Our world has changed. The Post Pandemic terrain will be a landscape far different to any we have encountered before. As digital natives we are connected and tethered in a complex network and with an understanding of the necessity of physical entities. The design of tomorrow will require radical new ways of thinking.
Imagine the designer as a living cell, embodied in a space that allows adaptation and mutation and imagine a design process under the paradigm of infection. Let us consider this new “infection” not as a harmful entity, but one that causes fascinating and unforeseeable mutations, unrestricted by disciplinary or social borders. This infection is far more than just gaining new information via research and applying them in well-known processes. The organism is being rewritten, the cell is mutating, changing shape, developing new abilities, and adapting in an ever-changing environment. The infection collides. Connects itself to others, creates unlikely bonds, it permeates and re-infects, soon the cell adapts, changes and begins to form new connections of its own. The infection takes hold.
This semester a collaborative project between Design and Architecture Students of ABK and the visual communication students from the Birmingham City University asks for radical new ways of thinking as a designer. In weekly seminar non-design impulses from experts (Biochemistry, Mathematics, informatics and sociology) will lead to theoretical discussions and hands-on approach of understanding new media techniques, including using the programme TouchDesigner. Through those external impulses, a transformative and productive process occurs enabling individual interests to arise and unpredictable connections to be made. Combining critical reflection, via a feedback loop of radical thinking on cybernetics and system theories, and a hands-on experience in creative coding, will lead to a metaphorical infection, an individual way of thinking as well as an own artistic practice. We will deal with topics such as adaptation, manipulation, collusion, interaction and staying in or letting go of control. What possibilities can an infection enable? Which new structures do evolve when interacting with a complex system? What is collapsing – what surviving? Join this international, transdisciplinary GER-UK-experiment!
Guests invited in this seminar:
from the field of Biochemistry, Informatics and Mathematics.
Important:
This Seminar+Workshop is a collaboration between Natalie Weinmann, Academic Associate, Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, Germany (Dare’n’Do) and Kristian Jones, Lecturer in Visual Communication, Birmingham City University, U.K. (VOID LAB). The project is digitally & tech focused. No prior knowledge of coding necessary. Language spoken in the seminar will be English. The resulting project does not need to be digital!
When:
Kickoff: Monday 19th of April 2021 - 4pm
(i) Radical-Viral-Infection-Seminar: Mondays 4pm;
(After announcement a few extra meetings on Thursdays 4pm)
(ii) Mutation and Adaptation Workshops: 3rd-5th of June + 17th-19th of June 2021
Registration:
via email with information about study department + semester to: natalie.weinmann@abk-stuttgart.de. Participation is assured only after confirmation. Registration deadline latest: 15th of April 2021
Seminar results will be uploaded in July 2021
(April 2021)
All rights reserved by Dare'n'Do – contact: mail(at)natalie-weinmann.com