Sync/O Research as Teaching Laboratory

Another great contribution from graduate student Lily Skove:
At the Ohio State University, The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) is a unique space for the convergence of distinct fields. Perhaps “collision” of distinct fields would be a more apt description, as “convergence” suggests easeful assimilation. Collaboration as collision necessitates the full force of each fields’ identity, traditions, and expertise entangling to create something new, and this is how I would describe ACCAD’s latest conquest, Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced. Working as a student on this project gave me the unique vantage point of observing and engaging experts at work in cross-disciplinary investigation. It is difficult to learn in classroom settings about the nature of collaboration across disciplines, how to set them up, how to guide investigation, create space for distinct expertise and find areas of common ground, and so on. Seeing Synchronous Object’s collaboration in practice and being invited to play an active role in the project’s process, has given me new tools to think about my own research. I think that this project offers a successful model for universities that want to teach their students about how to conduct collaborative research and initiate dialogue across disciplines. It goes without saying that the graduate students on the creative team that made Synchronous Objects achieved a level of intimacy with the project that afforded them new insights and deepened their own learning, but Synchronous Objects created many opportunities for students across the Ohio State University campus to come into contact with the project at various stages of it’s development. For instance, the dance department organized several entry points for the students into this project, such as the “Creative Research Consortium” that explored the project’s themes offering new ideas that were then folded back into the work of the core research team. Currently the architecture department is offering a course that uses Synchronous Objects as a jumping off point for new discovery in their field. As Synchronous Objects circulates in the Ohio State University community, it fosters a desire for new collaborations as people in various fields meet for the first time, and as the departments on campus are re-envisioned not as separate camps of knowledge but as resources for each other. ACCAD offers itself as a meeting place both literally and figuratively on the university map for all of us searching for a collision of interests, and a nurturing environment for hybrid projects.