<i>Aibonica</i> Creator: Robert P Taylor

Robert P. Taylor's: Bahrain: Reflections on Globalizaton and Arab Higher Education

Site artist and creator, Robert P. Taylor

From 1970 to the present, at Teachers College, Columbia University, I have been either an administrator, a faculty member, or both, working with those around me to encourage and assist them to introduce computer based technology into their administrative, research, and teaching activities. In the last decade of that period, much of my own work with technology focused on creating websites, mostly based upon digitized versions of my own drawings. Because a certain amount of my professional time is always spent in meetings, some of my drawing-based websites explicitly reflect upon human interaction, particularly at and around formal meetings. Concurrent with this drawing and production of websites, the focus of my teaching and research also shifted toward technology's increasingly accellerating and discernable impact on the globalizing of human life and education. Because most people still do not comprehend globalization's extent or implications as they should, my drawing-based websites also began to attempt in part at least, to increase awareness of this globalization. The globalalization and Arab future conference in Bahrain was designed specifically to increase awareness of globalization and its educational implications directly for those academics and intellectuals attending, and indirectly for the many more with whom they might subsequently have contact.

My attendance at the meeting allowed me to draw (1) participants as they presented and interacted in the two days of the conference, (2) other Bahrainians in the three days afterward, (3) persons I encountered travelling to and from the conference and around Bahrain, and (4) some works of art in London on my way home. It thus provided fitting material for another website of the sort I have become quite interested in. From the 62 drawings made in connection with the conference, Bahrain was created. Though unique, it is still closely related to the several websites I have made since 1996 to reflect other meetings, in South America, Europe, and the Middle East (for example, see SeeRIBIE and SeeTET01, in Related Taylor webberies below).

The drawing required for all these websites had the unanticipated effect of sharpening my interest in the art of others. Of course drawing is fun and very satisfying, and I certainly draw partly because of that. However, as I grew more sharply interested in the art of others and began to study and draw it in museums in New York, Washington, Amsterdam, London, and elsewhere, the globalization of art impressed me anew. (In Bahrain itself, for example, see the elements of globalization mentioned in connection with the Picasso and the Canova work visited in London. Though that globalization has also accellerated rapidly in the 20th Century, it has been present, and in retrospect detectable, for at least 4500 years. But carefully studying the art of others also increased further my interest in making drawing-based sites that reflect meetings and encounters. Who artists have drawn and why has always reflected what a society holds important, and the activities and interactions of people in the society have always been a focus of artistic interest for that reason. Thus, though novel in being exhibited on the web, the subject matter of the drawings displayed in my sites reflects a long tradition in art and society. And like the art that preceded them, the images themselves represent a communication that transcends language differences. I have created Bajrain, not just for the fun of doing so, but also because I believe such images can help us better understand each other and our rapidly globalizing world.

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