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754843670 If/Only: design, technology and society 2020
INTERACTION DESIGN THEORY SEMINAR 4th semester

Spring 2020

INSTRUCTORS
Dr Joëlle Bitton

Stefano Vannotti

Verena Ziegler, joelleverena.bitton@zhdkziegler@zhdk.ch

Dr Jean-Baptiste LabruneJoëlle Bitton, jeanbaptisteparis@gmail.com Verena Ziegler, verena.ziegler@zhdkjoelle.bitton@zhdk.ch

Office hours by appointment

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Spaces, Artifacts and Ecosystems held by Verena Ziegler
Technoculture and Society held by Dr Jean-Baptiste Labrune
The Design of Trade held by Dr Joëlle Bitton
Complex Systems & Power Structures held by Dr Joëlle Bitton
xx by Stefano Vannotti

EXPECTATIONS AND GRADING

The seminar proposes a critical conversation, addressing political components of design and their influence on human life. Methods of discussion, observation and critical thinking are practiced throughout.
Grades will be based on the oral and written presentations and on class participation. 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.

Class participation 20%

In-class assignments 20%

Final Essay 60%

Any assignment that remains unfulfilled receives a failing grade.

ASSIGNMENTS

Exercise Observation

The theoretical discussion of the subject is substantiated by a practical observation that can be presented in a freely selectable form. However, this should address the following questions:

(1) What is the origin of space?

(2) Why is this political?

(3) How is space observed and perceived?

(4) How changed does space become through observation and perception?

(5) How does the reader perceive space through the nature of the description?

Essay

The final assignment should develop a question from the topics dealt with and include these in form of a critical or argumentative essay.

Extent of the essay about 2500 words with references and bibliography.

The essay can be written in German or English.

Essay deadline: uploaded to the IAD server: (folder essay assignment)

COURSE MATERIALS

Readings are made available in the shared IAD server: smb://fileredu.ad.zhdk.ch/DDE/BDE_VIAD-MATERIAL/01_VORLESUNGEN & PROJEKTE/19FS/Sem4_If only_theory

CALENDAR & SESSIONS

Session 01 – 18.02 Observation I

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Readings to be read in advance, preparation of presentations of essay investigations and preparation of notes (from the readings).

Session 06 – 01.04 Cybernetics Revisited04 – 23.03 Decolonising technologies

C. R. Licklider. Man-Computer Symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960 – (Full paper)
Lucy. A. Suchman. Plans and Situated action: The problem of human-machine communication. ISL-6.
Palo Alto Research Center. 1985 – (Pages 0 to 23 of the Pdf)
Molly Wright Steenson: "Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape 2018.
Widget Connector
url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkCeYKOqMO4-
(Full video)

Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes .

Short Bio:

Jean-Baptiste Labrune
Jb Labrune is a designer and researcher specializing in the development and study of creative processes in the context of new programmable materials, critical design and avant garde places mixing artists, scientists and thinkers. His researches focus on the notion of “Exaptation”, the way in which users of technologies reconfigure and hack them, producing original and unexpected functions and uses. He completed his PhD at INRIA and postdoc at MIT, then became a researcher at Bell Labs and interaction design professor at ENSAD (Arts Décos School). He then joined SciencesPo University as a senior lecturer while launching his practice at Radical Design Studio. He organized many “hybrid” workshops in art & sciences venues in France (Arts Décos, Beaux-Arts, Palais de Tokyo, Mains d’Oeuvres) & internationally (Mediamatic, Interaction Design Institute Ivréa, IMAL, Hangar, Hyperwerk, Akademie Schloss Solitude, MIT Medialab).

Session 07 – 08.04 The Uses of Literacy

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to

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Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes.

Session 08 – 15.04 Anthropology of Hacking

Gabriella Coleman, A Golub. Hacker practice: Moral genres and the cultural articulation of liberalism". Anthropological Theory. 8 (3): 255–277. 2008 https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/003/679/255.pdf (Pages 4 to 13 of the Pdf)
SSL Nagbot. Feminist Hacking/Making: Exploring New Gender Horizons of Possibilities. The Journal of Peer Production. January 2016 http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-8-feminism-and-unhacking/feminist-hackingmaking-exploring-new-gender-horizons-of-possibility/(Pages 1 to 3 of the Pdf)
S.Wuschitz 2014, “Feminist hackerspaces: a research on feminist space collectives in open culture” PhD dissertation, University of Vienna, Austria. (pages 46 to 61 of the Pdf)
Maxigas. (2012) Hacklabs and hackerspaces: Tracing two genealogies.Journal of Peer Production (2). 2012 http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/hacklabs-and-hackerspaces(Pages 1 to 5 of the Pdf)

Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes.

Session 09 – 29.be sent by Monday morning

Session 05 – 06.04 Accelerationism

Mark Fisher. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative ? Zero Books, 2009 (First chapter)
Sadie Plant. Zeroes + ones: digital women and the new technoculture. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1997 (Pages 105 to 120 of the Pdf)
Robin Mackay. Armen Avessian. #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader. Urbanomic 2014 / MIT press 2019. (Pages 355 to 370 of the Pdf)

Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes. to be sent by Monday morning

Session 10 06 – 06.05 - On the History and Empowerment of West African Workers

Guest Lecture: Dr Cassandra Thiesen-Mark, Universität Basel

This lecture considers the history of the inclusion of West African labourers in the global economy: what specific mechanisms and terms defined this process? What was the promise of the creation of a system of free wage labour? And how convincing was its implementation in this part of the world? It will cover the current and past struggles of these male and female by exploring how they have managed to secure sources of power and security in the overwhelming absence of state- or employer-related social welfare mechanisms.

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Kate Meagher, Laura Manna and Maxim Bolt, "Making the Right Connections: Globalization, Economic Inclusion and African workers". Journal of Development Studies. 2016.

The Design of Trade

Commodities & entanglement

▪Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, “Labour Recruitment in the Nineteenth Century: The Place of Practicality” (Ch. 2). In Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909, University of Rochester Press, 2018.

Short Bio:

Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen is currently a lecturer and researcher at the history department of the University of Basel. She completed her doctoral research in African History at Oxford University in 2014. Her research focus lies in the social and economic history of West Africa. Her current research project traces the history of agricultural development policies and practices in Liberia between 1944 and 1957. Her first book Mediators, Contract Men and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909, which is part of the African Studies Series of the University of Rochester Press, traced the economic factors behind indirect recruitment for Ghana’s early colonial gold mines. It paid special attention to a variety of West African labor agents orchestrating this form of migration; both male and female, career-and profit-oriented. General research interests include Africa during the age of developmentalism, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rural history, the history of African intermediaries, the history of work.

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Session 11 – 13.05 - India’s shifting place in the world wide web of cotton, c. 1600-1950

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▪Giorgi Riello, "The Globalization of cotton textiles.

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Indian Cottons, Europe, and the Atlantic World, 1600–1850". In

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Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello, eds, The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (Oxford, 2009).

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Harald Fischer-Tiné is Professor of Modern Global History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zürich). He has studied South Asian history, political science and Hindi at the University of Heidelberg (from where he earned his PhD in 2000) and the Central Hindi Institute in Agra (India). He has published extensively on South Asian colonial history and the history of the British Empire. His research interests include global and transnational history, the history of knowledge and the social and cultural history of colonial South Asia. His most recent monographs are: Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism (London and Delhi, 2014); Pidgin-Knowledge: Wissen und Kolonialismus (Berlin - Zurich, 2013, in German. He has also (co)-edited ten anthologies, the most recent of which are: Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings (Houndmills, 2017); Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and “Immorality” (Cambridge, 2016), with Jessica Pliley and Robert Kramm; Colonial Switzerland: Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins (New York and Houndmills, 2015), with Patricia Purtschert; and A History of Alcohol and Drugs in Modern South Asia: Intoxicating Affairs (London, 2013), with Jana Tschurenev.

His articles and book reviews have appeared in many journals including the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Modern Asian Studies and Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Currently, Harald Fischer-Tiné is concluding the manuscript of a research monograph on the history of the American YMCA in South Asia (1890–1960).

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Session 12 – 20.05 - Silk Road: Old and New Networks

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Hansen, Valerie. (2012). The Silk Road: A New History. New York, Oxford University Press. Read Intro in depth and browse the rest of the book for general overview.

▪You, Mi. (2018). Silk Roads, Tributary Networks and Old and New Imperialism. Extra States: Nations in Liquidation. C. Edwards and i. Fokianaki. Antwerp, Kunsthal Extra City

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Mi YOU travels physically and metaphysically on the silk road. She curated performative programs at Asian Culture Center (Gwangju) and the inaugural Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival (2016) taking the silk road as a figuration for deep-time, de-centralized and nomadic imageries. With Binna Choi, she is co-initiator of a long-term research/curation project Unmapping Eurasia (2018-). She is faculty member at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and writes on art, performance philosophy and science and technology studies. She is member of Academy of Arts of the World (Germany) and serves as director of Arthub (Shanghai) advisor to The Institute for Provocation (Beijing).

EXPECTATIONS AND GRADING

The seminar proposes a critical conversation, addressing political components of design and their influence on human life. Methods of discussion, observation and critical thinking are practiced throughout.
Grades will be based on the oral and written presentations and on class participation. 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.

Class participation 20%

Journal/Blog 20%

In-class assignments 20%

Final Assignment 40%

Any assignment that remains unfulfilled receives a failing grade.

ASSIGNMENTS

Journal/Blog

A separate 'Journal' is developed by each student that reflects on learnings from the seminar. It should be in the form of an online blog (ie. WordPress, Tumblr or other):

...

Exercise Observation

The theoretical discussion of the subject is substantiated by a practical observation that can be presented in a freely selectable form. However, this should address the following questions:

(1) What is the origin of space?

(2) Why is this political?

(3) How is space observed and perceived?

(4) How changed does space become through observation and perception?

(5) How does the reader perceive space through the nature of the description?

Essay

The final assignment should develop a question from the topics dealt with and include these in form of a critical or argumentative essay.

Extent of the essay about 2500 words with references and bibliography.

The essay can be written in German or English.

Essay deadline: 07.06.2019 uploaded to the IAD server: (folder essay assignment) smb://fileredu.ad.zhdk.ch/DDE/BDE_VIAD-MATERIAL/01_VORLESUNGEN & PROJEKTE/19FS/Sem4_If only_theory

COURSE MATERIALS

Readings are made available in the shared IAD server: smb://fileredu.ad.zhdk.ch/DDE/BDE_VIAD-MATERIAL/01_VORLESUNGEN & PROJEKTE/19FS/Sem4_If only_theory