Alastair Fuad-Luke: Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World (2009)

Design academics and practitioners are facing a multiplicity of challenges in a dynamic, complex, world moving faster than the current design paradigm which is largely tied to the values and imperatives of commercial enterprise. Current education and practice need to evolve to ensure that the discipline of design meets sustainability drivers and equips students, teachers and professionals for the near-future. New approaches, methods and tools are urgently required as sustainability expands the context for design and what it means to be a ‘designer’. Design activists, who comprise a diverse range of designers, teachers and other actors, are setting new ambitions for design. They seek to fundamentally challenge how, where and when design can catalyse positive impacts to address sustainability. They are also challenging who can utilise the power of the design process. To date, examination of contemporary and emergent design activism is poorly represented in the literature. This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism. Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism. This activism has a dual aim – to make positive impacts towards more sustainable ways of living and working; and to challenge and reinvigorate design praxis,. It will collate, synthesise and analyse design activist approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples/outcomes from disparate sources and, in doing so, will create a specific canon of work to illuminate contemporary design discourse. Design Activism reveals the power of design for positive social and environmental change, design with a central activist role in the sustainability challenge. Inspired by past design activists and set against the context of global-local tensions, expressions of design activism are mapped. The nature of contemporary design activism is explored, from individual/collective action to the infrastructure that supports it generating powerful participatory design approaches, a diverse toolbox and inspirational outcomes. This is design as a political and social act, design to enable adaptive societal capacity for co-futuring.

Publisher Earthscan, 2009
ISBN 1844076458, 9781844076451
244 pages

interview with the author (Juha Huuskonen, April 2012)

author
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PDF (updated on 2012-10-30)

Roy Ascott (ed.): Engineering Nature: Art & Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era (2006)

This third volume in the Consciousness Reframed series, documenting the very latest artistic and theoretical research in new media and telematics including aspects of artificial life, robotics, technoetics, performance, computer music and intelligent architecture. The contributions to this volume represent the work produced at conferences and in journals which are only now emerging into more accessible literature. With over fifty highly respected practitioners and theorists in art and science contributing, there is a stimulating diversity of approach and a rich background of knowledge.

Publisher Intellect Books, 2006
Consciousness Reframed Series
ISBN 184150128X, 9781841501284
333 pages

publisher
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PDF (updated on 2012-7-24)

Jiří Valoch (ed.): Computer Graphics, catalogue (1968) [Czech]

“In 1968, during the time of the Prague Spring, and still before Cybernetic Serendipity opened in London on August 2, 1968, and before Tendencies 4: Computers and Visual Research started in Zagreb on August 3, 1968, Jiří Valoch, a Czech concrete poet, organized in Czechoslovakia an exhibition of digital art. It was shown in February 1968 in Brno (at Dům umění města Brna, House of Arts), in March 1968 in Jihlava (Oblastní Galerie Vysočiny), and in April 1968 in Gottwaldov (now Zlín) (Oblastní galerie výtvarného umění). The show had a title Computer Graphics and presented works by Charles Csuri, Leslei Mezei, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, A. Michael Noll, and Lubomír Sochor. Frieder Nake gave a lecture at the Brno opening. This show was, most likely, the first digital art exhibition in Eastern Europe.” (source)

The catalogue includes six reproductions of the works (Nake, Nees, Sochor), texts Programované umění (Valoch, 1967), Projekty generativní estetiky (Max Bense, 1965, excerpt), Poznámky pro Jiřího Valocha (Nake, 1967), O realizaci mých grafik (Sochor, 1967), and short biographies of exhibiting artists.

Publisher Dům umění města Brna, Brno, 1968
16 pages

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More about the exhibition