Kat is talking about an exhibition of her PhD work, that “explored the innovative practices of suburban technology (wifi and bike) makers operating on the fringes of established centres of innovation”. Jennifer’s object is dirt, a “mutable, fuzzy and messy object”, and Joe starts with a project using beads, that has been recently developed into an interdisciplinary research project.

We start at 4pm and finish with some refreshments in the studio at 6pm. Documentation of the event will be available shortly here.

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The theme for this years festival is FUTURITY NOW! and event literature leads with a quote from William Gibson; ‘The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet’. As in previous years, the main body of the festival programme takes place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, with off-shoots all over Berlin.

The festival runs from the 2nd to the 7th of February, and the winners of the TRANSMEDIALE AWARD 2010 will be announced on Saturday 6th in the auditorium of HKV.

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This exhibition is about experimentation and play. It brings together artists with long-established international reputations, alongside recent graduates. What they have in common is a mischievous curiousity about the world around us, and a do-it-yourself approach. They conduct witty low-tech experiments to uncover the enchantment hidden within everyday utilitarian objects.

The address of the venue is Storey Gallery, Storey Creative Industries Centre, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster, LA1 1TH. Here’s some background to the gallery, which has a Facebook page here, and is directed by John Angus with events produced by Suzy Jones.

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Over the past decade there has been an increasing engagement between design and STS. One emerging and novel area of exchange is concerned with exploring the ways in which practices of ’speculative design’ and STS concerns of publics, participation, politics as well as expectations come together to inform one another, to critique one another, and to collaborate in developing new modes of co-production of contemporary technoscience. Although such associations are promising, they are nascent and in need of articulation and critical examination.

For this track we are soliciting participation from STS scholars, design researchers and practicing designers. Our objective is to present a range of scholarly approaches and exemplary projects in order to critically explore the practices of Speculative Design.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 15 March, 2010.

Submission instructions are available online at: http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010/abstract-submission

About EASST:
The EASST_010 conference is the biennial forum of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) for contributions on topics from the range of disciplines found within science, technology and innovation studies. The particular focus for the 2010 conference is that of practice and performance. Science and technology, are seen as performative domains of the “social”, situated practices rooted and grown in a sociomaterial context.

More About the track ‘Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience: Possibilities and Critical Perspectives’
By speculative design we refer to a set of design practices and outcomes that are moving away from common notions of design as “problem-solving” or “styling”, towards framing design as a means for surfacing and materialising issues and contributing to the formation of publics and futures. In this move, design is increasingly cast as a possible mode of intervention into technoscience, thereby establishing renewed associations with STS. With speculative design the performativity of the object comes to the fore as a concern for both designers and theorists, as its objects and outcomes are often brought into being to, and interpreted as, materially and discursively enacting values, identities, agendas and beliefs. A challenge for STS then is to describe and characterise the performativity of the objects of speculative design in new ways that avoid recourse to the familiar positions and debates concerning ‘the political of artefacts’.’

For this track we are solicit participation from STS scholars, design researchers and practicing designers. Our objective is to present a range of scholarly approaches and exemplary projects in order to explore and outline this field of convergence. Within the track, presentations will be organised thematically.

Key questions we hope to address include the following:

- How does a convergence of STS and speculative design reframe the notion of intervention?
- How does the convergence of STS and speculative design perform issues of politics and the political?
- How does speculative design operate to articulate issues, and what are its limitations in these endeavours?
- What kind of futures and expectations are performed in the doing of speculative design?
- How can we understand novel objects and materiality as forms of engagement and involvement?
- What are working strategies for supporting this convergence of STS and ’speculative’ design?
- What are the limitations of STS methodologies in contributing to the design process and analysing the objects of design?
- What are limitations of design practice and methods to seriously taking up STS concepts and methodologies?

Regards,

Carl DiSalvo, Georgia Institute of Technology
Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths, University of London
Tobie Kerridge, Goldsmiths, University of London

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The framework of the conference is based on the assumption that the evolution of sciences and technologies, and their impact on society, suggests new research questions that constantly tend to expand the ways to design research – in term of topics of interests, approaches and contaminations – research questions that can be relevant for the design knowledge, practice and education.

I spoke about Material Beliefs in terms of its contribution to public engagement of science and technology (a pdf of the full paper is available here) in a session with Björn Franke and Françoise Adler entitled “SENSE AND MEANING”. I also had a chance to hear from Pelle Ehnand Giovanni Anceschi.

The symposium was convened and hosted by Massimo Botta and Polly Bertram from the Laboratorio Cultura Visiva at SUPSI.

Cinema Corso, venue for Multiple Ways plenary sessions (image from Multiple Ways page)

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Below is a list of presenters and dates for these seminars, which are free and open to all. They take place at 4:00pm-6:00pm, at the Interaction Research Studio, 6th Floor, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW.

Autumn Term 2009

Seminar 1 – Wednesday October 14th
Introducing the Objects of Design and Social Science
With: Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths

Seminar 2 – Wednesday November 4th
Buildings as Things
With: Albena Yaneva, The University of Manchester

Seminar 5 – Wednesday November 18th
Speculative and Critical Objects
With: James Auger, Royal College of Art & Jimmy Loizeau, Goldsmiths

Spring Term 2010

Seminar 4 – Wednesday January 27th
Objects and Services
With: Chris Downs

Seminar 5 – Wednesday February 17th
From Objects to Issues?
With: Noortje Marres, Oxford University

Seminar 6 – Wednesday March 10th
Object Fair
With: Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths

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The exhibition has a speculative focus, taking emerging technologies and new materials as a source for hypothetical and idiosyncratic designs which aim to ask questions rather than provide answers. This ambition is reflected curatorially, with each project framed by a question. These are listed on this Science Gallery web-page, and are also present in the exhibition space, with the texts laser-cut from plastic, and running around the edges of the installations.

There are some projects here that originated in Material Beliefs, including Soares’ Vegitarian Tooth and Auger, Loizeau and Zivanovic’s Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots. Biojewellery is there, which I collaborated on with Nikki Stott and Ian Thompson, as well as Caccavales’ Utility Pets, which are relatively old projects compared to Thomas Thwaites Toaster Project or Zoe Papadopoulou and Cathrine Kramer’s Cloud Project which both featured in the 2009 Royal College of Art graduation show. Indeed WHAT IF… could be seen as a retrospective of speculative design’s association with science, albeit a family of such work, rather than a thematic survey. For – with the exception of Mathieu Lehanneur’s Local River – all these projects are the work of staff and former students of Design Interaction department at the RCA.

The Science Gallery opened in 2008, a glass segment facing outwards on to Pearse Street on the north-eastern edge of Trinity College campus. The transparency and accessibility of the gallery space perhaps relates to it’s role as an “interface between research and the city“, and I was told that as the Trinity campus expanded and grew, it bricked up the windows on its outer edges, turning its back to the life of the city. To me it seemed that the Science Gallery takes its corrective role seriously, and I’ll mention a couple of details. I was struck by Gorman’s insistence at the opening that the exhibitors should stand with their work, and chat about it with attendees, rather than drift to the bar. There was mention that the Gallery’s demonstrators, who following the hubris of the opening are on hand to discuss the exhibits, could do a better job of this than the designers who made the work. And it was one of those designers who said this.

While I’m continuing to try and assemble my PhD thesis, I tend to give myself a fairly hard time about the claims I make about the way my work ‘opens up’ technology. I have also developed a healthy scepticism about the composition and ambition of the field of public engagement of science and technology, in which I consider my work to sit. I’ll continue to wrestle with my own doubts, and in the meantime it is experiences like WHAT IF…, with its enthusiastic and lovely visitors, staff and exhibitors that cut through these academic troubles.

Science Gallery WHAT IF… opening day

Documents and prototypes from the Biojewellery archive

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A full schedule is available here, and the event is being blogged here.

Noel Jackson opening BIG Event 2009 (image from Jonathan S blog)

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There is a call for participation that closes on July 20th. Proposals are invited from artists and designers within the categories of Exhibition, Workshops, Live Electronic Performance, Cinematic Works and Listening Post.

I’ll be contributing to a workshop on Wednesday 23rd, which is about “Open-Ended Technology Design”. It will be interesting to see how some of the practices from Material Beliefs will fit here. There are some direct links to the Arduino platform that Massimo Banzi is likely to bring to the table – this hardware was used in some of the Material Beliefs Prototypes. I’m also looking forward to hear more about John McCarthy’s research at UCC, and Rob van Kranenburg’s work following his Internet of Things.

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Speakers: Revital Cohen, Martin Conreen, Emily Dawson, Anna Dumitriu, Ben Johnson, Kira O’Reilly & Janet Smith, Rob La Frenais, Brendan Walker

Guest curated by Tobie Kerridge & Elio Caccavale as a part of Colm Lally’s programme, more details and directions online at E:vent.

Ben Johnson presents his new kitchen

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