In the spring semester of 1997, the students of Art 400V: Internet Authoring and Design, produced the prototype of Sites Pacific, an Internet journal focusing on issues of design, culture, and technology in the Pacific region.
Sites Pacific will be dedicated to the integration of design theory and criticism with critical approaches from a variety of humanities disciplines. We view this web site both as a teaching tool to enhance the humanities content of our curriculum in design and as a national and regional resource for students and faculty with an interest in exploring the relationships between art, design, technology, and the study of cultures. This project is tied to developments in course content in the Department of English and the Program in Graphic Design in the Department of Art and will be supported by new course work in internet publishing, design, and site management.
The on-going development of this publication will involve not only design students from our own department but also students throughout the University of Hawai'i system who are interested in collaborative interdisciplinary work that combines design and art criticism with other humanities disciplines. We hope that the development and maintenance of the journal will provide the foundation for a variety cross-listed courses and learning communities that will build bridges between the Department of Art and other departments on campuses in the Hawaiian islands. Furthermore, the accessibility of the on-line journal will eventually permit us to expand the pool of participants--writers of articles, contributing editors, guest editors, advisory boards, designers, staff members--beyond the boundaries of our university system and will offer a resource for researchers, educators, and students throughout the nation and the world.
Our goal is to establish a high-quality and truly innovative on-line journal, managed by students under the supervision of faculty. We seek to provide a forum for intellectual encounters and exchanges among artists, designers, art educators, art critics and historians, and people working in areas of cultural studies, ethnic studies, media studies, political science, sociology, and other humanities disciplines. Such a resource will overcome the vast distances that separate students and teachers in Hawai'i from their peers on the U.S. mainland and in other sites in the Pacific. As we move into what many are calling "the Pacific century," students in Hawai'i, in the center of the region, are poised to make significant contributions to developments in global culture. The directors of the Sites Pacific project are committed to providing their students with the intellectual and technical ingenuity--and with the breadth of vision--that will enable them to fulfill this potential.