The idea that technologies influence society—both positively and negatively—is not new. This is mainly the terrain of the philosophy and the ethics of technolo-gy research. Similarly, design research aims to help create new technologies in line with individual, social, and societal needs and values. Against this backdrop, it seems essential to expose relations between design and philosophy of tech-nology research, particularly from a methodological perspective. The main goal of this paper is to suggest a preliminary overview of methods and approaches that can inspire and inform interdisciplinary collaboration and, with that, sys-tematic engagement with ethics in design processes. Through interdisciplinary exchange, we propose a preliminary typology of ethics-informed methods and approaches based on two main dimensions, namely theory-grounded approaches to theoretically-flexible techniques and assessment to accompaniment. This mapping intends to help navigate the ethical qualities of selected methods from both disciplines, and it aims to create a platform for fruitful interdisciplinary conversations.
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EU president Ursula von der Leyen wants Europe to tap into its inner avant-garde. In her inaugural State of the Union speech from September 16, 2020, she pledged to revive the historical Bauhaus - the experimental art school that married artistic form with functional design, founded a century ago in Weimar, Germany. Their objective was to democratize the experience of aesthetics and design through affordable commodity objects for the masses. Today, the European Union sees a chance to create a new common aesthetic born out of a need to renovate and construct more energy-efficient buildings. “I want NextGenerationEU to kickstart a European renovation wave and make our Union a leader in the circular economy,” von der Leyen said. The new Bauhaus is not just an environmental or economic project, “it needs to be a new cultural project for Europe. Every movement has its own look and feel. And we need to give our systemic change its own distinct aesthetic—to match style with sustainability. This is why we will set up a New European Bauhaus—a co-creation space where architects, artists, students, engineers, designers work together to make that happen. This is shaping the world we want to live in. A world served by an economy that cuts emissions, boosts competitiveness, reduces energy poverty, creates rewarding jobs and improves quality of life. A world where we use digital technologies to build a healthier, greener society.”
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This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
Fashion has become inextricably linked with digital culture. Digital media have opened up new spaces of fashion consumption that are unprecedented in their levels of ubiquity, immersion, fluidity, and interactivity. The virtual realm continuously needs us to design and communicate our identity online. Unfortunately, the current landscape of digitised fashion practices seems to lack the type of self-governing attitude and urgency that is needed to move beyond commercially mandated platforms and systems that effectively diminish our digital agency. As transformative power seems to be the promise of the virtual, there is an inherent need to critically assess how digital representation of fashion manifests online, especially when these representations become key mediators within our collective and individual public construction of self. A number of collectives and practitioners that actively shape a counter movement, organized bottom up rather than through capital, are questioning this interdependence, applying inverted thinking and experimenting with alternative modes of engagement. Starting from the research question ‘How can critical fashion practitioners introduce and amplify digital agency within fashion’s virtual landscape through new strategies of aesthetic engagement?’, this project investigates the implications of fashion’s increasing shift towards the virtual realm and the ramifications created for digital agency. It centers on how identity is understood in the digital era, whether subjects have full agency while expected to construct multiple selves, and how online environments that enact as playgrounds for our identities might attribute to a distorted sense of self. By using the field of critical fashion as its site, and the rapidly expanding frontier of digital counter practices as a lens, the aim of this project is to contribute to larger changes within an increasingly global and digital society, such as new modes of consumerism, capital and cultural value.
In the past decade additive manufacturing has gained an incredible traction in the construction industry. The field of 3D concrete printing (3DCP) has advanced significantly, leading to commercially viable housing projects. The use of concrete represents a challenge because of its environmental impact and CO2 footprint. Due to its material properties, structural capacity and ability to take on complex geometries with relative ease, concrete is and will remain for the foreseeable future a key construction material. The framework required for casting concrete, in particular non-orthogonal geometries, is in itself wasteful, not reusable, contributing to its negative environmental impact. Non-standard, complex geometries generally require the use of moulds and subsystems to be produced, leading to wasteful, material-intense manufacturing processes, with high carbon footprints. This research proposal bypasses the use of wasteful scaffolding and moulds, by exploring 3D printing with concrete on reusable substructures made of sand, clay or aggregate. Optimised material depositing strategies for 3DCP will be explored, by making use of algorithmic structural optimisation. This way, material is deposited only where structurally needed, allowing for further reduction of raw-material use. This collaboration between Neutelings Riedijk Architects, Vertico and the Architectural Design and Engineering Chair of the TU Eindhoven, investigates full-scale additive manufacturing of spatially complex 3D-concrete printed components using multi-material support systems (clay, sand and aggregates). These materials can be easily shaped multiple times into substrates with complex geometries, without generating material waste. The 3D concrete printed full-scale prototypes can be used as lightweight façade elements, screens or spatial dividers. To generate waterproof components, the cavities of the extruded lattices can be filled up with lightweight clay or cement. This process allows for the exploration of new aesthetic, creative and circular possibilities, complex geometries and new material expressions in architecture and construction, while reducing raw-material use and waste.
