This free monthly newsletter starts conversations on issues to do with design for resilience — and thereby reveals opportunities for action. It also brings you news of Doors of Perception events and encounters. Back issues are now archived on Design Observer. To subscribe to future newletters by John Thackara click here.
DOORS 7 ON FLOW: FIRST RESULTS ONLINE
If you missed the seventh Doors conference - or if you went, and wish you could re-visit it - 19 presentations are now online, including some of our top-rated presenters: Janine Benyus, Bruce Sterling, Patricia de Martelaere, JC Herz, Ezio Manzini. Open Doors project descriptions and links have been posted, as have the first 250 photos. There are links to Doors 7 web logs, and to press articles about the conference. Our Top Ten recommended books are reviewed, and there's a delegates' voxpop. There's even information about the conference song.
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/
FROM TROPHY BUILDINGS TO ARTS DE LA RUE
Bad news for aspiring Frank Gehrys: Mayors around the world are looking for alternative ways to develop their locality that do not involve spending vast sums of money on trophy buildings designed by brand-name architects. The emergence of sociability as a new criterion for urban design has prompted the French - who, with their Grands Projets, invented the craze for trophy buildings - to promote the development of live, participatory events as ways of adding value to a place. Read more:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/In+the+Bubble/
FROM SHELFWARE TO WETWARE: WHERE NEXT FOR DESIGN RESEARCH?
"Here are four success factors for design research. One: locate at least part of the project in a real-world context. I heard no convincing examples of purely theoretical design research. Two: design research should involve the re-combination of actors among the worlds of science, government, business, and education. Three: if the results (and value) of design research are to be shared effectively, communication and dissemination methods need to be designed and budgeted at the start. Four: there's an urgent need to develop peer-to-peer methods for design research." Extract from John Thackara's diary following a conference in London.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/In+the+Bubble/details/59/
DATA KNITTING and LIVING ARCHIVES
Next year's DEAF, the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (25 February - 9 March 2003, Rotterdam) is called Data Knitting. It will explore the ways in which information is gathered, ordered and made accessible through databases and archives."Data visualization, and interaction with data through media, are reactions to our awareness that we should regard the world as a complex and dynamic system", says the website. "Artists and architects are developing software systems wherein data is self-organized into dynamic knowledge systems, lending new insights into complex processes and visualizing these processes." A parallel symposium called Living Archives will address the issue of "memory as a living, flexible archive." Speakers include Arjun Appadurai, anthropologist; Simon Conway Morris, paleontologist; Sadie Plant, media theorist; and Manuel DeLanda, author of A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. And a series of four master classes on the use of databases and archives features th! e artists Lev Manovich, Joel Ryan, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Sher Doruff
http://www.v2.nl/Projects/interfacing_realities
http://www.v2.nl/2002
SEEING IS RELIEVING
Is leisure a state of being, or a state of seeing? How do we respond to the bombardment of images in the production of mega-events? Does "live" sport exist? This conference will address the politics, management and consumption of past and present leisure scapes. 8 - 10 July 2003, University of Surrey, London.
http://www.leisure-studies-association.info/LSAWEB/Index.html
FUTURE CINEMA
Curated by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel, Future Cinema - an exhibition about the cinematic imaginary after film - explores video, film, computer and web-based installations that anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression. Until 30 March 2003, Karlsruhe Media Centre, Germany.
http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/Future_Cinema
SECONDING THAT EMOTION
When designers start talking about "designing emotion" our reaction here at Doors is to reach for the sick-bag. Who gave designers the right even to think in these terms? But judge for yourself at the "user_mode" symposium, at London's Tate Modern, whose contributors include: Sara Diamond (Director, Media and Visual Arts Banff, Canada), Stuart Jones (composer/performer/interactive sound artist based in the UK), Lev Manovich (new media theorist), David Ross (Director of the Beacon project New York, and formerly Director of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and Tobi Schneider (Architect, Interactive Institute, Stockholm)
http://www.tate.org.uk
ECO CITIES
The Internet conference on Ecocity Development (February-June 2003) addresses an issue that concerns 50 per cent of the world's population. Online symposia will deal with eco-city planning and management; eco-planning methodology and instruments; eco-settlement and eco-building; industrial ecology; human ecology and capacity building for eco-culture.
http://segate.sunet.se/archives/et-frej.html (English)
http://segate.sunet.se/archives/et-oden.html (Chinese)
http://www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/ecocity03
HEALTHY JOB
A new master's degree programme in health journalism has been created by The School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.
http://www.healthjournalism.umn.edu/
THAT BATHROOM EXPERIENCE
A design competition, on the occasion of the International Trade Fair for Building and Energy Technology in Frankfurt, organised by the German Design Council.
http://www.german-design-council.de/DESIGN/design03.html
TAHITI CALLING
Curiously, our invitation to speak has not yet arrived; it must be in the post. The 10th international conference on telecommunications (ICT'2003, February 23 - March 1 2003) takes place in Tahiti, Papeete, French Polynesia.
http://conf.uha.fr/ICT2003.htm
GOOD, OR WHAT?
Back to Doors 7. Immodesty compels us to give you a sneak preview of its online evaluation. When asked, "What is your overall evaluation of the conference?" our delegates replied: Fantastic 19.5%, Very good 45.5%, Good 29.5% (that's 94.5% so far), Below average 5.5%, Bad 0%. Besides that, 92% of delegates were happy to have met new people at Doors. And, to the question,"what part of your life would you say Doors influenced most?", eight per cent answered: "my love life." Aaaah. We'll post a fuller account of your evaluation - including the negative comments, we promise! - in the new year.
