Art and Design Commons^™

Scaling Experiments In Urban Space – An Exploratory Framework, Eva Knutz, Kathrina Dankl

Nordes Conference Series

In this article, we outline an exploratory framework that attempts to capture different types of scaling practices in urban space. "Scaling" in this context is understood as a concept that involves a temporary intervention in public space that negotiates agency among human and nonhuman actors. The aim of this framework is to assist curators and researchers in conceptualizing site-specific interventions or exhibitions in urban contexts.

Closer To Earth: Scales Of Planning For Urban Waters, Kristine Holten-Andersen

Nordes Conference Series

Climatic changes of waterbodies calls for new scales and approaches to planning of urban surface waters. Learning from a real-time case of planning practice, I display and discuss how limitations of sectorial logics, operational scales and schemes of planning, in addition to inherent epistemological prisons of dominant dichotomies, are obstacles of an actual reorientation of planning practice. On this background, I call upon further research – of a designerly and transformative kind, to explore novel approaches to municipal planning of surface waters. I speculate how this could evolve around a multidisciplinary rubber-boot approach with landscape architects performing as Sherpas, process …

Tracing Matters Of Scale By Walking With Minerals, Petra Lilja

Nordes Conference Series

Most practices of design are dependent on materials, and an anthropocentric way of thinking matter as mere resource ready to exploit, dominates. This text attempts to counteract that mode of thinking about matter, by walking and thinking-with stones, minerals and fossils in a disused limestone quarry in southern Sweden. The text is folding together thoughts from philosophy of science and vital materialism with insights from the lithic, spatio-temporal scales of sedimented fossil archives of the quarry and situated experiential explorations taking place there. What emerged from the learnings of the minerals, and what this text contributes with, is a proposal …

Distributed Thinking Through Making: Towards A Relational Ontology In Practice-Led Design Research, Luis Vega

Nordes Conference Series

Practice-led design research is a celebrated but debated field of inquiry. Although it offers appropriate tools to advance design knowledge through and within making, its scope remains limited to the scale of individual practice. Such a limitation hinders the possibility to account for particular design instances in relation to more general contexts. To address this issue, the paper at hand presents an exploratory literature review discussing why practice-led design research may benefit from adopting a relational ontology—i.e., a stance wherein to be is to relate. The review identifies two streams of relational thinking that exhibit potential overlaps with practice-led design …

Big Data And Small Beginnings – How People Engage With Data Physicalizations, Jacob Buur, Jessica Sorenson, Christina Melanie Cooper

Nordes Conference Series

Data physicalization has emerged on the design scene as a way of making sense of big (quantitative) data. This study explores how bigdata physicalizations are designed, how people engage with them, and how that spurs innovation. Graduate student designers created 15 data physicalizations to engage bus planners and bus passengers at multi-stakeholder workshops in discussing bus services and bus designs. The physicalizations were based on passenger data from 9 city bus routes. We used dimensional analysis to scrutinize the data physicalizations as constructs and multimodal interaction analysis to understand how workshop participant interact with the physicalizations. Using the theories of …

Living World Dynamics - Or: What Brian Eno Can Teach Us About Knowing In A Complex World, Connie Svabo

Nordes Conference Series

In questioning how we come to know the world, we have to maintain the insight that things can hang together in many ways and that the world always exceeds our modeling attempts, regardless of scale, weight and representation. Multiple orders are at play in the world and perhaps the best way to get a measure of a lively world is to move with it in performance. Modelling knowledge on endlessly unfolding and endlessly changing performance provides a way of researching the world in a lively manner: beyond static specification and blue-print simplifications. This generates a new relationship between world, knowledge …

A Matter Of Scales: Experiential Evaluation As A Caring Platform Across Scales, Lieve Custers, Oswald Devisch, Liesbeth Huybrechts

Nordes Conference Series

Densification, as a sustainable spatial development strategy, is a matter of care that takes place on multiple scales and is related to liveability in a paradoxical way. In this paper we approach this paradox related to densification as a “matter of scales” and work consciously with the tensions which arise when multiple actors act on multiple scales, such as a lack of communication and mistrust. We analyse and discuss how the participatory design approach of “experiential evaluation” supports this conscious approach by giving form to it as a caring platform around a “matter of scale” by connecting the multiple actors …

(Un)Weaving (Un)Sustainability, Sheida Amiri-Rigi, Despina Christoforidou

Nordes Conference Series

The spatio-temporal scale of design for sustainability has come full circle. What started within a technology-oriented global outlook, later evolving into a people-oriented and local view on change, now urges for a holistic, broad extent and multilevel design for sustainability. This paper enquires into the theories of social change that govern different approaches within the field, and positions the adhesion of socio-technical system innovation and transition design to classical modern theory, against an emergent design paradigm anchored in practice theory. By drawing on the literature of the field and comparing various models, a conceptual framework is suggested where "practice" serves …

Scaling Up Diversity And Inclusion: From Classroom To Municipality, Annukka Svanda, Martina Čaić, Tuuli Mattelmäki

Nordes Conference Series

This paper investigates opportunities for scaling up the diversity and inclusion of international residents at the level of municipality service offerings. The starting point is a set of small-scale service design projects actively involving municipal representatives and university students. This collaboration was part of a service design course at Aalto University addressing challenges faced by the municipality of Espoo, Finland. Through triangulation of three data sources i) precourse meetings, ii) email surveys during the course, and iii) semi-structured interviews with participating municipal representatives after the course, this paper offers insights on how smallscale service design collaborations can facilitate the scaling …

Temporal Scales Of Participation: A Rift Between Actors And Spectators, Alicia Smedberg

Nordes Conference Series

Participatory design is a future-oriented discipline, but there is an imbalance in agency between those who produce future imaginations, and those who consume them. This paper argues that we, as designers and producers of future-oriented design interventions, hold responsibilities towards third party “spectators”. The paper departs from an incident that took place two years after a Future Workshop had taken place between public sector workers and citizens in Malmö, Sweden, when a concerned third party mistook the workshop’s potential and preferred imaginations of the future for truths. In the light of Hannah Arendt’s writings on imagination the paper separates actors …

Teaching Size, Area And Scale, Ingri Strand, Eva Lutnæs

Nordes Conference Series

Gaining an understanding of scale, area and size is an important part of the subject of Art and crafts. Although this skill should be practiced, perhaps even mastered, by pupils in primary education, it is regarded as difficult to teach, due to the skill being intangible and difficult to discuss. This paper seeks to aid in overcoming these difficulties, as it gathers initial findings from ongoing interviews with teachers on their strategies for teaching this important skill. Instead of highlighting one strategy as the best, we wish to showcase a broad range of appropriate approaches to this theme. Tensions between …

Design For Noticing With Biodiversity Logbooks, Liz Edwards, Serena Pollastri, Linda Linda Linda, Robert Barratt

Nordes Conference Series

This paper introduces the use of design to improve noticing skills in order to address environmental issues at a variety of physical and temporal scales. We illustrate the application of ‘design for noticing’ through Biodiversity Logbooks – a pilot project intended to reduce ‘plant blindness’ amongst primary school children. Plant blindness is the inability to recognise, appreciate and value plants and it has far reaching social, environmental and economic implications. In this project, we designed pedagogical tools and processes to foster the skills of noticing plants in their environments, and connecting the small-scale of their individual features to large-scale systems. …

A Tale Of A Wise City: A Speculation On Entanglements Of Non-Humans And Humans In An Urban Space., Inna Zrajaeva

Nordes Conference Series

This paper proposes methods for imagining a future which includes non-human stakeholders. The particular scenario is built on the concept currently known as Smart City. This exploration proposes a speculative fiction of a future where technologies in a Smart City are serving human and non-human citizens. The final outcome is a fictional documentary that illustrates life in the city from the viewpoint of its human citizens. To develop the concept of the city one of the primary challenges was to coordinate the many different scales, from the entire city structure to the interactions between the individual citizens. To address this, …

Proceedings Of Nordes 2021: Matters Of Scale, Eva Brandt, Thomas Markussen, Eeva Berglund, Guy Julier, Per Linde

DRS Conference Volumes

This volume is the proceedings of the 9th biennial Nordes conference, hosted by Design School Kolding and the University of Southern Denmark, 15 – 18 August 2021. All contributions relate in different ways to the overall theme, ‘Matters of Scale’.

Designers are often invited to upscale their efforts to help solve the big challenges facing our societies and the planet. But just as often, the idea of upscaling is met with a critical requirement to evaluate, document and account for design-initiated change. Otherwise, the idea easily ends up representing “the overblown claims”, as Geoff Mulgan once called them, that unfortunately …

Auxetic Structures From 3d Printed Hybrid Textiles, Subin Shajoo, David Schmelzeisen, Christopher Pastore

Kanbar College Faculty Papers

Auxetic structures have been produced using 3D printing and knitted textile materials. A review of other auxetic textiles is presented along with the new materials. A range of configurations were developed, prototyped, and tested to demonstrate significant auxetic response, including Poisson’s ratio up to negative one. The concept of 4D textiles was employed to create environmentally responsive hinges in some structures, allowing the material to change shape in response to thermal stimulus.

I Bloomed In The Dark, Izzy (Kiara) Narvais

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

We come from different places and different backgrounds. Our lives are a constant trial and error. Our past lives on and makes us bloom into the people that we are today. I want to share my story to create a safe place to talk about our trajectories. In a place of darkness and sadness that I sat in for so long, a bright light and a flower grew through it all within me. I have been bullied, abused, and sexually assaulted. I take that as not a place of weakness but a place of strength. I stand strong to be …

The Anxiety Of Presenting Identity, Savannah Fleming

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This work explores aspects of Queer identity, historical reflection, and acceptance through painting, printmaking, and collage. Savannah Fleming's artwork intends to reclaim art history and alter it to include those excluded from its canon. Through the use of prints, paint, and collage, they create works that address the bias of art history, while tackling contemporary problems of identity and acceptance. References and alterations to art history are her way of addressing the erasure of Queer and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) from the art historical canon, while battling with modern-day confines on individuality.

Flesh And Circuit: Rethinking Performance And Technology, Conor Mcgarrigle, E L. Putnam

Articles

The live, embodied, material, and interactive qualities of performance have made it a notable means of exploring the creative potential of technological engagement, acting as a critical vector for revealing and resisting the technological colonisation of everyday life. The innovative collaborations of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) during the 1960’s with artists such as Yvonne Rainer and Robert Rauschenberg, Stelarc’s extreme body modifications, Dumb Type’s intermedia performance, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena and La Pocha Nostra’s poetic and speculative imaginings, have mapped the advances in technology and opened new creative fields to explore embodiment. However, there are still some significant oversights …

Waiting To Be Seen, Sarah L. Napp

Student Projects

Personal knowledge through constant introspection is the cornerstone of "Waiting To Be Seen". Through this series of paintings, I became aware of the depth of the shape of my thinking as a result of accepting my vulnerabilities.

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.

Empirical Drawings: Utilizing Comic Essays In The Social Studies Classroom To Teach Citizenship, Angelo Letizia

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article posits that the comic medium, wedded with traditional essay assignments, may be a powerful tool for social studies teachers, those who prepare social studies teachers at the collegiate level and other teachers and professors who desire to teach about citizenship in an era of "fake news" and alternative facts.

Irmgard Sorenson-Popitz, Gilmore

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

No abstract provided.

Ghost Bikes, Elizabeth Long, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Baker & Whitehill supplemental content

No abstract provided.

Alan Fletcher, George Rodriguez

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

No abstract provided.

Morag Myerscough, Lukas Emory

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

No abstract provided.

Reliquary, Matthew Sloan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I am interested in ritual – the rituals we inherit, and those we choose for ourselves.

By situating the everyday mugs, cups, plates, and bowls next to objects more closely associated with ritual and ceremony, I am suggesting that all of these are significant objects. On one hand, the tableware essential to the rituals of daily living we share at home, on the other, communion vessels and reliquaries are used to deepen a spiritual ritual shared by a community. Both rituals are important experiences worthy of introspection, and consideration.

This is why I make pottery. I believe that handmade objects …

Arid Visions, Casey Miller

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

“The vibration of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthralled me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright light.”

-Agnes Lawrence Pelton

Arid Visions is inspired by my experiences exploring the deserts of southern Utah. The desert landscape is a bounty of diverse flora that appear alien-like. My work celebrates these plants, honoring them for more than what they are sometimes perceived to be. The desert can be an unforgiving place… where an agave’s mesmerizing layered leaves lure you in, but get too close …

Ghost Bikes, Elizabeth Long, Special Collections, Fleet Library

8th Baker & Whitehill Student Artists' Book Contest 2022

AMERICAN PRINTING HISTORY ASSOCIATION - New England Chapter Purchase Prize | $375 Purchase prize winners receive a cash reward and the books are added to the Fleet Library at RISD Special Collections' Artists' Book collection.

Ghost Bikes, Elizabeth Long, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Baker & Whitehill supplemental content

No abstract provided.

Invasives In Our National Parks: How Tourists Can Help Stop The Spread Of Invasive Species, Alexandria Elivira Marci

Masters Theses

Invasive species are a major issue around the world and more specifically in our U.S. National Parks. Ranging from plants to insects to animals, invasive species are a greater threat than many may imagine. The impact that invasive species have on an ecosystem encompasses more than taking over a native species’ environment; it includes competing for food, water, and other resources, as well as having an adverse effect on our economy and threatening us with deadly diseases. Many factors lead to the cause of spread of invasive species, but all point back to human interference, from purposely spreading invasive species …