Emergent Strategy

Question I: In your view, what is a function of humans in the universe?

I think function of human is create, product and contempt, we create tools, we found out whatever we could use for our own benefits. we create civilizations, make sure we could probably do generation to generation. we product a lot tools, or other creature to meet our all kinds of needs. we also contempt all kind of element we possible could use. That why I will say for human humans in the universe is create, product, and contempt.

Question II: Do artists, designers, and technology have that same or similar responsibility? What are the nuances between those roles?

In my opinion those three roles are similar, however based on their function somehow they are very different.

the same or similar responsibility is they all create things, but for each job description, each of them have some different. In my mind  the artist has the pure mind, they just need to emotional, and intense to feel the whole world, and directly translate the further words into the language that we used to know. Artist always have future vision to look at everything. The technology is another pure role in those three roles. technology just need to focus on how to make design into a real thing and also functional. The last I want to talk about is the most hard role out of those three. It is designer, it is a bridge from artist to technology. designer need to balance the artist elements, and buyer’s needs, also make sure the idea can possible happen in technology.

prompt 1.

• Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

Constantly, I feel trapped inside people’s imaginations or expectations. Speaking from my experience, to be able to identify others’ wrong impressions and re-situate oneself takes practice. There are two types of other’s imagination to be trapped within. Growing up, Brown had to cope with white supremacists and racism. The vision loaded on her being aimed for no good within her. She speaks of her younger self looking for other options “where she wasn’t dismissed as an idealist or an inferior.” There may also be an opposite kind of imagination where people firmly believe in others’ potential, which also causes burden.

I don’t think either of those imaginations is psychologically healthy. Some might find maroon space, some just have to confront the problem.

prompt 2. 

• Q: Do artists, designers, and technology have that same or similar responsibility? What are the nuances between those roles?

Indeed, all creators and inventors bear the similar responsibilities of imaging alternatives.

To think writers, artists, designers, architects, etc speak independently from their own field, I would better imagine working collectively as part of world-running systems. Think of any today’s product, simple as a water bottle, which is designed, manufactured, tested, commercialized, and consumed, engages multiple areas of specialists working collectively to bring out. As mentioned in Brown’s article “critical relationships, the strength of collective is more important in a long-term transformation process.”

Artists, designers, and technology, in regard to alternatives’ emergence, are all responsible for thorough research, experiments, and bias elimination. Living in the industrial age, I think some fields are required to be more specified than others. The artist sometimes can be really abstract about their idea, the designer in other words has to make sure the deliverables are more accessible to users.

Q: In your view, what is a function of humans in the universe?
A: In my opinion, one unique thing about human is that human can discover different functions or values of all the things in the world. Before human, stones were just stones, fire was a natural disaster, minerals and fossil fuels buried under the ground. But human could make use of them, giving them values and different functions, in other words, making new connections. The neurons in our brain make connections, the more connections between neurons, the more powerful and complex our brain would be. I think the presence of human creates more connections in our world, activating more potentials.

Q: Do artists, designers, and technology have that same or similar responsibility? What are the nuances between those roles?
A: I think artists have that similar responsibility. Similar with authors, other than physical tools and materials, there is nothing that limits an artist from creating. You don’t need to obey the laws of physics, you can create any thing you imagine, that’s the privilege of an artist. So it is their responsibility to utilizing that privilege to spark the imagination of their audiences. Designers are a little different. They don’t have the total freedom of creating anything in their imagination. I think their responsibility is to connect the imaginary world with the real world. And technology is both the means and ends to that connection.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?
A: There are several principles that I find a little more difficult to achieve. For the principle “trust the people”, we were often taught to be skeptical, to have our own thoughts, to think critically. So when coming across new ideas from others, it’s natural for me to doubt it in the first place. Is the information source reliable? Is this person qualified to make this statement? Are we communicating within the same context? Am I interpreting this idea correctly? So when talking about trust, it takes effort for me to achieve it, not only for trusting others, but also trusting my own judgment.
The principle “less prep, more presence” is also a bit counter-intuitive. When doing research or other projects, I often found myself doing a ton of preparation before actual getting my hands on. I tried to cover all the aspects I could think of, being afraid of missing anything important. So I guess this principle might be a good advice for me for my later works.

Principles

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

I find many of the principles difficult to achieve or maintain. For example, I don’t do very well with change, even though I agree, that change is constant, and to the extreme, Change IS god. I am not very good at adapting to a new environment, and often time, before I noticed, everyone around me had already become friends but me. Thus, when I am finally used to something, it hurts a lot to lose it. I think I’ve accepted Change is constant, but it is still difficult.

However, in terms of my own creative practice, I find “There is always enough time for the right work” to be the most challenging principle out of all. I spent the last 3 years in an MFA painting program, where you meet with two advisors bi-weekly to talk about your works. Where curators and gallerists come into studios to judge and find something that they can make use of. I always felt behind, as I was a slow painter. I learned to adapt to the speed, and told myself MFA was all for exploration, I can take as much time as I want when I’m out of the program. I graduated from the program more than a year ago now, and I’ve stopped painting completely, as I don’t remember how to get back my patience, the natural way that I used to paint. When I paint now, I always lost patience within a week, and so my work became gimmicky and fast. I feel conflicted, as they are now more contemporary, but is this really who I am, or had I become a product of an MFA factory?

Elements

Q: Without overthinking it: which of these elements brown describes most immediately feels evident as part of your creative work, and how? 

I found “fractal” and “interdependence and decentralization” the two elements that feel more like part of my existing creative work. In my own practice, I focus on my response to little things that happened around me. Trivial things that happen in corners of our society that I believe are foreshadowing the future of our society as a whole. As a first-generation Asian immigrant in this country, I also find the idea of “who we are and how we share” a constant question I try to answer in my own creative work. I’m well aware of my difference from the existing Asian-American community in the country, but also aware of others’ profiling and expectations of me for being an obvious female Asian. I don’t want to overwhelm people or annoy people with my work, but at the same time I want my work to influence the people who see it, so I’m constantly looking for angles in presenting things.

Principles

Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

Out of all the principles that Brown uses in her study of emergent strategy, the principle that I personally think is most difficult to achieve is “Less prep, more presence.” I think that this phrase is a reminder that sharing our work is equal, if not more, important than doing the work itself. Without sharing our work, we do not receive the feedback we need change and grow. Oftentimes, I feel that I spend too much time preparing a creative project, rather than showing it to my peers and to the world. I think that it is caused by fear of judgement. Overcoming that fear is the stepping stone to producing work that is personal and meaningful.

General

How would you define emergence? What is its opposite?

According to the Oxford Language, the word “emergence” is defined as the process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being concealed. In the context of the reading, “emergence” is the phenomenon where behaviors are formed when parts of a system interact—behaviors that they would not otherwise do alone. For example, at a biological level, water is formed when oxygen and hydrogen atoms interact. Then puddles, pools, rivers, and oceans can be formed when water molecules interact. This thinking could also be applied at a social level also, where humans can come together and find a common purpose to create a community and accomplish things they could not do alone. I think the opposite of “emergence” would be

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

• Q: Have you felt trapped inside someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?
• A: I believe if you look at society as a larger system, we are all, at one point or another, trapped inside of someone else’s imagination. There are many ways to approach life, yet many of us have followed a similar set path or societal standards; school, college, work, marriage, and purchasing a home. So much of this “straight and narrow” approach to life was systemized through someone’s thoughts or imagination. In the media and mainstream America, standards of beauty, worthiness, and reward are bestowed upon us through one lens built from a collective imagination of those in the power of the narrative and to be given the designation of tastemakers. Much of this sentiment is outlined in the list of concepts from the reading. As I have gotten older and experienced some fallout from sticking so closely to the binary of  “right” and “wrong,” I took stock of what was important to me, not what was being projected by others and have attempted to approach my life with that compass. At the risk of sounding selfish, the lifestyle shifts from the pandemic provided a silver lining of fully leaning into remote work, the ability to live nomadically, and to apply and partake in this program 13 years after graduating from undergrad.

• Q: What is a negative pattern that you see in a small way that reverberates outward that you could attempt to disrupt today?
• A: This quote particularly resonated with me, “Transform yourself to transform the world.”—Grace Lee Boggs. While it feels like a drop in the bucket, my partner and I have recently started to introduce more plant-based food into our diet and routine to attempt to combat the environmental impacts of the meat/farming industry.

Prompt 1: In your view, what is a function of humans in the universe?

I think the core function of humans is to create. Through creation we are able to build and experience. We collaborate and expand. Creating brings us together and allows us to express our individuality and perhaps, if we’re lucky, to leave a lasting mark that can tell future generations and species that we existed.

Prompt 2: How would you define emergence? What is its opposite?

I would define emergence as collaboration. It is a process that requires the individual to work with others around them bringing a mindset of “let’s solve this together, slowly”. It very much involved individuals working together is a cohesive and seamless manner to achieve a desired outcome. One example cited in the reading is the migration of birds. If they are grouped too closely together, they cannot move efficiently. If they are grouped too far apart, they cannot gain the benefits of streamlining, etc. So all of the bird need to collaborate in order to achieve the outcome of migration.

I would say it’s opposite is isolation. When we silo ourselves and focus on individual output rather than collaboration we are unable to get more out of the system than we put in. When there is the absence of collaboration, individuals don’t reap the benefits of their communities.