Design Documents

Mapping communication in interdisciplinary and anti-disciplinary work with media, software and society

Seminar, October 13, 2005, Rotterdam

FULL TRANSCRIPTIONS

date: 13 October 2005 location: V2, Eendrachtstraat 10, Rotterdam time: 10.00-17.00 entry: 10euro, (korting: 5euro, PZI/WdKA/HRO, free entry) reservations: Recommended. Please reserve places at, gaby AT v2.nl

McKenzie Wark Victoria Donkersloot Dennis Kaspori / Jeanne van Heeswijk Nina Wakeford Herve Paraponaris Kristina Andersen Rolf Pixley

Click here to download pdf file of the symposium flyer.

How do interdisciplinary teams communicate in media design and electronic art? If they do communicate well, what are the ways that artists, designs, programmers, engineers, and those they work with, such as users, discuss their ideas, clarify problems, and find results that enhance their work?

In the developing area of social software for instance, how could a social network draw up a brief? How does media design itself create tools and materials for such work? Are there new opportunities for the creation of design documents that come out of networked and computational digital media? How do the cultures of open and distributed creativity and production experienced in Free Software and other areas allow us to see other forms of collaboration?

Key to the theme of the symposium is the discussion of boundary objects within projects, devices, documents, sketches, plans, briefs, models, prototypes, mock-ups, experiential accounts and so on. Under the magnifying glass: examining existing design documents; creating typologies; vocabularies, in-project vernaculars; boundary or shared objects such as drawings, diagrams; in-code comments; divisions of labour; designing speculative research; mapping interactions; resisting or working with multiple economies of time and resources.

Bios and links

Kristina Andersen works with sensors and sensuality, with performers and circuit hacking. http://www.lockergirl.com/ http://www.tinything.com/

Herve Paraponaris considers himself first a citizen, then an artist. With his work he approaches multi-layered society in all its economic, political, cultural and media facets with a stereoscopic view. He is deeply concerned with the restructuring of public spaces and the politics surrounding them. His site specific proposals can take on many forms, ranging from traditional art exhibitions, designs for urban sport equipment, music editions, propositions for social gatherings, even to co-op business developments. http://www.ussr.coop/ http://www.herveparaponaris.net/

Victoria Donkersloot is a media designer from Rotterdam. She recently worked as the interface designer for the cultural file-sharing application Apnaopus, http://apnaopus.var.cc/

Rolf Pixley is a programmer, designer and artist based in Amsterdam. With interests ranging from Cybernetics to Fluxus he has designed and built bespoke display and interaction systems for himself and numerous clients across europe.

Nina Wakeford Director of INCITE in the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. Along with colleagues at INCITE she is interested in the ways in which collaborations can be forged between ethnographers and those from other disciplines, such as engineering and computer science. She asks how critical social and cultural theory can play a part in the design process, including the challenges which feminist and queer theories pose to collaborative projects between designers and sociologists, as well as technology studies. http://incite.surrey.ac.uk/

McKenzie Wark is Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at Lang College, New School University. He is the author of several books, most recently Dispositions and A Hacker Manifesto. http://www.ludiccrew.org/

Dennis Kaspori / Jeanne van Heeswijk are collaborators on a unique spatial and social planning project, Face Your World. Using sophisticated custom software, children are engaged in a serious process of social-spatial decision making. Most recently, Face Your World has been a six month project to design a park in the Sloterplaas area of Amsterdam. http://www.faceyourworld.net/ http://www.themaze.org/

This event is organized by: Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam http:// www.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/ http://www.wdka.hro.nl/

and V2_organisation: institute for the unstable media http://www.v2.nl/

It is a contribution to the MultimediaN research network. http://www.multimedian.nl/

Originally published at: http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/Seminars2/desdoc/