last update: March 2012

I wear a lot of hats, but my overriding interest is looking at and shaping how we use technology to build community and empower ourselves as individuals. I engage in this area through research, writing and art, and I'm increasingly doing it through design and design strategy too.

The Short Story

An Xiao Mina is an American design strategist, researcher and artist. She focuses on the role of technology in building communities and empowering individuals. Her work has been featured in diverse venues like the Brooklyn Museum and Shanghai's Xindanwei, and she has contributed writing to publications such as Wired, The Guardian, and Esquire Philippines. Find her on Twitter at @anxiaostudio or on her web site at www.anxiaostudio.com.

The Longer Story

An Xiao Mina is an American design strategist, researcher and artist. She focuses on the role of technology in building communities and empowering individuals.

She has exhibited in art and design spaces internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, Yale/Haskins Laboratories, Shanghai's Xindanwei and the Pacific Asia Museum. Her work and writing have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Design Observer and Esquire Philippines.

In 2009, she co-founded a Chinese-to-English Twitter translation site with nearly 10,000 followers and a dozen contributing members, and she continues to head up @Platea, a social media-based performance art collective. She recently served on the curatorial team for Un-Named Design at the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, a collaboration with the Oslo School of Architecture and Beijing-based FAKE Design. The exhibition was named a best contemporary design show by the New York Times in 2011.

Originally from Silverlake (Los Angeles) and Manila, An tweets non-stop at @anxiaostudio and writes regularly about her work at www.anxiaostudio.com. She misses sleep.

Working Assumptions

Communications technologies present new ways to build unique global and local communities and to empower individuals to educate themselves, express their beliefs and explore their creative potential.

We need an expanded definition of design to encompass design's role in building systems and strategies. Design is both aesthetics and problem solving, and it has a powerful role to play in making technologies that are accessible and impactful.

We cannot effectively design without knowing deeply the persons, cultures and contexts we are working with. Thoughtful research and people knowing are essential to any creative practice.

Artists and artistic practices play a vital role in modern society and deserve promotion, funding and recognition. By placing art within digital media, we increase the possibilities of collaborative creation and participant engagement.

Our work can and should coexist with the pursuit of financial security and emotional well-being. Conscientious consumption and sustainable business are welcome buzz words when meaningfully put into practice.

With only about a third of the world's population now online, all of us speaking different languages and living within different cultural contexts, we still have much work to do in building a truly global community. It's people, with the help of machines, who start the important process of bridging linguistic, cultural and geographic divides.

Technology doesn't replace face to face interaction; online and offline worlds complement each other. This is why coworking spaces, hacker collectives, professional conferences, casual meetups and other collaborative/group events are becoming increasingly important.

The more we share, collaborate, collude and co-create, the closer we get to a sustainable, just and happy world.

Wholesome, delicious, scrumdiddlyumptious meals devoured alongside lively conversation and/or quiet reflection are essential fuel along the way.

Personal Bio

I grew up in Silverlake, Los Angeles, near a shady part of Sunset Blvd. that's now considered trendy. I also spent a good portion of my childhood in Manila, Philippines. Both of these cities are rich ethnic melting pots, and as a child, I had friends from all kinds of backgrounds. I've also lived or spent significant amounts of time in the east coast of the US (especially New York), the east coast of China (especially Beijing and Shanghai), and Korea. I'm ethnically of Filipino and Chinese descent and a classic third culture kid, constantly navigating multiple worlds and discovering the richness of each culture and way of life I encounter.

I'm doing my best to achieve conversational fluency in Mandarin and Spanish; I read both better than I speak them. I have a soft spot for the American Southwest, China's Northeast (东北) and the small islands off Palawan, Philippines, but I will always consider Los Angeles home. When I'm not working, I love hiking, swimming, cycling and cooking. I enjoy travel, for business or pleasure. I miss sleep.

You can call me "An" or "An Xiao". If you speak Chinese, that's 米娜 安晓.

What the Heck is a Virtual Studio?

When I was living in New York, people constantly asked me where my studio was. I didn't really have one, but that didn't stop me from pursuing a career in art and design. As most of my work is digital, my studio is in my computer and anywhere I set it up. But there's more to it than that. Here are a few definitions of "virtual" from Merriam-Webster:

* being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted
* being on or simulated on a computer or computer network
* occurring or existing primarily online

An Xiao Studio, then, exists primarily online. Projects can happen anywhere, and the possibility for collaboration is any time. I have no brick and mortar studio--that space could be a coworking space, a cafe, an airplane, a tent in the desert. But I've engaged in a number of design, art and research projects in concert with many people scattered around the world. The studio exists in essence; it's virtually a studio. It's a virtual studio.