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The module 'Spatial Interaction' challenges students to deepen their practical and conceptual knowledge of human interactions in their immediate surroundings. Starting from a location in Zurich where public life and „tamed nature“ overlap, students will develop spatial-technical frameworks for situated interactions. The student projects will connect people and environmental processes with the aim of investigating local impacts of urban (or everyday?) behaviour as well as long-distance effects of individual actions. They will learn how to interface the present mesocosm (collecting environmental data, identifying relationships) and how to anticipate/experiment with advanced techniques like remote sensing or machine vision. Designing in such situations requires the development of strategies for public outreach and communication as well as basic knowledge of intervening in complex systems. Students will work in groups and in a form of self-governed organization.

Topic 2024: AI, Democracy and Public Space (Draft)

As artificial intelligence permeates various aspects of public life, from surveillance systems to algorithmic decision-making, it brings opportunities and challenges for democratic societies. Amongst privacy, bias, and control concerns, it becomes easy to imagine an expanse of dystopian futures. Yet, AI is now inseparable from all possible trajectories: finding a non-zero-sum relationship with AI is a societal and ecological imperative.

We have already seen AI as a technical tool and an economic driver, but it is also a political instrument. But as we should know, design, too, is a political instrument [i].

The shift of political discourse to social media has left us highly vulnerable to subversive A.I. based manipulation. But what about the historically central sphere of political and democratic discourse: the public space? Could this be our great chance to re-design a relationship with AI that is symbiotic and aligned with the needs of humans and non-human ecologies?

References

i. Fry, Tony. Design as politics. Berg, 2010.

Schedule

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