INBOX

My email INBOX at SUNY New Paltz, where I teach, is a public address. This makes it a public space for people to reach me. It is a conceptual space. Students no longer wait in line during office hours to speak with a professor, they email and hope to either discuss an issue virtually or set up an appointment. This public space is also a place where "others" can email me and expect to find ME. Conceptually this challenges the materiality of a relationship where there has previously (meaning in my experience) been DESIGN. As an instructor I expect myself to wear certain clothing and comport myself in a manner consistent with my role and work. I have depended on the architecture of the university; the library, an office, classrooms, lecture centers, studios. Now the space called INBOX is a free and open access space. I can ignore email, but it requires attention. It is in my space.

Occasionally something unexpected and interesting comes to my INBOX. A search engine, like MyLife.com added my name to a conference invitation list. If I respond I doubt that a person will know who I am and yet, I am interested in their conference. Here is the information. It addresses DESIGN interwoven with anthropology, technology and other areas outside the realm of creating objects or buildings. I am intrigued because concepts have become the spaces that I occupy more than a diverse number of structures. Will someone please design a better INBOX?
Design Conference

Respectfully yours,
Emily Caigan, MFA
(aka) Bob's Daughter

caigane@newpaltz.edu
Women's Studies Program
SUNY New Paltz

Puzzles...past and present

I am thinking about what to email Mr. Loewenstein.

I will thank him for sharing stories with me.
Will I send him a link to this blog?

This would constitute a new step in the process - including the people who have become part of the story as readers and possible participants in the story since they may leave comments. As I write this I feel that I must include the link and tell him about the blog.

This is a puzzle...I like puzzles.

It is a moving puzzle and the pieces aren't set and predetermined to make a picture, which is really a story.

When I looked at the furniture designs today I thought "these look like puzzles that move from 2D to 3D".

I have a new understanding about why my father wouldn't let me keep the Barbie Townhouse he and my mother bought me for Hanuka when I was a child. I remember him trying to put it together for hours while I sat on the stairs - watching. He was frustrated and eventually yelled out, "This is going back! If a Harvard architect can't put it together then it's a piece of junk!" Oh, I cried and cried. I wanted that Barbie Townhouse.

I get it now - it offended him. It was poorly designed and if design is a learned thought process then it couldn't be good for me to play with a badly designed toy.

xoxo,
Bob's Daughter