Joining Up: Evaluating technologically augmented interdisciplinary cross-cultural collaboration (original) (raw)

"Over two intensive weeks during September 2011, students from The College of Fine Arts (COFA) at The University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Donghua University (DHU) engaged in creating dynamic content together using a live database. RARE EARTH: Hacking the City aimed to forge an open-source space in Shanghai for experimental improvisation that accentuated use of interactive media and mobile technologies to facilitate cross-cultural design collaboration. The studioLAB encouraged students to use Shanghai as a laboratory for investigating, sharing, and amplifying ideas for the future of cities, immersive interactive environments, and cross-cultural co-creation. The project’s interdisciplinary focus attracted involvement from students and practitioners working in architecture, design, photography, sculpture, social innovation, art theory, curating, media arts, programming, and language translation. RARE EARTH was conceived around an Interactive Media Platform (IMP) integrated into the studio as a means to document and exhibit the diverse work being carried out. The participants uploaded and tagged their content to a live Flickr database that regularly updated the IMP. The database of image, sound and video content produced describes the creative processes, social and studio encounters, and the outputs of students and other actors involved in the project. RARE EARTH offered students opportunities to think ‘beyond possibilities’ (Wood, 2012) in exploring the significance and implications of culture amid the emergence of complex network technologies, Asia’s rapid urbanisation, and this century’s reconfigured geopolitical relationships. However, despite technological interconnectedness, collaboration between people from different cultures is subject to communication breakdowns because our realities are comprised of differing norms, symbols, and representations reinforced through education (Snow 1993, Sussman 2000). Additionally, opportunities for students from West and non-West to engage in dialogic, co-languaging processes that deconstruct cultural difference remain uncommon, and educators and practitioners face significant communication challenges that limit the complexification of creative solutions. Building on an existing body of research , this paper discusses the opportunities, constraints and outcomes of the studio. A model for Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Collaboration (CCIC) is proposed as pliant methodology advocating sensitivity to divergent institutional expectations, language difference, culturally based assumptions about learning, and the potential of interactive media platforms as intercultural communication and collaborative tools. This highlights the crucial role for open, technologically augmented laboratories in creating adaptive, interdisciplinary design pedagogy where students may be empowered to reflexively explore meaningful ways designers from different cultures might work together in a ‘joined up’ way to envisage our as yet unimagined collective futures. Key words: design education, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, collaboration, interactive media"