Interdisciplinary IAD Module Fall 2018, in cooperation with DDK, DKV and DKM

Instructors

IAD:
Joëlle Bitton
Clemens Winkler

DDK:
Michael Simon
Manuel Fabritz

Guest lecturers:
Andreas Kohli (DKV)
Beate Schlingelhoff (DKM)

The module takes place over 3 weeks, from 04.12.2018 to 21.12.2018, from Tuesday to Friday, 9.00-17.00 - see timetable below for detailed hours and classrooms. 

Overview and Objectives: Hacking Values

The course is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Interaction Design, Theatre, Art and Art Education.
Within the topic “ecologies”, we discuss our environment and the ways we engage with powers and systems that surround us.
We propose to frame that with the term of “hacking”.

Hacking

With “Hacking”, we do not (only) mean the popular meaning of "hacking into computer systems".
The term also means messing about with something in a positive sense, that is, using playful cleverness to achieve a goal.
Hacking can also manipulates or alienates a system, an object, etc. for specific purposes.
Thus "Hacking values" can be understood as a method to recognize and understand systems and structures of power, but also possibly to challenge their authority.

From "life hacks", necessity-based "bricolage", such as Jugaad in India (see other terms in different countries*) to art-based and political-based targeted disruptions, "hacking" could be considered as a form of activism, akin to notions of resistance, disobedience, and subversion, especially as we refer here to "values". 
As such, finding affordable or personal solutions, going around established systems, repairing or subverting an object's use could be ways of gaining or regaining autonomy, gaining or regaining meaning, etc. The hacks themselves often have a playful quality to them that underlines that those forms of resistance are mostly physically non-confrontational and non-violent. 
Forms of hacking can also include statements of living and thriving within subcultures, forms of art and performance (ie. drag culture), taking counter hetero-normative and counter patriarchical actions (such as not being referred to with a gender-based pronoun).  
Finally, adopting and embracing failure, cracks, oddness and uncanniness could constitute again other forms of hacking, and be notably expressed with art, design and craft (see Kintsugi art for instance). 

This course will encourage students to take on roles of hackers of systems they would like to address, and demonstrate how they can learn from their environment and challenge their assumptions and ours. We will ask you to start the first couple of days with hacking yourself, your own values, your own personal space. We will discuss together in the class possible systems to 'hack' such as medicine, urban space/environment, surveillance, etc but each student or group of students would pick their own. 

*"Jugaad roughly corresponds to do-it-yourself (DIY) in the US, hacking in the UK, tapullo in Italy, zìzhǔ chuàngxīn (自主创新) in China, Trick 17 in Germany, gambiarra in Brazil, système D. in France,
or jua kali in Kenya; in addition, equivalent words within South Africa are ’n boer maak ’n plan in Afrikaans, izenzele in Zulu, iketsetse in Sotho and itirele in Tswana.[6]" [Wikipedia, Jugaad article, accessed 10.09.2018].

Structure

The course is structured with lectures from main instructors and guest lectures, discussions, mentoring sessions, independent study blocks, as well as exercises showcasing methods from various disciplines (interaction design, art, art education & theatre).
Projects are conducted individually or in a team (up to three students).
The outcome could be a performance, a public space installation or an intervention or other format that demonstrates or simulates a system being hacked.

Methods

Through a set of lectures and exercises, we will look at hacking values of the political space, of the material environment, of the personal space, and of the body.

Strollology:
We take a walk through the city of Zurich and develop our personal observation. On the base of the Swiss design theorist Lucius Burckhardt, who developed the technique of observing cultural landscapes (promenadology), we create our attitude to perception and to what might reality be. This is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of urban space, its infrastructure and interactions and thus the basis for a human or social-centered Design.

Dancing Exercise
see William Forsythe

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)
(Add. Link at ACM)

Prototyping/Learning by doing

Materials as metaphor
Materials have properties that can be changed. By manipulating and modifying those properties, we learn control conditions and can play with that system.

Social Experiments:
tbd.

Expectations and Gradings

Grades will be based on group presentations and exercises, class participation, documentation (journal) and final work. 
Contributing to constructive group feedback is an essential aspect of class participation. 
Regular attendance is required. Two or more unexcused absences will affect the final grade. Arriving late on more than one occasion will also affect the grade.

Final work 50% 

Group exercises/presentations 20% 

Journal Documentation 20% 

Class participation 10% 

Any assignment that remains unfulfilled receives a failing grade.  

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 adequation with the intention and the process.

2. Online Documentation in the form of a journal containing photos, recordings, text of the process (choice of online format is free). In addition, a final documentation package should include a 1mn video, 2-3 high quality photos and a short text.

Timetable

Name of Lecturers in brackets {} jb: Joëlle Bitton, cw: Clemens Winkler, ms: Michael Simon, mf: Manuel Fabritz, ak: Andreas Kohli, bs: Beate Schlingelhoff