Today’s weather is almost exactly like that of the first Earth Day celebration I attended in Philadelphia 38 years ago (big gulp - I’m really that old?). In 1970, concepts like “sustainability” and “eco-friendly” were new to mainstream America, and a welcome relief to the dark cloud of Vietnam. The article titled “Dreaming in Green” in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, April 20, 2008, which features RISD alumni Theo Richardson ’06 FD, Charles Brill ’06 FD and Alexander Williams ’06 FD, co-founders of Rich, Brilliant, Willing, demonstrates to me how far we’ve come since those days. The article talks about the power of design to examine problems that may normally reside within the corporate domain and present a unique solution that may have practical applications.

Other alumni who are finding creative ways to combine their design expertise with environmental issues are Daniel Michalik MFA ’04 FD, who believes that everything in our lives could, and should, be replaced by cork, and Chelsea Green MID ’07, James Minola ’07 ID, Jackie Guido ’07 ID, Brit Kleinman ’07 ID and Sami Nerenberg ’07 ID, who are collaborating as Grain Design, a consultancy dedicated to uniting sustainability and business through 2- and 3D design services, research and strategy.

There are many more of you out there thinking green. Drop me a line and let me know what you are doing!

Christina Hartley ’74 IL
Director of Alumni Relations

I care about raising money for scholarships at RISD, but getting into RISD requires being able to avail yourself of more opportunities for exposure to the arts and design as a pre-college student. The RISD Student Gallery Board is hosting a benefit for a college prep program and selling raffle tickets. I am always someone that likes an excuse to use my Dremel tool and a few computer codes and have submitted a little iPod piece entitled Random RISD.

A friend recommended I read Ziyad Marar’s The Happiness Paradox. It’s a lovely read that I recommend for your summer list. I believe this one sentence by Ziyad sums up the premise of his incredible book. A paradox indeed. But at RISD it’s all possible. What sort of rhymes with riz•dee? Why … ris•ky!

Currently visiting from Brighton in RISD Graduate Studies, Prof. Chris Rose pointed me to his collection of essays entitled Five Essays on Design which provide a basic set of thoughts around thinking across and inside disciplinary boundaries. In his essay, “Technology, Craft, and the Transformation of Skill,” he says:

Learning from another person while you are in their presence involves emulation — something the body is phenomenally good at. The problem with learning software is that unlike, say, archery, the process of learning by emulation (or empathetic study as described by Goethe) is severely reduced.

I began to wonder how reduced the experience really is. I mean, you rarely say someone is “really good with the computer mouse” in the same way you might say that someone is “really good with a knife.” Skill. How deep is it in the digital realm?

Many younger people argue that the process of programming represents the deeper skill that is only recently being re-discovered by digital media artists and designers. Yes there are people that are good at programming — in the same way you might say they are a good gymnast. Olympic-class coders certainly abound at MIT. But programming has never felt like an entirely human or natural activity for me. Perhaps I am in the minority.

I am hopeful that in my lifetime we will see a mode of engaging technology that combines manual/physical thinking together with all the possibilities of the virtual/mindful playing that can be done with the computer. Let’s see where this all goes … and I’m betting that it will happen … at our RISD.

This week I slightly inconvenienced the Staff and Students at the Met cafeteria by playing the role of serving up the pasta choices for the evening. There were three choices available from the pasta kingdom: gemelli, rigatoni, and a roundish pasta that I can’t remember the name … hmm. About 15% of the students asked for a mixture of all three, around 30% asked for a hybrid of two, and the rest were pasta-purists. That evening the largest distribution of majors I served were in Architecture, Illustration, and Graphic Design — these majors seem to attract pasta lovers as opposed to the other dining options that were available. I will have to study this phenomenon more carefully …

Today I was in NY for an electronic portrait by artist Lincoln Schatz as part of a project for Esquire. Lincoln’s process involves putting people inside a box with 25 high-definition video cameras staring at the subject for about one hour. The experience was quite eery but cozy; my takeaway for the day is that you can get a lot of work done in a box.

I opened my issue of TIME Magazine this week to find Prof. Randy Pausch answering 10 questions. Question number 9 certainly caught my attention. Thank you Randy!

I attended the RISD Athena Awards in New York last night. The host was Kurt Andersen and the ceremony was held at Martha Stewart’s HQ in NYC (the famous building where you can literally drive into the building). RISD President Roger Mandle and his wife Gayle Mandle received the Helena Adelia Rowe Metcalf Award for Lifetime Achievement to a rousing crowd of RISD supporters that flew in from all over the country. As I sat next to Martha during the ceremony I secretly wanted to tell her how much a fan I am of her magazine but thought that would seem a bit too contrived, even though it’s totally true. If only the meals I make could look as good as they do in Martha Stewart Living … sigh.

Yesterday I had a nice visit from Christopher Lydon and learned more about his vision for “open source” in the broadcasting sphere. It’s kind of strange meeting someone that you’ve heard for years on the radio. So far away from you … and suddenly so close and right in front of you. Christopher and I have a strong overlapping interest in the concept of “open source” — which is a concept that can seem a bit foreign but let me explain.

In the old days you could fix your own car. You’d pop open the hood and look inside. It would make sense from a mechanical perspective. If you weren’t afraid of getting your hands dirty and had the right set of tools, anything was possible. Cars were “open source” — the owner could go in and fix/modify it to their own specifications and desires. At the least, the owner would understand how the car worked. Understanding is a powerful thing. It is the basis of insight and also foresight.

Christopher’s interest is in an “open source” concept of radio where participants all over the world own its ongoing construction; in the same way my hope for RISD is that it is an “open source” institution where RISD constituents can do the same. Open-ness comes from knowledge how something works … which is never an easy thing as learning takes time. Also even when a complex system is fully open, it might be meaningless to know how it works because it’s close to impossible for a single person to understand by themselves.

For instance today my computer was not working entirely well. So I opened it up to see if I could fix it. The problem was a superficial one, and thus I could address it. If the problem were much deeper, say within the circuit board or in the actual software code it would have been close to impossible to fix it. Were I to have all the knowledge in the world about how the exact model of my computer works and all the necessary tools, I could possibly fix it. But would that be a good use of my time?

I leave this general line of thinking as an open question.

Last night I attended an incredible performance by Yo-yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. Musicians played in concert with a single narrator’s hypnotic voice. Everyone in the packed RISD auditorium was surely transported to another place.

A particularly memorable moment was when the narrator made a small error in his story and with the quick recovery of, “… let me rewind that back,” he continued forth in an elegant, fluid manner.

I presented my artwork earlier this year at the recent Davos World Economic Forum together with Yo-yo as one of four invited artists. My personal encounter with Yo-yo at Davos is recounted here.