Gift interfaces

September 18, 2025 Winter 2025

Throughout Gift Interfaces, students immersed themselves in gift-giving cultures and practices to imagine design behind scale, questioned the norms of what a gift can be, and most importantly, gave and received many, many gifts.

Rather than lecture about the theory of gift giving, we spent most of our time as a class listening to each others’ stories and our reactions to relevant ideas, projects, and experiments. We discussed how to make ourselves receptive to gifts and what conditions facilitate a continuous cycle of giving. We looked beyond the gift object itself to the wrapping paper that surrounds it (literally and metaphorically), the ceremonies and rituals associated with giving, and the ripple effects gifting has on our broader communities. We wrestled with tough questions and practiced real giving: to each other, our loved ones, and finally, our communities.

In our final class, we held a beautiful potluck and gift wrapping party where we “wrapped” (documented) all the gifts given throughout the class, uploaded them to our class gift interface, and took turns opening each others’ gifts. The resulting website represents the archive of our work and discussion together.

This is the letter we wrote to our students:

Dear Gift Givers,

The very first day that we met, we shared stories of meaningful gifts we've received. Elan told of the many summers that his mom spent weeks pre-cooking and individually wrapping a month's worth of kosher meals so that Elan could attend sleepaway music camp. Spencer spoke of a group living experience in which gifting was permanently in the air —--- communal meals, skill shares, handwritten notes.

We couldn't have known it at the time, but it feels obvious now that in those very first 10 minutes, we were already casting a powerful spell, manifesting the kind of learning that can only come from gathering, and the kind of gathering that can only come from learning, and that in so doing, this gift of gather-learning would be reflected back to us tenfold.

You attended to each other as strangers, in your strangenesses, and then unfolded the ones you thought you knew best, only to love them in their unknowability. You made instruments that measure the color of the sky. You hid poems in flower petals, wrote letters to trees. You saw as much of god in mosquitos as much as in in artichokes. You implored us to imagine a large wide-mouth jar, wrapped extremely tightly with duct tape around the top so it won't leak, weighing about a pound, sour mango deliciousness.

We channeled into you the words of Sal Randolph: "The line between gift to the other and pleasure for the self is always blurred and shifting. The gift goes back and forth a thousand times a day. It's a kind of game." Little did we know how short and blurry the day would be, that the game had already well begun. We channeled into you Robin Wall Kimmerer's story of a hunter who, when asked by an anthropologist why he shared surplus meat instead of storing it for lean times, simply replied, "I store my meat in the belly of my brother." All the while, you were already filling our bellies to the brim.

After we prompted you to give gifts, we requested gift interfaces: rituals and tools that create the context for giving. And in the resulting exchange, in between the literal responses to our query, a preposterous glimmer. Tacky! Inevitable! Exquisite! You were the gift interface the whole time.

Thank you for all your propositions, questions, and stories throughout our time together. We cultivated generosity materially in our gifts but also spiritually in our mutual attention. Exploring these questions so core to our identity as a people together, we hope you have found a few ideas about the mystery of giftmaking. We hope the seeds you have planted (and will continue to plant) grow beyond us. We hope they gain lives of their own, sow seeds of their own. And we hope those seeds eventually find their way back to you, like a long lost classmate, again and again and again.

Love,

Spencer and Elan ~ May 19, 2025

Visit the website to peruse the wonderful gifts, view our syllabus, sift through inspiration, listen to the class playlist, and add a thank you note. Thank you for attending to our gift interface.

Enter the Gift Interface