Category: Activities

Last week, Product Design 4th years Alvin and Joe have visited the annual Dutch Design Week (DDW) held at Eindhoven. Here are some of the highlights:

 

Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show

Located in town centre, the Design Academy hosted their annual degree show, MINED during DDW. Exhibited were graduate projects from the class of 2017, which resulted in a plethora of thought provoking artefacts based on each student’s individual context and research.

Kristaps Polïtis, Printstrument

This is a collection of 3D-printed modular instrument components that allows children to learn music in a more experimental manner. Children mix and match the components to assemble a customised instrument, enhancing the element of play when learning musical instruments.

 

Billie Van Katwijk, Ventri

Ventri is a series of leather fashion accessories and fabrics that is process from cow stomachs as a way to reducing waste in the meat industry. Cow stomachs are conventionally waste byproducts, yet are transformed into unique fashion artefacts that feature a visceral, natural aesthetic.

 

Strijp-S is the centre venue of DDW where many of the major exhibitions are gathered.

 

With the omnipresence of the internet, Materialising the Internet explores how does the ever integrating digital and physical world effect our experience in the consequently augmented world? One example is materialising the infamous euphemism ‘Netflix & Chill’ into an Airbnb room available for single night rentals.

 

In Embassy of Food, this participatory installation Algen Bar connects visitors to the algae ecosystem housed in the jars. Visitors breathe into the tube which proves valuable nutrients for algae, and earn a fresh algae beverage when nutrition levels are satisfactory.

 

Biodesign for Social Impact Workshop

Joe co-hosted a workshop with his fellow Bio Design Challenge (BDC) ’17 team members Design Informatics MA graduates Eva and Sean, and I had the pleasure of helping as event photographer. The Biodesign for Social Impact workshop enables participants to imagine society under the rapid development of biology and design, creating speculative scenarios that have profound changes in the future.

There were so many other more things on show at DDW, not one day has passed by without being intellectually stimulated, if you still haven’t checked out DDW yet, be sure to check it out next year!

 

Product Design has now fully migrated to the new curriculum and we are welcoming students from all areas at the University of Edinburgh.

We would like to let everyone know about the 3 exciting (Level 7 and 8) electives that we have available this year:

Design From Data (Sem 1 – Tuesdays PM), Electronic Things (Sem 1 – Thursdays PM), and Re-Value (Sem 2 – Tuesdays PM)

Design From Data

 

Electronic Things

The course provides an understanding of how designers are increasingly required to work with electronics and microprocessors in order to create products which are responsive and agentitialal around their human counterparts. Through an introduction to hardware and software platforms, students will be supported in the designing of digital artefacts. Digital artefacts are capable of sensing the world around them, interpreting and re-presenting the data to the people with whom they co-exist. Creation of these artefacts combines the social science goal of collecting information about the use and the users of the technology in a real-world setting, the engineering goal of field-testing the technology, and the design goal of inspiring users and designers to think of new kinds of technology to support their needs. A combination of a series of lectures that reflect upon current creative electronic practice, and workshops that provide technical and creative will support students to develop their own electronic artifacts for deployment in settings informed through their own interests.

 

Re-Value

BETTER
Daisy Ginsberg, Royal College of Art
http://daisyginsberg.com/
 
Monday, 5th June, 3.30-5.00pm
1.06 Old Surgeons’ Hall
 
Designers often advocate that design makes things better. In promising a better future, they are not alone: engineers, marketers, politicians and scientists also invoke the imaginary of better, creating dreams that have very material effects. In some of these visions, “better” will be delivered by science and technology; in others, the consumption of designed things will better us or the world. “Better” itself has become a sociotechnical imaginary; progress, without the philosophical baggage. But better is not a universal good or a verified measure: better is imbued with politics and values. And better will not be delivered equally, if at all. “What is better?” and “Who gets to decide?” are questions with great implications for the way we live and hope to live. This seminar explores how critical design can be used to address these questions, while considering critical design’s complicated relationship to bettering, as a critical yet optimistic practice. Drawing on my experiences working amongst the architects of synthetic biology’s powerful dreams of better, I consider how critical design can question better, opening up the possibility of alternative dreams.

Further details: http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/events/stis_seminars/2016_2017/better

This event is part of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Seminar Series
http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/events/