Classnotes 30 November

  • — November 30, 2020
  • // Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

What does it mean to own it?

to stand behind to be responsible as designers we have collaborators, users, mentors, participants, friends, the community > who owns what? to commit to defend to be proud of to be there for it

What could fail?

  • backfires, useless for the community, turning out arrogant

  • too shallow

  • too ignorant

  • isn’t useful

  • too abstract

  • too design-y

  • doesn’t reflect what they actually need and want

  • worst: doesn’t mean anything for them and for me

  • don’t package weak concept in nice video to hide the weak parts

Feedback

  • Example: Advertisement where it is said that the ballerina is going to be a good computer scientist or the metal worker a good sales manager

    • Denies them the skills they already have
    • Think of the reverse: How can I be useful or how can my skills be useful, what are my skills, how do people respond to those skills I already.
    • Reflect on own skills, their strength and weakness
    • identify what you or people might think of is not a skill but in fact is
  • Embracing dialogue, building trust, …
  • Skills are unconsciously in use (like when I was in Wang Chau)
  • Learned a lot at zhdk: switching modules, multi task, switch from programming to conceptualise to video to book research
  • We are not specialists

Theses I liked

It is hard to say in five minutes which ones I liked and which ones I think sort of failed. Spontaneously coming to my mind of the ones I saw exhibited are the ones from Adonis, Marcial and Fiona. Adonis because I liked his topic, which is very intimate, invites to dream and imagine, isn’t all too serious, Antonio would call it poetic. Marcial because I know him and his works and I liked how what he student led like a red(?) thread to his thesis. I worked on a few occassions with him and his interest for sound and experiments was present since the first semester, and seeing it evolve into his thesis was very inspiring to witness. Fiona’s one I didn’t really understand but I think her paper was very nicely designed.