As part of my teaching at Parsons, every so often I get asked to be a part of or help with student projects or exhibitions. One of these opportunities crossed my desk a few days ago, and read in part:

I am emailing you all on behalf of the Senior Thesis Exhibition Core Team. As a result of tonight’s meeting the students decided that their objective is to represent all senior students in the design of the card and therefore agreed upon creating a collaborative opportunity for all students to participate in the creation of the visuals for the post card. We ask each of you to decide upon a 1×1 inch icon/image that would represent yourself and/or your work. This image will become part of a larger grid.

I must admit, if I were a student, I would have had a really tough time with this particular assignment. For one thing, trying to encapsulate a senior project, especially midway through the process of making one, is pretty difficult for my students, many of whom are making a long-form, large-scale project for the first time. I also wonder—though it’s certainly well-meaning—how truly “collaborative” a grid of 1×1 inch images is. Sure, it gives you a cross-section of styles and approaches and everyone gets equal play, but it seems like saying my sock drawer collaborates with my underwear drawer to form a dresser, or my car collaborates with the car next to mine to form a lot of parked cars. Yes, they show parts of a whole, but a “collaborative” whole, to me, it’s not.

A senior project seems like an ideal time to question such things as what collaboration is and isn’t. It also is a really good time to challenge oneself and one’s peers in terms of how things get made, both alone and together. In that spirit, I decided to give myself the assignment that I was directed to give my students. But who to collaborate with on this critique of collaborative endeavors? The best partner I could find was chance, so I grabbed my Magic Eight-Ball and gave it a shake. “What should I do here?” I asked. “Concentrate and ask again,” it replied. It seems like I’m telling my students to do that all the time.