Social
Spaces

Our research group Social Spaces and four students of our educational program Communication and MultimediaDesign (Media, Arts and Design Faculty) will participate in a workshop called Ageing in Kensington! at the Royal College of Art. The students will be part of interdisciplinary groups of RCA students and explore new methods to explore the theme of ageing. Social Spaces will present some of its past projects in the health field. The workshop is organised by Yanki Lee (RCA) and our Media, Arts and Design Faculty is partner in the project.

SKOR organizes a two-day symposium on care, art, architecture & citizenship, called “Speculations on the Cultural Organisation of Civility” on October 29-30, 2010 in Amsterdam, Felix Meritis.

“The two-day symposium Speculations on the Cultural Organisation of Civility seeks to connect current debates about care and citizenship in contemporary art, philosophy and politics to realities of healthcare organisation in the Netherlands and internationally. With a focus on healthcare as a prime site of global market-driven transformation in governmental policies, this symposium brings together philosophers, artists, curators and politicians to question the role of art and its assumed ameliorative function.

We ask: If art consensualises the increasingly capitalised infrastructures of public care, can it still act as a critical agent?
The structure of this symposium stages theories and case studies to come hand in hand, providing a significant and radical overview of the field.”

The full programme can be found on www.skor.nl/artefact-4820-nl.html

The Waag Society, a Dutch organisation that investigates social applications of networked technology, designed a “Story table” (“Verhalentafel”) a few years ago with film, music and spoken word fragments which date from the period between 1920 and 1980. Old people can digitally leave their comments on this table, so it requires an active attittude. It is a risky design, since it introduces quite advanced technology and a very hybrid collage of media in a elderly home. At the same time it plays with trust, through de design of a classical, wooden table. This table aimed at older people overcoming their fears about new technologies and breaking down their social isolation (www.waag.org/project/verhalentafel). In the meantime a mobile version, in the form a wooden suitcase, is designed adapted to changing life circumstances of elderly in Dutch society (http://www.waag.org/project/mobieleverhalentafel). We are very curious about the sequel!

In May a conference on Inclusive Design finds place in beautiful Norway, called Innovation for all. This might be an interesting conference for all of you who are interested in including different groups in society in design and generating innovative business outputs via this process.

The latest weeks we have been exploring the potential of an Internet of Things for memories and – by extension – for dementia. Tales of Things, a collaboration project between five universities, is developing a project very close to our interests in this perspective. ‘Tales of Things’ “(…) encourages users to ‘tag’ objects with digital media using the sort of technology found in Oyster Cards and bar codes. Users can upload an image of the object and an associated memory in the form of text, audio or video to the project’s website – talesofthings.com – or using a dedicated iPhone application”.
http://machineslikeus.com/news/project-explores-internet-things.

Picture by Kurt Stockman, Timelab, Ghent