information ecologist

Kate West from the University of Michigan’s School of Art & Design asked me to write a few words about my study abroad experience while at U of M for an upcoming issues of A&D: Emergence. One never knows how these kinds of things will be edited to fit the space, so I included my full answers below:

What was your first experience with international study? A&D? Before?

In public high school I was caught the travel bug, and with the support of my parents I was lucky enough to travel to England, France and Germany.

During my undergraduate studies at Syracuse University I traveled to England and France during spring break for an art history class on post-impressionism, and then spent my last semester as an undergraduate studying at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. where I also got to travel through Vietnam, Thailand and China.

I had planned to study abroad in Hong Kong my Junior year, but then the SARS outbreak happened, so the trip was postponed until my final semester in college. That taught me that travel is more fun when you are willing to be as flexible as possible. I was the only foreigner in the art school there the majority of the foreign students in Hong Kong were in business or politics.

At U of M:
Spring 2005: I went to Suriname for our first year experience,
Summer 2006: Had an international internship in Bangalore, India at CKS and ended up teaching at Srishti School of Art Design & Technology.
Fall 2006: Spent 10 days in Sau Paulo, Brazil doing Design Ethnography which can be seen in the Emerging Economy Report
Spring 2007: attended a conference in Oxford, England and then on to Swansea, Wales
Graduation: Moved to Bangalore, India

Did that experience change you? If so, how?

All of my travel experiences have definitely changed me. Traveling made me much more empathetic and open-minded to the many ways that humans understand the world and organize their lives. Especially traveling in Brazil and India I had to come to grips with the fact that the majority of the humans on this planet are people of faith, and that any successful shift towards a sustainable human existence on spaceship earth needs to take into account and appeal to religious and arational belief systems, as well as rational belief systems. I have become a advocate for Cognitive Justice, and am excited to see the increasing number of American faiths attempt to take on environmental degradation.

Did it impact your creative work? If so, how?

Cities have become my muse. I fall in love with what makes cities themselves and nowhere else. Living in two information Mega Cities (Hong Kong and Bangalore) has directed my creative work towards understanding and playing with the flows of material and information into and between cities.

Did your view of the U.S. change? Did travel and study inform your ideas for your own creative work? Did it make you hungry for more travel? More aware of differences?

I always feel like traveling makes me hyperaware of the qualities that come from my American experience: Endless optimism and a cultivated niavate that can be refreshing or insufferable to Non-Americans, depending on the situation. Travel made me reexamine my assumptions about the relationship between the state and markets and seek out affinity networks that answer to neither. I continue to be alarmed by most American’s willful ignorance of the rest of the world, but also their generosity and willingness to reexamine assumptions when given the opportunity. My wish for education reform is that every high school student be required to travel abroad and/or complete a service project as part of graduation into a global economy. Becoming a citizen of planet earth requires a larger and more nuanced vision of the world than can come from being isolated in any one local or national culture. Obviously, at least one study abroad experience is essential for any serious Bachelor’s degree.

What international experiences have you had since then?

After graduating from A&D@UofM, I moved to Bangalore, India from May 2007-Dec. 2008 along with my classmate Gabriel Harp (MFA 2007). In that time we helped to launch a graduate program and lab in Experimental Media Art at the Srishti School of Art Design & Technology (http://srishti.ac.in), and co-author a business report about design innovation called the Emerging Economy Report for CKS ltd (http://cks.in). I have spent the last semester teaching at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR but I will be returning to Bangalore for a month this June to initiate some new projects. The friends and connections I have made in Bangalore will continue to shape the direction of my creative work and my career.

Did your A&D sponsored international experience have a significant impact on your work/life? If so, why? And how?

A&D sponsored international experience had a profound impact on my career decisions after school. Spending a month in Paramaribo, Suriname exposed me to a pluralistic culture I had never heard of or could have imagined existed in the Western hemisphere. With one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 21st century I was awoken to the possibility of radically different urbanism could be described as Rural CyberPunk, that I have been following around the world ever since.

By helping me fund my international internship in India the school helped me gain the experience and contacts I needed to establish myself as a participant in an international network of artists and designers.

Has international work and study become a mainstay/ continuing component of your practice?

Because I am ultimately interested in imagining a sustainable networked urban culture it has been invaluable to visit so called “world class” cities such as Hong Kong and London, but I have learned much more by seeing how places like Swansea, Bhuj and Guangzhou have adapted at the periphery of the global networked economy.

If you’ve decided to work/live outside of the U.S., what motivated that choice?

The opportunity to spend significant time in a culture very different than my own, in an exchange of mutual respect and co-evolution. An opportunity to join an institution that would allow me to write and re-write my own job description while on the job was a definite plus. That kind of risk taking usually only happens in very young institutions, and I am very grateful and humbled by the space for taking risks provided to me by two very interesting Indian institutions.

What are your plans for the near future?

I am attempting to launch a design office called the Office of Urbanism, Computing and Human Ecology. (http://ouche.org) I think I will be able to work out a situation where I can spend half of the year working and teaching in Portland, Oregon my adopted hometown/base of operations, three months in Bangalore, and the other three months traveling. This arrangement would allow me to establish a practice with roots in the only U.S. city that is serious about sustainability, and continue to be inspired and do work in cities all over the world.