TransD change minds
Posted by Christopher Taylor Edwards on December 13, 2013
As the semester is coming to an end, I’ve began to question the amount and quality of knowledge I actually absorbed from the great deal of information that was presented to us throughout these four months. I questioned my success, or the lack of, in drawing connections and making critical analysis of a single or multiple subject matters. To think transdisciplinary is not easy. And to apply this transdisciplinary thinking of acknowledging the different perspectives and diversity of how systems function is difficult when my mind has been wired to solve problems through very specific modes of visual communications. But then as Jamer has said early on in the semester, in order to solve bigger more complicated problems, we need to think outside of the conventional methods. We need to think in a lot of different angles in order to discover where the right place to intervene is.
One thing I really like about this program is that we bring in guest speakers from different areas of expertise to come speak at seminars, workshops, and lectures. They are the examples of transdisciplinary in practice and thinking in their use of methodology and media. This not only legitimizes what we learn in class, but it also gives us an opportunity to see the theories and methods that we read about in books demonstrated effectively in real life. It is one thing to be reading and to have discussions in class, but another to bring what we learned out into the real world and apply it to different aspects of our lives.
So I continued to question where, and how would I incorporate my expertise and think transdisciplinary? But I’m also beginning to think that this may not be the right question. I am boxing-in the concepts of trans-design to where I want it to fit. While the whole time as I am learning, my mindset it changing. As my thinking change, my behavior and decisions also alter.
In all aspects of my life I do have a new attitude in doing things. And when I read the books I’ve read before, my responses are different and I catch different ideas. Although there hasn’t been any larger scale opportunities for me to practice the transdisciplinary thoughts, yet… I do see things differently now, and I question things more critically. I feel like my brain is beginning to function on a different frequency. If I keep this up, my projects can probably end up being transdisciplinary.