design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
TRANSCRIPT
Anne Sophie GauvinLucia GiulianoStefano Mirti
Accademia di Belle ArtiABADIR
Design, schools& lots of mythopoetics
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Mythopoeic or mythopeic1. Of or relating to the making of myths.2. Serving to create or engender myths; productive in mythmaking
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mythopoeia
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Index
1. The community is the message. Living in the social-media world
2. Learning through narratives. Form follows fiction
3. Some of our stories. Design Royale, Whoami, Ceramic Futures and Design 101
4. Questions and doubts. PS.
The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
The community is the message.Living in the social-media world
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The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
A few days ago a friend asked me: “But why should I learn to use social media?” This is a question that doesn’t have an answer. It’s as if someone were to ask me: “Why should I learn to play the saxophone?” The question is put in a peculiar way, but it is possible to come up with a series of sensitivities and insights that we can gain and understand thanks to intense involvement with new social media.
Here are 12 points with which to start a conversation:
Living in the social-media world
The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
New media?New media don’t exist (and conversely neither do old media).
GenerosityIf you’re not generous, nothing (significant) will ever come of using social media.
Digital flâneursIf you find that detail is able to fascinate other people, a breath-taking film begins.
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The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Where does the money come from?It doesn’t. Or if it does, it comes through absolutely unpredictable mechanisms.
Deductive?No. Inductive. The Web is made up of millions of extraordinary unsystematised (and unsystematisable) fragments.
HumourHumour is a fundamental ingredient. This was already true for an exclusively analogue world, but it has become indispensable in a digital planet.
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The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Visual imaginationThe landscape does not exist. What does exist are spectacles of interpretation that we put on when we look around us.
The 1% RuleIn the worlds of the Web there is this very simple formula: 90-9-1. In a given digital community, out of 100 participants there will be 90 who use the medium in a passive way, 9 who are sporadically active and 1 who generates almost all the content.
Experts They don’t exist. At best, there are people who try and try, making mistakes over and over again.
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The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
HierarchiesHierarchies and dynamics of power exist, but they are simply implicit, unspoken.
Watch out!A digital layer has appeared in our lives. But this does not mean that the early analogue layers have disappeared.
The community is the messageMcLuhan taught us that “the medium is the message”. Perhaps what we are seeing here is another step in a different direction: the community is the message.
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Here the link to the original article: Stefano Mirti, “The community is the message”, Abitare 532, May 2013:http://www.abitare.it/en/internet-2/the-community-is-the-message
Learning through narrativesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Learning through narratives.Form follows fiction
2.
Learning through narrativesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
To use design as if it were a tale, a story, a litmus paper with – as ingredients – our fears, our vanity, our manifest desires and those unmentionable, without forgetting irony and the taste of paradox.
In the first place design is desire. Necessities can be faced if we understand them first of all as desires. Designing a better world was a dream of the last century: why should we commit the same mistakes again?
Perhaps it would already be sufficient a design able to describe the world, able to make visible the most ambiguous and difficult physical and conceptual places: those that nobody wants to think about.
At most, if we want to be really ambitious, a design that tries to open up some daylights towards other possible worlds.
Form follows fiction
Here the link to the original article: Walter Aprile, Stefano Mirti, “12 notes and ideas on design (and on teaching it in a cynical and cheating world)”. In: Hans Hoger, design research, Editrice Abitare Segesta, Milano, 2008): http://designismanipulation.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/12-notes-and-ideas-on-design-and-on-teaching-it-in-a-cynical-and-cheating-world/
Learning through narrativesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
If we agree that form shouldn’t follow function, we decide to enter into a new realm.A world where design is in first instance a narrative exercise used to tell stories and to work on the symbolic value of space, objects, buildings, graphics.
The designer as a story-teller.
A writer tells his stories writing a novel. A musician uses the music to reach the same purpose.A movie-maker uses film... ...and a designer does exactly the same exercise using his specific tools.
Before elaborating on this, we did the exercise to see which are the most interesting design schools (from our specific point of view). Schools where the school itself is a great narrative exercise. Places where the student enters and falls directly into a great and fascinating story.
Some of them belong to the past, some of them are active now.In all cases, they are places where the knowledge dissemination happens within a very powerful narrative scheme.
Where the school is a mythmaking institution
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
Architectural Association
from 1847
This independent school of architecture, one of the most prestigious and famous in the world was “in/famously founded by a pack of troublesome students”.
www.aaschool.ac.uk
www.bauhaus.de
Bauhaus
1919 –1933
This school brought together the most outstanding masters and students seeking to reverse the split between art and production by returning to the crafts as the foundation of all artistic activity.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
THE PRINCIPLESResilienceover strength
Pullover push
Riskover safety
Systemsover objects
Compassesover maps
Practiceover theory
Disobedienceover compliance
Emergenceover authority
Learningover education
Black Mountain College
1933 –1957
Operating in an isolated rural location, this informal and collaborative school, with an interdisciplinary approach, encouraged experimental intelligence and plurality.
www.blackmountaincollegeproject.org
MIT Media Lab
from 1985
“At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined. Interdisciplinary researchers design technologies for people to create a better future.”
www.media.mit.edu
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea
2001 –2005
Ivrea explored business in addition to design and technology for developing innovative products and services, giving people new ways to interact through communication, network and information technology.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_Design_Institute_Ivrea
Institute without Bounderies
from 2003
A Toronto-based studio that works towards collaborative design action and seeks to achieve social, ecological and economic innovation where everyone seek to live, learn, work, and play together as a global community.
www.worldhouse.ca
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
www.khanacademy.org
Khan Academy
from 2006
“Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. Whether you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology.”
P2PU
from 2009
An online open learning community allowing users to organize and participate in courses and study groups to learn about specific topics. A DIY wiki-type mentality where anyone can create a course as well as take one.
www.p2pu.org
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
www.tradeschool.coop
Trade School
from 2010
A self-organized learning space where students barter with teachers for instruction. Anyone can teach or take a class.
Code Academy
from 2012
Committed to building the best learning experience inside and out, the Code Academy’s vision is that every student should have the opportunity to learn how to code, allowing much importance to computer science and computer programming as part of the core curriculum in education.
www.codecademy.com
Some of our storiesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Some of our stories.Design Royale, Whoami, Ceramic Futures, Design 101
3.
Some of our storiesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Our small (and heterogeneous) team has been working on a new narrative-based “design” educational model adapted to the age of digital information.
We beleive communities to be the best places to learn, understand who we are and what kind of attitudes we have (or miss) within a group, find others who share the same visions and ideas and with whom to collaborate with in the future.
Communities in which to mix on-line and off-line activities. Places for participants to get to know each other, share references, play together and influence others.
Communities in which to test one’s social influence. Places for learning to communicate and transfer knowledge in the most efficient way.
Communities as sources of interest and reference to others. Places in which participants become coauthors of an important collection of content and material.
Design Royale, Whoami, Ceramic Futures, Design 101
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Design Royale
www.design-royale.com@d_royale on Twitterdesign-royale on Facebookvideoleaks on Vimeo
An experimental project for the 2011 Milan Design week made by people from all over the world and built through human relationships. All of this for one night at the secret garden, a magical hidden space where everyone was invited.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
https://www.facebook.com/groups/197692343597186
Some of our stories
Design Royale
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Whoami: the design game
www.whoami.it@WHOAMIgame on Twitterwhoamigame on Facebook#whoamigame on Instagram
An on-line / off-line design game where players and gamemasters complete hands-on challenges to share within facebook-based rooms. Players can meet in the physical world during 3-day workshops taking place in Milan or at Abadir, in Catania. Active since January 2013.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Whoami: the design game
www.whoami.it/community
A community of players and gamemasters.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
www.whoami.it/community
Some of our stories
Whoami: the design game
A player’s profile accessible from the community
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Whoami: the design game
www.facebook.com/groups/WHOAMItyperoom
Type room led by Ko Sliggers.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Ceramic futures: from poetry to Science Fiction
www.ceramicfutures.com@CeramicFutures on TwitterCeramicFutures on Facebook#CeramicFutures on Instagram
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
An on-line / off-line design challenge between students from the Glasgow School of Art, IED Roma, Politecnico di Milano and Abadir Academy. The project is promoted by Cofindustria Ceramica and runs between June and August 2013
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Ceramic futures: from poetry to Science Fiction
ALESSANDRO CERTANI
IED Roma
CAROL BELL
Glasgow School of Art
ALBERTO IACOVONI
IED Roma
FRANCESCO LIGNAROLO
IED Roma
LESLEY MCINTYRE
IED Roma
EMMA ARNOTT
IED Roma
CLAUDIO GALASSO
IED Roma
KO SLIGGERS
IED Roma
CLEMENTINA GENTILE
Accademia Abadir
ALAN VARGAS
Politecnico di Milano
ANNE LARSEN
IED Roma
ALEC HARRISON
Glasgow School of Art
ENRICA MASI
Politecnico di Milano
LUCIA GIULIANO
Accademia Abadir
MARK LEROY
Glasgow School of Art
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
www.ceramicfutures.com/community
A community of students and tutors from 4 different schools.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
350 39 16 21100 7
da aggiustare
Some of our stories
Ceramic futures: from poetry to Science Fiction
www.ceramicfutures.com/community
A student’s profile accessible from the community
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Ceramic futures: from poetry to Science Fiction
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
MY FIRST PROTOTYPE
TESTING FORMS
LUCA ROSSI
ENRICA MASSI
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACTHOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
I'm quite happy about my first tests... :)
www.ceramicfutures.com/diary
The diary is where the works are shared, commented, voted.
Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Design 101 (or design basics)
www.iversity.org/courses/design-101
Our course proposal for a MOOC (massive open on-line course) won the Iversity “MOOC production fellowship” competition. Financed by the German government, it will start in fall 2013.
Questions and doubtsDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Questions and doubtsP.S.
4.
Questions and doubtsDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Confucius taught us a very simple truth: “If I hear, I forget. If I see, I remember. If I make, I undertstand”. This was true 2500 years ago as well as today. But today we have new and social media. Today we have a new generation of people who are born in a social media world (with various cognitive consequences).
Does this imply some changes in the above mentioned truth? What kind of changes? Positive, negative, both?
Think of Marshall McLuhan. “The medium is the message” he said. But then, what happens when the community becomes the message?
P.S. #1
Questions and doubtsDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
We live in a social-media based world. This has a fair number of eery implications. Implications, questions and doubts that no one is able to answer (for the time being). Foremost, the social media world, is it Orwellian? No. George Orwell was wrong. We don’t live in the 1984 dystopia. Aldous Huxley was the right one. We actually live in the Brave New World.
Orwell feared that truth would be concealed from us.Huxley feared that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.In “1984” people are controlled by inflicting pain. In “Brave New World”, people are controlled by inflicting pleasure.
In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
P.S. #2
Read the original visual essay by Stuart McMillen at: http://www.highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell
Stefano Mirti@stefi_idlab (on Twitter and Instagram)www.facebook.com/stefano.mirti.3
Lucia Giuliano@luciagiuliano (on Twitter)@lucigiu (on Instagram)
Anne-Sophie Gauvin@asgauvin (on Twitter and Instagram)