Cumulus conference St-Étienne, notes

Cumulus conference, St-Étienne, France
20-23 november 2008

Design Education for Sustainability working group
Peter Stebbing, Ursula Tischner, Ezio Manzini, Armin Reller, Yoram Krozer

What since the Kyoto declaration last year?

Peter Stebbing:
Incomplete information -> bring science to design curriculum
The goal is not to become scientist but understand information that is important
Designer = knowledge choreographer

Ursula Tischner:
econcept.org, sustainability.designacademy.nl
Design week, design awards to promote sustainability at the institution

Ezio Manzini:
DIS research unit, www.sustainable-everyday.net
What is design? it’s when problems are not well defined. if defined, you have an engineering problem.
Designers need to dare.
Eco-design is not Design for sustainability

Armin Reller:
Material, when we will run out?
platinum, 5g in 10 tons of raw ore.
computer, 2000kg raw material to produce a 2-3 kg machine
we have to close the loop to capture the new “spice materials”

Yoram Krozer:
Cartesius Institute, NL, sustainable innovation
European Industrial Banana doesn’t exist anymore. New regional centers of knowledge.

Topics to discuss:
-Cumulus coordinated global MA design program. Semester 1 and 4 at home university, 2-3 on site, prone to problem for observation and hands-on.
-Design Sans Frontières
-Cumulus members required zero emission institution
-Resources Library
-Greening the conference…

Ajanta Sen, India, call for projects 10’x10′ board per school to show projects about sustainability. ajanta [at] colorsofindia [dot] com

————————————————————–

Conference/Talks

Lorenzo Imbesi:
Liquid Modernity, Karl Marx
The end of solid objects
Design as science of/for innovation

Marie-Virginie Berbet, Paris, France:
Senses: lacking sense
Deeper sense: emotions
Designing Design, Kenya Hara, 2007, [to check]
Approaching a prophylactic design, project stress at work
Propose two devices to prevent fatigue that leads to exhaustion.
a)lamp that goes fast then slows down to motivate you to destress [ref. TEI08]
b)cocoon for napping at work

Colleen Macklin, PETLAB, Parson, NYC:
Is google is making us stupid? by Nicholas Carr
Annie Hall movie excerpt, deep reading is difficult
efficiency (google) vs inefficiency (games)
Golf example, would you redesign golf for usability?
The tetris effect
Core mechanics (budgetball game, learn about debt) and emergent play
-rules
-freedom (play)
-strategy and innovation
-emergent play (superstruct game example)
Industrial age, information age, ludic age?

Tomi Knuutila, Rovaniemi, Finland, Simplicity for the interactive artist
Nathan Shedroff [to check]

François Mangeol, France, Playing with QR codes, nice animated RFID tags, partial tags, use of colors, etc.
www.francoismangeol.com

Wikibivouac, students from Grenoble.
Bottom-up maps instead of top-down. Grassroot information
Decentralize hosting, servers, protocoles as it is still a level where information can be controlled and filtered by various parties.