In a state of ontological crisis, all boundaries
have been ruptured between nature and culture, human and machine, and
object and subject. We find ourselves exhaustively tackling the turmoil
of our own designed circumstances, as we emerge to become extensions of
the extensions that we built.
In this practice-based design
theory project, the authors share their experiments in negotiating power
with things, hacking mundane objects, and thus their own everyday
lives, allowing themselves to be swayed and misled, disrupted and called
into question.
The experiments delineate a mode of critical
cultural inquiry where design and sociology collide to elicit critical
perspectives on the ‘designer’ and the ‘designed’ as we act within an
entangled politics of things.
- Political agency of things
- Design as critical praxis
- Praxis-based design theory
Michelle Christensen & Florian Conradi, University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) / Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)