Sticks + Stones 2005 included design students and faculty from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The project used video-conferencing, pdfs, and reading materials simultaneously in the two classrooms and the project concluded with each student developing a self-portrait based upon mapping vernacular. The portraits were exchanged between the two schools and labels were applied by students that summed up what each felt the person in the self-portrait might be like based upon their initial impressions of the portrait imagery and text. Students anonymously labeled the portraits and were encouraged not to self-censor.
Some found the process difficult while others found it liberating. Terms such as “distant,” “boring,” and “naughty,” were offered along with more pointed terms such as “slutty,” “disturbed,” “homely,” and “spoon-fed religion.” A concluding video-conference revealed how students had labeled one another. Although they easily formed assumptions about what the other group would be like, the students were more concerned about how they would be judged, rather than with how they would categorize the other group. For example, Weber State students worried that they would be regarded as Mormon polygamists whereas UAB students were anxious that they would be perceived as uneducated “rednecks.” Both concluded that the other group was surprisingly “normal.”
Sticks + Stones 2005
Sticks + Stones 2005 included design students and faculty from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The project used video-conferencing, pdfs, and reading materials simultaneously in the two classrooms and the project concluded with each student developing a self-portrait based upon mapping vernacular. The portraits were exchanged between the two schools and labels were applied by students that summed up what each felt the person in the self-portrait might be like based upon their initial impressions of the portrait imagery and text. Students anonymously labeled the portraits and were encouraged not to self-censor.
Some found the process difficult while others found it liberating. Terms such as “distant,” “boring,” and “naughty,” were offered along with more pointed terms such as “slutty,” “disturbed,” “homely,” and “spoon-fed religion.” A concluding video-conference revealed how students had labeled one another. Although they easily formed assumptions about what the other group would be like, the students were more concerned about how they would be judged, rather than with how they would categorize the other group. For example, Weber State students worried that they would be regarded as Mormon polygamists whereas UAB students were anxious that they would be perceived as uneducated “rednecks.” Both concluded that the other group was surprisingly “normal.”