MIT Out and Unbound
I’m settling into my new role here at MIT as the IDEAS Competition coordinator. Its a great place to be – the Media Lab, Arts department, Architecture and Urban Studies – all contained within this vast engine of applied research. My role here is to support student interest in applying their ingenuity to community development problems they care about. This involves a healthy dose of partnership building, mentor recruitment, administration… in the context (or service?) of international development, innovation and experiential education – right up my art + technology + participation in development street.
At the top of my reading list as I settle in – my daily diversion – are Paul Polak’s Out of Poverty and Paul Miller’s Sound Unbound. While these two titles might seem at first pass to be world’s away, I find that both are mediations on creativity, appropriation and problem-solving.
Reading Out of Poverty is like stepping off a plane and onto an arid desert, dry wind tugging at your eyes as a total stranger hands you a glass of water and welcomes you to their world. Along the way, your guide offers some straight forward guidance on working with the local people who happen to have extremely limited incomes – in most cases farmers earning less than $1 a day from a plot > 4 acres – to break the cycle of poverty. That glass of water, by the way: it comes from beneath your feet, pumped by the same people you’ll meet as he introduces ’round. Paul’s experience in this landscape is impressive: as the founder of International Development Enterprises, he has traveled the world over the last two decades listening to how poor farmers talk about being stuck. And has come up with some really basic solutions, namely a pump and irrigation system that, in the right conditions, increase crop yields of profitable produce and thereby raise incomes.
Sound Unbound is another universe. Its an aural and literary tropical jungle of ideas so rich they reach back, way back, to expose vine-covered ruins. And at the same time the essays contained in the book push upward and outward, pointing out the changing constellations in our rapidly evolving digital universe.
Sound Unbound is the perfect kind of book to swallow – like the bird, to duck and dive into suddenly; to withdraw. Repeat. Dodge around Cory Doctorow’s pithy introduction but pause long enough to catch Steve Reich get excited about sampling, not synthesizing. Enter Paul’s world of mixed up, mashed up, layered energy. Collisions reveal ecstasies; catalysts are crucibles. Start anywhere, just begin. Free associate with Jonathan Lethem, feint ‘colored noise’ with Ron Eglash. Its a ripping read I’ve just begun.
What I see that brings these two books together is the curiosity of their respective authors, who happen to be at very different moments in their lives. Paul P. opens talking about his grandson. Paul M. is trying to DJ in your mind. But they are both fundamentally curious about creativity and its roots – whether in poverty or in the prima materia of culture. Both see the dialogue, the synthesis, and the re-production as fundamental to our well being, as farmers and per sons.
Read either? Drop a line, pull a quote, mix it up.
While I was in Ithaca last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Romanoff, restorationist and artist. One of the pieces of ‘functional salvage art’ she introduced me to was her “washboard table.” The idea is elegantly simple: for an open-faced (front and back) table, join two antique washboards together with a top surface and an interior-mounted lower shelf. For a closed-back table, join three washboards together.
During the weekend of April 11-13, more than a dozen Twinfield staff, parents and students helped to sort, record, and mount the more than 450 “Peace Tiles” that would compose a new mural in the school’s cafeteria. The Peace Tiles – individual collages on 8-inch square wood panel – each responded to the question, “What is my place?” When combined into a mural, they produced single image representing the Central Vermont landscape where they live – a theme selected by the 2008 graduating class.
While the mural represents one of a few large works in the school, there is some concern that students will find the mural a ready target for vandalism. I am not so certain, for two reasons. First is that each student has a piece in the mural: everyone contributed to it, and as a result I would expect that it feels more “owned” by the entire student body. The second reason is that the mural should have some longevity: every student, from pre-K up to the graduating class, contributed to the mural – which means it could be up to 12 years before that bit of school history graduates. In my mind, that’s a pretty lengthy bit of time for a story to circulate. Both aspects of the mural I hope will garner students’ delight and respect for many years to come.
