MA Studio 

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The MA studio takes place over 10 days, from 16-25.10.24
- 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'.

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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)

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