I took your Designing Conversation Spaces class over a decade ago, damn, and designed an app called “The Wedge.” It was made to encourage healthy debate around wedge issues - taking design cues from both comparative analysis of various app commenting systems, and your faith that we could nurture healthy communities online with good design choices. Later on I had a brief stint as your research assistant, covering tweets about the Tunisian Revolution. This, in part, influenced me to design an AR application that could post and read hidden messages on clothing.
You definitely helped spark my interest in thinking critically when experimenting with technology, and seeing it as a radical lever. Your curious, light-hearted, and encouraging teaching style made learning joyful, instilling confidence and inspiring me to lean toward prosocial design to stimulate cultural change.
Since then, I’ve built a career and arts practice at the intersection of ecology, technology, and art, creating innovative projects like:
• Lobby4Me.ai: A participatory AI-based civic engagement tool. 🔗
• Circles: A decentralized universal basic income, and experiment with post-capitalist economy 🔗
• Xyrden: A participatory world-building community researching paths to a harmonious, more-than-human future society. 🔗
• Sagara Nataraja: An regenerative underwater sculpture utilizing coral restoration methods. 🔗
I have shown work at Jaipur Art Week, MoMA PS1, servus.at, Radical Networks, MoneyLab, Basic Income Earth Network, Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, and through Basic Income Berlin Lab.
I’m now applying to the Media Arts and Practice PhD program at USC to further explore these intersections, and your class was a pivotal starting point in this journey.
Just a note that it is possible that I will use this letter for other, similar applications, and would love to not bother you for minor changes. If you can please send it in a format that is editable, or does not say the specific institution, I would appreciate it.