term 2

making sense & meaning

the distributive nature of design - "thomas diez"

Economic growth was influenced by various processes. At the beginning, significant changes occurred due to technological revolution and industrialization. Convenience and imprudent buying also contribute to capitalism. Because when we consciously decide to buy, wear or use something, we unconsciously support the production or company. But economic growth cannot be infinite, because the scarcity of raw materials is a reality, as well as cheap labor and illegal trade. It is important to understand that we can influence many things with design and that we should understand it and not exploit it. Design should help to involve the user in the life cycle through distributed design for example. Distributed design doesn't have to happen only in big companies, it can also happen in neighborhoods or makerspaces like the "Fadlab". It is said to be opensource and accessible to all. Initiatives to support traditional business development systems and communities are supported, as well as models that allow relationships to develop between different people. For example, through digital fabrication with artisanal and instrumental production processes, competence development and resilience can be continued. FULL ARTICLE

• “Our existence happens thanks to a series of design decisions at a personal and collective level on a larger scale.”

• “Every design decision generates economic, social, ecological, and even geological changes on a planetary scale”.

• “Distributed Design allows us to bring the principles of digital revolutions in communications and computing to the production and consumption of products.”

• “Distributing design means designing a democratic and conscious tool to empower innovators, creators, citizens, and people with ideas to make their individual and collective dreams come true.”

• „Design is the most powerful tool we have as a human species, and it must be accessible to all.”

• “Let’s embed a new distributive nature in Design and let it propagate through our networks.”

steps to an ecology of mind - "gregory bateson"

This book is about bridging the facts of life and behavior in combination with what we know about the nature of patterns and order. Many try to build a bridge between behavioral and physical and chemical sciences, even though behavior cannot be described in terms of mass and length (physical forces). Common adjectives in behavioral science are: ego, fear, instinct, intention, mind, self, intelligence, stupidity, and maturity, but these are very different. Science had no conscious goal for his knowledge. It works by two essential aspects: the observations cannot be denied and the bases must fit. Data is a reliable source of information for scientists, such as that of the scientist Shannon, who established information theory, which deals with concepts such as information and entropy, information transmission, data compression and coding, and related topics. How did ideas come together? Was there a natural selection of which ideas die out? According to the origin myth of the Judeo-Christian peoples, that God created the sky and then light on the dry planet, he called the light day and the darkness night and after the darkness came the first day, then water gathered in the sky and God called the planet earth and the water around sea. Problems of modern science were already hinted at in the first verses of the thundering prose: The problem of the origin and nature of matter is summarily dismissed / The passage deals at length with the problem of the origin of order / A separation is thus generated between the two sorts of problem. / Order is seen as a matter of sorting and dividing. / Closely linked with the sorting and dividing is the mystery of classification, to be followed later by the extraordinary human achievement of naming. / In conclusion, the question whether the basic loading of science and philosophy was gained by inductive reasoning from empirical data is not simple! FULL ARTICLE

• “I have said vaguely that any study which throws light upon the nature of "order" or "pattern" in the universe is surely nontrivial.”

• “By use of this diagram, it became clear that a difference between my habits of thought and those of my students sprang from the fact that they were trained to think and argue inductively from data to hypotheses but never to test hypotheses against knowledge derived by deduction from the fundamentals of science or philosophy."

• “Always there is a transformation or recoding of the raw event which intervenes between the scientist and his object.”

• “…energy expended in behavior must surely be included in this budget; therefore it seemed sensible to think of energy as a determinant of behavior.”

• “But mental process, ideas, communication, organization, differentiation, pattern, and so on, are matters of form rather than substance.”

design as participation - "kevin slavin"

It's about understanding the designer not as the center of the system but as a participant and designing entire systems in combination with other forces, ideas and events. Mies, an architect who says that everything is perfect until someone uses it and designs and changes it himself, so he designed his products so that you can't change and mess up much. The first official user might be Don Norman at Apple, who brought the term "User Centered Design - UCD" to life, which means the interface between physical interaction and design. Here the word user includes drivers, passengers, authors, customers, readers and so on. "User centered design" is concerned with addressing a user's wants, needs and inaccessibilities and adapting the design to them (which don norman invented and is still of great importance today). Through the cognitions about wishes and the behavior of the users, some things became really famous. But if we focus too much on the users, we forget the needs of the actors of other systems. Like buying online at "Amazon" or food services like "Uber-eats" or "Getier" we don't get anything from the work, logistics or the cook and so on. Big companies build these complicated systems which they then have to hide so that the concentration is on the user. Fun palace from price was more like a system with an unstable behavior, which is unpredictable and indeterminate. His architecture was more than a contemporary of cybernetics and he did not design for the user (ucd) but for all uses he did not know. Another example is a building made of hi-fi materials that is virtually made of earth and can be composted again, with almost no waste, energy consumption and carbon emissions, which means that it participates in the built environment, as well as the environment, the gardens, the production, agriculture, etc.. FULL ARTICLE

• “You’re Not Stuck In Traffic You Are Traffic”

• “If a user spends more time with something, it’s better than something they spend less time with.”

• “When the methodologies of design and science infect one another, however, design is not just a framework for participants, but something that is also, itself, participating.”

• “In other words, it’s not as simple as making sure that people are participating with the building rather, the building is explicitly designed to participate in the built environment around it, as well as the natural environment beyond it, …”

stephanie hankey: tactical tech

Stephany Halker is working with another guy and create the : “Berlin duo help you hide your digital foodprints” Also she is focusing on the different kind of meanings of design. Design as intervention :Creating spaces (for people who come together), not just digital things, mostly analog. Design as invitation: Visual storytelling, design as agitation: Visual Investigation & curation, design as Provocation: Conversation & discovery and design as design as catalyst: rethinking models.MORE INFO

a history of the world in seven cheap things - "jason w. moore"

The 21st century was a time of "abrupt and irreversible" changes in the web of life, Earth scientists call it a state change. It is easier for most people to imagine the end of the planet than the end of capitalism. The speed and scale of today's destruction cannot be inferred from the activities of our knuckle-dragging ancestors. Consider this relationship as a sign of cheap nature through much genetic manipulation meat is altered, chickens can walk less, are larger and mature faster. Chickens don't emit co2 unlike cows, but they need a lot of fuel to keep them and so cheap chickens get cheap energy. The social struggles over nature, money, labor, care, food, energy, and life that come with the poultry bones of the Capitalocene are one reason why the most iconic symbol of the modern era is not the car or the smartphone, but the Chicken McNugget.

A brief guide to humans and nature be fore capitalism

In the past, new towns were built everywhere and a growing part of the population, about one fifth, was engaged in non-agricultural activities. But after some time there were heavy rains, waves of refugees, cold spells, heat waves, and thus the harvest became more difficult and worse. When the weather turned, this triggered a cascade of failures that spread through a class system that forced soil depletion and starvation, killing millions of people. Then, as now, it was really a question of power. Thus, family formation and population growth are not determined by an eternal reproductive instinct, but by a variety of historical conditions that depend on culture, class, and land availability. With changing climate and growing population comes increasing malnutrition. Food shortages at the end of the Medieval Warm Period made European bodies more susceptible to disease, and the Black Death turned that susceptibility into an apocalypse. The Little Ice Age exposed the vulnerabilities of feudalism. Feudalism in the social sciences refers primarily to the social and economic form of the European Middle Ages, and it tended, like many agrarian civilizations, to exhaust its agro-ecological relationships.Feudalism depended on a growing population not only to produce food but also to reproduce lordly power, but peasant revolts threatened the feudal order. Although this was a blessing for most people, the percentage of the European population in the economic surplus was shrinking. The old order was broken and could no longer be maintained, and so capitalism emerged. East Asia was more prosperous, and although the rulers there also faced socio-ecological problems, they found ways to manage upheaval, deforestation, and resource scarcity on their own terms.

• “Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star, and yet they have done it” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

• "How do objective people choose which things they will be objective about?"

This book / Article was really refreshing and also very interesting how the capitalism growed and also how our human being develop. But also it makes me sad and I knew some things before but it some parts were really shocking. Also some question are popping up my mind like: Need of creating a new language? What is the difference between bitcoin vs. holochain? Where do we stop defining things? When do we stop boxing/limiting perceptions? When do we stop drawing borders? FULL ARTICLE

talks: Li Yu, Subedi Thakurata and Beno Juarez

We had three speakers the last class talking about western centric design. Li Yu from China, Subedi Thakurata from India and Beno Juarez from Chile. Why there is this separation? Because of people? Geography? Or Perspectives? It should be more about working together than separately, because each of us has its own positive aspects. “From competition to cooperation”. It makes no sense to work just individually, we are better and stronger together and also have more ideas and different perspectives and thoughts about projects. Article 1 Article 2 Article 3

abstract

What design means to me? For me, design has several definitions, which makes it exciting and changeable. On the one hand, design for me means a method of communication between things, which can be physical but do not have to be, and living beings. In the sense of communication between different things, because through design communication can be created or supported. For me design includes not only the design of beautiful 2d or 3d objects, but the efficient implementation of usability and application, where no human/animal with certain background, age, gender, religion etc. should be excluded. Through design, complex issues can be presented in a minimalistic and clear way, making them understandable for everyone, and easy to use, where a lot of research is involved.

Also, for me, design is not just about communication between different things, but design can also bring them together, such as through interaction. Also through other innovative processes in technology, information, transformation, communication, intelligence, understanding and co-creation. Design is rather a way of thinking, holisitsch to interpret and combine processes, understand and bring them across well. It encompasses the whole .

How can design help you to achieve your purpose? I thought about my role as a designer. When I first studied industrial product design I just thought about different kind of physical products, like kitchen tools, furniture or machines. And then I reflect that in this world full of different products you already have “enough”. Now I see my role as a designer different. Everything is connected with design, are these books, apps, furniture, labels, tools or pencils. I think design could be also a tool to bring people together, because design creates trust and let people get affected or are not interested in using/buying. With my skills on being a maker, empathetic and interested in psychology and my way of designing I want to be part of something and accompany or support good projects. I feel not only as a designer, but as a thinker or agent in change of many processes, things or societies. With design I want to create more sustainability, inspire people to go out of their comfort zone and create awareness.

How design can be used to transform your world? We need to understand that we have a lot of responsibility and can influence other lives by being part of the design of systems, products, interactions, spaces. So it is very important to understand the big picture, to think holistically and to take the community with us. It's not about designers standing alone and doing all the work, it's about being inspired and learning from each other. By involving other members in our design process, we gain further insight that we may not have noticed or considered. Also, through processes, we get to know the needs of the project and the users better. After all, we as designers can't get everything right on our own either. We only see/understand what we know/know and can design with that information, so it's important to research, but we have to realize that we can't grasp everything. Also by the whole information flow, like also Fake News we are flooded and do not know what is right and wrong. Therefore, design must be able to adapt to change and be resilient. Design is a means to not only be an observer but an active member of a change. It depends on us, who we are, what we do, if we want to be part of the system or drop out, how we decide to buy/do things, as well as our social, political, ideological or our attitudes.

essay

Introduction In this master, "Design for emergent futures", it's not just about creating beautiful and functional things but rather, we cover any future scenarios and deal with current issues. It is also about experiencing and understanding things first hand from a first person perspective, as well as getting radical and moving out of your comfort zone to make new discoveries and feel things directly. A lot of texts were read, documentaries were watched and projects were inspected. Also gained skills like Electronics, digital Fabrication and Storytelling which will be beneficial for future projects.

The course "Sense & Meaning" led by Thomas Diez aims to connect students and their projects to themselves as designers. This is done by questioning, challenging and learning from other professionals. We question ourselves about our present to understand what future we would like to achieve.

Importance of nature When we look back at the past, we hardly see things that we do nowadays the way we used to live, work and act. But I think it’s also important to take also good things from the past and not just invent new things and combine old and new. Each year we improve and also in the 21 century we not only need to take care of the needs of us, but also of our planet. We think we make it each year better, but forget about the basics and the nature, where we are coming from. Now we start directly caring about sustainability, because we forgot how to life with and within it. In the documentary “Kiss the earth” they said: “Our health is connected with the worlds health”. So the less we care and understand the importance of the connection the worse it gets and also the environment for our human being living. The soil gets more dead day by day, so we use more and more pesticides to produce, so the soil gets even more dead and because we are in a capitalism lifestyle where we always want to have all different kind of food products, we need to produce everywhere everything which is of course apart of the natural lifecycle. Also the pesticides the toxic goes into the ground water and then into our body and kills any kind of microorganism. Desertification is getting huge and will cause many upcoming refugees. Instead of healing first what we destroyed we destroy it even more. Growing concepts like “Permaculture” and understand the needs and problems, would already help, but for that is “no time”. Monoculture makes the soil dead, it’s better to plant permaculture and learn how to regenerate and safe the good soil. There is also not only one way to make these things run better, it is basically about making things more conscious and trying to understand. For example, planting is also about seasonal calendars, knowhow how to prevent and combat diseases/parasites, understanding about the varieties of soil and inform about the importance of soil and regeneration. Also there are different solutions of capturing carbon in soil with tropical forests, Managed grazing, Forest conservation, Peat lands, Plant each diet, Seaweed farming, Bamboo, Perennial biomass, Coastal wetlands, Green roofs and Biochar.

Reconnection to nature I would like to start here with a sentence from a speaker in the documentary called: “The need for human connection and why it starts with ourselves” from Molly Carroll, where she said: “you need to connect to yourself first and understand your feelings to understand them from others”. I would like to combine this sentence with the understanding of fellow human beings, but also of the environment/nature. Without knowing our personal needs, strengths and weaknesses, we cannot see or understand them in our surroundings. For example being more self-sufficient helps to understand the processes and effort of producing energy, food and other products to life. During our daily life we don’t really realise how much we are consuming, how things are being produced and which different types of products even exist. We are less and less conscious in our life and life in the fast mass production, where products we use get fast boring, are exchanged and thrown away easily. I want to appeal on being resilient, which means being an individual responding to problems and changings by adjusting our behaviours. Also connect this with the “Slow movement”, because at this team we tent to make everything fast and want more and more, which is also related to the topic being addicted to short term pleasures and have the bubble thinking, where you just life in your own bubble without understanding the opinions and behaviours of fellow human beings. It´s about fast fashion, fast food, fast tourism and so, which is first not good for the environment in different kind of aspects and also not good for the people and for yourself. You are living in your own bubble, don´t really understand what is happening surround you. Also I had this experience when I was working almost three years in a company, where I had similar tasks for 40 hours a week. After the work I was so tired and just wanted to move and make sports after sitting 8 hours at the computer or meet my friennds after being in my homeoffice having just telephone calls without camera. So I “didn´t” had time to for example red news, get to know my neighbors or forget about things. Living and taking things slow can connect your more again to food, your place/nature, life and people and also you. It could reduce short term pleasures and make you more conscious about things.

Inside of a humanbeing “You work more, have less free time and then buy things to reward yourself and create endorphins instead of doing directly what you feel like doing regardless of how much money you earn”, I would like to start this chapter with this sentence from the book “The café on the edge of the world” from the author John Strelecky. We are in a world, where we can be the authors of our life story. The work-life balance is not well coordinated. People have a dopamine overflow, people having more mentall illnesses (like depressions and burnout) and need more to be happy. We need more and more to be happy, also because we see all the possibilities and ways while watching pictures and videos on social media and compare us. People are getting egoistic, disconnected to nature, don’t understand the interrelationships and the importance of nature. Also Gregory Bateson was talking in his book “Ecology of mind” about different types of human behaviours and common adjectives like: : ego, fear, instinct, intention, mind, self, intelligence, stupidity and maturity.

What we can do as a designer „Design is the most powerful tool we have as a human species, and it must be accessible to all.”, I remembered this sentence from the book “The distributive nature of design” in collaboration with Thomas Diez. With design you can not only make things looking good, but also influence peoples life and also the worlds health, which thoughts are also included in the two sentences: “Our existence happens thanks to a series of design decisions at a personal and collective level on a larger scale.” and “Every design decision generates economic, social, ecological, and even geological changes on a planetary scale”. Design should be accessible for everyone, make things clear and helps thinking more holistic, because designer should not have the only responsibility of changing specific processes. More a tool or platform or device which communicate openly and well so that everyone understands topics. Also to gain people´s inner peace with justice (climate,...) and equality. Inner peace for me means, being satisfied with yourself, connected to the nature and empathic. Living in a biophilic coexistence, where we live in a conscious way together with the nature while including each other’s needs. Because like they said in the book “Design as participation” form Kevin Slavin: “But if we focus too much on the users, we forget the needs of the actors of other systems”.

At the moment there are many companies where the last stage is mass production. And through financial (because the banks have to give away money again through interest and taxes and have to bring more in), political (elections) and social (psychotherapy could be turned into a shopping strategy, how to explain to people how best to transform themselves (and buy things)) reasons where are addicted to this mass production.

All in all I think it would be very helpful to reconnect with the nature and our fellow human beings to gain a biophilic coexistence where we life together peacefully and helpfully instead of acting against each other.

Term 2