Mapping the Euregional fablab: a report
On Friday 11th of June the research group Social Spaces was invited to organize two mapping sessions at the i_beta festival in Heerlen, the Netherlands. This festival revolved around innovation and new trends in the world of e-culture and creative economy. Organized by Social Beta – centre for e-culture, the i_beta festival focused especially on the challenges the Meuse-Rhine Euregion faces today and on the role e-culture can play in solving these problems. During the two mapping sessions the participants, all coming from various disciplines, designed a Euregional fablab. They discussed how they would imagine a(n) (e-culture) fablab in the Meuse-Rhine Euregion and what key values it would represent.
A reflection on artistic research
Via my collegue Sarah Késenne, I found an article on artistic research, which offers an interesting and provocative reflection. This sentence seams like an interesting starting point for further discussion: “An adequate research methodology has to be developed in order to allow the researchers positions on multiple social-material time-spaces of actual making and doing—positions that permit and actually encourage active involvement in the artistic processes in the stages of production before publication, exhibition, and critical reception.”
The rest you can read yourself at http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/40
Call for applications: PhD fellowships in Social Spaces
Under the LSM program (Limburg Sterk Merk: Limburg strong brand), the MAD-faculty in Hasselt and Genk (Belgium) obtained substantial fundings in order to stimulate the research at the MAD-faculty (PHL and MDA) through doctoral fellowships, starting in Jan. 2011. In total it concerns 7 full-time PhD-fellowships for four years in arts & design research.
The proposed project and research question of the applicant will have to match the theme of one of the MAD-faculty research groups, among them Social Spaces (see our mission statement under ‘About’). In addition, there has to be a potential for upgrading the Limburg region. There are several substantive criteria that the application must meet. The detailed call with the assessment, template, LSM file and multi-year plan of the research group Social Spaces, will be made public during the first week of July 2010.
Interested? Contact MSterckx [at] mail.phl.be or liesbeth.huybrechts [at] mda.khlim.be
Designing household energy practices
Our Social Spaces collegues Virginia Tassinari and Nik Baerten were part of Designing household energy practices. A “non-conference” bringing together designers, companies and academics “.…beyond awareness raising and formal education for sustainability, how could the affordance of products support new and more sustainable ways of living? After giving visibility to energy flows, how can design help to rethink the basic interactions with our domestic environment to scripting practices that requires less energy?” More information on this event, you can find here.
It has been an exciting week with the Cumulus conference coming to Genk. I will report on this conference more thoroughly soon, but first I want to congratulate our collegue Virginia Tassinari that she has been elected to be part of the Cumulus board. Two times a year she will, together with designers and thinkers all over the world, meet and exchange practices and knowledge.
