Former C-md student Hannes d’Hulster, working for the Ghent based webcompany Netlash-B-seen, is co-organising a Belgian event. More info on this can be found at http://informatiearchitectuur.be/.

Currently, the organising committee is looking for researchers, academics and practitioners to submit proposals for the papers, case studies, workshops & masterclasses on various themes.

For more information and deadlines, consult the conference website.

June 3 – 04, 2012
Deadline CFP: Jan 15, 2012

Keynote speaker: Prof. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University

Space has been subject to aesthetic, art-historical, philosophical,
anthropological, geographical and political investigations, each with
its idiosyncratic definitions. Space maintains a close relation with
illusionism, narrativity, and the performative qualities of art.  Space
is especially interconnected with time, making it impossible to
separate one from the other. In the current dynamic reality in which we
live, it is hard to remain confined to just one modality of spatial
thinking that will capture all of its complexity; yet this problem is
not limited to our contemporary globalized moment, but is also relevant
to different historical periods. Consequently, in order to engage
effectively with the problem of space, recent studies have demonstrated
multiple methods of conceptualization, while emphasizing the
dialectical relations and tensions between them.
Within the realms of art and culture, the discourse on space has often
engaged with problems of representation (artistic genres such
landscape, narrative space, chronotopos, interior/exterior, etc), or
with political issues relating to territorial conflicts and borders.

This conference seeks to investigate the dynamic formation, throughout
history and art history, of sites, places, and environments, in which
interactive relations, identities and signs are ceaselessly rewritten
and redefined. These kinds of processes produce spaces that hover
between the specific and the generic, the local and the global, the
historical and the contemporary, the real and the virtual, along with
the symbolized and the abstract. At the same time, these modalities
emphasize the fact that any designation of places and sites is
inseparable from the different ways in which they are experienced,
perceived, imagined, and represented.

We invite papers that consider diverse conceptualization of space and
forms of representations, as well as the varied ways in which lived
environments trigger different forms of interventions and
reconfigurations: legal, political, social, aesthetic and technological.

Abstracts are invited by 15 January 2012 and should be sent to:
supra.tau.conference@gmail.com.
All abstracts must be in English and should be limited to 300 words.
Head your abstract with your name, professional affiliation, and the
paper’s title. Submit with the abstract a one-page curriculum vitae,
home and work addresses, and e-mail address.
Each paper should be limited to a 20 minute presentation, followed by
dialogue and questions. All applicants will be notified of the
acceptance or rejection of their proposal by 28 February 2012.

For more information or any further inquiries please contact the
Conference Chairs: Prof. Hana Taragan (taragan@post.tau.ac.il) and Dr.
Tamar Cholcman (cholcman@post.tau.ac.il).

Suggested topics for papers (but not limited to):
Space before and after Giotto
Liturgical space
Sacred spaces
Medieval non-space
Perspective/Camera Obscura
Space and (non) rationalism in post-Albertian art theory
Emotional space
Pictorial space and voyeurism
Islamic space and its absence
Place and non-place
Art and culture in public space
Urban Planning and Architectural Space
The absence of place
Spatio-temporal dimensionalities
Memory and monuments
Narrative, meta-narrative and space
De-territorialization and Re-territorialization
Finite – infinite space
Information technology and space
Body and territory
Cosmopolitanism and globalization
Spaces of display
Heterotopia and utopia

Bas started by explaining his background. He did a master in Communication Sciences at the University of Amsterdam where he developed his fascination for how people use media & technology. During his Masters he learned about usability research but wanted to go step further. He wanted to experiment with involving the user in the design and research process. This was the starting point for his PhD at the Royal College of Art in London, where he developed his ‘Design Documentaries’ method. This method took the form of a visual storytelling format that brings the everyday life of people into the design process, allowing it to act as a source of inspiration for designers. This method is often used by his design research firm STBY. For example, in a project commissioned by Panasonic called Living Sustainably, STBY researched how people in the US can live a sustainable lifestyle. This isn’t a question they could answer right away. They first had to understand peoples lifestyles and needs. By creating a series of design documentaries, they were able to create videos that communicated a range of intimate insights into their lives and opinions, telling their stories in a way that could both inform and inspire. STBY helped Panasonic to incorporate these insights into their future concept developments and business model development.

Design documentaries start from the idea that understanding is the first step in creating meaningful solutions that could enrich peoples lifestyles. Also, they make things visual, which helps people to understand. Empathy is an important skill in this context, the ability to put yourself in someone else his or her shoes, which really helps to open up to personal experiences that help you understand that persons needs.

Bas focused on the importance of making things visual for designers and artists in a research context. It is a way to express and share their knowledge. It allows not only peers but also people in other disciplines to interpret this knowledge and create new insights. Making an original contribution to knowledge then creates an ongoing debate that pushes interdisciplinary development forward.  Bas pointed out that working in between fields will become increasingly important. Several problems that our society is faced with today, are too complex to be solved within one disciplinary field.

Research through design  is a way of creating new meaning by visual storytelling. This vision raises interesting questions about the role of the designer in society. Should designers limit themselves as the makers of objects, or can they also adopt a new role as the makers of meaning? I think, as Liesbeth Huybrechts pointed out in her Thesis, designers can become makers of hybrid things, creating both objects and meaning.

In the first week we immediately got involved in the project, thinking about possible bacteria and their applications. As completely new in the field of synthetic biology, we looked at previous iGEM projects and saw examples of how bacteria were created that could function as biosensors. We really liked this idea and the potentials it held. Eventually though, we decided that E.D. Frosti was going to be our project, a bacteria that can induce or inhibit ice formation. The end product could for instance be used to prevent ice formation on roads in the winter.

Together with Stefan and with advice from our team members, we slowly started to comprehend the science behind the project and translated the mechanisms behind E.D. Frosti into a visual style. Our work went into a wiki, an animation, presentation and we came up with the idea to do a workshop with children, explaining them the basics of synthetic biology and letting them visualize a future with it. After we got through the regional Jamboree in Amsterdam, we started working on our final project, a 3d poster.

Our idea started with a report on the belgian news. They imagined Frosti’s ability to inhibit ice formation as a alternative to the application of salt on the roads. This showed how easily our project could be translated into real life applications. We knew it was important to highlight this positive point in our project and we decided to include illustrations into the poster that show these applications. The problem was that we were restricted to a certain size for our poster, which brought the important informative value of the poster in danger. We solved this by using a 3d technique, in which viewed, from the right angle, the poster shows the applications and from the left angle the information. Our poster shows two possible applications. An anti-freeze protein that protects farmer’s crops in the winter and a fictional instant-ice-machine, bringing synthetic biology in the households of people.

In the end we presented our poster in Boston at the M.I.T. and, although we didn’t won in the competition, we got alot of positive reactions. After Boston E.D. Frosti catched the attention of entrepreneurs and definitely has potential to be commercialized. More on our project can be seen here, and our adventure in Boston is documented on our blog.

To trigger reflection on the difficulties of this debate, the project started off with an immersion in the world of people with a physical disability. Student teams did interviews and observations with people with a physical disability and experts in prosthetics.

This all served as a kind of extreme user experience. The aim was to bring students closer to situations in which they were confronted with a desire or a moral debate concerning enhancing – or in this case, curing – human performances and abilities. The experiences and insights that the students gained via these observations and interviews will be interpreted and translated to the field of human enhancement in the next phases of the project.

Last week (November 25^th), we invited Anab Jain and Jon Ardern from the design studio Superflux to introduce the students in the field of human enhancement. Superflux explores the potentials and implications of emerging technologies on society and the environment often using speculative design. They already did some projects in the field of human enhancement, e.g. the project “Song of the Machine”, exploring the possibilities of a new, modified – even enhanced – vision, where users can tune into streams of information and electromagnetic vistas currently outside of human vision. Since the work of Superflux takes on all kinds of forms – e.g. applications and products, but also stories, films, images and props – Anab and Jon were a perfect match with our students coming from Product design, Animation film, Film, Graphic design, Communication – and Media design and Photography.

Anab and Jon first gave a lecture on human enhancement. They showed a wide range of examples of speculative design concerning human enhancement, ranging from product design, photography to illustration. They emphasized how speculative design devices can help exploring a wide range of possibilities that might be desirable to know ahead of time. But also how they create a means by which people can place themselves into rich emotional scenarios. Anab and Jon explained how designers could play a role in the field between science or technology and humans or non-experts, which was illustrated by the short film “Song of the Machine”.

Song of the Machine from Superflux on Vimeo.

Speculative design then enfolds scripts to build a dialogue. As Anab explained during the lecture: “As scientists they are approaching from a data-driven perspective, assuming that people want to be able to see something, even if that might not be the case. As designers, what we often ask is what will our experiences of and with technology feel like… human-centricity over efficiency…. What does that mean in terms of our own bodies, our sense of being, our memories, our relationships, our environment, our values?”

In the afternoon, Anab and Jon did a workshop to trigger the students to develop speculative designs. For this, they provided four scenarios of which student teams could choose from. The scenarios described human enhancement in a wider context (e.g. societal, political, etcetera).

For instance, one scenario was: “Following a shift in approaches to the modification of embryonic DNA for ‘fixing’ inherited diseases, it becomes culturally acceptable for parents to ‘boost’ the strength and (more importantly) intelligence of their offspring. In the course of a single generation, base IQ jumps from 109 to 210, in what comes to be known as the ‘Generational Event Horizon’. Super-intelligence, however, comes with unexpected side-effects, often leaving parents and children struggling to communicate.”

Since this scenario included parent-children relationships, most student teams chose this scenario. Exploring these scenarios, the students had to develop a design, guided by questions on:

- unexpected outcomes and consequences of (the development of) these technologies;

- their impact upon the wider society and/or the economy;

- economic, social and individual reactions on these technologies;

- how students would fit these technologies into their own lives, or how they could change the ways in which the students feel about themselves and their lives.

The design output could be a product, a service, an installation, a film and so on.

We finished the day with short presentations of the designs the teams created. One team presented a scenario involving Google babies, one team designed a megaphone that translated the hyper-intellectual language of children into understandable language for their parents and another team discussed the changing timeline of a person’s life (given the fact that people with a higher IQ learn much faster). These scenarios were an interesting and imaginative first exploration of human enhancement. In the following weeks, the students will research them more in depth to develop their final design for this project. One thing Anab rightfully emphasized is the importance of in-depth research. She also pointed out that designers don’t always have to create solutions but can explore new roles for design, for instance, in stimulating dialogues between different groups of people.

In its online form, the Usewell tool offers visitors the chance to shuffle through cards, looking for challenges their organisation is currently facing, ranging from issues around innovation to problems with existing websites, in turn, these challenges are linked with user-centred design methods which, when carried out, can lead to insight/solutions to the challenge at hand. The 15 Usewell methods; Brainstorming, Card Sorting, Checklist Review, Context Mapping, Customer Journey Map, Diary, Focus Groups, Interviews, Mapping, Personas, Prototyping, Scenarios, Shadowing, Task Analysis and User Experience Test, were selected based on their accessibility, contribution and relevance to organisations and small businesses looking to learn more about their user-based, innovate on existing services or make changes to existing products or services.

As a project, Usewell offers an easy, quick and easy way to match method to challenge. There already exists many roadmaps, toolkits, books and websites which offer many takes on user-centred design methods, but few offer users a clear means on how to prepare, execute and analyse the results. Over the coming years, Usewell intends to add further methods, casestudies and tips/tricks from users,educators and those trying these methods out for the first time.

Following the presentation of the case-studies, the Usewell workshop worked with an off-line version of the Usewell cards. This offline, tangible card-set mirrors the content online but is a tool that mediates discussion in small groups. Each small group was moderated by a Usewell partner and the participants ranged from small-business owners, people from cultural institutions to teachers in higher education. The feedback from the session confirmed the intent of Usewell, to make a clear relationship between the real issues faced and suggestion of method and to make these methods accessible.

For more information, visit: http://www.usewell.be
Download the cards, guide and worksheets: http://www.usewell.be/#/methods/

We challenge designers, urbanists, photographers, researchers and other disciplines to imagine a city called Eutropolis. Share with us your idea or dream about Eutropolis and it’s future. Your contribution might be a graphic design, an essay, a poem, a photoshoot or an artwork.

Want to contribute?

Send your proposal no later than 15th of December to eutropolis@ibeta.eu.
The publication will be spread throughout Eutropolis with your work included. Also, you’ll be our guest at the TEDxEutropolis conference on the 4th of February 2012 in Hasselt (B).

More information can be found here

Social Cities of Tomorrow

They are currently welcoming proposals in the fields of urban design interventions, projects by housing corporations, media artists, citizen initiatives, technology companies, or others.

Deadline for proposals: 15 December 2011

For more information, consult the conference website.