I spent much of my week distracted and distraught by the demonstrations and confrontations in London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, to name some of the locations of unrest this August. Perhaps I was particularly tuned in to that part of the world because in June I was working in London and Bristol, and in […]
Engaged vs. Entrepreneurial Universities
One keynote address at the recent Erasing Boundaries symposium was by Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., from the University of Buffalo Center for Urban Studies; it was entitled “The Engaged versus the Entrepreneurial University: How Neighborhoods Matter.” (See earlier posts for descriptions of the symposium.) Taylor posited these types of universities as two distinct, indeed opposing, […]
Case Studies of Engagement
At the recent Erasing Boundaries symposium, there were so many sessions with fascinating case studies of people’s engagements. (See “Spaces of Connection” post below for more information on this symposium.) Jocelyn Zanzot (Auburn) spoke about the Rural Landscape Studio in Macon County, Alabama, in which she and her students worked with the Shiloh Missionary Baptist […]
Local, Global and Digital Engagements
As noted in the previous post, I was able to attend the Erasing Boundaries Project symposium in April 2011 in New York City. The project is a collaboration among landscape architecture, architecture, and planning faculties, students and community partners. The two days in New York were packed with stimulating presentations and lectures. Kudos to the […]
Spaces of Connection
The Erasing Boundaries Project hosted a national symposium in April 2011 in New York City called “Educating at the Boundaries: Community Matters.” The project is a collaboration among landscape architecture, architecture and planning faculties, students and community partners. This was the second symposium; the first was held in 2008. The goals include examining the pedagogy […]
Of Rockets and Humanities
Speaking a year ago at the 50 Years of Public Computing at UI symposium (April 15, 2010), Professor Marc Snir noted that technologists at times have been uninterested in the outcomes of their inventions: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department.” Of Community Informatics (CI), Snir noted: […]
Responsive Architecture
I had the good fortune to hear Tristan Sterk talk the other night in Champaign. He’s teaching now at the Art Institute of Chicago, and came down at the invitation of Therese Tierney, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at the U of I. Tristan is principal of the Office of Robotic Architectural […]
Regional Relationships
The collaborative artist team, Regional Relationships (RR), has just launched its first edition! Matthew Friday, the first artist commissioned by RR, has been working in southern Ohio with flooded mines. He writes of “interlocking networks of abandoned mines” that number about 12,000. A bacteria has colonized the flooded underground areas and, as part of their […]
Notes on “Archiving Memory in the Age of Digital Technologies”
I am still playing conference catch-up. Between September 23 and October 3, 2010, I went to two conferences, the Imagining America conference in Seattle, and the Society for the History of Technology conference in Tacoma. For now, I just want to share my notes on the keynote talk on September 24, 2010 by Diana Taylor […]
Reboot, Rebuild
On Saturday, October 30, about fifteen people who had gathered in Chicago for the Digital Excellence conference came together to brainstorm next steps for the community technology movement, with Michael Maranda doing the heavy lifting of organizing a space and guiding the discussion. Besides Michael, the group included Max Gail of LAP.org, Antwuan Wallace of […]