ZERO1 Blog

For many people, the notion of origin suggests a narrative of immigrating to one place from another, having daily roots in one country and familial, cultural or historical roots in another. However, since the proliferation of public access to DNA testing, narratives of origin have become more nuanced portraits of who we are and where we have come from, giving diversity visibility, as it is embodied within each of us.

Understanding how to build a user-driven platform has stretched my non-geek brain to new areas. Thanks to my web guru and mentor Julie Thompson, a connection ZERO1 provided me with, I was able to direct my focus, during this first phase of platform-prototype building, to two major foundational areas of work: the platform-users’ needs and the platform’s search feature.    

But before I go any further, and for those who may be just joining in, my project is about building a platform that will become a hub for fostering art making in the social realm, and for promoting a healthy dialog and collaboration between this type of art practice and the sciences, the grant givers, the art institutions and the non-governmental agencies that operate with an integrative approach. The end goal of this platform is to foster a way to go about social change that integrates the creativity, the problem-stirring and the borderless experimenting capacity of socially engaged artists with disciplines that are normally bound by scientific procedures.