Practice-based ontological design for multiplying realities

This text argues that a practice-based notion of ontological design is useful for designers to transform the politics of the already designed world. The text analyzes three approaches to the philosophical concept of ontology and suggests that a Science and Technology Studies approach focused on observing ontologies in practice provides pragmatic potential for designers to intervene in public controversies. The author’s case study of a contested airport expansion demonstrates that this approach can sensitize the designer to multiple realities, identify ‘where’ the ontological infrastructure of a problem is located, and define ‘what’ design is needed to transform a controversy. The text uses these findings to propose principles of practice-based ontological design that can support designers who are seeking to transform the world into a series of situated controversies.Keywords: ontological design, ontological politics, design intervention

Towards a Typology of Design in relation to Prisons

This working paper addresses the ambiguity around systems in design by developing a tentative socio-material framework for categorising systems articulation within design. It suggests that there is not a single systems design approach, but that there are multiple articulations that are divided as to “how to know systems” and “what systems are composed of”. The paper suggests that there needs to be much more clarity and specificity about what kind of system is assumed or intended to be designed. It identifies that visualisation is the dominant mode of engaging with systems, which reinforces the notion of systems as knowable. In contrast, there are other approaches to systems that suggest they can be transformed directly. Finally, the paper argues that systems thinking is changing design, becoming a knowledge practice and knowledge broker, which has distanced design from its material impacts on the world

The politics of metadesign

This is a conceptual paper that explores the notion of metadesign which is premised on redesigning design itself. It interrogates the claim that metadesign is ‘open’, ‘fluid’ and ‘democratising’ by analysing its literature and practices. The paper makes two arguments. First, that metadesign is a theoretical power grab that prioritises language at the expense of material design which separates it from other design approaches. Second, that metadesign currently does not offer conceptual tools for observing and analysing the politics of real-world metadesign. If metadesign wants to be a democratising force, then it needs to question its legacy of transcendent language and engage with metadesign in practice and the politics it enacts in the world. Metadesign must shift towards ‘practice-based metadesign’ and work with concepts from Science and Technology Studies such as ‘infrastructural inversion’ to observe the politics of infrastructure and destabilise assumptions about discourse as immaterial and structures as material

Close to the surface: Digital Presence

Symposium and exhibition held at the ICA by FADE (Fine Art in the Digital Environment)as part of the AHRC funded project 'The Personalised Surface within Fine Art Digital Printmaking' . A series of presentations and a panel discussion regarding the use of digital processes in art practice

Bio Mapping: How can we use emotion to articulate cities?

How does the city make us feel, and how can we use our feelings to make cities? The text explores what emotion can 'do' when its measurement and articulation are organised using different methods. The text explores the difference between two ways of mapping emotion that both use physiological sensor technologies in relation to the city. One is an art project that uses body sensors to allow people to articulate their relationship with the environment, while the technocratic approach uses sensors and crowdsourced data to build an emotion layer for urban planning. While using similar technologies, the projects build radically different social and political relations with the environment. The study suggests that research only matters when it arouses 'interest' in others and create unexpected connections

Insurrection training for post-human politics

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to articulate an ontological anarchist approach for an engaged post-human politics and present insurrection training as a pragmatic tool for researchers to directly transform the world. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses how post-humanism has been criticised for dissolving political agency. It shows that this is due to the way post-humanism has been framed as sensitising and including non-humans into liberal politics. Instead, the paper examines anarchist-influenced post-humanism and combines this with the notion of multiple ontologies and ontological interventions. The paper presents the notion of insurrection training as offering the possibility for researchers to become emotionally sensitised to ontological difference. A case study of the "Seeds of Hope East Timor Ploughshares action" (1996) is used to illustrate what insurrection training and ontological interventions look like in practice. Finally, the paper makes suggestions as to how post-human researchers can apply this approach in their everyday lives. Findings The paper suggests that beyond a liberal framing of post-humanism as inclusion, there is also an ontological anarchist post-humanism that can support transformative impacts in the world. This form of post-humanism offers specificity of intervention and reflexive training practices. Insurrection training can offer new possibilities for post-humanist researchers: experience ontological difference, de-trivialise the everyday, connect to social movements, make post-human politics "doable" and offer "direct" change. Originality/value The paper addresses discussions that claim post-humanism is disabling political change. Its contribution is to map an anarchist post-humanism and extend this with concepts of multiple ontologies. It proposes the notion of insurrection training which places attention on the role of the researcher as an active agent that needs to be sensitised to ontological difference to carry out interventions. A case study of direct action illustrates what ontological intervention and insurrection training look like in practice. The case study suggests that insurrection training is an everyday performative practice that integrates and negotiates the personal, material and political. Finally, the paper suggests how researchers can adopt such an approach in their everyday lives

Program or be Programmed? Teaching algorithmic principles to future designers

This paper reflects on the development of a unit about algorithmic design in the context of a new undergraduate design course at the Open University in the UK. The paper investigates how to teach algorithmic design and explores what content should be taught by carrying out a literature review of pedagogical approaches and offers reflections on their implementation in the course. The review reveals that there is currently no accepted framework for teaching algorithmic design but highlights the widespread argument for teaching a programming language. What differentiates the approaches is how one teaches programming, whether as a technical tool or as an expressive and cultural medium. The Open University unit aims to teach algorithmic principles via a student project that uses code to design wallpaper for their home. By situating computation within the student’s own domestic context, the unit seeks to foster the development of personal judgment, sensitivity, and novel forms of algorithmic innovation. The paper aims to provide insights for design educators who are developing similar courses through face-to-face instruction or distance learning methods and presents a challenge to explore ways of using design pedagogy to situate algorithmic design within people’s lives

ECSA’s characteristics of citizen science

This document attempts to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set.The characteristics outlined below are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. Our aim is to identify the characteristics that should be considered when setting such criteria (e.g. a funding scheme), and we call upon readers to determine which subset of these characteristics is relevant to their own specific context and aims. These characteristics build on (and refer to) the ECSA 10 principles of citizen science as a summary of best practice – and projects are expected to engage meaningfully with them. Where it is especially pertinent, we refer to them in the characteristics below

Mapping and sensing Dewey’s Situations as design and social science methods

This exploratory paper proposes the use of pragmatist philosophy as a methodological bridge between design and the social sciences. It develops John Dewey’s ecological notion of the ‘situation’ into two design methods for mapping and sensing situations. The first method, called ‘mapping situations’ is based on Adele Clarke's concept of ‘situational mapping’ and aims to pinpoint actor relations, concealed power dynamics, and areas for intervention. The second method, ‘sensing situations’ helps to develop a deeper understanding of a situation through embodied experience. The combination of these cognitive and affective methods offers a holistic approach to deal with complexity and ambiguity. The potential of these methods is to use Dewey’s situation as a shared unit of analysis that allows designers and social scientists to work together and address problems in new and innovative ways that go beyond the limits of their respective fields

Taxonomy of environmental sensing in smart cities

This chapter analyses the impact of six sensing devices derived from smart cities and the Internet of Things and suggests they are creating novel environmental practices. These practices depart radically from the commonly held epistemological paradigm that environmental data lead to environmental knowledge. Instead the chapter outlines a variety of surprising practices that these devices enable. These findings suggest a need to reconsider the rhetoric used to describe these devices and an urgency for further ethnographic research on the practices and ethics of environmental sensing in smart cities