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Full-Text Articles in Art and Design

Does It Spark Joy?, Connie Svabo Jun 2019

Does It Spark Joy?, Connie Svabo

Nordes Conference Series

The question is asked by Japanese clutter-clearing expert Marie Kondo in a Netflix program, where she helps North Americans deal with their many things and where she also teaches participants to fold their clothes in organized ways. The question ‘Does it spark joy?’ in my text is used in an intellectual act of folding together thoughts from situational aesthetics, vital materialism and a philosophy of mingled bodies - into a relational and processual ontology, which overcomes the subject-object divide, highlights the transcendence of self and promotes receptivity to the dynamic and open-ended character of the world. The mundanity of clothing …


Towards Sustainable Textile Materials: Potential Pathways And Dialogues Between Disciplines, Pirjo Kääriäinen, Kirsi Niinimäki Jun 2019

Towards Sustainable Textile Materials: Potential Pathways And Dialogues Between Disciplines, Pirjo Kääriäinen, Kirsi Niinimäki

Nordes Conference Series

The need to take care of our material environment has become urgent. New types of scientific collaboration have emerged, and designers are being invited to collaborate with top-level scientists. Several examples have shown that the creativity of designers can be brought into different kinds of scientific collaboration to enhance existing approaches and ways of working. This study investigates various design-science collaborations in the context of material research, all aiming to create sustainable textile materials. The empirical basis of this study consists of five material research and development projects. Our data identified five different approaches to materials; Transforming, Reinventing, Recycling, Biofabrication …


Who Cares? …But First, What Is The Who, And What Is Care?, Ian Coxon, Craig Bremner Jun 2019

Who Cares? …But First, What Is The Who, And What Is Care?, Ian Coxon, Craig Bremner

Nordes Conference Series

What is Care? A word, a concept or a myth? In this paper we explore some of the key formulations of Care that should be considered if Care is to become instrumentalised in design. Primarily, we revisit that meaning of Care which could be of most value to design. After all, Care, at least to some, is the essence of what it means to be human. The goal of this paper is to prompt reconsideration of the many differing notions of Care and to stop for a moment to investigate one formulation of Care that contributes a way of clearly …


Waste, So What? A Reflection On Waste And The Role Of Designers In A Circular Economy, Holly Mcquillan Jun 2019

Waste, So What? A Reflection On Waste And The Role Of Designers In A Circular Economy, Holly Mcquillan

Nordes Conference Series

This paper discusses research currently being undertaken which addresses the interrelated volume, value and cost of waste and the responsibility designers have in its creation. The paper begins by outlining the contemporary waste problem (in the fashion industry). Then utilising observations made during recent field tests – where waste reduction and elimination strategies were applied to existing designs – the impact that explicit and implicit design hierarchies and complexity have on waste minimisation attempts are discussed. Questions such as: is waste a problem in the context of proposed Circular Economy models? After all, if we have a Circular Economy, then …


Advanced Resilient Practices: Demythologizing Design Heritage, Fahrettin Ersin Alaca, David Muñoz Alcántara Jun 2019

Advanced Resilient Practices: Demythologizing Design Heritage, Fahrettin Ersin Alaca, David Muñoz Alcántara

Nordes Conference Series

This paper presents an international research, exhibition and forum project that has been developing since 2016. The project aims to demythologize design’s consumerist Utopias and sectoral hierarchies as a series of temporary artistic and design interventions. By socio-historical analysis of politics of design, the project involves blurring the borders between exhibition, archival display, and action research. This involves pushing forward Pratt’s “contact zone” as a technological site of embodied advanced practice of design critique together with the exercise of dissent foregrounding ecology of practices. The present paper focuses on the project’s methods and research outcome concerning the case of Finnish …


Rituals Of Care: Reimagining Welfare, Meike Schalk, Sara Brolundde Carvalho Jun 2019

Rituals Of Care: Reimagining Welfare, Meike Schalk, Sara Brolundde Carvalho

Nordes Conference Series

The legendary Swedish welfare state model comprised, on its smallest scale, an infrastructure of ‘common rooms’ (gemensamhetslokaler). Here, we explore common rooms as a spatio-social concept inspired by ‘the commons’. We argue that common rooms were fundamental to the Swedish welfare state model until the 1990s, and that the divorce of the spatial dimension from the social apparatus contributed to their decline. Using recent common rooms (Gemeinschaftsräume) in subsidized housing in Vienna as our empirical example, we illustrate how collectivity is influenced by changing legal frameworks, with common rooms receiving new attention in recent sustainable housing policies. On the micro …


Finding Calm In A Perfect Storm, Stella Boess, Elaha Zarabi, Christiaan Uythoven, Gerald Kraan Jun 2019

Finding Calm In A Perfect Storm, Stella Boess, Elaha Zarabi, Christiaan Uythoven, Gerald Kraan

Nordes Conference Series

This paper presents insights from an exploratory study into the experience of orthopaedic rehabilitation that sought to support patients in self-care. In a research-through-design study, rough prototypes were generated and patient needs elicited. The project was a collaboration between an academic designer, a design agency, and an orthopaedic surgeon, and included perspectives from hand therapists and patients themselves. The study showed that patients greatly appreciate data support of hand rehabilitation exercises, because it helps them adjust and pace their perspective and experience of getting better. From a reflection on the prototypes in relation to the patient experience we also concluded …


Ecofeminist Understandings Of Care And Design For Sustainability Transitions: Towards A Theoretical Framework Of Work For The Degrowth Movement, Eeva Houtbeckers, İdil Gaziulusoy Jun 2019

Ecofeminist Understandings Of Care And Design For Sustainability Transitions: Towards A Theoretical Framework Of Work For The Degrowth Movement, Eeva Houtbeckers, İdil Gaziulusoy

Nordes Conference Series

The starting point of this paper is a recognition of the need for transitions to sustainability. This exploratory paper is a stepping stone for development of a theoretical framework for ways of imagining and acting upon ecofeminist degrowth futures based on design for sustainability transitions (DFST). The aim of the framework is to conceptualise the role paid and un(der)paid work in and for such transitions. In this paper, we bring together previous research of design for sustainability DFST, degrowth, and ecofeminist understandings of care as gendered work. With references to the multi-level perspective of system innovations, DFST investigates the niche …


Caring With Others – Cultivating And Revaluing As Forms Of Everyday Designing, Melisa Duque, Laura Popplow Jun 2019

Caring With Others – Cultivating And Revaluing As Forms Of Everyday Designing, Melisa Duque, Laura Popplow

Nordes Conference Series

In this paper we reflect on the notion of caring with in design research by discussing processes of cultivating and revaluing. Cultivating as a form of caring with other species. Revaluing as a form of caring with unwanted things. Both are addressed as everyday designing, ongoing liminal processes that have regenerative potential to revalue and care for/with dirty matters.


Affective Infrastructuring, Alicia Smedberg Jun 2019

Affective Infrastructuring, Alicia Smedberg

Nordes Conference Series

This paper discusses the implications of care within infrastructuring processes, through the lens of a case study account and anecdote. The case study, located in Malmö (Sweden), is an on-going project exploring methods for citizen engagement within city planning. The paper seeks to exemplify how affect can travel - and accumulate - in interactions between public sector workers and citizens, and how this affective current means that each actor is simultaneously affecting and being affected by her surroundings.


Taking Positions: Institutions And Individuals In Public Sector Design, Maria Ferreira, Eeva Berglund Jun 2019

Taking Positions: Institutions And Individuals In Public Sector Design, Maria Ferreira, Eeva Berglund

Nordes Conference Series

If recent decades have witnessed an expanded notion of design, here we explore such trends through the changing roles of public innovation labs and individuals within them. Recognizing the work of design scholarship in seeking to understand this influential and fast-changing field, we focus not so much on institutional form as on individuals doing design-led work in the public sector, whether or not they think of their work in terms of design. The paper draws on initial findings from ongoing work involving interviews and engagements with such labs in Latin America. We suggest approaching urban innovation labs with more attention …


Broadening Horizons Of Design Ethics? Importing Concepts From Applied Anthropology, Johanna Ylipulli, Aale Luusua Jun 2019

Broadening Horizons Of Design Ethics? Importing Concepts From Applied Anthropology, Johanna Ylipulli, Aale Luusua

Nordes Conference Series

This paper is a thought experiment: we explore how certain ethical considerations of applied anthropology might contribute to the evolving body of work on design ethics. To begin to consider ethical analogies between these two fields, we first align them on a conceptual level by scrutinizing how they both change relationships. Further, we introduce three central concepts and related debates of applied anthropology that could supplement discussions on contemporary design ethics: beneficence, collaborative approach and advocacy. The authors are specialized in (design) anthropology, architecture and human-computer interaction (HCI); in this paper, we draw from our respective fields and backgrounds.


Designing Care And Commoning Into A Code Of Conduct, Cindy Kohtala, Jedediah Walls, We-Left Collective Jun 2019

Designing Care And Commoning Into A Code Of Conduct, Cindy Kohtala, Jedediah Walls, We-Left Collective

Nordes Conference Series

Despite claims to being counterculture and a better alternative, grassroots activist design groups and free culture movements may replicate the marginalizing behaviours of dominant society, also in their governance and designs of their interaction platforms. We developed a code-of-conduct, or Community Guidelines, for our online commons-oriented group to nurture a sense of a caring and mutually responsible community. The guidelines aim to bring into online interaction the living person-to-person dialogic relationality we exhibit in collaborative work offline. Our social learning process could have implications for designing healthier online community protocols and platforms and be able to better tackle the challenges …


Research Experiences Beyond The Comfort Zone, Juan Sanin Jun 2019

Research Experiences Beyond The Comfort Zone, Juan Sanin

Nordes Conference Series

The intersection between design and care is shaping new design fields that are both promising and challenging. Design for healthcare is one of these fields: it brings opportunities for improving people’s experience of care through design research, but it takes designers out of their comfort zone. Scholars have reported success doing design for healthcare, but not much has been said about challenges, failures or confrontations found in this field. This paper argues that we should care more about discomforting aspects of design research to get a better understanding of what designing together involves. It presents a case of care (in)action …


(Un)Curating The City: Participatory Design And Urban Heritage, Mela Zuljevic, Liesbeth Huybrechts Jun 2019

(Un)Curating The City: Participatory Design And Urban Heritage, Mela Zuljevic, Liesbeth Huybrechts

Nordes Conference Series

This article explores the relations between participatory design (PD) and critical heritage studies (CHS) in the context of urban planning and development. In searching for a PD approach which can critically address the role of heritage in urban development, it problematizes the focus on economic viability in urban renewal practices and the lack of care for socio-political values and challenges. The article searches for a PD framework that could support alternative regimes of care, via the notion of design space as the terrain for selection, articulation and curation of values. This framework will be outlined by reflecting on a case …


Testimonial Digital Textiles: Material Metaphors To Think With Care About Reconciliation With Four Memory Sewing Circles In Colombia, Jaime Patarroyo, Laura Cortés-Rico, Eliana Sánchez-Aldana, Tania Pérez-Bustos, Nasif Rincón Jun 2019

Testimonial Digital Textiles: Material Metaphors To Think With Care About Reconciliation With Four Memory Sewing Circles In Colombia, Jaime Patarroyo, Laura Cortés-Rico, Eliana Sánchez-Aldana, Tania Pérez-Bustos, Nasif Rincón

Nordes Conference Series

Research on textile crafting offers an opportunity to investigate reconciliation in a context that brings together every day practice, the realities of the conflict, the possibility of healing, and the rebuilding of social fabric. In this exploratory paper we deploy a methodological design which contributes to think about reconciliation with care through the practice of textile crafting in four memory sewing circles, integrated mostly by elderly women in different Colombian municipalities. This design implies the prototyping of a set of technologies that integrate digital components to various handcrafted textiles with the ability to digitally embody reconciliation in the selected sites, …


Design For The Age Of Species – Exploring Ways For Designers To Care For Multispecies Coexistence, Petra Lilja Jun 2019

Design For The Age Of Species – Exploring Ways For Designers To Care For Multispecies Coexistence, Petra Lilja

Nordes Conference Series

This paper presents the project The Age of Species (TAS) and the ‘multispecies approach’ addressing the who in care with the aim to disrupt human-centeredness and open up for reconfigurations of design practices to better engage with troubled presents where a myriad of other species is overlooked and becoming extinct. TAS invites designers and scientists to speculate of and design for anthropo-de-centric futures by thinking through care and coexistence. By describing and reflecting on the experiences of an initial workshop and its outcomes as well as anchoring it with theories within feminist posthumanism, the aim is to explore and define …


Zoepolis: Non-Anthropocentric Design As An Experiment In Multi-Species Care, Monika Rosińska, Agata Szydłowska Jun 2019

Zoepolis: Non-Anthropocentric Design As An Experiment In Multi-Species Care, Monika Rosińska, Agata Szydłowska

Nordes Conference Series

The paper provides an introductory discussion and a curatorial case study on design practice that contributes to a constitution of a human and nonhuman community as well as challenges and expands the notion of care to other species. It starts with an examination of existing approaches to design that take into consideration relations between humans and non-humans. Departing from a critique of discussed perspectives we then introduce a concept of zoepolis based on theories of Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, Donna Haraway, Joanna Bednarek and Bruno Latour. In the second part of the article we discuss the exhibition “Zoepolis. Design …


Co-Ability Practices, Renáta Dezső-Dinnyés Jun 2019

Co-Ability Practices, Renáta Dezső-Dinnyés

Nordes Conference Series

This paper explores philosophical and strategic possibilities to understand the concept of co-Ability, and generate critical and new insights to our value system in human centred societal challenges. I apply an experimental approach of research through design, analysed from an interpretive point of view to prove a grounded theory. The paper starts from a prosthesis development presented as a tangible pragmatic procedure. The purpose of the case study is the notion of care through practical design that is marked with concern since the probability of harm can be incised by pure design decisions. Instead of describing the politics of roles …


Design For Care In The Peripheries: Arts-Based Research As An Empowering Process With Communities, Satu Miettinen, Melanie Sarantou, Essi Kuure Jun 2019

Design For Care In The Peripheries: Arts-Based Research As An Empowering Process With Communities, Satu Miettinen, Melanie Sarantou, Essi Kuure

Nordes Conference Series

Arts-based research (ABR), its potential for participation and collaboration, can create insights and understanding of complex societal structures. It can also be used as an approach to find mindful solutions with peripheral communities. The paper argues that ABR, supported by practical collaborative processes, can offer suitable approaches to design for care by including local stakeholders in community-led development processes. This paper presents a Life Story Mandala tool that enables researchers and art and design practitioners to manage complex societal development processes in a globalised world (Bonsiepe 2006). The tool was developed during two global research cycles in South Australia and …


Three Ecologies Diffracted: Intersectionality For Ecological Caring, Martín Ávila Jun 2019

Three Ecologies Diffracted: Intersectionality For Ecological Caring, Martín Ávila

Nordes Conference Series

This essay commemorates the 30th anniversary of the publication of Félix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies. It does so by proposing a ‘diffractive’ reading of the book, suggesting latent potential in each of the overlapping “ecologies” that conformed the ecosophy sketched by Guattari. There are mainly two aspects of The Three Ecologies addressed in this essay. Firstly, the understanding of the general frame of the interrelation of the three ecologies as an “intersectional” approach. Secondly, the understanding of this form of intersectionality as a possible platform to acknowledge other-than human ‘intersections’. Through the essay I exemplify with one of my own …


Identities Shaped By Creative (Design) Journeys, Stephen Awoniyi Jun 2019

Identities Shaped By Creative (Design) Journeys, Stephen Awoniyi

Nordes Conference Series

The current paper presents an exploration of creating or making. We interviewed several makers of creative work, using a creative piece each had made as a conversation core. Their descriptions of making journeys marked out coupling of processes and outcomes. Comanaging both structural components involved temporally-delimited stages of actional and conceptional unfolding. Doing and thinking, however, also sketched an outline of a personality at a moment in time. These were all fluid transactions. Based on accounts of making journeys which circumscribed person-work amalgamations, we described a dispersion of markers across a dispositional field negotiated by creators. The creative operation can …


Taking Care Of Plastic: Discursive Jewellery And Anthropogenic Debris, Synne Skjulstad Jun 2019

Taking Care Of Plastic: Discursive Jewellery And Anthropogenic Debris, Synne Skjulstad

Nordes Conference Series

Tons of plastic waste pile up in our oceans by the minute. This paper discusses a jewellery design project where anthropogenic debris takes centre stage. The project investigates how marine plastic trash literally may be turned into treasures through approaches that transverse design, craft and communication design. The main design material are plastic pieces selected from the shores of Norwegian fiords. Each piece of plastic selected for jewellery is treated as precious. Care is thus a concept that frames this jewellery design project as it both connects to the micro and macro perspectives on plastic. The jewellery is relating aesthetic …


Why Care About Virtual Landscapes? Immersive Open World Gaming Related To Positive Health, Paul Roncken Jun 2019

Why Care About Virtual Landscapes? Immersive Open World Gaming Related To Positive Health, Paul Roncken

Nordes Conference Series

For some reason many people enjoy, spend long hours and pay for being out on virtual fields, playing an avatar that needs to hunt, prey, hide, survive and interact with all kinds of programmed entities and online players. Surely the designers and programmers deserve praise for their efforts and achievements in yearly progress on more detailed and increasingly immersive virtual experiences. But does that suffice to care about virtual landscapes other than classifying them as artificial places for fun and diversion? In this paper I will make a first attempt to relate virtual landscape experiences to accumulated insights in environmental …


Who Cares About Those Who Care? Design And Technologies Of Power In Swedish Elder Care, Camilla Andersson, Ramia Mazé, Anna Isaksson Jun 2019

Who Cares About Those Who Care? Design And Technologies Of Power In Swedish Elder Care, Camilla Andersson, Ramia Mazé, Anna Isaksson

Nordes Conference Series

Design is increasingly recognized as an instrument of power. We explore power in the context of the Swedish welfare state and care institutions, which are undergoing political and structural reconfiguration as new technologies are introduced. Our aim is to better understand the effects of designed technologies within care institution and over care workers. Through our research, we have identified deviances, or gaps, between institutional policies and daily working practices, in which workers must cope within a grey zone of legality. Against this backdrop, we bring together and discuss concepts from philosopher Michel Foucault and sociologist Dorothy Smith in order to …


Health Cultures: Designing Healthcare Infrastructures As Urban Interfaces For Society Participation, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Katrien Dreessen, Irma Földényi, Daniela Dossi Jun 2019

Health Cultures: Designing Healthcare Infrastructures As Urban Interfaces For Society Participation, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Katrien Dreessen, Irma Földényi, Daniela Dossi

Nordes Conference Series

This paper - based on the participatory design research project ‘Health Cultures, Healthcare and Multiculturalism’ - reflects on how we can redesign healthcare infrastructures as urban interfaces for citizens from different cultural backgrounds to participate more actively in society. The project investigates the health care systems and institutions of care in action, and how they develop within the context of a growing multicultural society and the declining welfare state. Via a design anthropological research in different health-related contexts within the city of Genk (Belgium), wherein 54% of the inhabitants come from foreign descent, we studied how these environments function as …


Caring Design Experiments In The Aftermath, Kristina Lindström, Åsa Ståhl Jun 2019

Caring Design Experiments In The Aftermath, Kristina Lindström, Åsa Ståhl

Nordes Conference Series

We live in the aftermath of industrial design, which primarily has been guided by a focus on making the new. Through the project Un/Making Soil Communities, carried out where glass production has left pollution in the soil, the authors propose caring design experiments which aim to foster maintenance and repair for livable worlds. In this articulation, the authors draw on democratic design experiments (Binder et al 2015), but propose a shift from gathering around matters-of-concern (Latour 2005) to matters-of-care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). Furthermore, caring design experiments also entail engaging with big enough stories (Haraway 2016) through going visiting …


Reparative Practices: Invitations From Mundane Urban Ecologies, Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland, Kristine Samson Jun 2019

Reparative Practices: Invitations From Mundane Urban Ecologies, Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland, Kristine Samson

Nordes Conference Series

The paper proposes a reparative turn in co-design towards an attention and sensitivity to more-than-human world-making practices in our urban environments. The notion of ‘reparative’ hold strings with the reparative system that an organism starts when damage is experienced. Thinking-with this biological, cultural and performatively, we propose the reparative as the starting point for learning to notice life-giving potentialities in the Anthropocene. Reparative practices are ethical and political in the sense that we are searching for life-giving practices that can move us beyond design practices in the Anthropocene. Hence, by bringing attention to environmental enchantments related to sensory everyday practices …


Iron While Still Damp, Julia Valle-Noronha, Marina Valle-Noronha Jun 2019

Iron While Still Damp, Julia Valle-Noronha, Marina Valle-Noronha

Nordes Conference Series

This exploratory paper looks into the relationship between people and the things they wear through the lenses of care and domestic labour. More specifically it addresses the practice of ironing and what it can offer to such relationships. The work collects data from wearers via deployed kits—containing a shirt and a diary—and a group discussion on the wearer-worn engagements. The results show that while little academic focus is given to domestic labour, ironing emerges as a practice that can share understanding of what lies behind the visuality of garments. It suggests that designers and researchers invest in further exploring the …


Letters South Of (Nordic) Design, Pablo Calderón Salazar, Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero Jun 2017

Letters South Of (Nordic) Design, Pablo Calderón Salazar, Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero

Nordes Conference Series

The following text is an e-mail exchange between colleagues, countrymen and friends – one located in Brussels (Belgium) and the other in Bogotá (Colombia) – and it is presented as an epistolary article. Different to traditional academic articles, there is no initial hypothesis proven throughout the text, but a narrative emerging from the conversation among peers. We started from the topic (design + power) and questions proposed for the 2017 edition of NORDES; we could say that, paradoxically, we head north in a southbound conversation that involves decoloniality, deschooling, practices of designs with other names and even the film Ratatouille.