In-depth ses­sions

From 2011 on, Shapeshifters is – next to the public lec­tures,  organ­ising in-depth ses­sions for the Typo/Graphics master’s stu­dents from the Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design. These ses­sions stim­u­late the debate about the future of a highly evolving graphic land­scape and visual cul­ture in gen­eral.

In 2011, 4 ses­sions are sched­uled:

1 and 2 March: The Design Game, by Petr van Blokland
3 March: Session by Karsten Schmidt
(Soon more infor­ma­tion avail­able)
5 and 6 April: Critical visu­al­i­sa­tion, by Peter Crnokrak & Karin von Ompteda
28 and 29 April: Visual essay of a building, by Lizá Ramalho & Artur Rebelo (R2)

The Design Game

by Petr van Blokland

When: Tuesday and Wednesday 1 and 2 March 2011, 10 am
Where: Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design
This in-depth ses­sion is open for all stu­dents of the depart­ment Graphic design after reg­is­tra­tion (inge@shapeshifters.be)

Too often stu­dents reason from their own expe­ri­ence, without checking if these assump­tions are based on true and valid prac­tice. Design edu­ca­tion walks in the edge. It is the teacher’s task to stim­u­late stu­dents to develop their intu­ition. Cultivated oppor­tunism is for the designer-to-be an impor­tant instru­ment to sur­vive. But in the mean time a stu­dent needs to develop a package of rational cri­teria to the right design paths.
During the design courses, the dis­cus­sion about the cre­ated work is simply not enough. Most stu­dents don’t have enough expe­ri­ence to self-reflect on their design process.
The Design Game is cre­ated from this need.

Why a design sim­u­la­tion game?
Teaching design is hard. Design as pro­fes­sion exists on the edge of cre­ativity and intu­ition on one side, and ful­filling external require­ments on the other. Teaching design is making stu­dents to learn to keep the right bal­ance between these two sides, which at first seem to be con­tra­dicting. When expe­ri­ence builds up, stu­dents will become aware that the one side exists only because the other does. Choosing the right bal­ance is not a com­pro­mise but a log­ical con­se­quence of cre­ating some­thing new that solves existing prob­lems.
Students are expected to start thinking about the process itself and not just about the final results of their work. Their ability to ‘Design their design process’ is one of the require­ments that stu­dents are judged on during their edu­ca­tion.
This thesis will dis­cuss the devel­op­ment of the game, its his­tory, rules, con­di­tions and require­ments. Some the­o­ret­ical back­ground on design will be dis­cussed to emphasis on the con­nec­tion between the game and design prac­tice.
Since design, by def­i­n­i­tion, does not have a thor­oughly defined sci­en­tific basis, results of the game cannot be mea­sured in hard num­bers. But the number of times that the game took place shows nev­er­the­less some inter­esting con­clu­sions, that can be trans­lated into sit­u­a­tions to make stu­dents aware of useful tem­plates for their own design process and their rela­tion with cus­tomers.

Critical visu­al­i­sa­tion

by Peter Crnokrak & Karin von Ompteda

When: Tuesday and Wednesday 5 and 6 April 2011, 9 am
Where: Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design

Brief

This project is an immer­sion into data visu­al­i­sa­tion as a crit­ical design and art prac­tice. Students will work in pairs to under­take explo­rations into the World Values Survey. Over a day and a half, stu­dents will inte­grate diver­gent exper­tise and per­spec­tives in their task to visu­ally tell sto­ries held within the data. The cen­tral chal­lenge will be to pro­duce a project that chal­lenges cur­rent thinking.
While the art and design con­tri­bu­tion to data visu­al­i­sa­tion is receiving increasing atten­tion, it remains con­tro­ver­sial, par­tic­u­larly with regard to the topics of sub­jec­tivity and aes­thetics. This work­shop addresses the impor­tant sub­jec­tive role of the artist and designer by revolving around one set of data, to be inter­preted by visual arts stu­dents. Ultimately, the final projects taken as a whole – employing the art and design arsenal of beauty, metaphor, emo­tion, humour, and nar­ra­tive – will address the issue of what cre­atives bring to the field of data visu­al­i­sa­tion.

The data set

A global net­work of social sci­en­tists have com­piled the World Values Survey; a repos­i­tory of human per­spec­tives on topics including faith, trust, hap­pi­ness, morality and human rights. The chal­lenge for stu­dents will be to crit­i­cally visu­alise any aspect of the data, pro­ducing out­comes that chal­lenge cur­rent thinking.

Things That Will Happen

1. Lecture on art and design con­tri­bu­tions to data visu­al­i­sa­tion
2. Group explo­ration of the World Values Survey
3. Software tuto­rial on data visualisation/exploration
4. Discussion of pro­duc­tion methods and media of projects
5. One-on-one tuto­rials with Peter and Karin
6. Critique and dis­cus­sion of dis­sem­i­na­tion venues

Links of Interest

www.worldvaluessurvey.org
www.visualizing.org
infosthetics.com
www.datavisualization.ch

Visual essay of a building

by Lizá Defossez Ramalho & Artur Rebelo (R2)

When: Thursday and Friday 28 an 29 April, 9 am

Where: Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design

Things That Will Happen

The objec­tive of this in-depth ses­sion is to elab­o­rate a visual essay that will serve as a con­cep­tual frame­work for a building that per­forms a very par­tic­ular func­tion.
The pro­posal con­sists in devel­oping an exper­i­mental project in which ques­tions of iden­tity are seen and graph­i­cally rep­re­sented in a crit­ical way. Throughout, we will dis­cuss con­cepts, approaches and design processes.
At the begin­ning of the ses­sion, we will intro­duce the design brief, the building and its func­tion, as well as other impor­tant details in rela­tion to the project. The project will be taken on in pairs. At the end of the work­shop, each group will present and defend their pro­posal.

Material

Each par­tic­i­pant should bring var­ious mate­rials in order to have a range of media on hand, a laptop in addi­tion to a pho­to­graphic camera.