Introduction to our Labinar Topic

Place: Narratives, Visualizations, Access and Contexts 

A "labinar" (lab/seminar) held in conjunction with the Malmö University-Rochester Institute of Technology Symposium October 8-10, 2015

Welcome to our blog which is intended to offer a space for discussion and dissemination. If you wish to contribute to our blog, please email me jdgsh [at] rit.edu & I will add you to our list of contributors.
    Our labinar takes its cues from the fundamental concept of placemaking, that is the connection between people, culture, contexts, geography/site, and design. By engaging in conversations about place, we ultimately seek to frame discussions about people and their association to a place or places and its extension as a form of individuation or community. What narratives emerge from place? How is place visualized? How do we obtain access to place? And, what is the cultural context(s) of place? What role does/can/should technology play in creating meaningful experiences in locales that have a strong sense of place? 

   The four co-organizers come from Museum Studies, Communication, Industrial Design, and Sustainability—disciplines that look critically at sites, narratives, objects, the built environment, and locations as emblems of context. By inviting conversation around the topic of place we hope to engage in discussions that ask us to think about the ways in which individuals and communities obtain access to and navigate through their environments; how they engage with place on familiar and unfamiliar terrain, in the short-term and long-term; and how they engage with the other members of the communities surrounding them.
   We see this topic as appropriate for the Malmö symposium due to five factors—two related to academia and three to community: 1) the nature of the academic institution such that students are transient though faculty and staff tend to be less so—how is our understanding of our campus(es) framed in light of this?; 2) RIT’s accomplishments and further initiatives in study abroad through global campuses and partnerships; 3) the historical past of Rochester as a manufacturing center, Flower City, Flour City, and its current move toward high-tech sciences; 4) Malmö’s transition from a shipbuilding industry to a knowledge industry; and 5) the highly complex constitution of Malmö’s population, as impacted by transitional industry and immigration, as well as very new efforts in Malmö to become the world’s most international city (“Little Big Malmö).

   Co-organizers will establish a blog for the labinar in advance of the symposium (here). That site will house our introductions to this topic and the lenses through which we view Place: Narratives, Visualizations, Access and Contexts. Each participant will be asked to contribute to this blog during/after the labinar to introduce themselves and their work (brief) and to provide a space for discussion and dissemination, as well as engagement with those unable to attend the symposium. 

Place: Narratives, Visualizations, Access and Contexts  is co-organized by:

Juilee Decker, Ph.D. Assoc. Professor, Museum Studies, College of Liberal Arts
Andrea Hickerson, Ph.D. Assoc. Professor, School of Communication, College of Liberal Arts
Roger Chen, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, Department of Sustainability, Golisano Institute for Sustainability
Mindy Magyar, M.F.A., Asst. Professor, Industrial Design Program, School of Design, College of Imaging Arts & Sciences