User:Francg/expub/thesis/thesis-outline

Thesis Outline

What you want the thesis to be about?

I want the thesis to be a bridge between the digital and the handmade, showing a research focused on the study of the growth of techno-dependency in the evolution of medias, how our daily online environment triggers our senses, how far information can potentially be spread, how deeply embedded is our digital persona on us, or which future scenarios can be speculated from this ongoing issues; e.g.: "Who would be able to design a book in a post-apocalyptic digital era where Adobe no longer exists (neither other similar software replacements)? maybe only coders." This could be an interesting discussion that could be further explored and so interpreted by suggesting new possible directions, which can bring attention to the close connections between technology, politics, economy and design.

For instance, the book "Conversations" shows how a book can be designed using markdown languages and to still keep a beautiful layout with code-based imagery. It offers a good example of a workflow (based on existing platforms + tools; namely etherpad (web based text editor; I personally like its numeric aesthetic and usability), latex (specific mdown reader) or bash (shell scripting), which in this case involves "sociality" with a group of participants. That is to say, the social aspect should be an important factor in the development of my thesis, deepening into a more concrete study case.

Building a book through markup languages would be an inspiring challenge for people with complete different profiles and levels of specialization, such as writers, artists, activists, etc., but also a way to encourage myself personally to be a more self-sufficient designer, not to become a developer, but a more multidisciplinary designer by integrating code. Most importantly, by using these tools we will be questioning the process of creation, our active roles with technology, and their social significance as well:

Will there be data visualization?
Which are the digital mediums employed to produce such work?
What information sources (study case) are going to be researched?
Is there any particular digital culture type behind it?
What experimental publishing forms or collaborative spaces can this body incorporate?
Would this material be aimed for designers, non-designers, youth, politicians (what is the audience?)?
What is the pedagogical value of using such tools? Is it technological freedom?
Can documentation bring out a dialogue between man and machine, highlighting the potential of using code without loosing the quality and craft of a handmade work?

Maybe this is a way to not become obsolete for me, having the need to find other ways to find more interesting and resourceful workflows that make us feel more useful.

What is exciting about this is that the transition and separation of the digital and analogue, or the digital and physical realms, can also highlight the results of this collide, whether digitally or as some sort of printed matter. This could be an initial connection to some previews essays on cybernetics and technology as human extensions.

Bibliography

sarah garcin: the PJ machine (Publishing Jockey) -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvL6N168Dg4
Ricardo Lafuente -> https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Lettersoup
http://conversations.tools
https://www.forkable.eu/generators/dit/o/free/A3/dit-A3-001.pdf
https://archive.org/details/designforbrain00ashb

Some tools:
https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet
http://www.latex-project.org/
http://pandoc.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/epub
https://www.scribus.net/

Tech blogs:
Five ways to track viral things Online https://www.newswhip.com/ https://techcrunch.com/ https://thenextweb.com/

- - -

Session 2 thesis outline + prototype