Détournement

RELATED TERMS: Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt); Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange; Psychogeography; Situationist International Within the practice of designing narrative environments, détournement may usefully be articulated with ontological metalepsis, as a creative and critical technique. Détournement is the reuse of preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble. It has been a constantly present tendency of theContinue reading “Détournement”

Design Practice and Functionalism

RELATED TERMS: Co-Design; Creative Thinking; Critical Thinking; Design History; Design of Narrative Environments; Latour; Modernism; Modernity; Ontological Designing; Philosophy; Postmodernism; Practice; Product Design and Industrial Design; Theoretical Practice; User-Centred and User-Driven Design; Utopia and Utopian Thinking; Design practices lie at an intersection. They intersect social practices taking place within, while re-shaping, public space; commercial practicesContinue reading “Design Practice and Functionalism”

Dérive

RELATED TERMS: Alienation effect – Verfremdungseffekt; Avant-garde movements; Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange; Detournement; Method and methodology; Psychogeography; Situationist International In Debord’s theorisation of Situationism, dérive, détournement and psychogeography are closely aligned practices. Dérive translates literally as drifting but it is a more active and purposefully disorienting strategy than this rather neutral term suggests. DebordContinue reading “Dérive”

Computer Science

RELATED TERMS: Interaction; Interaction design; Taxonomy Paul Dourish (2004) brings to attention Matthew Chalmers’ observation that computer science is based on philosophical assumptions and arguments that were prevalent before the 1930s. Dourish continues, “Computer-science in practice involves reducing high-level behaviors to low-level, mechanical explanations, formalizing them through pure scientific rationality; in this, computer science revealsContinue reading “Computer Science”

First Things First Manifesto

RELATED TERMS: Ken Garland wrote and proclaimed the First Things First manifesto in 1963 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. It was first published in January 1964. Co-signed by 21 colleagues, the manifesto proposed that design effort should re-directed, away from advertising towards more worthwhile, purposeful activities. A second version, entitled First Things First 2000,Continue reading “First Things First Manifesto”

Modernism and Avant-Garde Art Practices

RELATED TERMS: Modernism; Avant-garde movements; Socially engaged art; Critical thinking; Agonism and avant-gardism; Dissensus – Ranciere Design practice has long been influenced by art practice, and vice versa, for example, the minimalism of the 1960s and 1970s influenced graphic and industrial design, in one direction, while modernist art of the early 20th century incorporated designedContinue reading “Modernism and Avant-Garde Art Practices”

Modernism

RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Design History; Postmodernism; Utopia and Utopian thinking; Design practice and functionalism; Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange; Modernity; Dasein; Everyday Eagleton (2021) states that, “Modernism is among other things a crisis of narration, as the world ceases to be story-shaped. History is no longer informed by the plot once known as progress.Continue reading “Modernism”

Agonism and Design

RELATED TERMS: Agon; Khora or Chora Originally developed in relation to the work of artists and architects by Jane Rendell (2006), critical spatial practice has since expanded to include discourse among designers, geographers, planners, landscape architects, activists and philosophers.  According to Max Willis (2019), three core principles of agonism, in relation to design practices, canContinue reading “Agonism and Design”

Feminist Spatial Practices

RELATED TERMS: Spatial Practices As Schalk et al (2017) note, spatial practices is a broad term for architectural, artistic, design and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices engaged in studying and transforming space. Feminism, because feminist politics believes that things can be otherwise and that they can be changed, offers an optimistic outlook on the future.Continue reading “Feminist Spatial Practices”