Growing volumes of wood are being used in construction, interior architecture, and product design, resulting in increasing amounts of wood waste. Using this waste is challenging, because it is too labor-intensive to process large volumes of uneven wood pieces that vary in geometry, quality, and origin. The project “Circular Wood for the Neighborhood” researches how advanced computational design and robotic production approaches can be used to create meaningful applications from waste wood. shifting the perception of circular wood as a simply harvested stream, towards a material with unique aesthetics of its own right. The complexity of the material is suggested to be tackled by switching from the object-oriented design towards designing soft systems. The system developed uses a bottom-up approach where each piece of wood aggregates according to certain parameters and the designed medium is mainly rule-sets and connections. The system is able to produce many options and bring the end-user for a meaningful co-design instead of choosing from the pre-designed options. Material-driven design algorithms were developed, which can be used by designers and end-users to design bespoke products from waste wood. In the first of three case studies, a small furniture item (“coffee table”) was designed from an old door, harvested from a renovation project. For its production, two principle approaches were developed: with or without preprocessing the wood. The principles were tested with an industrial robotic arm and available waste wood. A first prototype was made using the generated aggregation from the system, parametric production processes and robotic fabrication.
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Lives of Data maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big data, computing, and society in India. Data infrastructures are now more global than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically disparate and diverse contexts.Lives of Data emerged from research projects and workshops at the Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It brings together fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to set up a collaborative research agenda on computational cultures. The essays offer wide-ranging analyses of media and techno-scientific trajectories of data analytics, disruptive formations of digital economy, and the grounded practices of data-driven governance in India. Encompassing history, anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), media studies, civic technology, data science, digital humanities, and journalism, the essays open up possibilities for a truly situated global and sociotechnically specific understanding of the many lives of data.
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Computational thinking (CT) skills are crucial for every modern profession in which large amounts of data are processed. In K-12 curricula, CT skills are often taught in separate programming courses. However, without specific instructions, CT skills are not automatically transferred to other domains in the curriculum when they are developed while learning to program in a separate programming course. In modern professions, CT is often applied in the context of a specific domain. Therefore, learning CT skills in other domains, as opposed to computer science, could be of great value. CT and domain-specific subjects can be combined in different ways. In the CT literature, a distinction can be made among CT applications that substitute, augment, modify or redefine the original subject. On the substitute level, CT replaces exercises but CT is not necessary for reaching the learning outcomes. On the redefining level, CT changes the questions that can be posed within the subject, and learning objectives and assessment are integrated. In this short paper, we present examples of how CT and history, mathematics, biology and language subjects can be combined at all four levels. These examples and the framework on which they are based provide a guideline for design-based research on CT and subject integration.
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My research investigates the concept of permacomputing, a blend of the words permaculture and computing, as a potential field of convergence of technology, arts, environmental research and activism, and as a subject of future school curricula in art and design. This concept originated in online subcultures, and is currently restricted to creative coding communities. I study in what way permacomputing principles may be used to redefine how art and design education is taught. More generally, I want to research the potential of permacomputing as a critical, sustainable, and practical alternative to the way digital technology is being taught in art education, where students mostly rely on tools and techniques geared towards maximising productivity and mass consumption. This situation is at odds with goals for sustainable production and consumption. I want to research to what degree the concept of permacomputing can be broadened and applied to critically revised, sustainable ways of making computing part of art and design education and professional practice. This research will be embedded in the design curriculum of Willem de Kooning Academy, focused on redefining the role of artists and designers to contribute to future modes of sustainable organisation and production. It is aligned with Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences sectorplan masters VH, in particular managing and directing sustainable transitions. This research builds upon twenty years of experience in the creative industries. It is an attempt to generalise, consolidate, and structure methods and practices for sustainable art and design production experimented with while I was course director of a master programme at WdKA. Throughout the research I will be exchanging with peers and confirmed interested parties, a.o.: Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), RUAS Creating 010 kenniscentrum (NL), Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (NO), Mikrolabs (NO), Varia (NL), Media Arts department at RHU (UK), Media Studies at UvA (NL).
