THE MARIUS CODE
Here is a small photo album from the opening
I went to an exhibition opening yesterday of work by the Norwegian artist Marius Watz. I somehow bumped into Marius in my early days in Oslo and I became impressed by his methods and attitude I guess. He came to work in our faculty in Oslo, a bit complicated in execution since he is a flyer, has been mostly living in Berlin and later in New York. His work is strangely exploratory through digital code – something that is not appreciated in classical art schools where the understanding of art is as something heroic and based on the Beaux Arts tradition. My opinion is that art schools do actually discriminate against people that arrive at art and design through computer skills. Most professors in art schools look for applicants that have the potential to become copies of the professors. A major problem in universities generally that has made various creative explorations and innovations to happen outside the boundaries of academia.
Anyway, Marius has been a member of our faculty for a while and is now more linked to the school next door, AHO that has more focus on digital interactions.
What I liked about the exhibition is the physicalization of the coded work that Marius is doing. The wooden structure bringing promise of new and larger structures generated by code, hopefully ending in maybe even architecture and grander public art works. This is something that some architects have become quite anal about, for example the project by Hadid the Guangzhou Opera House for example. To me actually a rather boring and repetitive architecture that has little to do with people. A kind of a heroic architecture for the sake of architecture.
Marius on the other hand can enjoy the freedom of being an artist working in code and then later bringing forward physical enjoyments. I wish him luck in the future and wait for more stuff, not only on my computer screen but out in the open.
March 12, 2011
Tags: art, DESIGN, digital, oslo Posted in: ART, DESIGN, PONDERINGS 
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DESIGN STRATEGIES, ADDRESSING CHANGE
The student gang in the studio environment. The compulsory coffee and waffle included.
I have been running a simple course in design strategy in our design faculty in KHiO during the last week. The course is an introduction of the philosophy of design thinking and its participation in strategic changes in daily life. It has transpired that young people, including our students, are interested to use their skills to pursue more demanding issues than just to make ‘cute’ things and images. I remember that in a course that we run annually with the business school here in Oslo BI, when the students are given free rain in what to pursue in group work as start-up entrepreneurs that out of 18 projects 16 came up with ideas for businesses that wanted to address social and/or environmental issues.
The term Strategy actually comes from military origin and refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal or goals. An identical definition has often been used to define design. So strategy and design are actually terms for a very similar activity, while design schools and design practices have traditionally aimed at making cute and simple solutions and objects/images.
Design activity has until recently concentrated on the more formal activities in terms of physical and mental form rather than conceptual. This focus has changed radically during the last decade and today the greatest demand for design skills in the world is in services, human interactions, social solutions for sustainability, and environmental change – not in form giving.
In the course we looked for issues that we would like to improve in our daily life. To make life simpler, easier and more beautiful – the three fundamental tasks for design. We had long conversations about what is impeding, global, environmental, social tasks that lie ahead and how designers can be on the forefront in the work. And the students came up with some innovative ideas, fun, serious and promising for their continuing design work in the program.
And to our great support we received a super extra teacher addressing the same things, Ezio Manzini, who supported our ideas about design and what we should be working on in the future – - or for the future. Here is a link to some of the projects that we are involved in presently.
Here is a short list of what the students would like to address:
Kristine is a crafts artist in glass blowing but is concerned about consumption. She maintains that many people have no respect for the value of things in our society in affluent Norway. Uncontrolled use of things and food. Unorganized situations. She wants to look at how things function in daily life because it irritates her how ignorant people can be to environment, things and people. To become an ethical conscious consumer.
Her strategy would be to create a catalyst, meeting room/place where crafts can be worked used as an attraction. Where people can meet up to learn and enjoy. The problem is often that crafts people are so isolated when they work and she wants to open up the place. To create an attraction point, café, lunch place where people meet. The guests can then learn and enjoy the production, use the glass products for coffee etc. She wants to collect together creative people to work together.
Denise wants to develop an interactions project for children and food. Visual communication. How to develop ideas among children early enough about eating healthy. This is a very fundamental issue in modern Western society. How to do things other than just give advice. How can a designer develop information and responsibility among children. She proposed an animation figure could be related to your own life. She saw the Tamagotchi as an interesting paradigm. She also had ideas about how this could be a school project where you have to post your development with the tamagotchi. The Tamagotchi is a handheld digital pet created in 1996 in Japan. Over 76 million have been sold world-wide as of 2010. Most Tamagotchis are housed in a small egg-shaped computer with an interface usually consisting of three buttons.
Charlotte is a furniture and space design student. She came up with many ideas about addressing irritable situations like in cafes, marking a territory in a playful way, how to decorate the metro so that people move more freely around and do not congest in front of the doors. Her philosophy is to introduce playfulness, with colors, labels etc. where people will be a bit happier when passing through the daily routines. How can a designer address public space for more enjoyment? Her work is more social engineering than social innovation where people work together to create solutions.
Sofie participated in the course dialogue and had many interesting ideas about daily life. Lots of discussion about family linkages, strengthening social interactions in various forms. Very motivated student with good ideas that she will probably develop through here future projects.
Rikke spoke about cuing situations and about social situations where we are afraid to talk to strangers. We teach our children never to talk to strangers. We become isolated in our world. She wants to induce social interactions in the public space. Norwegians are not open to talk to others. Why not talk together? She says. How do we see others – and she is interested to develop ways for people to interact.
Susanne is a fashion design student and has ideas to make normal clothes for people that have movement problems, disabled people, to enhance inclusion through being dressed like everyone else, not only hospital jogging clothes. Make the clothes possible through putting them on in a simpler way or around the body. She has worked in a home for handicapped. Her project is Inclusive Design in a sense. Social engineering for those that are not integrated.
Thomas says that he is more egocentric and has created a complete new religion and wants to develop a strategy for implementing it. He wants to demonstrate how everything connects, holistic understanding about the world. He has found lots of inspiration from various sources. He wants to develop the idea that the internet is just a common chat space. He talks about making videos for religions prophets that can tell stories that stimulate ideas.
Julius is a visual communication student and is interested in addressing the interactions that users of computers demand as simple and no-nonsense. Wants to create a social innovation for the elderly. Operating system with only internet and text making. This is a new user group that demands to be part of the new digital reality but does not want do or can deal with the complicated interactive systems that is in computers today.
March 10, 2011
Tags: DESIGN, future, strategies, sustainability Posted in: DESIGN, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
EZIO MANZINI ON VISIT TO OSLO
A meeting in our school discussing possible futures and how to approach them – and maybe importantly how design schools can be prominent laboratories in that direction.
We received a very inspiring guest here in Oslo this week. The architect/designer/teacher and sustainability guru Ezio Manzini. He gave a motivational lecture that was mainly attended by students and staff in our school and AHO, the school of architecture and design next door.
He promoted ideas about social innovation and design. Something that I have been involved in for quite a while. This kind of activity has been enjoying major growth during the recent years. In some ways facilitated by social networking on the Internet, but the activity has always existed and before the internet was natural phenomenon and I have met it to a large extent in Africa for example. There is only a different system with the introduction of the internet. One can say that it is just plain cooperation to get things done and changed.
Interesting how we have been talking about how everyone is actually a creative designer in various ways. People are generally innovative when it comes to responding to pressing issues, and usually their actions are to make things simpler, easier and more beautiful – the three definitions of a design activity. To maintain that only artists and designers are creative is a mix of terms. All people are creative.
I remember when one of my first groups of students in the then new academy in Iceland (The Iceland Academy of Art) were invited to the Milano Satellite Show in Italy in 2003. They created a very interesting design exercise named: Designer for a Day by The amazing design kids. There they actually kicked their fathers. The typical star designers that had got used to being on the front covers of design journals. The group proposed that everyone is a designer, is creative and they produced a magazine that they handed out in the Milan Show. Now, this is a much more common activity in design. To promote relational design, co-design, human centered design etc etc.
Manzini has been very influential in promoting sustainability and how design method or designers are central actors in that enormous task. He and a small number of people globally have formed a working group, hoping to link together interested parties into a network, The DESIS Network where we will share ideas. This is a network of schools of design and other schools, institutions, companies and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It is a light, no-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.
It so happens that the themes they are interested in are the same that have been prevalent in my work in Mozambique, linking together active people that are interested to get something done to make a change. Change for a better society, for a more sustainable future. We will keep the dialogue for the coming months and meet again in Paris in May when we will all be present in the Cumulus Conference.
March 7, 2011
Tags: DESIGN, milano, oslo, schools, sustainability Posted in: DESIGN, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
RUI TENREIRO VISITS HIS HOME TOWN
Outside Cafe in Somerschield garden. From left: Karina, Rui and Maimuna
We met up with Rui Teneiro (see his website) yesterday for talk about graphic design in general and in particular about its development in ISArC. Rui is a local Mozambican guy who has been living widely and has just recently finished his master in graphic design in Konstrack in Stockholm. His participation in ISArC activity could be a great asset for the school. He does not live in Maputo full time, but might be in town at various times. This is great because the ISArC philosophy is to be a clear Mozambican school with fundamental understanding of its roots in the local culture, while with eyes open to global activity. We had a small coffee before Rui had to fly back to Sweden and wait now for next steps in how he can be included in the teaching with Karina and Maimuna and the many other local teachers.
February 22, 2011
Tags: academy, art, graphic design, maputo, mozambique Posted in: DESIGN, ISAC - KHiO Comments Closed
WONDERFUL CLASS IN ICELAND DIALOGUE
Two class photos
This photo shows the complete class. It was decided that the teachers should be to the side (as we are on the right) but the academy rector is located in the center front row.
I had such a great time with the students and teachers in Iceland in January as reported on this site and more on the specific site for the course ICELANDDIALOGUE. One of the 10 groups decided to go through a dialogue between faculties and specializations. They visited all locations where the academy is and took guided tours etc. This group took the classical school class photo of us in the course. The were posted to me today and I want to publish them here. Really good vibes there.
This photo has the same people but is classed according to location. The red lines divide the student groups, with teachers furthest to the right. Group furthest to the left is Fine Art, centre is Design and right Performing Arts.
February 21, 2011
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MEETING OF TEACHERS IN ISARC BEFORE SEMESTER START
The teachers in Art and Design Faculty. Director Victor Sala in centrum
Today was the last teacher’s meeting in ISArC before teaching starts next Monday. Interesting to see the plans, hear the strategy from the director and the faculty leader Dr. Victor Sala. Since ISArC has two years of BA students now the program is wider and there is a strengthening of conceptual thinking in the teaching program. I am in full agreement with that strategy. The students will learn skills and styles, but everything has to be embedded in the cultural understanding. There are classes planned in introduction to sociology and psychology of teaching in addition to the history of art and design. It is in a way positive that the school is not anchored strongly in one art form or specialization, but promotes trans-, inter- and cross-disciplinary conceptualizations of the work. This is important for a school that is the first academy in art and design in the country. There is always also the message that it is important for the school philosophy not to just repeat European or Western arts teaching, but to look at things the other way around, from the locality here and put the Western art scene into that perspective.
Comparing notes and planning
Now, it will be exciting to follow the next months and also prepare for the intensive workshop that is now planned in early March when 5 designers will come to Maputo from KHiO to work with the very competent design students in ISArC.
February 18, 2011
Tags: academy, art, DESIGN, maputo, mozambique, program, teaching Posted in: DESIGN, ISAC - KHiO Comments Closed
NEW YEAR START IN ISArC IN MAPUTO
Here is a little photo album from the event
A full auditorium of eager students and teachers
Today, 16th of February was the official opening of the academy ISArC after the summer break. Now the school comprises of two years in BA. The second year students are really in-house gang since they have actually been one and a half year already in the school because of the pilot semester we had in the beginning. And the 1st year is starting their BA education today. The opening ceremony was actually touching, especially when one reflects back to the early days. The auditorium was full of young people, the creatives of the future Mozambique, artists, designers and cultural managers.
It was fun to see the students from cultural management running the show, with dance, music and the formal speeches. Director Filimone Meigos started the proceedings but the main speaker today was the poet and writer and economist Dr António Pinto de Abreu. He spoke about the development of the creative and cultural industries in Mozambique. Something that goes hand in hand with the development of ISArC and seems to be understood by the leaders of the school. Some of the art academies in Europe still stick to their heroic artists position, wanting to ignore the effects of economy on art, production and consumption. Teachers in art schools until just recently did not want to have anything to do with profit and arts consumption, while it is understood that cultural development and art is not disconnected to the development of society. Dr. António Pinto de Abreu spoke at length about these issues, discussed the individual and society in general, development of Mozambican culture. He referred to the explanations about equties from the economist Hernando do Soto and made the clear statements that here in the South the capital exists, in things, in people in systems, but it is not validated by the economic system that is directed by the developed countries.
The lecture was very relevant to the students and staff, especially in relation to how global economics are developing today. It is interesting that this is one of the first things that we discussed here in Maputo on my first visit here in 2007, visiting the business department, the school of architecture and the foundation art school ENAV.
Research in various countries is confirming the influence on ecomomic growth by the cultural industries, one came out just recently in my country Iceland. The best arguments for development economics came out in 2008 in the Creative Economy Report by UNCTAD (The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), where it is clarified that the support and development of the cultural and creative economy is the most effective way for development as well as far best supporting gender equality and diversity.
Dr. António Pinto de Abreu giving his pep talk. Director of ISArC Dr. Filimone Meigos listens from the main table, and teachers in the front row.
It will be exciting to follow the coming year in ISArC with this large student group, lots of positive wibe and a generation that will in the future take over the culture of the Mozambican nation.
Sudents in ISArC performing. The slide says: The Cultural and Creative Industries and the Development of the Economy
February 16, 2011
Tags: academy, art, creative economy, culture, DESIGN, economy, mozambique Posted in: DESIGN, ISAC - KHiO, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
Thoughts and explanation about design as a strategy
What is being done, – a few links for information.
My first speech in KHiO in January 2005 – a kind of tired of Design with the big D and wondering how things are really going.
Many great things happened in KHiO during my time there as a dean. For example did I go to Maputo in Mozambique, not knowing what consequences that would have.
When we set up the new Master Program in KHiO Design Faculty, we immediately started with a project that we named The Sally Anne project. Later I and Maziar met friends that had been invited to Norsk Form where I was speaking about design and responsibility. This friend is Lorraine Gamman, a long time friend of Maziar. They run a project in London named Design Against Crime. This project aims to design in the way to reduce the opportunity of crime. There are many similar design oriented projects going on, like the various inclusive design proposals in the Helen Hamlyn Centre in London.
Through talks we came first up with the idea of a design orientated something that we named Don’t Panic. We kind of agreed that we were in a kind of a grief situation, not liking most things in our daily life. Maziar made the very nice map of how we should classify design in our project.
Lots of talking and the Zeitgeist has moved our views towards projects that might be called Doing Good Projects. The world was changing and many design schools at the same time. Al Gore fronted the film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 and we know the story.
There has been lots of talk about how design and technology has left the user behind in many cases. Nobody likes television remote controls, nobody likes checking in the flying at the airport and so on . . .
My definition is Design is
HUMANIZING TECHNOLOGY.
There is technological progress moving fast ahead while we have lagged behind in adjusting it to us, the normal people.
When we moved to Maputo we for example tried to get the students to run a service design project through visual communication. Calling it Social Design.
In the Faculty of Design in Oslo we have talked about the issues that designers have to face when they get out of the program. Design has changed fundamentally during the last decades. More than half of the users of design in the world today do not live in the Western World. They are the new market that determines how things are going to be designed.
Design and Art has always operated differently to the other specializations. It is open, unpredictable but comes with results through problem definitions. And then proposing solutions. Design should be included in all other activity in the world and not exist for itself. Designers are those that will be worth their salt in the coming decades because of their method – s.
The students in the school are very interested in issues like Design for the other 90% – it shows when the students get free projects to do. The select to do socially responsive projects much of the time,
“There are still people who believe that design is just about making things, people and places pretty. In truth, design has spread like gas to almost all facets of human activity, from science and education to politics and policymaking. For a simple reason: one of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change.”
We name it Design Strategy. There are various projects there, have a look.
February 6, 2011
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RAVE IN ICELAND
I have had great time in Iceland running the course named ‘Dialogue’. A ‘time out’ moment for the students and teachers to talk together, meet each other cross the specializations in the Iceland Academy of Art.
The course and the dialogue culminated in the final presentation by Andri’s group with a Rave in a disused power station that creative people are taking over. Mostly designers have moved in with their computers and sketch books, but they have also put some workshops already for making prototypes and models of their ideas. The rave was directed towards the old and the new economy. Will anything change? Many people in Iceland are sceptical and there are factions in the country working toward protecting their rights to natural resources and others that want to open new avenues for creative people and culture. The future is there to take it. This video records parts of the evening. The only enhancing drug in the place was dance!
And here is an other video of the very nice spirit that was over the work in the disused fish factory on the harbour front in Reykjavik.
January 31, 2011
Tags: academy, art, creative industry, DESIGN, dialogue, rave Posted in: ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, ICELAND Comments Closed
ICELAND DIALOGUE – GREAT TIME RUNNING A COURSE IN ICELAND
A break exercise driven by Ólöf Ingólfsdóttir, one of the mentors in the course
For two weeks in January I am running a course in the Iceland Academy of Art in Reykjavik, Iceland. The academy where I established the new Faculty of Design and Architecture ten years ago. It is always great to return and participate in activities there, teaching, planning or research.
I have made an indipendent blog site for the activities that take place during the project and it is named Icelanddialogue.
The location ÚTGERÐIN where the course takes place on the old harbour front in Reykjavik. This building was once a very active fish plant but is now empty and houses innovative and creative startups and various courses initiated by the Iceland Academy of Art and the Reykjavik Business School, named Hugmyndahús Háskólanna. It of course smells of fish. The name means ‘the fish producers’ – an old company name I think.
The object of the course apart from being about talking together is to wonder if there will be an other society in Iceland in the future or if it will just go back to the same grove it was in before the crash in 2008. Many wonder if anything will change and we will forget fast and love our bankers and business men again. Or should the creative people be more active in the future of society?
The argument for this course is that the academic system today is result driven where one course comes after an other and there is no time to take time to have a dialogue, and especially between the different fields in the academy. The course includes students from all the faculties in the academy and the students work together across specialized fields having a dialogue and disseminating to each other. The course is split into 10 different groups with one mentor driving each group.
A presentation by Dalli, one of the mentors in the course
January 23, 2011
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ART AND TOURISM OR REFLECTIONS ON IT
I went to the opening of an interesting exhibition in the Reykjavik Museum. The name of the exhibition is WITHOUT DESTINATION. The inspiration for the projecT is the ever-increasing flow of domestic and international tourists through Iceland. Numerous contemporary artists and scholars have studied the complex relationship between humans and the environment in this context, and their research sheds light on the many factors that contribute to the tourist’s experience. Without Destination offers audiences the opportunity to explore these ideas through an exhibition where wanderlust, destination and the concept of place. The museum is also conducting a conference on the subject. Here are a few images from the opening.
January 22, 2011
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ILHA DE MOZAMBIQUE
Ilha de Mozambique is probably the most famous place in Mozambique. It is a very small island connected to the mainland with a long causeway. The island has been a location for arrival and departure into Africa, from the Indies on the way to Europe sailing south passing Cape and then sailing up the Atlantic. It was a major Arab port and boatbuilding centre long before Vasco De Gama arrived there in 1498.
The island contains a fortress that ages probably over 1000 years, was first set up by Arabic merchants and then later taken over by the Portugese. The island has been nominated a UNESCO world heritage site and contains architecture from pre renaissance as well as properly classical buildings. To visit was interesting, the road passes through the African bush, a very fertile agricultural land with many small farmers, villages with straw huts, but occasionally one also saw concrete ruins, probably from the Portugese colonial times. Sad to see almost all of them empty and ruined with the locals living in their more indegineous houses. The war after the Portugese left, a war between USA and the Soviet Union has damaged greatly the culture, but . . maybe also some of the Portugese methods and systems did actually not fit very well the climate and local culture. It was possible while they could run the place, base it on slavery really, but today new infrastructures are being built up, telephone systems, energy, transport and economic systems that hopefully creates sustainable Mozambican culture. There are many things that still need improvement, but I must admit that I am very optimistic for this land. It reminds me of my youth in my country and now seeing how far my country has come in the last 50 years.
But it was sad to see the island in many ways. The people there run their lifes, markets, fishing and tourism in ruins, many of wich are pure ruins really, with cloth replacing old wooden doors, gaps in roof tiling and rubbish and sewage goes directly into the sea, just like I remember from the small towns in Iceland when I was young.
January 3, 2011
Tags: arab, colony, ilha de mozambique, mozambique, nampula, portugal Posted in: PONDERINGS Comments Closed
NORWEGIAN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN THE ARTS AND CULTURE
I participated in a very informative meeting disseminating and evaluating cooperation projects within culture and the arts in Africa. It was interesting to learn how very different the projects were, spanning music, collaborative social arts, education etc.
There were examples of exchange in both directions South and North and the participating institues are located widely in Norway and in Southern-Sahara Africa.
Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) is the institute that has been responsible for financing, and thus evaluating the viability of the projects, while SiU (The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education) has been the Norwegian administrative body.
Now the Norwegian Government has decided to adapt its policies to present day situation, new issues have come up and new ideas about how to gain better efficiency and sustainability from and after the projects. Norad has been developing a new format for the projects and they say that the new directives will be available in mid 2011. Until then we have to wait to see how to adapt to the new policies. The Oslo National Academy of Art (KHiO) will run a conference in early March on behalf of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, where the issues will be addressed and one can mabe see different angles to this kind of development work.
The photos are from the conference that was held by ACE (Norad Program in Arts and Cultural Education) in the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.
The presentations were from the following projects:
- Bringing Music to Cape Town’s Underprivileged Communities.
- Community Arts – Educating the community artist. A project between Hedmark University College and Marangu Teachers’ College, Tanzania.
- Generating Knowledge through the Visual Media: Establishing Visual Anthropology at the University of Bamako, Mali.
A slide of the evaluation of project models made by Norad
December 17, 2010
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TANGIBLE INTERACTION DESIGN
I had the pleasure of going through projects in the School of Architecture and Design in Oslo, AHO. These were projects done by students in MA and they had concentrated on tangible interactions. Basically the touching point beetween machine and man. There were many sensor-devices in use that created different outputs in various media. Many of the students wanted to address social or health issues like pain and pleasure. This field is incredibly important in present day conditions because there is almost no location left where we operate without the interface of some technical system.
Here are some images from the event.
Interactions and tangible interactions are fundamental for design in present conditions when technology is advancing very fast. My favourite definition of design is ‘Humanizing Technology’ and that is really what the projects presented in all their different approaches. In the end, whatever technological and scientific advances come up with, they become inherent in human activity and as such the students are experimenting in the right direction.
December 17, 2010
Tags: art, DESIGN, interaction, norway, oslo Posted in: DESIGN Comments Closed
CHRISTMAS SPONTANEOUS SONG
Our MA students in Oslo decided to prepare for Christmas with carol singing. One of the end of semester activities that bring pleasure to being part of a team. Here is a little video of the performance. Maybe our students should stick to design and leave the performing arts to others?
December 16, 2010
Tags: Christmas, DESIGN, performance Posted in: DESIGN Comments Closed
