Week 8 - Xtine Burrough

During this week’s class, we were given the opportunity to listen to a presentation and meet Xtine Burrough. Burrough is a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas where she focuses on Design & Technology, Communication & Culture as well as Emerging Media Arts (“Xtine Burrough: Professor: Faculty”). In addition to her being a professor, she is also an avid writer and author. During this week’s class, we were given the opportunity to listen to a brief introduction to her new book: Art as Social Practice. “With a focus on socially engaged art practices in the twenty-first century, this book explores how artists use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities, create change, and bring forth social impact through new technologies and digital practices” (“Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change”). Much like the presentation we listened to with the founder of BlackNasa or our visit to the planetarium, Burrough’s book is critical to our course because it combines science, art and technology to inspire change, raise awareness and create social change. After briefly looking at the table of contents, one topic stood out to me the most: Bio-Digital Pathways: Mushrooming Knowledge, Expanding Community. Although I was unable to read that portion, it sounds similar to what we learned earlier in the class about mushrooms/mycelium and the social networks they create in order to thrive. The bigger the mycelium gets, the more they are “expanding their community” in order to work for a common cause/goal which in turn allows them to impact the mushroom. Not only that, but Burrough’s has also authored multiple other books including Foundations of Digital Art and Design (2013), Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (2011), and “The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (2015) (“Xtine Burrough and Sabrina Starnaman”). In addition to her work, Burrough also talked about LabSynthe, which is a lab at the University of Texas. “LabSynthe is a creative laboratory for the investigation of synthetic and electronic poetry. The laboratory currently work on projects at the intersection of memory, translation, poetry and sound, worker’s rights, and feminism. LabSynthe is a place where all voices are welcome. It operates like an improvisation group, prioritizing “yes and” as a condition for exchange” (“LabSynthE: Labs & Studios.”). One part of their mission statement/purpose is the fact that LabSynthe is a place where all voices are welcome. In today’s society, many individuals are underrepresented, misheard and or completely afraid of projecting themselves and their voices. With such safe spaces, individuals are able to creatively express themselves amongst one another through the use of poems. This is a perfect segway into the next half of the class in which we met in person to talk more about Xtine’s work and create our own poem!

After meeting on Zoom, we were able to meet and speak with Xtine Burrough in person near the Broad Arts Center. At first, I was extremely hesitant when I heard we were writing our own poems, however, she reassured us that anything and everything can be turned into poetry (so we were not given strict guidelines on what to write!). Specifically, we were instructed to write a one breath poem which means our entire poem must be said in one breath. After breaking out into smaller groups, we decided that we were going to write a Haiku, simply because it is short and can be said in one breath. “Haiku is sometimes referred to as one-breath poetry, because it is short enough to breath in one breath. A haiku comes from and returns to a place of stillness. Its content is usually a fleeting but memorable moment, a snapshot of the natural world” (Abbagnano). I could not tell you the last time I wrote or read a poem, however, it was great to be able to write one with my classmates. Before we began writing our poems, Burrough’s gave us a few examples, one of which was extremely powerful and regarded the late Eric Garner, who was killed by the NYPD while being arrested. As my group began brainstorming ideas, we were able to learn that many of us shared a few things in common. We were all in the Life Sciences and two of us were graduating in a few weeks! This led us to writing a haiku about Biology and our love/hate relationship with Biology and STEM classes, in general. We were then instructed to write our own haiku and present it to our small group. I decided to write one about school and how much I disliked it (I promise I do not hate school). My haiku, which I was surprisingly able to read in one breath, was as follows: School is so useless. I sadly need to do it. Get me out of here. Being able to simply go through the emotions and thought process of writing a haiku was wonderful and I am so glad we were able to meet Xtine Burrough. Below are images of our workshop where we learned more about Burrough and had the opportunity to write our own haiku!

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Works Cited: 

Anthony, and Danielle DeWilde. November 4. “Haiku – One Breath Poetry.” Alchemy of Breath: Breathwork Training and Events, 5 June 2019, https://alchemyofbreath.com/haiku-one-breath-poetry/#:~:text=Haiku%20is%20sometimes%20referred%20to,snapshot%20of%20the%20natural%20world.

“Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change.” Routledge & CRC Press, https://www.routledge.com/Art-as-Social-Practice-Technologies-for-Change/burrough-Walgren/p/book/9780367758462#:~:text=With%20a%20focus%20on%20socially,new%20technologies%20and%20digital%20practices.

“LabSynthE: Labs & Studios.” ATEC at UT Dallas, 16 Jan. 2022, https://atec.utdallas.edu/content/labsynthe/.

“Xtine Burrough and Sabrina Starnaman.” Dallas Museum of Art, https://dma.org/xtine-burrough-and-sabrina-starnaman.

“Xtine Burrough: Professor: Faculty.” ATEC at UT Dallas, 25 Oct. 2021, https://atec.utdallas.edu/content/burrough-xtine/.