Ordinary Mutations

MA Studio 

Lecturers

Joëlle Bitton, DDes

The MA studio takes place over 10 days, from 16-25.10.24, generally from 09.00-17.00.
- see timetable below for detailed hours. 

Overview

This course invites students to provide context to field research and participants engagement and situate them in their design process.
A particular emphasis is placed on the relations of the designer with participants and audiences, with the world they inhabit and the role they consider playing in a larger ecosystem. In this course, we consider the agency of a designer, the ways they reach their human or non-human audiences and the impulse for 'actionnable moments' they can create.

As a framework, we situate those questions in the 'decor of everyday life', a common thread that looks at the ordinary as a source of inspiration. In it, we find tactics of existence, detours and cracks that sustain a sense of wonder in the face of overwhelming global issues. In the liminal space between the ordinary and the wonder, we find indeed countless possibilities, mutations of sorts. To start, we need to retrace our kinship with - besides humans - plants, animals, minerals, mountains, rivers and oceans: true others that 'make sense'. 

Objectives of the course

• Defining your audiences
• Engaging with them 
• Using Methods from various disciplines and experimenting with them.
• Discovery of your operative values and possible ways of challenging them
• The final outcome could be a performance, a public space installation, an intervention or another format that manifests your intention and meaning, in the context of 'ordinary mutations'.

Structure

This studio course is structured with inputs, discussions, mentoring sessions, independent study blocks, as well as exercises showcasing methods from various art & design disciplines.
Students are expected during their independent study time to iterate several times on concepts discussed in class. Projects are conducted by groups of 2 students (groups of 3 students could be an option if argued for). 

Methods

We will use a wide range of methods - below are short descriptions of some of them. These methods from a range of different disciplines can be adapted or iterated upon:

Strollology:
You take a walk through a particular area and develop personal observations. On the base of the Swiss design theorist Lucius Burckhardt, who developed a technique of observing cultural landscapes (promenadology), we create our attitude to perception and action to what might reality be. This is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of urban space, its infrastructure, its dynamics, its leakings and interactions and thus the basis for a human and ecosystem-oriented design.
link: 04_Burckhardt_Lucius_1981_2012_Design_is_Invisible.pdf

Prototyping/Learning by doing
Prototyping can cover many meanings and take many shapes at every stage of an interaction design process: ideation, defining a concept, group discussion, field studies, iterations of outcomes, etc. By externalising thoughts into tangible objects or embodied experiments, we demonstrate over and over the possibilities of an interaction. This is the affirmation that learning can happen on trying, experimenting, failing, improvising, not quite planning or knowing in advance how something works or how to do something. Some learnings are not contained to a typical scholarly structure of acquiring a theoretical knowledge before practicing it - but they are manifesting in action.

Materials as Mediators
Materials surround us all the time, even if we tend to ignore it through our everyday habits, like on our digital journeys around the globe, we are still constantly immersed in it. What about their certain properties, conditions and transformations constituting the space around us? Like the air and atmosphere as a phenomena, we inspire (from latin breathing in) and respirate, we speak through, we form our intimate atmospheres, we can observe this medium on various scales, might it be observing pollutants in the sky down to textures and  surrounding us all the time. By manipulating and co-creating with these material conditions, we learn to play with underlying systems.
link: https://zkm.de/en/event/2011/06/experiencing-atmospheres-dimensions-of-a-diffuse-phenomenon

Social Experiments:
Like in Herbert Garfinkel´s «Krisenexperimente» in the 70s, we would like to emphasise on our everyday routines within social interactions, might it be a daily shopping in the supermarket, where we take out goods from other´s people baskets without asking, not cueing at the check out, being very polite to our best friends, sitting next to the only person in the train and so on. We would like to emphasize in implicit rules, which are inscribed in our social behaviour, making up a certain cultural context we live in. Through this method we might become foreigners in our own culture for a certain action.
link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment

Dancing Exercise
In this method, we see performance as an anchor point in iterating concepts. Like William Forsythe, who's basic idea is taking ballet as a language with its own vocabulary and rules, to break it and bend it, you can take geometries like of classic dance to be twisted, tilt or pulled out of a line. This is a way to mess with social conventions. We do not act "properly", like dancing in a discussion or talking in a dancing piece. Dancing becomes a method of investigation like Forsythe was remarking "I think by dancing I was able to understand a lot of things. I was able to intuit things about mathematics and philosophy … "(BBC Radio 3 2003, interview with John Tusa) So how do we understand the patterns of social dynamics around us and how do we stretch and break it apart to gain a better understanding?

link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Forsythe_(choreographer)
link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/arts/design/the-shed-new-york-prelude.html

Bodystorming
Bodystorming is an improvisational brainstorm based on interaction and movement with the body. To remind participants that interactions are human and physical, to teach stakeholders empathy for users, and to get away from our computers. "Bodystorming is useful when you are designing devices or interior or exterior spaces. For example, you might use bodystorming to understand how users of different heights and ages would experience different versions of aircraft cabins (for example, what are the problems with lifting luggage in crowded planes from the floor to the overhead bins), or the layout of modern train cars. Bodystorming can be quite useful in understanding the experience of teams who work in close quarters like doctors and nurses in an operating room or the cooking staff in a restaurant. Bodystorming is a way to envision how people will interact with ubiquitous computing systems like smart homes and virtual meeting spaces." (Design Research at Autodesk)
link: Bodystorming as embodied Designing (ACM)

Expectations and Gradings

Grades for this class are passing or failing.

All assignments are mandatory to pass:

• Final work & final documentation (video/photos/text)
• Online journal with notes, sketches & findings
• Exercises/presentations 
• Class participation 

Any assignment that remains unfulfilled receives a failing grade. 
Arriving late on more than one occasion and repeatedly may also affect the passing grade.
Regular attendance is required. Attendance of all the in-class sessions are expected.

Deliverables

1. Final Work: The format of the final outcome is up to the students. It could be: a performance, a prototype, a movie, an installation, a graphic work, an intervention, etc. It needs to be in sync with the intention and the process.
2. On-going online documentation in the form of a journal containing photos, recordings, text of the process (collective use of Miro board).
3. A final documentation package should include a 1-2mn video, 5-7 high quality photos and a short PDF with title/authors/text abstract/highlights/findings.

Timetable & Assignments