The Human Mind and Migration program is part of the impactmania/Art Design & Architecture Museum interdisciplinary internship. The students work on a migration path of choice: research, interview, and publish their findings for an academic year.
HMM's online exhibition: https://project.hmm.ucsb.edu/ (2021)
Final projects: https://project.hmm.ucsb.edu/projects (2021)
Digital Nomads magazine (2020)
Human Mind and Migration (2019)
Music and Migration: The Movement of Sounds
By Alice Taylor
impactmania/ AD&A Museum Student (UCSB)
Within impactmania’s Human Mind and Migration program, the possibilities of topics to explore are endless. I am choosing to pursue the subject of music and how it relates to the individual and cultural experiences of migrants because music has always been an integral part of my life. It is clear that music and migration are also interconnected in multiple ways, and I aspire to look deeper into a few. For instance, how can a piece of music share the feeling of moving to a new place? What is it like to play a traditional instrument in a new culture? Do different styles of music blend together via migration? These are the types of questions I am excited to explore in the coming year.
Image: Michael Aaron Williams
Migration of the Houseless Community
By Jennifer Yoshikoshi
Homelesness is a very big issue in the United States, especially in California, but why is the problem only increasing as time progresses? Growing up in the Bay Area, seeing tents and homeless encampments in parks and on the side of freeways was a common sight. Seeing a community of homeless people alongside roads and in common areas has become such a norm but this is a national issue that needs to be addressed. I am researching the way that economic issues affect the migration of homeless people around the United States. Do economic conditions in different states affect the rate of homelessness and why is this a growing issue?
Architecture and Migration
By Sabrina Li
impactmania/ AD&A Museum Student (UCSB)
Archiecture is the product of culture, and it is designed for culture. To adapt to people's different needs in other regions, architects have taken on flying to foreign countries, which has led to the development of globalization.The BMW Welt in Germany, China's Guangzhou Opera House, and the City of Arts and Sciences in Spain are all impressive. Still they all seem to be of the same architectural style, despite existing in different countries with widely different cultures.
My research aims to determine the effect the migration of architects has on the local architectural style and culture? Interview was conducted with Renato Russi, a famous Italian architect working as foreigners in China. Through a combination of the architect's own experience and insights, it supports my findings.
Migration Converges: The Intersection of Migration Pathways
By Stevie Sandy
Impactmania / UCSB 2021
Image: Transpacific Project, 2011
Do migration pathways have meaningful effects on interpersonal relationships?
Migration Converges is a study to demonstrate the way that diverse and unique migration patterns often still lead to the same intersection points, but what does that mean for human connection? I will be interviewing candidates with different migration patterns who all have connections with UCSB. From my individual experience, I notice that migrants who have many points in their pathways are more understanding and compassionate individuals in the world. Each individual I interview has a unique migration pathway, but in some way, they have all intersected my pathway in the four years I have been at UCSB. All of these people are self-aware and find satisfaction in serving their communities and those who surround them. Could this be a result of migration? Does migrating and seeing other parts of the world encourage self-awareness and compassion?
Second-Generation Neurological Responses to Migration
By Stephanie Ando
impactmania/ AD&A Museum Student (UCSB)
The effect of migration on the human brain is a fascinating field that can never be fully explored. However, with impactmania's Human Mind and Migration, I hope to add to the research through studying how the brains of second generation immigrants function. I aspire to provide representation for communities often overlooked by asking what happens to the brain of a second generation immigrant child? How do their childhoods differ from those who have multi-generational roots? What chemicals do they release and can the trauma be undone or alleviated later? Immigration is not simply a legal process that ends with notoriety and I would like to shed light on the familial burden it brings for generations through my research.
A Migrant Genealogy of Naming
By Mina Nur Basmaci
impactmania / AD&A Museum Student (UCSB)
My project considers migrants' names in relation to assimilation, social protest, and legacy. Names—what/who we were named after, the tradition that informs our name, whether we identify with that tradition, etc.—give us away, and have added significance to migrants as they parcel through an inherited past, a meandering present, and an emerging future.
"Our names were made for us in another century." - Richard Brautigan
"What's in a name?" - William Shakespeare
Image: "Adam Naming the Animals," exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum
The Role of Social Media in Migration
By Kristina Goetz
impactmania/ AD&A Museum Student (UCSB)
Does social media play an explicit role in motivating migration, and the integration of new migrants? How does social media effect the transformation of migrant networks? Is there a difference in the neurons released while viewing something you like vs. you do not like on social media? And, how can the activation of these neurochemicals influence the migration of people?
Digital Nomads
By Joanne Sun Mun and Laic Beugre
impactmania/UCSB philosophy student contributors
Our focus explores how digital nomads experience migration. What began as a research project transformed into a creating a magazine that implores digital nomadism with an interdisciplinary lens. We researched into how fields such as philosophy, religion, and neuroscience apply to digital nomad culture, and translated all this information into a uniquely designed editorial, curated to encapsulate the digital era.
Modern-Day Migrants in the Performing Arts
By Natalie Gomez
impactmania/AD&A Museum student (UCSB)
Careers in the performing arts inherently come with a life of constant migratory movement. Performers will find themselves in hundreds of different cities, or even countries, throughout their lives in order to pursue and share their art. Leaving one's home and having to readjust to new surroundings can have lingering effects on a person's brain, and being exposed to different cultures often ends up influencing their creative outputs.
To explore how this nomadic lifestyle has shaped the lives of performers, I have compiled interviews with three performers: an actor, a musician, and a dancer. Each artistic performer shares personal stories about how migration, the arts, and the brain intertwine in their lives. The achievements of these modern-day migrants in the performing arts serve as examples of how humanity can benefit from a more interconnected world.
Globalization of Korean Pop (K-Pop)
By Alex Moon
impactmania/UCSB student contributors
With the rise of Internet and platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Youtube, the world is now closer than ever with over-flowing information from all over the world. We now can create, view, and share content on such platforms and receive feedback from all over the world instantly. In the era of globalization of information, the process of globalization of the Korean Pop (K-Pop) has been expedited at an exponential rate. The long existing K-Pop is now being exported and creating explosive popularity in Asia, Europe, South America, and North America. The study focuses on the process of globalization of the culture, the impact of culture, and the future trajectory of K-pop as a mainstream culture in the United States.
Americans
UC Santa Barbara students, Janette, Joanne, Lucio, Laic, Esmeralda, Alex, Chris, and Abby on the American Dream, migration, and being American.
From China to South Africa
By Denisse Gonzalez
impactmania/AD&A Museum student (UCSB)
Chinese Migration to Africa
For the last few decades, over one million of Chinese people have migrated to Africa. According to the 2019 China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies it is estimated that US$143 billion has been extended in Chinese loans to Sub Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2017.
There was a Chinese African Forum on China-Africa Cooperation or (FOCAC) that was proposed by president Jiang Zemin in 1996 and implemented in the year 2000. It has since sparked substantial investment in the country with US$67.2 billion in loans extended between 2001 and 2010 from China’s Export-Import Bank.
From Syria to Germany
By Tess Reinhardt
impactmania/AD&A Museum student (UCSB)
Syrian Migrants Resettling in Berlin
Since Angela Merkel’s famous, “Wir schaffen das” or “We can do it” address in 2015, [in response to Germany’s ability to manage the large number of immigrants] some 1.4 million migrants have applied for asylum in Germany. Today, Syrians make up the third largest group of foreigners in Germany.
From Mexico to the USA
By Lizbeth Martinez
impactmania/AD&A Museum — biology student (UCSB)
A Home Away From Home: Boyle Heights, Los Angeles
From the Philippines to Hong Kong
By Paksy Plackis-Cheng
Senior Fellow Research and Media
Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong
impactmania and University of California, Santa Barbara’s (UCSB) Human Mind and Migration program asks how migration impacts our minds and cultures. In this section, we are exploring the lives of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.