CREATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN ART AND DESIGN RESEARCH

Conference 1-2 July 2009, De Montfort University & Loughborough University. Interrogations: CREATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN ART AND DESIGN RESEARCH The conference addresses various aspects of interdisciplinary approaches in Art & Design research, as well as practical and theoretical methods for interlinking with other disciplines. The objective is to explore interdisciplinarity as a new trend that brings together different disciplines, forging new connections and contributions to collective knowledge. Ultimately, the aim is to promote and encourage interdisciplinarity as a way to enhance creativity in research. This conference aims to address the challenges and trends of interdisciplinary research that contributes to art and design. We are inviting performance proposals as part of the conference programme, as well as formal presentations (deadline 16th of January). It is hoped that the performance event will embrace an eclectic mix of works communicated through a variety of forms: any visual, sound, spoken word, music, short plays, dance, design, film, multi media, digital projects and other performance medium or methods of expression involving interdisciplinarity as a way of transferring ideas and stimulating creativity across disciplines. The event will take place on the first day of the conference, after the sessions. Limited sound equipment as well as video and slide projectors are available. Artists are responsible for installing and removing their performance materials on the day of the performance. Each performance running time will be 25 minutes. If you would like to be considered, please send a proposal, one page maximum description of your idea, including your contact information, a brief description of the performance, special equipment or space needed. The proposal should detail the project, its production, how it engages participants and any technical requirements. Please be as specific as possible. You may submit your proposal via email or digitally on Compact Disk or DVD by 28th February 2009. Send materials or enquiries to: Basia Sliwinska Loughborough University School of Art & Design Epinal Way Loughborough Leicestershire United Kingdom LE11 3TU

RIGOR AND RELEVANCE IN DESIGN

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION (International Association of Societies of Design Research 2009): RIGOR AND RELEVANCE IN DESIGN, 19-22 October 2009, IASDR 2009, Seoul, South Korea. This is a large, international design research conference with an intensive and high quality program. This venue will bring together top design researchers and practitioners to build and advance knowledge in the field of Design. We encourage your enthusiastic participation for this exciting opportunity. Design has been evolved into a unique but highly influencing discipline in this rapidly changing society. But it has also struggled to find its own rigor and relevance as a disciplined field as its own. In this conference, we invite various perspectives and research outcomes that may address the issues of establishing our own rigor and relevance of design research and practice in the field of Design, as well as discussions and research activities related to all the important design subjects as follows: 1. Design Theory and Methodology; 2. Design Philosophy, Ethics, Values, and Issues; 3. Design Education; 4. Design Management and Strategy; 5. Sustainability, Culture, History, and Society in Design; 6. Human Behaviors, Perception, and Emotion; 7. Semantics, Aesthetics and Experience in Design; 8. Interaction and Interface Design; 9. Design Tools and New Media; 10. Universal Design/Inclusive Design; 11. Design Creativity; 12. Design Project Cases. -- Abstract deadline: February 28, 2009. More information:

Art in the Knowledge-based Polis

by Tom Holert

Lately, the concept of “knowledge production” has drawn new attention and prompted strong criticism within art discourse. One reason for the current conflictual status of this concept is the way it can be linked to the ideologies and practices of neoliberal educational policies. In an open letter entitled “To the Knowledge Producers,” a student from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna has eloquently criticized the way education and knowledge are being “commodified, industrialized, economized and being made subject to free trade.”1

In a similar fashion, critic Simon Sheikh has addressed the issue by stating that “the notion of knowledge production implies a certain placement of thinking, of ideas, within the present knowledge economy, i.e. the dematerialized production of current post-Fordist capitalism”; the repercussions of such a placement within art and art education can be described as an increase in “standardization,” “measurability,” and “the molding of artistic work into the formats of learning and research.”2 Objections of this kind become even more pertinent when one considers the suggestive rhetoric of the major European art educational network ELIA (European League of Institutes of the Arts), which, in a strategy paper published in May 2008, linked “artistic research” to the EU policy of the generation of “’New Knowledge’ in a Creative Europe.”

More.

Thanks to Michelle Gratacós Arill for this reference.