Here’s an interesting series of seminar organized at Goldsmith College - at the intersection of two practices and two discourses, design and social science - with the “object” as the boundary… material object, object of interest …

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The Objects of Design and Social Science
Common to both design and (parts of) the social sciences is a shared
pre-occupation with objects. On the one hand, design is concerned with
making and interpreting objects including the finished article (e.g.
consumer products), ‘experimental’ design aids (e.g. prototypes), and
projective representations (e.g. scenarios). Recently, design has also
begun to re-engage with more speculative objects whose ambiguous
functionality contributes to the exploration of the social and the
material, the political and the aesthetic. On the other hand the
social sciences also work with objects, including categorical objects
such as race, gender, and health, empirical objects ranging from the
mundane to the exotic, and conceptual objects such as the notions
social scientists use to understand and theorize the social. Here, the
sociology of science and technology has been especially productive,
introducing notions such as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989),
epistemic objects (Rheinberger, 1997), immutable mobiles (Latour,
1990), quasi-objects , black boxes (Latour, 1988) to name but a few.
Accordingly, a focus on material, empirical and conceptual objects
brings into sharp relief overlaps and disjuncture between the two
disciplines and a rich space for dialogue.

This seminar series will seek to bring into view and explore existing
objects of both design and social science as well as draw out objects
of novelty for both disciplines. In doing so we will seek to engage
with emerging issues and topics in both disciplines such as the
outputs of speculative and critical design, participation, engagement
and publics as well as addressing notions concerning heterogeneity,
process and event. This series will continue to serve as a platform
for opening up interdisciplinary research futures. (more…)

Last month when I was in Paris I went to see “Verticale Rouge, Paroles en l’air”(which you can translate Red vertical, idle words. Note that “paroles en l’air” means idle words or empty promises, “en l’air” also means in other context “up in the air”), the work of Brigitte Brandeau in a group exhibit at La Madeleine.

In this work Brigitte is exploring how text disappears behind its shadows. The text (made of copper) is hanging in the air, a floating panel, projected on a white background. One can’t read the copper words; in fact they don’t even really look like words but the projected shadow does look like, “is” text. It reminded me of these old handwritten letters, with a fading ink. Brigitte told me how she was aiming to explore the ephemeral nature of the text which does not “really” exist, while its shadows seems more “real”. I won’t get into a discussion about the notion of reality (it’ll take us too far, and this has been an on-going discussion for centuries) but I was really intrigued by this approach as in my work with Anca Metiu on writing and correspondences, we’ve been looking at writing as a trace and as an objectifying process. Brigitte’s notion of text (close for me to the work of Blanchot) also reminded me some previous posts on literary texts as creating a space for the reader. (Once again we could have a very long discussion on the notion of text, esp. literary text, but it will take us far away from the issues - already broad - discussed in this blog).

It also made a lot of sense for our work with Aileen as while by projecting text on semi-transparent panels we were aiming to create a “physical” space for people to walk through, Brigitte by projecting a “physical” text made of copper made it disappear in front of its shadow. Yet in both cases, we all worked with materials. Brigitte told me about the tenuous work of writing the text with copper and it reminded me of our work with the wires, fabrics, projectors and ladders…

If you’re in Paris, stop by. Verticale Rouge is at the end of the Church, on the right.

As a follow up to the discussion started with my post on the project, Taking From, Leaving in, Moving on, I thought that the installation “Waste Not” by the Beijing artist Song Dong is very relevant. It is currently at MOMA. I saw it last Friday before leaving for London.

The installation consists of objects collected by Song Dong’s mother during 50 years. “The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.”My first thoughts were for the concept of materiality, of evocative objects, of the importance of “stuff” in our lives when I first came in the space. My second thought was “His mother did not move!”. I had thrown so much before moving to London, and had been throwing so much before (which is hard for me who tend to get attached to objects, and who love my books - these I don’t throw them. I left a few behind, but only a few and I keep shipping them… ). It also reminded me Yasmine’s post: All what I own or another post by Yasmine: How much does home takes?

These are issues we started exploring with Aileen in a curating collaboration on neo-nomads, evocative objects and a sense of place, with Baseera Kahn at Rotunda Gallery planned for March 2011 (I know it seems far away… to us too! but it’s an exciting project. We’ll keep you posted).

al

I could relate something from the movie “The Matrix”. A virtual world and how things happens inside. I liked it and interested in research on this new idea on depicting virtual interactions in to physical world…I will do some more analysis and come some other time to understand in detail and see how ideas live in this virtual world…

Here’s an interesting piece of work that really points to a lot of what we have been talking about- the materiality of the virtual…

http://www.jeanshin.com/textile.htm

Friday, Aileen and I were talking about the visitor account that is available on a computer at the installation site and how it was changing the affordances of the blog space - in this case increasing propinquity, and decreasing privacy. Interesting to see how a blog which is usually seen as public by essence has in fact degrees of privacy… Interesting also to increase propinquity (”traffic”) by adding an access in a physical location - as if the installation was becoming an extension of the blog, a door to its conversation space.

This blog was conceived as a semi-public space with a certain number of contributors who can write posts, while others can only post comments. We decided to create this account for visitors to interact with the maze and “build the space with their words” and suddenly the space changed with a diversity of potential authors and discursive practices - shorter messages, some “chat” style on the day of the opening night (the maze had then become a giant bulleting board), and others related to the experience of the space (the latests posts are more of this type).

One person mentioned to us if we were not willing to have these visitors’ posts posted on another page; he was worried that it might kill the discussion between the original contributors. We thought of it but Aileen and I agreed that it was part of the experiment and that it would be great if visitors read some of the posts and posted comments, and that it will be also great if the contributors to the blog kept posting while the installation (and the blog consequently) is open to the public.

The reading of the visitors’ posts is also a great source of learning. To see how people interpret our work and what it evokes to them - in some cases, their views of space. One visitor added the tag “body”: it was interesting that despite many of the discussions we had on this blog about materiality (particularly on how virtual was not synonym to immaterial), about sensory experiences, this tag had not been created.

This maze is not confusing to the body, but it is to the mind.

Melchior

A few pictures taken by Hiroyuki Futawatari yesterday as we were working in the space.In some ways, the process is very new to me, in other ways it does remind me a lot of analyzing qualitative data… Tinkering, playing out with ideas / “stuff” … keeping an open mind and seeing how meaning emerges…

Thanks Hiro!

While reading Yasmine’s post on the situationists and the “psychogeographical” maps (February 2nd), it reminded me of a book by Latour, Paris, Invisible City.

In this book which mixes photos and texts, Latour takes on a journey beyond “Paris, the City of Light”, reminding us how beneath the surface, there are always much more going on and highlighting the complex networks of people, artifacts and socio-material practices that “make” a city. This is a great exercise of “thick description” (Geertz, 1973).  It reminds me also of Becker’s description of art worlds (1982): Artistic work, like all human activities, depends on the joint activity of a number of people. Producing an artwork requires more than just an artist; it requires an idea, a manufacturing/distributing network, time, money, “support” apparatus, an audience, critics, training, and civil order (Becker, 1982).

In some ways, Aileen and I are also aiming to develop a “thick description”, a good understanding of  the relationships between physical spaces, virtual spaces and interactions. (more…)

The blog was started as a “companion” to the installation project we are working on with Aileen and that will be presented at NYU-Poly from March 5 to March 27 (BTW, thanks Yasmine for the nice post on Neo-Nomad). It is interesting to me that this blog has taken an existence of its own and several of you have mentioned to me that the conversation should be maintained after the installation.

To tell you the truth, I never thought of when to stop it. Now I got really into the discussion and I believe we should keep the discussion going, although we might want to reframe the terms of the discussion - how I don’t know; that requires some more thinking.

What I wanted to do today was reflect about the process, talk about the installation project as an intellectual scaffolding process. It started with this idea of presenting some of my research ideas, and in fact combining two streams of my research - hence it was more than mere presentation, it was already combination. This could be understood (and I originally  conceived it as…) as a translation exercise: an attempt to use a different medium, a different language game - art rather than peer review publishing.

This relationship, the nature of the collaboration has evolved into a dialogue. As I started working with Aileen, and as I have to explain her what I was trying to present (and Aileen can be tough sometime! thanks though for all these hard questions which pushed my thinking forward), my ideas evolved and the relationship between them too.

Aileen also made suggestions for the installation per se that led me to start thinking of what it meant at a conceptual level. Hence, I started thinking by drawing, sketching, taping on the floor, climbing on ladders and moving projectors. This is perfect for someone with an interest in materiality (which started with my interest with the materiality of the paper flight strips used by the air traffic controllers)! I cannot help thinking of the prototyping workshops with the computer scientists, engineers and air traffic controllers during the Cameleon project and this is a wonderful experience.

The ideas are still evolving and I am not sure how I will write the paper that will correspond to the installation. Yet, the installation has forced me to specify the concepts; it also has led me to uncover the different layers of meaning involved in this work. The blog and the discussions have also helped a lot. It is for me another interesting element to add to my thinking about the role of writing for knowledge sharing and development (that’s another project I have with Anca Metiu looking at the power of writing through a historical analysis of correspondences - Einstein, Descartes, Virginia Woolf, Mme du Chatelet, Kafka, Hudson Bay Company and East India Company… That’s another story… More on that topic another time).

Thanks to all.

Cheers,

al