Björn Franke News - Projects - Research - Teaching - Biography
Visual Culture and Visual Research Methods The contemporary world is dominated by the constant flow of images in form of billboards, television and magazines. The World Wide Web has revolutionised the way in which we produce and communicate through images but we very rarely stand back form this constant flow of images and inquire the nature and working mechanisms of this visual culture. This seminar will provide a critical introduction to the history, research methods and central debates within the field of visual studies. Central questions are: What is an image? How do we perceive and understand images? What kind of knowledge can we derive from images and how can we transfer knowledge through them? How can we gain knowledge through the production of images? These questions will be explored through a series of lectures and a sustained engagement with selected texts and films about images, vision, visuality and visual objects.
Contemporary Issues in Design This seminar investigates the theoretical foundations of design and design practice as well as current issues and future directions of design. The theoretical analysis includes design as social action, design and responsibility, sociology of objects and cognitive design processes. Current issues in design such as participatory design, customisation, design activism and critical design will be approached through an analysis of literature and design projects. The seminar provides a forum to develop skills in design research and thinking which allows to understand the various factors that shape design activity, research, teaching and outcomes.
Thinking Objects and Thinking Things This seminar aims to explore the relationship between objects, things and thought processes. The topic is approached form various perspectives in philosophy, science and technology studies and cognitive science. Drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, Michel Serres, Bruno Latour and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, we will explore concepts, such as epistemic things, boundary objects, quasi-objects and thinking things. We furthermore will relate these conceptions to approaches in the cognitive sciences, such as disputed cognition, the extended mind hypothesis and activity theory. The aim of the seminar is to understand of the role of things and objects in thought processes and how this relates to investigative design practise.
Sustaining What?
Design, Technology and Society Since the Greek myths of Prometheus and Pandora’s Box, the relationship with technology and the human aspiration to manipulate and control nature has been problematic. On the one hand it is only through technologies that humans can emerge from nature and on the other hand this technologically created second nature often threatens the very existence of the human being. These threats are often less single technologies or technological artefacts but large scale technological systems fuelled through bureaucratic thinking that assemble what Lewis Mumford has called megamachines: the nuclear arms race for example ran almost autonomously. This seminar aims to develop an understanding of the relationship between technology and society. Drawing on perspectives from history, anthropology, sociology and philosophy, the seminar explores the co-evolutionary aspects between technology and society.
The Politics of Artefacts The world that we live in is to a large extent the product of deliberate planning and construction. The built objects and environment that surround us strongly condition our actions, experiences, and sense of personal and collective possibilities. This seminar explores the relationship between the design of artefacts and the quality of social and political life. It investigates the social, cultural and political origins of designs and ways in which political ideas are represented in design. The inquiry is interdisciplinary, drawing on approaches from social science, philosophy, engineering, industrial design, architecture, urban planning, and information systems. In this seminar we explore the nature of things and political realm from the perspective of things – or rather politics as things – which Bruno Latour has called Dingpolitik.
The Future, the Possible and the New
Dream Houses and Utopian Homes The home has been the manifestation of a technological utopia throughout the twentieth century and has been immortalised in the ‘Monsanto House of the Future’ in Disneyland, the US TV series ‘The Jetsons’ or the famous ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Houses of the future are mainly a spectacularisation new technologies for marketing and advertising purposes of a society that is obsessed with the future and the latest gadgets. They mainly use clichés and stereotypical consumers and reinforce the status quo rather than exploring new aesthetic possibilities for human interaction. This course explores past and present manifestations of the ‘future’ in the home and aims to critique the blind faith and belief in technological progress as well as the underlying technorhetoric of the ‘better future’ in science, marketing and advertising. We examine the relationship between real human needs and marketing of new technologies and will explore alternative aesthetic possibilities to use technology in the home.
Parasites It is through an understanding of the operation of a host that a parasite can co-exist and adapt to its environment. The parasite does not attempt to change its host through destruction since its own survival depends on the existence of its host. It instead must learn to adapt to changes in the host’s structure. The task is to take an existing artefact or spatial situation and modify it, so that the existing function of the object or space is significantly improved, or that it enables access to resources which were previously inaccessible, or that it provides a completely new function or viewpoint.
The Experiential Dinner The restaurant Dialogue in the Dark in Hamburg creates an extraordinary atmosphere for the customer by being completely dark. Virtually blindfolded, the customers see neither the food nor any of the dinner guests and therefore have to experience the dinner through other senses. Design a concept for a dining event that, similar to the aforementioned example, provides an original experience through a singular factor for the customer. The task is to specify the factor and the resulting experience and develop the design around that, for example, by adding or subtracting something from the usual dining experience.
A Room of One's Own The mass market consumer culture often neglects the complex needs as humans which are often treated as impersonal users or consumers. Real humans, however, may require more specific and unique objects and spaces beyond customisation, which acknowledges their complexities, contradictions and irrationality. For this project we will design a space for a person with a mental affliction (hypochondria, panic disorders, paranoia, or similar) by considering the space as a retreat within the person’s home where the affliction can be exhibited or relief can be found.
Living with Robots In near future, keeping live animals as pets may become obsolete, as they will be replaced by robotic pets: no more hamsters accidentally flushed down the toilet or dogs given as Christmas gifts abandoned on roadsides. Robotic pets may learn tricks; they do not require to be fed and they can be simply shut off during family vacations. Robots, however, may replace not only pets but also family members or they may bring furniture to live. What kind of environment will emerge from this new form of interaction? What kind of robots will there be? Will they be based on existing forms of life, objects and machines or will there be new forms?
The Subversive Tourist As an outsider, one only gets glimpses of what a city is truly about; we can but speculate how the city really works, what secrets it holds, what strange technologies are embedded in its infrastructure, who and what goes where and why. Consider a very particular kind of tourist – an explorer – who actively seeks out to investigate the hidden networks (e.g. electronic, transportation, social, political) of the city. This tourist would find stimulation and nourishment in infrastructures which are off-limits to the casual visitor. The task is to design a transformer for a subversive tourist, that changes 'negative' aspects of the city into 'positive' experiences. The transformer should be considered in abstract terms, as a device, machine or kit, which changes something and has an input and an output.
© 2004 - 2010 Björn Franke |
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