the mark of unity

everything will

come together

with chance

and choice

 

balanced

and designed

with integrity 

and hope

 

yes

we can

Filed under: art, community, creativity, design, education, experience, future, life, love, philosophy, poetry, politics, social community networks, sustainability, work

revolution finished

 

GOD and HUMAN

MOTHER and NATURE

CHICKEN and EGG

MAN and ROOSTER

INVENTOR and INNOVATION

can’t go backwards

LIFE is always forward

and equal.

 

be born

re-birth

revolution

sex

acceptance

Filed under: activism, art, city, community, creativity, cycling, design, education, experience, future, humanity, iran, life, love, music, nature, philosophy, poetry, politics, school, student life, sustainability, work

internetoflife – the collective language to simply learn

Anyone who is reading this is a part of the book. internetoflife is one word but it assembled of three other words that we know in English.

The final direction for my thesis after 1.5 years of research is internetoflife.com

I believe in the power of the collective to share wisdom and create links.

I believe in words to reflect identity.

I believe in words of wisdom, quoted by you.

So please visit the site and contribute.

First round of submissions for final presentation at my gradshow are April 12, 2008.

Anyone, anywhere you are, if you are reading this and you are interested in the concept of my network and want to support it into fruition, please click on the submissions page. I would also like to request for volunteer translators to translate the internetoflife questions into other languages, so we can get a universal network of words. Text and colour are universal languages — lets ’simply’ use them to broadcast ‘who we are’.

More information on how I arrived here will be posted soon.

You are also welcome to add me to facebook since I have nothing to hide about who I am.

Filed under: activism, art, community, creativity, design, education, humanity, life, love, music, philosophy, poetry, problem solving, quotes, school, social community networks, sustainability

The Storefront: urban re-generator

Think Tank class; 4th-year interdisciplinary design; OCAD Toronto.

semester brief: make a change; design action; intervene

realproblem: Bloorcourt Village; underdeveloped business district in Toronto (between Christie to Dufferin on Bloor)

Join our online network: The Storefront — a strive for our physical space on the streetfront.

If you’re interested in how our class has moved from idea to actualization, you can subscribe to my podcast in iTunes. On the left bar, click ‘Podcasts’, under ‘Advanced’, go to ’subscribe to podcast’ and paste:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thestorefront

Filed under: activism, art, bloorcourt, community, creativity, design, humanity, podcast

my art of paint

I’m not a painter.
I love art and I love looking at colour especially when it’s painted.
I love it when it’s not a visual representation of a physical thing.
I love the music of it; the way it doesn’t mean anything unless you make it mean something.
Something in me told me that I should get up and paint.
So I listened to that thing and did it.

It is my first time painting without anything in mind to paint.

I just grabbed my 5 year-old paints and smothered the one canvas that had been leaning on my wall beside my bed behind my hung clothes for…oh, I don’t even know when.

It felt good.

Filed under: art, poetry

Bloorcourt Village Festival

I am taking a Think Tank 3: Action class here at OCAD with Bruce Hinds in conjuction with Lewis Nicholson’s class working on the same target. Our class’s project is about making a difference in a community and the community we are working with is Bloorcourt in Toronto (from Bloor & Christie to Bloor & Dufferin). The neighbourhood needs revitalization. It is a targeted neighbourhood that needs improvement and a group of city workers / volunteers in the area assemble the Business Improvement Association (BIA) in Toronto. Keith Rushton’s Think Tank class last year got a great deal of recognition for what they did with Ward19 and the solution they presented to the City of Toronto was what has gotten OCAD a lot more involved with the City; they want our thinking to solve their problems.

The third week of class we had members of the BIA come in and we had a panel discussion on what the problems and issues were in the neighbourhood. We then all wrote a response to that meeting and started discussing possibilities for our approach to the project. I must say…this is what I love doing. I love listening, observing, discussing, coming up with ideas, researching then discussing more and coming up with more ideas and loop loop loop. We traveled to the site many times, took photos, and talked some more. The neighbourhood has many great qualities to it: 3 parks (one of which is Christie Pits: one of the largest most active parks in the city), local residential community, lots of ethnically authentic stores and restaurants, lots of diversity, full of artists and inarguably full of potential. The downsides are just like other downsides of a neighbourhood in demise which includes empty storefronts, drug dealing, bad lighting, no visual interest…basically nothing that really puts an identity to the neighbourhood to make it a destination.

We are about to change all of that.

We had a meeting that we had prepared a presentation for yesterday first with the City in the morning and then with the BIA in the evening. They both went exceptionally well and the room was filled with so much energy and excitement.

We ended the presentation with this:

“We propose to design a plan for holding a (possibly annual) festival event using the street and Christie Pits Park. The festival’s engagements and activities will be entirely based on the collaborations we make with local places including highschools, elementary schools, community centres, restaurants as well as current and former residents.

We intend to hold discussions, create excitement, document submitted ideas and creative input, and feature the results in a gallery/studio within Bloorcourt to encourage the revitalization of the neighbourhood and establish a genuine and visible vision
with a unified identity for the BIA of Bloorcourt Village.”

They are so excited and so are we. This is going to be such a fun project and you bet it’s going to hit the press; and it’s going to take it by storm.

Watch out OCAD and Toronto…here comes Think Tank.

Filed under: activism, art, bloorcourt, city, community, creativity, design, humanity, life, photography, school, student life

Ceramics no more at OCAD

I am taking a Virtual Communities class at OCAD as an expansion studio course. One of our projects was to document a story that we found interesting in our community and create a virtual (audio/video) presentation. Mine was ofcourse on the OCAD name change issue and a short audio collage of the student voice at the Forum. You can listen to it here.

Here is the link to our class blog where you can see all the posts and projects as a class.

I found another story that Kat O’Shaughnessy — a Material Art and Design student and Student Union Board of Director of the department — who took on the initiative to video document the voices and opiions of students in the major to really show what the concerns have been around this issue. Here is the link to her page. Great work Kat!

Filed under: activism, art, creativity, design, politics, school, student life

the urge

it’s the poetic urge,

merging my thoughts and pen;

it’s the inspiration,

matching my candle with darkness;

it’s the full beauty,

warming my skin through chest;

it’s the discovery,

yelling to ink my voice.

Filed under: art, creativity, design, experience, love, poetry

Choppy video of OCAD Student Forum 2007 (first half)

FORUM CONTINUED ON AUDIO

Here is the presentation that I had projected for this Forum.

Here is the document from Student Forum 2006.

Here is the first email ever received during the summer (August 1) notifying us of a decision made (to rename) without our input or concerns. The subject line read “Call for Creative Input from the OCAD Community”

And here is another note attached in the same email as above from the Chair of the Board.

This is the audio from the Town Hall meeting on Monday September 10 (first week back from school) — the first chance we had to meet as bodies given the guideline to contribute more names and support suggested names. It wasn’t about discussion, it was about stepping up to the podium with 1.5 minute to speak. Halfway through, people begin to speak up and question this decision; I suggest you listen to the second half, it relates more to the reason why Forum 2007 was conducted ASAP.

Here is the list of schools that OCAD should be looking at “competition”, not at UofT, Ryerson, York, Guelph, Waterloo, Concordia etc etc.

Royal College of Art
Rhode Island School of Design
Art Center College of Design
School of Visual Arts
Basel School of Design
CalArts
Otis College of Art and Design
Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design
Minnesota College of Art and Design
Maryland Institute College of Art
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Parsons the New School of Design
Ringling College of Art and Design
Rietveld Academy of Art
Glasgow School of Art
College for Creative Studies
Laguna College of Art and Design
Savannah College of Art and Design
Pratt Institute
Academy of Art Univeristy (with 13 Schools)

I wrote this letter on Monday September 24th after I received an email from a member of the Communications Committee on the Board of Governors who wasn’t present at the Forum and wanted to know what had happened and have a better understanding of what the students brought up. She wanted to have more information before she stepped into the Board of Governors meeting later on in the day.

I thanked her for contacting me and I began to write her an email:

—
…

I will summarize the majority of the content discussed at the forum on Wednesday.
I presented a lot of research that I had gathered from talking to countless amount of concerned and even apathetic students about the name-changing procedure that has been drastically dropped on us as students; we really felt like we are not having much of a voice in this decision. Students are concerned about the current state of the school. People who have a thorough knowledge on Art and Design education understand that we are not in competition with other universities in Ontario but we are in competition with other art and design institutions on an international level. Yes, the term “College” in US doesn’t mean community college — not to mention that US holds the majority of the Art and Design schools in the world.

I am representing students who are participating “vicariously” through me due to their high apathy and many other highly intelligent students who were present at the Forum and came out to really speak up about this issue.

You can easily fool first and second year students and the general public with the excuse that “since we are degree granting, we must enforce that in our name with the word ‘university’”. I see so much potential for this school and I have appreciated it even more when I did a study abroad, but with this decision to suddenly out of the blue come up with a solution to a problem that had never ever crossed my mind or any other student in this institution. The problems that have crossed our minds are, “hmm, the administration doesn’t give a SHIT about students”, and I say this harshly because this is the mentality of the majority of OCAD’s population (the one’s who’ve been around to see how things happen). — excuse the language.

What we really want is more attention to detail. We want more of a community; we want your attention when we say “fix this”, because ultimately we are right about what needs to be fixed. Part of the problem here is…there are lots of things that need to be fixed and doing something quite as drastic as RENAMING this historic institution that has NO need to RENAME itself but to learn how to MARKET itself better in every sense — due to lack of great marketing team, thought as to HOW to market and what caliber of students we want to attend this school. It’s about the students that do great work, the ones that graduate from here who will only come back if they love their school. They will only come back if they are proud to contribute to a school that contributed to their experience…and the only reason I see myself coming back is because of my amazing teachers; I would do anything for them.

We are worried about the MONEY, not the name. We’re worried about why the administration would make this decision without asking us if it’s a good decision in the first place. If you had ASKED us if we wanted to change a name, took a vote and actually CARED about what we think, then more students would actually appreciate the fact that you had done THAT at least.

Name change? If you’re going to do it, make it OCAD U. It’s stupid, there’s no need for it, it doesn’t change anything OCAD is and if you were to rebrand it AGAIN and remarket it again JUST BECAUSE of the “university” that is added to it, it’s even more stupid and a big shame. I will leave OCAD and say what a dumb decision and how sad it was that I tried to state the facts, do research, listen to people from all avenues, communicate to the public and take an intelligent, articulate stance on something and actually see NOTHING come out from it, I would be highly disappointed.

We are worried with that term “university” itself and how THAT itself is misleading…truthfully, from an international standpoint. I can support all that I say here if you give me more time to gather more students. I’m willing to do another forum before your next meeting, this time with more time to plan it and also more research. I don’t see a rush for a need to change OCAD’s name…period.

I just care too much about the future of Art and Design in Canada and what OCAD can really become because I have been here for FOUR YEARS and I have always LOVED school; I’ve always loved homework; loved learning; loved throwing myself into risks and I love the fact that I did not go to another generic “university” in Ontario, but I went to a specialized College (with studio based education and liberal studies) to become the creative power-house I am today. I have changed as a person at OCAD and I want the school to get credit for it. If I do big things, I want to tell everyone I went to OCAD: the best art and design school in Canada and I must say, it is at the TIP OF THE ICEBERG in international acclaim for it’s exceptional education IF WE DON’T SCREW UP and ask the right questions and LISTEN to our faculty, our students and INVEST time, money and energy into doing that.

Look INSIDE OCAD for your answers. It’s all there. THROW MONEY INTO OCAD, don’t go OUTSIDE looking for more students…they will come to you. I came to you, and so did everyone who is already here. It’s not about enrollment percentages, it’s about the quality of the student’s work once they get out of here. Why not help them more? Ask faculty what they think, I’m sure they have lots to tell you.

The forum is video-taped. I’ve yet had time to put it all content together and publicize it. (Mind you this is very valuable voluntary time of my own breath I am putting into this as a thesis student with a full course load).

I am also very confused for the making of this decision. It’s very twisted for me and I sure never want to be a politician. I never thought institutions were just as bad as the real world with their politics, systems and decision making.

If you have more questions, I would be pleased to answer.

Thanks for your time,

ghazaleh

—

She agreed with a lot of the things I had mentioned and strongly supported my case.

Filed under: activism, art, creativity, design, politics, school, student life

Tibor Kalman on Charlie Rose

Thanks to Debbie Millman for this interview

Filed under: activism, art, design, humanity