Two Days Until I Fly Away

I leave for Copenhagen on Friday evening and arrive in Denmark on Saturday. Maybe, just maybe, I will sleep on the plane and arrive without jet lag...here's to hoping.

So why am I embarking on this trip? The answer is, or course, "why not?". I am going back to Copenhagen and on to Bergen as part of a course called "Digital Scandinavia" (Facebook, WordPress). This two-week study abroad is the extension of the three-week Maymester course, which, together, act as my final courses in my art history degree. (Yay to being done with my thesis and another bachelor's degree!)

"DIGITAL SCANDINAVIA is a collaborative cross-disciplinary art and design initiative asking students to engage in digital process-based research that explores multi-scalar design and questions the very state of contemporary art practice. We will be looking at the macro down to micro scale variables that influence innovative creative production in both the United States and Scandinavia. In 2009, Denver, Copenhagen and Bergen will be our playgrounds. The collective work of team projects (COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT) will be exhibited in the fall of 2009 at RedLine/Denver in addition to publication in Modern in Denver. CPR teams began working together in May."

My team is called "Creative Gumbo." "Creative Gumbo is motivated by Richard Florida’s ideas about the Creative Economy and its limitless network, which broaden the notion of artist to include innovators within a variety of disciplines who have not historically been considered creative. Creative Gumbo is responding to the proliferation of social networking as a way to document the Creative Economy through an analog process. We are tracking the interconnection of people, projects, firms, institutions and concepts in the U.S. and Scandinavia that are shaping the areas of Environment, Community, Action, Entertainment, Innovation and Education. Our method is a collaborative, participatory-based experiment using handmade postcards, which will be distributed in a snail-mail system."



I am also traveling to Italy, Spain and Morocco. Matt is meeting me in Milan, Italy, and from there we will visit Naples, Rome and Venice. Then we are headed to Spain to see Barcelona and Bilbao. And in between the Spanish cities we are stopping in Fes, Morocco.

So why these destinations? Well, last time Pam and I only briefly stopped in Italy, Spain sounded nice, and neither Matt nor I have been to Morocco (and why not stop in Africa when we are so close?).

Over the course of a month I will be recording my travels here, on the Creative Gumbo blog and on my Facebook page.

I have also linked my Picasa albums to this page, and I can insert video directly into this blog and on Facebook. Think of my trip as your trip...especially if you are stuck at home this summer.

vi ses, hade, arriverderci, adios, khodafes,
-A