What is the most important thing?

..some helpful thoughts on writing of a blogger that I don't know anything about:

http://albertrosch.com/2015/10/27/what-is-the-most-important-thing/

- ute

reflections of a fabulous seminar on an unwritten page

WHERE DOES THAT LIGHT COME FROM AND WHAT IS THIS SURFACE MADE OF? POSITION YOURSELF STRATEGICALLY WITHIN A CONETXT AND CHALLENGE YOUR REFERENCES WITH RADICAL SPECULATION. Oh I remember these times so well. These times when we still thought that our visions of the even closer future could imagine aspects of what has become today’s reality. We smiled at how awkwardly closely related to the then present style, technical standard and habits historic visions of a future were. And never were able to question our own visions with the same sovereignty our view backwards allowed us. I sit on a sofa. His sofa. He controls the remote, and I find his choices entertaining - if nothing else he has this engaging way of speaking about them. Whenever he sits back, he draws fabulous creatures into his sketchbook. VISUAL OR VISIONARY – FIND THE DEAD END OR A WAY OUT OF THE MAZE. I stare out the window. Their window. I observe bird-on burdens. The poor things have become bio-based drones. Is their twitter virtual or still real? I sometimes sneak out the staff entrance and sit down on that patch of ever muddy earth that is not covered with asphalt. When the bugs crawl over my hands, I see pictures I thought I had lost in the depths of my mind’s ocean. We indulged in fable telling, movie making, clothes display and called every reasoning on our surroundings design. If we also stamped it “futuristic”, “visionary” or “revolutionary”, that would almost be justification enough for spending time, money and space on it – that time when time, money and space still existed. I try on that dress and try on another identity. I try to look convincing in my role as a water terrorist. The dress grows onto my skin and I hurry up, get some business done, before too many of them can afford to redesign their basic needs. SH**** IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY. THEN AGAIN: YOU FIRST BECOME REALLY CREATIVE AFTER HAVING FORCED YOURSELF THROUGH THE 10th ITERATION. I visit a field. Her field. Somebody said feminist research presentation style. I don’t like that classification. I do like getting to know ways of connecting information, associations and assumptions I haven’t come across before. Somebody else said transportation vehicle for messages. I like that better. HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO MY WORK? LET’S TEST OUT SOME TECHNIQUES. This laughter has to be read heard as an insider insight indicator. Sometimes I wish myself back into that innocent state of sweet ignorance. I sneak a peek into the cabinet. His cabinet of thoughts. Different cultures and their way of communicating. You can juxtapose any two or three objects and draw relations between them? It’s starting to get interesting. But it’s also ending. For today. WHERE IS THE DISCUSSION? CRITICAL EXCHANGE? CHALLENGING OF BORDERS? Sometimes I hear just too many voices. I’ve learned to switch myself off. Noratta.

Roll up - roll up for the fabulous mystery tour… a reflection by Bruce Snaddon

Andrew Morrison of our Centre for Design Research beckoned, promised and delivered a delightful day filled with speakers promoting multiple takes on what fabulation, design fiction and speculative inquiry can mean to us all. Each speaker was followed with a designated commentator who managed to tease a bit more from the truly varied and, at times encyclopedic proceedings.

Main points of the six Fabulous Seminar speakers:

Einar Martinussen spoke of the role of design as production of (incredibly detailed) spectacle and also very real comment on social issues projected into the future (the familiar made strange) – and the concern that the ‘future may be boring’ as voiced by J.G. Ballard. Einar’s collection of sci-fi genre movies and illustrations by key designers was a very good bookend to what Jérémie McGowan later presented as a need for a history of fiction in design that is more accessible than ‘mere visual theatrics’ in the white cubed spaces used to show examples of speculative design a la Dunne & Raby. Jeremie presented Banham’s use of the Baede-Kar audiotape (in Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles) as a kind of design fiction comparing it with the Wunderkamer ‘cabinet of curiosity’ and its weirdly wonderful factual and fictional juxtapositions.

In between we had Tau Lensjold who took us into the world of the elderly in a project that started with ‘what if?’ The work speculated what value there may be in providing elderly with a means of interacting with birds outside through bird-cams and bird calls. Ironically for a place supposedly interested in the well being of the elderly, when a bird started to react to the attentions of the residents it was removed, most likely to prevent it being a ‘nuisance’ to cleaning staff.

Synne Skjulstad then showed the work of her graphic design students using speculative scenarios for a world dominated by GEORAIN, a company having the monopoly for outrageously priced water from Mars – a visual identity developed revealed a rather conservative brand in a far-fetched scenario. She then drew us to the world of fashion and the question of ethics and aesthetics arose – it would have been useful to pursue this further but time didn’t allow.

Ståhl Stenslie then boldly stepped up with his Body Bio-Fictives and the designing of future affordances (W. Gibson). His presentation added to the growing archive for our history of design fiction with several examples ranging from Stelarc’s third ear implanted in his arm, to the fictive zero gender and its reality in the form of nullo ‘man’.

Laura Watts and her Pixels and Pencils presentation (a non-improvised talk on improvisation as method for writing futures) brought us all into a very reflective mode of considering our roles and reading of marginal landscapes. Her video of the Orkney Islands sliding into foggy view and disappearing again emphasized the notion of ‘frontier’ and its shifting status, and that “seabirds are resistant to transduction into numbers” and baselines. I would have liked her to read her evocative ‘poem’ (with its beautiful shape-shifting words) along with the video perhaps, the elusive island echoing her words, “I am standing in the field, my field, your field”. A generative talk that drew me into and out of my body to respond to new visions and thoughts of what counts as ‘field’, a field of practice, a field of research, a field of dreams and fictive futures? I was also prompted to think of my own research and of frontiers crossed with design students on several journeys into marginal spaces, contested spaces in transition that have been forgotten or been impacted by the anthropocene. Her point about the many different ways of transducing data struck me as being particularly interesting and pertinent to the notion of speculative design being a means of drawing our attention towards future possibilities. A writing of futures in ways that are able to transduce meaning from fictive scenarios into the everyday moments of the present. There’s an interesting hither and thither movement here, a shifting of modalities; present, past and future that is healthy, I feel. This articulated movement is the stuff our brains are tailored for, and I believe that meaning making is the richer for it.

The day ended for me feeling like I’d been in a fast car with my (receeding) hair blown back, and a sense of wanting to squeeze a word in but not being able to due to a very full programme. But maybe its in the nature of a fabulous mystery tour to ride the carousel with a mouthful of popcorn and a desire to do it all again. So here’s to the next one, with more time for comments from the P(eanut)hD gallery!

Reflection on a fab seminar, by Jan Fredrik Schønheyder

One Monday morning in late October, just after daylight savings, stars aligned for a fabulous seminar. A small but curios group of scholars, researches and practitioners where gathered to listen and discuss the speculative inquiry of design research and the fabulous topic of design fiction. (http://designresearch.no/projects/design-research-mediation/news?post_id=3940)

The seminar was kicked of and conducted by design researcher Andrew Morrison. By involving the audience, they themselves performed the introduction to the topics using the Prompter Pro app. All done to different degrees of success, and thereby letting the technology itself raise the issue on design speculations and criticism. An approach that also leads to the question; what does it mean to speculate together?

Einar Sneve Martinussen reflecting on urban imaginaries, form and phenomena gave the first talk. He reflected and compared different contemporary interaction designs from various science fiction phenomena´s in films, cartoons and literature. He especially focused on the gritty but epic visions of Jean Giraud. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud)

 Tau Ulv Lenskiold presented his project, Urban Animals and Us. The talk started with Jean-Marc Cóté´searly depictions of Visions of the Year 2000, from1899. (http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/france-in-the-year-2000-1899-1910/). Tau then spanned the speculative design futures through the seventies and nineties up to the Corner Convenience project from 2012. (https://vimeo.com/92325970). Tau then presented Urban Animals and Us, a speculative co-design project involving design interaction between frail senior citizens and wild urban animals.

Synne Skjulstad presented her talk, Fashion Forward, a look from the present into the future and back again. An intriguing perspective on how science fiction films are influencing the fashion industry, and where fashion moves forward to fashion films. An emerging trend where both irony and conservatism are used to present the natural movement of clothes. (https://vimeo.com/58933055)

Laura Watts presented Pixels and Pencils, improvising methods for writing futures. A poetic narrative, where she presented the marine renewable energy research, conducted in the Orkney Islands. (http://alienenergy.dk/ ) Laura claims that the innovative research initiative is to be considered as an equivalent to the Apollo space program. She masterfully tells the story of data, birds and the unknown.  

Next was Stahl Stenslie presenting Body Bio-Fictives, a slightly different approach and perspective on what happens to the body. In fiction, audiences have been accustomed to the concept of the cyborg, from Fritz Lang´s Metropolis to Terminator. However with the emergence of digital biology, we are starting to see new constellations of the cyborg. In these new constellations we are witnessing a fast pasted evolution of genetically modified organics, digital bio-printing to Humanity + and the enhanced human (http://humanityplus.org/).

Last speaker at the seminar was Jeremie McGowan´s talk on Precedents, a possible history of design fiction from Banham to the baroque. Through his speak, he explored the roles of the designer, and the possible new directions for design fiction. He claims that there exists a lack of precedents in critical design understanding, and that now it is all about repetition. Jeremie emphasizes the work of Rayner Bahnam and his influence on design research and draws a line back to the Wunderkammer found in renaissance Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities). A place where real objects are together with fictional objects to be speculated upon.

 

In depth: Urban Imaginaries by Einar Sneve Martinussen

In Einars´ talk he framed the topic around design, urban fictions and speculations, a spectacle on popular culture and interaction design. Today in popcorn blockbusters, interaction design have become more dominant and visual and not forgetting borderline intense. Which Einar so elegantly points out, relates to the latest plugin for After Effects. Concept interaction design has already become a separate branch with its own design hero’s such as Ash Thorp (http://www.ashthorp.com/ ) and Bradley Munkowitz, or Gmunk also known as (http://gmunk.com/).

But there are other design heroes outside the commercial Hollywood industry, such as French writer, artist and cartoonist Jean Giraud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud). Giraud, also known as Maebius, has contributed with important and pinnacle work as a designer and storyboard artist for Alien, Fifth Element and the Abyss. Giraud contributes with a different approach to design fiction; his style is grittier but still epic. He brings in the urban life and space into the story with great detail.

Further Einar presents one of Giraud´s design contributions, the Luc Besson movie Fifth Element from 1997. With an incredible budget it brings a new interpretation of how a space opera can be envisioned and presented. A silly movie with more design that was actually needed. Giraud designed the cramp compartment we see in the opening of the movie. His design is utilitarian and compact, with no room for excess or luxury. Maybe only the cat flap can be seen as a differentiator that stands out, both from a humanitarian perspective and as a familiar object the audience can relate to.

To maintain credibility it is important for an audience to recognize and relate certain objects or elements, even in hyper futuristic movies. George Lucas told his concept designers to always implement objects that are recognizable for the audience. Though no man alive has ever seen a hyper drive eon motor, we believe it when we see it in a movie. The reason is simple; we recognize the valve, the pipes and the blinking lights on a panel, because we have seen it before. The same goes for clothing designs as described in this article from Fastcompany. “McQuarrie sketched Vader with a billowing cape and a sinister-looking breathing apparatus. Costume designer John Mollo took it from there, fusing elements of various real-life uniforms associated with war and evil. To design Vader’s infamous black helmet, Mollo looked to the black, shiny headgear Nazis wore during WWII. He then added a gas mask, a motorcycle suit, black leather boots, and a monk’s cloak found in the Middle Ages department of a costume warehouse. Darth Vader’s helmet isn’t the only German army reference in the films: his army of Stormtroopers are named after specialist German soldiers in World War I.” (http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042202/weird-facts-behind-6-famous-star-wars-costumes)

Returning to Einar, he goes on to describe the story behind the design fiction in Riddley Scotts dystopia in Bladerunner from 1982. Here the work of Syd Mead had a strong visual appearance in a large-scale gritty smog environment, again the design depicts familiar objects that creates atmosphere.

Further Einar points out the work of J G Ballard, “a grumpy” author, that focus on the motorway and the masculinity in car chases, especially the Jaguar. Though paradoxically the design of the Jaguar can also be seen as feminine. Cars in like with boats, tend to have female names and descriptions. (http://www.glossophilia.org/?p=1411) Another reflection on road rage from the 60´s and 70´s, can also be related to the lack of air condition in automobiles and the condition of thermal stress (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40965843?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). A reflection that could be perceived as boring which removes the aspect of fiction in the storytelling. However it can contribute with a alternative speculation to why Ballard is a grumpy man.   

In his talk Einar reflects on our current technological state where the “future has arrived” and we are surrounded by connectivity. In popular culture this fact is starting to show, interaction is presented through activities, not zoomed in close ups of interface designs and gestures, or as JG Ballard so eloquently puts it: “The future is boring.”

A reflection on the disputas of Einar Sneve Martinussen from a beginning PhD candidate perspective – by Bruce Snaddon

The term disputas entered my discussions with Andrew Morrison and Henry Mainsah very early on when exploring the possibility of my doing a PhD at AHO. I think it was one of the distinguishing factors that defined the Norwegian PhD experience from others and Andrew always had a glint in his eye when talking about it. I wasn’t sure exactly why until this last week when I attended the PhD defence by Einar Sneve Martinussen, Pockets and Cities: Investigating and revealing the networked city through interaction design (06 October 2015).

What I witnessed on the day was a rather enthralling display of academic prowess coupled with a moving and respectful celebration of excellent work very well done. As someone whose field is far from close to Einar’s I let myself be guided and informed by the first part of the day, the public lecture. This was done with some elegant efficiency and my interest was drawn through to the end – not least by the fact that Andrew (in supervisor mode) had privately tasked me with the job of evaluating the lecture.

By the time we’d arrived at the opposition from Guy Julier and Aylish Wood I felt as though I’d been given a very priviledged whirlwind tour of many years work and was exteremly curious about the challenge that was to come. Not knowing what to expect I was struck by how genial and generous Guy was and how he created a space for Einar to elaborate on certain points that he felt needed more explanation. Guy in closing thanked Einar for his compelling and expansive PhD, and I quietly agreed on his choice of words. I do hope that my PhD will also one day be called compelling, because without this kind of work being compelling to identified audiences (and to bystanders such as I) I can’t see much lasting value in these huge academic efforts. Aylish came with some intriguing questions for Einar and I could sense approval from the audience – she probed around his use of the word meaningful and how he’d decided which meaning mattered and to whom, and the paradox of boundary objects being both porous and robust. Einar deftly fielded the questions and elegantly used the podium to further articulate and expound on his work and its very interesting reach beyond academe.

I also witnessed the special moment at the end of the day when supervisor and PhD fellow (now Dr?) quietly acknowledged the huge task they’d accomplished and spoke of exciting next steps. This generative nature of research work laying a path forward was very good to see and hugely encouraging for me as a beginnig PhD candidate. I also appreciated the inclusion of family and I speculated on the possibility (prompted by Andrew’s suggestion of a digital link-up with Cape Town) of mine being virtually here when I finally arrive at my own disputas.

William's Weekly Zotero Tip #3

I like to attach my PDFs from an external folder, as opposed to having them saved internally in the Zotero app. In order to maintain my 'PDF references' folder in an orderly fashion, I use the reference metadata to generate the title for the PDF. 


Towards Sustainable Design Development

DESIGN RESEARCH SEMINAR, 8-9 October, Group Room 3

As a continuation of discussions held at different events and projects, some design scholars have for a while been talking about the urgent need to both widely advocate a more general approach to Sustainable Design and, perhaps more importantly, also swiftly explore much more radical approaches to address pressing matters of climate change, the transformative potential of design and new strategies for making and research. This seminar focuses on the latter.

The seminar will bring together design researchers that already have these issues high on their own agenda and already acknowledge that we can't ‘grow' our selves out of this predicament. Development as we know it - and as championed in the west/north - has successfully exported a global single-lane path to prosperity that again and again has proved to be inherently unsustainable

 

William's Weekly Zotero Tip #2

I am so excited about the new ahophdlive.com website, so I felt the urge to contribute even on a Thursday. (weekly tips are scheduled for Fridays. I must be mad).

This weeks zotero tip is a video explaining various forms of in-cite referencing in the APA format, commonly used by journals such as The International Journal of Design.


Going public

This time it's for real! Many thanks to all of you who have provided the initial feedback necessary to getting this site up and running. I hope you are all, as I am, now hoping for great things to come. Extra special thanks to Etienne Gernez, William Kempton, Nicole Martin, Trude Løw Hansen, Trude Kleven, Reier Møll Schoder and Andrew Morrison for your highly productive critical-constructive inputs to this project still in-the-making.

-Jérémie


UiO Library visit

Contact Frida Almqvist and Elisabeth Sjödahl for organising group trip to UiO Library for meeting with subject librarians. We need to establish a list of sub-subjects so check UiO Library structure for librarians and specialist subjects you might want to meet.

William's Weekly Zotero Tip - #1

Good Friday to you all,

You should all know by now that Zotero is the best reference program, so I will start with a weekly Zotero tip, as I have so many!

Problem: I found a reference in "My Library" but i cannot remember in which categories i placed it (you can place a ref in several categories).

Solution: Let's hold down the 'alt' button on our keyboards and see where it went!
 

 

Hilsen,

William

Draft site 02

After intense discussion lasting for hours that felt like days, the ahophdlive.no site is now one step closer to opening to the public.

Draft site 01

While there are still some technical issues to sort, such as waiting for the registration of the final domain name (ahophdlive.no) to resolve, this is nonetheless a start. No fanfare just now, mind you - save your precious energy for passionate, engaging, reflective involvement in our cause. We´ll settle for grudging interest, too. Thank you and good night / Jérémie.