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

Web Innovation: stop looking for it!

I’ve realized how long it takes to allow a really great idea to emerge. The more time you spend thinking about what you’re doing and absorbing yourself only by what you’ve labeled as your idea, the more you confuse yourself.

A really great idea is innovational. You can’t go looking to make innovation– it’s nowhere to be found. You can’t find it if you don’t know what it looks like. Innovation is so simple, that it’s invisible.

This is why I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what I was doing even though I was a year ahead of everyone on my concept development for thesis in my current fourth year. I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t know why I was doing it and I was curious to find out what I really wanted to do. I wanted to make innovation and I was really keen on it.

That’s not how you do it — no! I realized this because I’ve had enough of it! I’ve had enough of reading about social networking, Web2.0, the next in technology, media, popular culture, online business and fancy tools! Get the hell out of here! All of you! I’m tired of reading about your stupid, lame-ass observations that I thought were going to give me answers! I didn’t waste my time because I got obsessed with you and now I’m letting you go for good, because I realize how little I connect with you! You just don’t get it do you? Does anyone get it? All you can do is write your books and make theories. I was disgusted to walk into Chapters and see stacks of books on the Web! Get the hell out of here! I’m not what you guys are talking about. I don’t want to be that! You’re brainwashing me and making me think I’m doing something else! Why are you so addictive? Why are you people doing this? Stop buzzing! Innovation is something you can’t find if you just talk about the same thing over and over and over! You’re going to wait around to point fingers and go “ooo”, “aaah”, “noooo”, “yeees”, “goooood”, “baaaaad”.

None of you get it! None of you who talk GET IT! Fuck your Facebook that ruined my life. I looked up to you, and I’m ashamed of it. I don’t trust anything but my gut and my gut won over your hypnotic. My gut is creative and I do not settle for anything less than what corresponds with my beliefs.

Do you want to know why I’m so mad? I’m mad at myself! I’m mad at brainwashing myself for so long with my eager and ambition to do something big. I’m mad at letting what’s out there on the web be an example of what I want to do. Because frankly, I don’t want to do anything that is close to what already exists online. I want to do something for people who can use what I do and appreciate what it can do for them. I want to help people and I have a unique personality and I know it. I’m mad because I sold myself short. I’m mad because I let my addiction to technology freeze me. I’m mad because I’m letting myself be like others when I know I’m capable of a lot more than others.

I’m mad because I’m tired of how people think! I’m tired of all this fluff and I’m tired of IT talk. I’m mad at designers for not being leaders and I’m mad at creative people who sell themselves short and don’t push it far enough! I’m mad what the Web is doing to our human factor — it is DEhumanizing us.

All I care about is nature. I care about true nature and its ability to transform and evolve and change. Fuck what you think matters because evidently, you have no idea what nature means. Therefore, you will always look for innovation and never make it.

If you don’t understand power, you will never have it.

Filed under: creativity, design, life, love, school, social community networks, student life

THESIS: 1.5 years – action time!

I’ve finally got it. After a year and a half of process, I’ve finally reached the process of execution, which will be a long and challenging process — I’m all up for it. It came out of last week’s thesis meeting with my prof Keith Rushton and in particular from Brian’s challenge — a former student of Keith’s working in the industry, who sits in on our meetings. I’m not saying that he revealed anything specifically, but he did make a spark go off. He challenged me to a point where I began to question my presentation for the grad show. I instantly rethought everything for my approach.

Brian said, “Web2.0 is dead in a couple months.” As much as I can argue and articulate what Web2.0 really means and explain O’Reilley’s 7 principles to inform people on the definition of the term, I realized that he had a great point.

My thesis is not about Web2.0, and particularly, I do not want people to have any preconceived thoughts on what my thesis is about. Immediately people will think about the social community networks that already exist on the web before they comprehend the intelligence behind my research and purpose.

I told myself, “You do ‘not’ want to be be compared to anything that is out there, so don’t present yourself that way and don’t set yourself up for that.”

The thesis started off with my vision for the web being used positively to connect people. The more I researched into it, the more I bookmarked social web, and the more I read about Web2.0 tools, theories, essays, opinions and research in technology, the more knowledgeable I became on how to measure success.

For over a year, all I did was research the web and read about the web. I bookmarked dozens of websites, rewrote my statement dozens of times, and exposed my thoughts to dozens of people, vocally repeating my purpose. The idea evolved, the focus changed, the strategies fluctuated, the passion transformed and the true purpose revealed itself to me through ongoing projects, involvements, and reflective experiential research. I am using my thesis to provide a unique and thorough experience through interaction and sharing of knowledge using a model that I create as a framework to facilitate productivity and interconnectivity.

Filed under: design, life, problem solving, school, social community networks, student life, work

I’m not a graphic designer

I’m not a graphic designer — don’t call me that.

Why are you calling me something that you don’t understand? How would you ever know what graphic design is to me? How could you ever have a clue if you never knew me, never spoke to me, never heard me, felt me, sensed me or cared to understand me? Why should you care anyway? It’s just me. I’m just me and I signed up to be a graphic designer — whoopdidoo!

Does that mean that I have to fit the title? Does that mean that I should accept to make your business card, your logo, your flyer and poster? I would if I wanted to; if I saw some value in it, I would. But listen, I can choose! I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.

What do I want to do? I want to use graphic design as just the beginning of a new world; to use it as a tool to get you to see the light.

I am a helper, researcher, listener, communicator and an information architect. I organize your plan. I articulate your thoughts and I make them exactly what you want to say, but also with a visual voice.

I am not a graphic designer; I am what you never thought a graphic designer could be. I am who you are when you practice a passion for improvement. I am what your soul wants, but never cared to reveal.

I am not a graphic designer. I am not what you label me. I refuse to wear your badge and I refuse to fit your idea of a biased perception.

I have a gut like you do and I use it as my torch.

I design me; I design future and I design potential for change. I design as much as you do, but I practice it with a joyous spirit.

If this is your idea of a graphic designer, then by all means, call me that.

Filed under: creativity, design, education, school, student life

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

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

OCAD Student Forum 2007: What’s In A Name?

After some commotion at the last Town Hall meeting, it is evident that OCAD’s renaming needs a lot more assertive debate and critical problem solving. There are many issues that have arisen with the OCAD administration’s drastic decision to re-name and re-brand the school, without any genuine communication, research and discussion with the OCAD internal and extended community for the making of this decision.

A completely student organized event, this meeting is an opportunity for students, faculty, alumni and professionals to truthfully address their opinions, concerns, suggestions and visions for the future of this school. We have a lot to talk about. Wise action will not be made if we do not dig into the root of the problem here. It’s time to bring our voices together and listen to one another if we want to make any change that is for the best interest of this thriving community.

This heated session will be documented and its recording has the possibility to be publicized. Make a presence, voice your opinion, listen and be receptive to people with perspectives different than your own. It’s time to be realistic, intelligent and more importantly democratic about this decision.

Supported by the Student Union
Hosted by Ghazaleh Etezal (Graphic Design 4th year thesis student) and Mohammed Mohsen (Drawing and Painting fourth year student and SU President)

These are questions that we will be discussing…

1. Is the renaming necessary? Why and for what purpose?

2. Is it wise for OCAD to put “University” in its official identity name considering its studio based education and current circumstances?

3. If the re-brand and renaming is an absolute, what thinking must we go through to consider a new name and identity? How do we problem solve with our creative abilities to embrace the education and community here at OCAD?

Read Globe & Mail’s report
Here is OCAD Student Forum 2006

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