Anne Chao sent this to me. This is an entertaining animated music video of Avril Lavigne. It is also an ethics fable, which speaks of power at the margins, social class, and the dynamics of status. The video is meant for youth, but is appropriate for all ages. Tiffany
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Last Friday, I joined Eugene Kim, as he led Blue Oxen's first workshop of Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration: an Introduction to Collaboration Tools. I learned a lot, met some good people, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I went with dreamfish Paul Loper, Patty Nason, and met up with Adina Levin, and Arthur Coddington from Craigslist Foundation.
Eugene did some thoughtful matchmaking. Before the workshop, he asked people what challenging scenarios they wanted to address and their learning goals. He then crafted a series of small group compositions that worked very well and where individuals had resources to share with one another.
In particular, we enjoyed the team activity of designing workspace for collaboration. And, Paul Loper leading us in a movement experience to bring awareness to the presence of shared knowledge in the group, that went deeper than words.
In one of my groupings, I worked with Pete Kaminski of Social Text , who introduced me to the joys of the social text wiki. I had an AHA finally about the wiki, which previously has not attracted me, because it wasn't pretty enough. But, as soon as Pete used the analogy of "improvisation" to describe how a Wiki works, then it all made sense. The collaborative process of improvisation allows for new forms to emerge as connections are made between entries.
Eugene and his partner at Blue Oxen identify these Patterns of Collaboration:
* Breaking bread together
* Intimacy gradient
* Celebration
* Water cooler, watering hole, the bar (enemies meet in the same space)
* Spotlight on others – Individuals are appreciated
* Shared language
* Shared display [try to play tick tack toe w/o paper] how much missed knowledge and communication without
* Group Information Hygene
* Visible Pulse – corrolary: leave a trail [ being aware of physicality during virtual]
And going out for a drink afterwards at a local fun bar was an essential part of the workshop design. It was over a beer that Ade Mabogunje and I dove in at length to make connections between knowledge production and how to design for sustainable development. We talked about how the the dominance of Eurocentrism and the masculine in popular assumptions about knowledge. I had so much fun that I forgot the time, and got finally got a call from Dietmar to come home! So, at dusk, the gang all trudged towards the Muni train station and parted in stimulated spirits.
Btw, If you want to have a beer experience with Eugene Kim, he has a good deal on the table. He is offering a Blogger Barter: If you want get started blogging on dreamfish, buy him a beer and he'll give guidance on learning to blog …. and from personal experience, I highly recommend taking him up on the offer.
I appreciate your contribution to discussion and feedback with this blog. Cheers, Tiffany
As we are inviting everyone to a blog fest, I better start myself! O.k., … I am sitting at lunch with Sunshine Mugrabi and we are talking about compostable furniture. We then get into deep conversation about the use of green space as transformative intervention for individuals, groups and organizations as away to develop more green awareness and behaviors.
We are touched and moved and shaped by the water we live in. While public art is supported by rich discourse on how environmental art can transform society, this understanding of the power of “connective aesthetics” (Suzi Gablik, Italian) lives in the world of participatory performance, visual art and architecture. My hope is for more fertile collaborations and cross-pollinations between artists, green architects and organizational theorists and consultants, who are working at the social levels – group, interpersonal and intrapersonal levels. There are evocative connections being made between open source movement and connective aesthetics, and connective aesthetics as embodied social corrective to disembodied times…..…. [click to read more and comment]
Experience from participatory choreography, group facilitation and inquiry into social improvisation leads me to advocate for creating projects that allow people to make connections between caring for the environment, each other and themselves via experiences that are emotionally and aestheticly rich, appreciative and participatory. The design of space makes a difference. This is because our emotions and senses are intimately coupled to the environment. In designing a transformative experience, I seek to design for simple fun ways for to people to physically jump into an “interactivist” practice — the self practices identifying with the interconnective processes of the senses, practices being hyper-aware of this interconnectivity, and plays with creative choices from this connected place. A pro-active awareness practice of Interactivism creates visceral opportunities for shifts of thinking about how deeply we are connected and builds capacity to step boldy into the unknown of trying out new relational behaviors, even while our new huggy behavior goes against the social norm around us. We can realize that, quoting Joanna Macy, the experience becomes “world as lover, world as self”
all for now, hugs (my space/ your space/our space), Tiffany
Sue Lebeck introduced me to SocialDesignSite.com and it is a cross-pollinating whirlpool of creative projects to check out. They are soon having a multicultural exhibit in May. Please be invited by their invitation…
"SocialDesignSite.com is an international online platform with the purpose to foster a discourse on social design. Social design refers to the inescapability of the social other. We are not isolated individuals. We have social interactions everyday. We have to deal with the social other. And in finding ways to do so, we create and design our social world. Every new day we need to choose. We could preserve habits and manifest traditions or we could do things differently. It is our responsibility. Both will have consequences. We cannot not change the world."
INVITATION: We would like to invite you for our DESIGNMAI: http://www.designmai.de exhibition: SocialDesignSite at www. SocialDesignSite.com, May, 12th to 18th (11a.m – 20p.m), to our Office in 10117 Berlin-Mitte, Marienstraße 20.
During 12th to 18th May we are participating at the DESIGNMAI “Digitabilty” in Berlin. Therefore we exhibit all social design projects of our website, either physically or via movies. We would like to get you in touch with the ideas of social design and with the projects’ initiators from all over the world. We count on the exchange of ideas and opinions. The atmosphere is going to be relaxed to smoothly slide into interesting dialogue.
Additionally we would like to invite you to the:
Opening party on Monday, 12th May, 5 pm – 8 pm.
Open Space discussions on Saturday 19th May, 11 am – 3 pm
Please register to receive further details at: Jan.Lachenmayer@SCgroup.de.
Last October, Don Bushnell and I were giving out free hugs at a conference, inspired by the Free Hug project video. We had so much fun that next Friday, we are setting up a Free Hugs booth at the Dreamfish Launch party so that we can give some squeezes. Our free hug project is part of a larger phenomena of social action projects of varying artists worldwide. Below is the World Hug Day project.
World Hug Day
by Gao Brothers
Beijing New Art Projects
"We propose the World Hug Day project. We started it in Shangdong Province, China, together with a worldwide Internet project, an interactive international campaign via the Internet, and have got enormous feedback and support. We carried out the first such performance, The Utopia Of Hugging For Twenty Minutes, on 10 September 2000. We invited some 150 volunteers, who were previously strangers to each other, to participate. We asked the participants to choose a person at random for a hug at the same time, and then cluster into group hugs. Since then, we have hugged hundreds of strangers, and organized group hugs for strangers in different public locations in different ways many times."
In order to develop the World Hug Day project worldwide, we are planning to go global to hug hundreds of strangers, with permission, of course, and organize group hugs for strangers, and hold a travel exhibition of these photos of the hug-performance worldwide.
Biography
Gao Zhen (b. 1956) and Gao Qiang (b. 1962) were both born in Jinan, China.
The Gao brothers are a pair of artists based in Beijing. They are authors of several published works, including How Far Can You Walk in One Day in Beijing, The Current State Of Chinese Avant-Garde Art and The Report Of Art Environment, who have been collaborating on installation, performance, photography works and writing since the mid-1980s. Some of their works were published in A History Of China Modern Art, China Avant-garde Photography, The Best Photography Of China, etc. and collected by Chinese and foreign people and museums.
4 Jiuxianqiao Road,
The Factory 798 Art District, Beijing
P.O. Box 8503
Beijing 100015
China
Tel: +86 10 84566660
Fax: +86 10 84566660
gaobrothers [at] gmail [dot] com
This interview clip is of a former switchboard manager of a Boston hotel. She gives a personal description of diversity and an example of how a muslim woman's work life was impacted by a lack of understanding about her culture and religion. The video footage is rough. But in this brief exchange, we can tangibly get her frustration, care, and her call for equity.
