most people will see when it is hanging from the lamp post.

Although I did not have time to do this, I am glad I did for two reasons:

1. It is good to make something creative with your hands. I've not had the opportunity to do so in  along time.
2. I got to meet really cool Santa Feans and visiting interns. So now I have people to go to farmers market with or take African dance with. I've particularly bonded with Dakota and Alicia, with whom I'm taking the dance class  tomorrow night after writing.

Yesterday, I spent the day with Gong Szeto, Bonnie Schwartz (his wife) and Willow (his daughter). I know they are going to read this, but trust me that I would say the same thing if they were not.  :)

They are truly good souls, smart and funny people, who think very deeply about the world, yet are still able to engage with it openly. The best thing that will come out of spending the summer here in Santa Fe will hopefully be the friendship I establish with them.

Sculptress of Plastic Ristras: SITE Santa Fe Biennial

Sorry, I haven't been posting. From some reason, not all of the posts from my mobile phone have been going through. For the last three days, I have been playing artist at the SITE Santa Fe. We are preparing for the biennial in a couple of weeks. A bunch of interns and community artists are helping to build these sculptures based on the work of Hiroshi Fuji, an emerging Japanese artists who does sculptures out of plastic bottles.

So we got to wash bottles the first day. It was actually fun because there was lots of women, so we would gossip and wash like women probably used to do when they went down to the river. A lot of people did not come back in the afternoon because they wanted to do only the fun making part not the preparations.

The second day and third day, I've worked on my sculpture, which was to create a ristra out of plastic bottles. Ristras are the strings of dry chilies that people hang on doors here in Santa Fe. I made two of them with the help of Dakota, a local artist in clay, and it took over 45 green and blue plastic bottles. Then I made four small non-chili ristras to fill out the space because the armatures cannot show when they are placed on top of the parking lot lights at the Santa Fe Opera.

Here is what it looked like at the end of yesterday. The blue green color makes it look like sea kelp, but then as someone pointed out (it looks very nourishing) which means it looks like a bunch of nipples. I will go back this AM to work on it. Then at 12:30pm, I meet Bonnie and Willow, who are the family of Gong Szeto, who I only know virtually, but will meet for the first time today.

VPs for Obama

So it seems that Barack Obama has wrapped up the Democratic Presidential nomination. Yippeee!!!! So now the question is who will be VP. I still feel a tug in my heart for an Obama/Clinton ticket. Out of other prospects that have been floating about my second favorite will be Bill Richardson on NM. He is probably one of the most seasoned, smart, progressive, and nice politicians around. If Obama cannot stomach Hillary, he would do well to be able to capitalize on Richardson's experience of how Washington works, which is what Obama needs even if he is going to do things differently. You have to know how things have run in the past before you can change them.

Not to sound cynical (I got Wyclef Jean's If I Was President in my head), the VP candidate is going to be super important. Because if Barack does become the first black president, he will be a major target. And if that worst-case-scenario comes to pass, cities will burn.

But for now, I am full of hope and optimism and pride in America that we can see the day when we can have a black presidential candidate. Yippee!!!

Santa Fe 1 hour opera

Santa Fe has this great concept of one hour opera to introduce people to opera in a much more managable way. There were lots of young people in line with me for whom it was the first time seeing opera. Tickets were $10 and $5 dollars making it as good as an investment as going to the movies. It was at the Scottish Rites Cathedral instead of the outside opera theater, but it will be really cool.

Response to DO article on Makereadies and Ink

Jessica Helfand has posted an article on Design Observer about the end of Makereadies with the age of digital printing. And what it seems to mark for her:

Ephemerality is so often the casualty of any kind of progress, as production of any kind is invariably supplanted by quicker, cheaper, more efficient means. In this case, the more the physical object is compromised by speedy transmittal, the more our definitions of design, and of the methods that produce it, must adapt to new conceptions of both method and manufacture.

 

Here is my response:
The Work of Design in the Age of Mechanical/Digital Reproduction

A few months ago, I went to an actual printing press to oversee a job. This was the first time that I understood that designers made prototypes. There is this entire heavy manufacturing process (with large German machines) that takes place for a Adobe InDesign file to become a physical brochure. That was a magical moment for me (as a quasi-non-designer) in terms of understanding design's role in an "industrial" process.

I am in Santa Fe for the summer, and now I realize what it means to be in a place of "Art." And by art, I mean you can see the human imprint on the works. One can see the brush strokes of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting and know that a human hand made it. You know that it is human because it is imperfect in is regularity.

What you are expressing so elegantly, Jessica, is what happens to design and designing as we move further away from the visibility of human (and mechanical, thus human) imperfection in the work. Philip Burton once told me that it took him 3 years to design his "book" at Basel. The nearly insurmountable potential for human imperfection in hand typesetting is what probably makes that book a work of design superior to art. What makes Saul Bass's work so compelling to me is that you know he had to cut forms out by hand with that level of imperfect precision.

So in addition to your questions of methodological emphemerality and manufacturing efficiency what happens to design when the possibilities of human imperfection are so minimized that there is no sense of awe in design? Is this not what digitalization has done for design? Yes, people still to bad design with digital tools, but the results are probably "better" designs than if they had to use Exacto knives and T-squares.

Is this part of the further democratization of design for "the people" (i.e. Walter Benjamin's argument in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? Is it part of the de-skilling of design for designers and printers? I think I could live with those outcomes in some ways.

Or does it speak to a deeper loss of the imperfections and "happy accidents" that make possible the delight, surprise, discovery, and humanity in a work of design? This to me would be the more tragic loss.

Yet, I do wonder, Jessica, who actually ever sees the makereadies? Is that moment of delight just for the designer or is a broader audience exposed to them? If it is the former, than perhaps the loss is double. That people do not see them and now they have become obsolete.

Why I think this matters? I once read an entire book of Shakespeare's sonnets. And you know, he wrote some really bad poetry. But, reading them made me appreciate the good poetry all the better because I understood all the possibilities of imperfection that made the good ones perfect. 

Elections coming up in Santa Fe

Yesterday, I brought out my real camera to take some pictures. One of my favorites is of the Voter Parking outside the Santa Fe Municipal Building. I've been following it semi-interestingly from the context of what I am writing about American democratic values versus the real lived experience. But more about that later. Now, just pretty pictures.