ICOGRADA | Calendar | ICOGRADA WORLD DESIGN CONGRESS 2009 | EXPLORE CHINA: JOIN IN A PRE-CONGRESS WORKSHOP
June 23, 2009 — cyunsunLeon: Welcome Message and Planning
August 29, 2008 — cyunsunTEDTalks: Jonathan Harris
July 28, 2008 — cyunsunTelling stories using data: An interview with Jonathan Harris
An interview with Jonathan Harris
Jonathan Harris calls himself a storyteller. But he’s also equal parts visual artist, computer scientist, anthropologist, data voyeur, photographer, digital anthropologist, interviewer, and designer. What might be more appropriate is “story revealer” or even “story enabler,” for Harris has the ability to uncover the complexity of human stories by starting with a simple question. His early work started with simple queries about far-flung data sets across the web: OneWord, an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranks words in commonness order into a very long single sentence; 10×10, an exploration of words and photos in the news, stretches our standards about what digital news means; and perhaps his most well-known piece today, We Feel Fine, searches the world’s blog posts for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” revealing emotion and humanity behind what would otherwise be plain old text. The audience for his designs, then, become the storytellers themselves, using them as a tool to unfold the narratives.
Figure 1: A visualization from the “We Feel Fine” project.
In the wake of the success of We Feel Fine along with Universe, a modern mythology project released at TED in 2007, Harris began to flip his process. Instead of querying the data and asking it to reveal the human story, he’s starting at the source—the human kind. Some of Harris’ more recent work required him to start with people, offline, in projects like The Whale Hunt, a process that required him to take a photo every five minutes while living with the Inupiat Eskimos in Alaska for nine days (in other words, 3,214 photos). In this and other recent projects, visualization of the data came only after he’s sat with humanity for a while.
Access to Harris’ particular style of putting together a story is now reaching a wider audience at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of a new exhibition, Design and the Elastic Mind. He was commissioned to do a piece on online dating, I Want You To Want Me, which chronicles the world’s long-term relationship with romance by visualizing text in online dating profiles.
Harris has become an unassuming evangelist for a new way of storytelling. He frequently speaks about his work publicly and places as much care and attention on describing his design process as he does with the design itself.
If asked to describe Harris a year ago, I would have said: Jonathan has a way of visualizing the world’s data to make it seem more human. But given his recent explorations, if asked to describe him today, I’d say: Jonathan has a way of visualizing humanity, and making it more accessible to the world. And often times, more beautiful.
Over a series of email conversations, I had the chance to talk with Jonathan about what makes a good story, why working alone is better, and where he’ll find his next project.
Figure 2: An image/phrase combination from the “We Feel Fine” project.
Given the layered nature of your work, how would you describe what you do?
I just work on things that interest me. From project to project, that can end up involving computer science, graphic design, visual art, anthropology, photography, storytelling, travel, interviews, and probably a few other things too.
Sometimes I try to identify a common thread in my work, and usually come back to “storytelling,” which is a very loose way of encompassing what I do. John Maeda once told me that my work is an anomaly, but that anomaly is a good thing. So I’m sticking to it.
What are the basic elements of a story regardless of the medium? Are there any?
I define “story” quite loosely. To me, a story can be as small as a gesture or as large as a life. But the basic elements of a story can probably be summed up with the well-worn “Who / What / Where / When / Why / How.” And feeling. Stories should have feeling, to the extent that they want to be human.
Figure 3: Navigating the “Whale Hunt” project by cast member.
Whale Hunt, one of your more recent projects, required you to move from a pretty human and intimate level with the content to a digital and more detached one in order to create the piece. How did this change in scale and intimacy affect the way you told the story as you developed it?
Well, on the one hand, I could still remember the feeling of the wind on my face, what a big deal it was each time I had to pee (it was -22 degrees out there on the ice), the exhilaration of piloting a snow machine across the moonscape of the frozen Arctic ocean, and the feeling of intense boredom while waiting four days in near silence for a whale to show up.
So I remembered those feelings and wanted to present the content in a way that could best express them. But on the other hand, I suddenly had this distance from the experience, which allowed me to observe its internal patterns and trends, and I wanted to find a way to express those too.
You used constraints to structure that story—the cast, concept, context, and cadence. When you start working with a narrative, do *you* give it constraints so that you can tell a story the way you want to, or do constraints naturally emerge?
Constraints naturally emerge. I look hard at the material, sometimes with the help of programmatic analysis, and see what secrets it holds.
The work that we’re talking about is primarily digital. When working with digital storytelling, how do you negotiate between guiding viewers through a narrative and providing options for them to choose their own path?
It’s important to do both. The power of defaults will need to accommodate the vast majority of people. But it must be easy and playful to diverge from the defaults and chart one’s own course. Here, layering is essential. At any one moment, the range of available options within view should be very small, but it should be effortless (and fun) to get more.
Figure 4: One of the 3,214 images from the “Whale Hunt” project.
Sounds like a significant challenge. How do online narratives usually fail?
They can fail for many reasons. They can be badly designed. They can be designed for other mediums. They can lack empathy. They can lack a strong narrative. Online storytelling platforms should offer insights about their constituent stories that would be opaque to other mediums.
Outside of your own work, are there good examples of the kind of insight you’re talking about—either online or off?
No good ones. This is a quality that has yet to be realized, in my own work or elsewhere.
What’s your own design process then? In particular, how do you start?
On paper. I do all my thinking on paper. I can’t think behind a computer screen. When I sit at my desk with my hand on the mouse, my creativity stalls, and I turn into a robot, efficiently executing what’s already in my mind.
It’s also important to be willing to throw away everything at any moment, if a better idea comes along. Many of my well known designs (10×10, We Feel Fine, I Want You To Want Me) assumed their final design states very late in the process, often abandoning weeks or months of work. Nothing can be sacred. Better ideas must always be allowed to subvert lesser ones.
Figure 5: Some sketches for the “I Want You To Want Me” project, which is on view at MoMA.
I’ve heard you do all your work yourself, so I suppose you don’t need to worry—at least as much—about throwing everything away. How does working alone, rather than hiring a team, benefit you or your work?
I believe in practicing one’s own craft. You learn an astounding amount from the resistance of the medium. My projects always evolve enormously from initial concept to final form. Often you try something and it sucks, so you go in another direction. Often you make a mistake, and the mistake ends up showing you a better way. But unless you have an intimate relationship with the medium and with the piece, you will not notice these cues, and the work will suffer.
I think this is why so much of the work that comes from large companies is so mediocre. It gets specified by someone and executed by someone else, with feedback from someone else and final say from someone else. It’s just a big mediocre mess. To make something really beautiful, you have to treat it like a lover. It has to be personal. It has to obsess you when you’re falling asleep. It has to be in your dreams. It has to be with you when you wake. It has to torment you.
If you allow the work to accompany you in those intimate moments, it will reveal itself to you, and the result will evolve like a life form, nuanced, and crafted with love. This is why I resist hiring assistants or interns, and certainly why I will never work for anyone else. This resistance to hired help limits my ability to produce more, but I think it makes each thing I do produce better.
Figure 6: A screen capture from the “I Want You To Want Me” project.
Can design studios or even designers in large companies foster this same sort of obsession?
No, I don’t think so—not with the same sense of loving. The best stuff is always personal.
It seems that your work is indeed becoming more personal. In earlier projects, you created tools that reveal storylines by analyzing large sets of data—but you yourself were removed from the actual story narrator. In more recent projects, you’re actively involved in the story, becoming the narrator yourself. How has this shift affected you as a designer? Has it affected the way that story gets told?
This transition is partially selfish (I don’t like the person I become when I sit for weeks behind a screen), and partially conceptual (I think the most moving work is personal work). After spending five years making projects that passively collect and reframe the stories of others, I began to see in this work something superficial, even cowardly. Piggybacking on all these other people’s stories, without risking anything myself, began to get to me. So I’m heading in a different direction now. And we’ll see where that leads.
You’ve been revealing narratives from the time you were at Princeton when you founded Troubadour Magazine through your work today in the MoMA. Have you seen a shift in the kinds of narratives we find interesting? Well, one big change is people’s obsession with data, which didn’t exist seven years ago when I was at Princeton making Troubadour. People have come to expect to see the story of data alongside the story of people.
In fact, I think people have begun to forget how powerful human stories are, exchanging their sense of empathy for a fetishistic fascination with data, networks, patterns, and total information. Really, the data is just part of the story. The human stuff is the main stuff, and the data should enrich it.
Isn’t this contrary the trends that seem to be emerging today with increasingly sophisticated technology?
One thing technology hasn’t figured out is how to enhance, rather than limit, our individuality. This is largely because technology, in order to be profitable, has to be mass-produced. And when things are mass-produced, everyone gets the same version. This would all be fine, if technology weren’t so damn addictive.
Most tools (hammers, pencils, leaf-blowers) don’t impose themselves on the lives of their users. Tools should accommodate us when we need them, and then go away until we need them again. This is the implicit pact between tools and their owners. But technology is different. Devices like Blackberries, iPods, iPhones, and laptops are the first tools to violate the pact of tools and their owners. They go too far, and they take over our lives.
I don’t have anything against these devices in particular; I just think every so often, people should go outside and smell the wind.
How do you judge where that line is so that you don’t violate the pact of tools? Is there a way designers can better understand when tools should retreat to the background?
The problem is less with the tools and more with people’s addictive relationships to them. But if tools insist on becoming addictive, they can at least have the courtesy of being personal. Instead of one-size-fits-all solutions, objects and experiences could fit the lives of their owners like a tattered favorite t-shirt, a lucky necklace, a haircut, or a snapshot of a first love.
Designers tend towards fascism—creating products and experiences that force themselves onto their users, leading to addictive relationships that all look the same. If these objects of technology are going to be part of our lives at all times, then they should bend and morph to reflect our personalities, enhancing rather than diminishing our sense of individuality.
Which story most influenced you as you were growing up?
I had this great big book called the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, which was a compendium of all things magical, mystical, and mythical. I also read a lot of comics (and wrote my own).
In a recent interview you said, “There are many ways to tell stories, and I’m still searching for the ultimate way. I don’t think humans have found it yet.” How do you push yourself to find new ways to expose these narratives?
It comes from living life and having an extremely intimate sense of technology. These things play off each other, and you start to see the physical world through the lens of technology. You can then envision applying templates and frameworks on top of reality, to highlight and reveal insights and patterns about life. It’s an organic process that only comes with time. As Hemingway often said, you have to live life to make work.
How do you find stories to tell?
Oh, they’re everywhere! Everything is a story. Sometimes it overwhelms me. I love walking around New York and making intense eye contact with strangers as they pass me, sharing a few brief moments of knowing, guessing intimacy.
Every face holds so much. I could do an entire project about anyone I ever meet. I just find people endlessly fascinating.
Art & Design Departmental Meeting Agenda
April 3, 2008 — cyunsunArt & Design Departmental Meeting Agenda
April 3, 2008
ITEMS:
1. Computer software/hardware requirements for Art & Design: the next step.
2. Fall 2008 Schedule: workloads and assignments
Independent Study: 5 students= 1 credit course
200 level :
3. E-portfolio
4. Specialization courses and their Syllabi
Major Curriculum starting with project briefs
Curriculum Committee
5. Capstone exhibitions
6. Candidates for our chair position
7. Department budget for this year, Any money for our classroom needs?
8. Supplies that we ordered?
9. Use of spray glue in the studios and possible places to install filmhood
10. Displaying student work on campus
11. The Knowledge Village ZU building and tracking on Dubai Campus
12. AOB
RESEARCH INCENTIVE FUND (RIF)
February 15, 2008 — cyunsunRESEARCH INCENTIVE FUND (RIF)
GUIDELINES for SUBMITTING RIF PROPOSALS – 2008/2009
This section contains information on the selection criteria, specific instructions, and budget formats for the presentation of the research proposals.
Types of Proposals
Type of Grant Annual Funds Available**
Large Grants Dh500,000
Max Dh250,000 per year per project
Regular Grants
• Individual
• Small group & Interdisciplinary research Dh580,000
• Max Dh30,000 / year / project
• Max Dh60,000 / year / project
College Small Grants* Dh120,000
Max Dh5,000 per grant
* College Small Grants will be administered within Colleges and do not require a proposal to the Research Incentive Fund
** Proposals submitted with a budget above the listed amounts will be reviewed on a case by case basis.
Submission of Proposal (or letters of intent, in the case of Large Grants) to Dean
Thursday 13 March 2008
RFRC sub-committee completes review of letters of intent for Large Grants and makes recommendations Thursday 27 March 2008
College & Dean reviews completed,
proposals forwarded to Research Funding Review Committee (RFRC) Thursday 10 April 2008
Large Grant full proposals due Thursday 8 May 2008
RFRC completes reviews and makes recommendations to Provost Thursday 22 May 2008
Announcement of awards Thursday 8 June 2008
Department Meeting 5/2/2008
February 5, 2008 — cyunsunDepartment Meeting 5/2/2008
Rooms: R-L1-34 and Z 134
Timing: 3 – 5 pm
Agenda
1. Inter-campus communication
Class presentation
Field Trip
Jointed Exhibitions
Workshop
Kerry will help us to organize the events.
2. E-portfolio
Is it viable for us to use it?
How are we going to access the data?
Assessment Issues: What are the skills that need to be accessed?
Customized solutions?
3. Undergraduate curriculum
Reordering issues
Majoring
– Computer configurations
4. Advising students
8 Semesters Plan
Self-registration system required
5. Blackboard use
% use only
6. Software requirements
Auto CAD
Management system
7. Exhibitions
Art and Design Campus Exhibition
8. AOB
Regards,
Kerry Eden
Administration Assistant
Art & Design
College of Art & Sciences
E-mail: kerry.eden@zu.ac.ae
Phone: 009714-4021126
Mobile: 050-7852551
Selma,
I have missed a chance to send the agenda/questions/suggestions for tomorrow’s meeting earlier. Sorry for the late delivery.
0. Curriculum Development
1. Capstone Projects Coordination
2. Application Trainings or Workshops for Faculty and Students
3. Students’ computer software requirements
4. Mac Labs
– Technician Support
– Hardware Maintenance
– Software Updates
5. Taking Advantage of e-Learning Technologies
6. Enhancing Graphic Design Programs with Media Design
7. Art and Design Students’ Activities
– Class projects, internship, or capstone presentations
– Competitions
– Participation in international design events
8. MOU with Inha University, Incheon Korea
9. Working with other universities via Global Modules
10. Blackboard
11. Advising roles and process
These are in my mind now. Looking forward to the meeting tomorrow.
regards,
yun*
Web 2.0 Technologies Workshop
February 4, 2008 — cyunsun- Collaborative and communicative
- Community Development
- Teaching Idea Pots
- E-mail Fatigue: Choose e-mails
- Note Taking, Editing, and Journaling in Class: Editing using Wikis
- Other: Notification, Communication, Productivity and Lifelong Learning
- From Desktop to Browsers
- Google Notebook
- iGoogle Application
Learing 2.0 23 Things: Learning 2.0 Technologies
- We have to do it in your own time
- To-do list
- Comments: learning together
The Future of Zayed University
February 2, 2008 — cyunsunMichael,
It’s my sincere apology for this late reply.
To answer your questions, I have started from envisioning what UAE higher education would need from a mother’s perspectives. If I were an Emirati mother looking for an exceptional university for my daughters, I would make sure to look for the following qualities in a University where:
• She could freely explore her apparent as well as hidden potentials
• There are ample opportunities for her to understand the rest of the world
• There are practical experiences in which she can encounter collaborative working/learning to prepare for the real world
• Leadership training and imaginative solution seeking are nurtured
• The understanding of a paradigm shift in roles of faculty as facilitators and the university as an open-system is pursued
Within a couple of semesters of working at ZU, I have observed that we as faculty do have a great deal of energy and passion to serve the University and UAE, and that a majority of students have unique motivations to contribute to the development of UAE. I believe that these are our strengths as an institution.
I acknowledge that it’s my privilege to teach these young brilliant ladies as the first UAE design generation who is and will be the leaders of UAE design. It must be the same case for many other departments at ZU. It’s exciting to envision the future of ZU as we pave the path to excel these young women to be the contemporary front leaders of their fields.
Listed below are a couple of my brief thoughts/suggestions that perhaps might help to build a positive future of Zayed University, focusing on the Art and Design Department.
1. Excelling the Practicality of Learning:
Dubai for example has a great deal of design issues that will benefit students’ learning if it is integrated with their classroom learning. Sustainable Design would be a great example if design courses could systematically educate them first and then have them involved in finding solutions, working closely with local companies and clients.
2. Making the Collaborative Faculty Community Stronger:
The diversity of the ZU faculty’s expertise and experience should be a blessing for us. Currently, individual faculty efforts and expertise are scattered and need to be integrated into curricular development in order maximize our strength. ZU’s faculty community needs to attain collaborative teamwork so that our efforts are effectively exploited.
3. Revisiting The Curriculum Development Process:
The Art and Design Department curriculum has not been defined as of yet as you are aware of already. Faculty learning opportunities should be coupled with refining curriculums. ILA days are not used well enough for us to collaborate. We might need to enhance ILA day activities, which has to be clearly integrated into the departmental level of curricular development.
4. University Programs for Prospective Students.
Recruiting high quality prospective students can be achieved by developing a rigorous portfolio review process and/or by offering short workshops for each major, which is a norm for many international universities.
5. Taking Advantage of e-Learning Technologies:
Most of our students are tech savvy and respond well and seem to enjoy learning with technologies according to my teaching experience here at ZU. Current web 2.0 technologies offer valuable opportunities that classroom learning can enhance and enrich. Course and learning management aid tools like content management with blog system, Moodle or m-Learning tools should be thoroughly examined and discussed for assisting our students and faculty. Blended learning approaches should be discussed among faculty to strengthen the curriculum development.
6. Building Open Classrooms
a. Bringing engaging client based projects and industry experts’ workshops into ZU.
b. Experiencing global dialogues: Example: Art 495 Global Module with University of Champlain (USA) for 4 weeks working on Global Warming last semester. It was identified that when our students had an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas on a forum, they easily overcame their shyness and engaged in conversations and discussions.
7. Enhancing Graphic Design Programs with Media Design
Educating socially responsible designers is one of most important tasks of design education. The current graphic design program should look into embracing the media design needs, which requires integrated study amongst film, sound, animation, and graphic design. The integrations of each field of design will strengthen the programs and eventually provide tools for visual communication designers.
8. Developing New Fashion and Jewelry Design Program
I have observed that many talented design students are very much interested in Fashion and Jewelry Design in general, as is much of the UAE public. Some said they enrolled in Graphic Design instead because ZU doesn’t offer Fashion or Jewelry studies. It would not only be a wonderful addition, but also a way of nurturing students’ interests as well as an opportunity for us to seek the industry-integrated program.
I look forward to further discussions.
Sincerely,
Yunsun
Design Systems
January 10, 2008 — cyunsunDesign Systems
Posted November 16th, 2007Session Organizer: Brian Lucid, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
A system is defined as group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements joined by a web of relationships to form a complex whole. Designers create systems to manage complexity, define consistency, generate form and composition, and create flexible frameworks for interaction or experience.
Systems theory has not had as strong of an influence upon design theory and pedagogy as it has upon other disciplines. However, designers have long been – and will be progressively more – engaged in the practice of designing systems of, and for, design.
A designer’s product was once fixed. Now it is increasingly dynamic. Designers enable fluidity by defining rules that govern relationships between elements and concepts, then choreograph how those relationships evolve over time and/or through user interaction. The shift from compositor to “rule-maker” has naturally led to a resurgence of interest in how we integrate systems into design education and practice.
How is the nature of systems and their application within communication design being addressed within design education?
