1. What were your first impressions of UC San Diego?

Erwin: My first impression of UC San Diego was that academically, it was a far cry from what I had previously been used to as a community college student. My first classes were held in gigantic lecture halls with upwards of 300 students. My primary interaction with instructors was with grad students instead of professors. And I got a sense that the staff that ran departments around campus actually took pride in completing their tasks to the best of their abilities. Each of these things really set a more serious tone for me in terms of stepping up to be responsible for my own education.

2. When did you know you wanted to study visual arts? Have you always been creative?

Erwin: I have been involved in creative endeavors pretty consistently throughout my childhood and adolescence. The funny thing is that I didn’t realize that I wanted to study visual art in an academic context until after I had already exhausted the other options. Making things was always running parallel to the rest of my pursuits, but existed on the back burner. It was really through my committed involvement with a group of performance artists in Los Angeles around 2000 that I finally decided to pursue a more serious approach to making art and went back to school.

3. How did you remain focused on your studies after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November 2006? How has the diagnosis changed your life?

Erwin: I was lucky in the beginning to not have serious symptoms of MS. I think the most difficult part of my situation was fear of the unknown. MS is such a variable disease that it makes predicting what will actually happen totally impossible. The way I dealt with this was to focus more on my studies and the production of new work. Given the circumstances, I felt a great urgency to work toward accomplishing my goals. I still feel lucky that I caught on to having the disease early enough that I have been able to take the necessary steps in order to successfully slow its progression. I live now with a better understanding of the fragility of our human bodies and thus am able to more easily motivate myself to be an active participant in more aspects of my life.

4. Who has been the biggest influence in your life?

Erwin: I think I would have to divide that honor amongst my entire family. I’m about six years older than the average undergrad, so I have had my share of loss and life experiences to contribute to different facets of my relationship with a very fractured family. During my education at UC San Diego, I took care of my grandmother as her primary caregiver. During that time, I was able to trace the lessons that my mother learned from her and, in turn, shape my experience of growing up. On the total opposite side during the same time, my father and I got back in touch with one another after 12 years of silence. There are really too many intricate networks of influence that have touched my life within my family structure to give credit to one person.

5. Which professor had the biggest impact on your education?

Erwin: Professor Adriene Jenik from the Department of Visual Arts has been hugely influential on my education and practice. She was the advisor who worked with me during my honors thesis. It was during that time that I discovered I had MS and simultaneously my grandmother, whom I had taken care of for four years, came to the end of her time here. Adriene was a massive source of support that was able to frame my education as clearly being about who I am, and what I want out of life. She is coincidently the professor who consistently challenged me while never failing to illuminate the possibilities and applications of what we were learning in a theory vs. practice environment. Further, she is just a great teacher who obviously loves what she does a great deal. That in itself has served as an excellent illustration of the benefits of forging your own path.

6. Describe your artwork. Where has your work been shown?

Erwin: I am primarily interested in investigating the intersection between communication technologies, the different spaces they inhabit and people’s relationships with each other through these mediating points of contact.

My latest project is a networked performance system that I have devised called Open_Dancefloor, which appropriates teleconferencing software to integrate distant live aural and visual performances within a localized DJ/VJ club scenario. This all works toward the purpose of creating new venues for artistic free speech within previously disengaged spaces. This gesture also seeks to transform the space itself into a two or more directional communication device via the Internet that is broadly accessible to those who live under different social, political and cultural circumstances.

My work has been shown at TNT — The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the 4th Annual Sound Walk in Long Beach, The Works in Detroit, Michigan, Design Within Reach in Downtown San Diego, and I have upcoming exhibitions scheduled in New York City and Amsterdam.  [To view his art, click here.]

7. What are some "outside the classroom" life lessons you learned as a UC San Diego student?

Erwin: I think for me, it is the realization that inside and outside of the classroom are really the same thing, and need to be considered and appreciated as such in order to get the most out of both. The journey is really so much more important because it designates a movement of sorts, between two static points in a world that also moves, whereas the destination is simply standing still.

8. Where is your favorite spot on campus?

Erwin: I really enjoyed hanging out outside the Grove Café. It is a perfect in-between space that creates a very different feeling than the rest of the campus provides. There is definitely a sense of solitude, which is paired with contemplation. The obvious age of the place and its isolation within a busy university always helps me to think about the implications of time as an envelope that encompasses and dictates the ways in which we relate to each other and our sense of space.