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Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking

6 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele February 22nd, 2008 in Announcements, Innovation, Conversations, Events

The Art Center College of Design in partnership with ESADE Business School is presenting on March 7 in Palau de la Música in Barcelona a global event featuring notable creative leaders and influential media discussing issues of critical importance to society.

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is a series of on-stage conversations with internationally renowned thinkers in many fields whose “disruptive” ideas and actions challenge convention, break current paradigms, and inspire positive changes in the larger world. Unlike traditional conferences, the Art Center Global Dialogues will pair these speakers with influential media figures—including highly regarded editors, publishers, and reporters—in vital exchanges that encourage the development of new ideas.

The Dialogues will focus on four areas particularly relevant to society today:

Urbanism and architecture
Communications and media
Transportation
Economic and social development

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is open to the public, and will spur a larger dialogue on current and future issues of concern to all of society. The international audience will include scientists, architects, designers, artists, entrepreneurs, institutional and business executives, and all those looking to be a part of this public forum, sharing their experience and questions.

Distinguished international journalist Richard Addis serves as the event’s Guest Program Director and Moderator. An international lineup of radical thinkers and provocateurs, all disruptive thinkers alike, will explore the six influential areas of our daily lives. Moderators and speakers to date include:

Climate Change: Harry Eyres (columnist, poet, writer, and naturalist) will discuss one of the most powerful disruptive phenomena of our age with such experts as Sara Wheeler (biographer, traveler, and expert on the Artic and Antarctica).

Geopolitics: Richard Addis (newspaper editor, designer, and writer) will explore whether political ideas provide solutions with Ron Haviv (award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of VII Photo Agency), Bernard Tabaire (Ugandan newspaper editor currently on bail for sedition) and Ram (Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu).

Business: Lynda Sale (Partner, Sale Owen, marketing consultant, and artist) will discuss with Blaise Agüera y Arcas (software designer at Microsoft Live labs) and others whether business can be redesigned to reflect its deeper reality as one of the most disruptive, free and creative forces of the modern world.

Science: Robert Matthews (academic, writer, and journalist) will be joined by David Hughes (astronomer, professor, and researcher), David Orrell (systems biologist and mathematician), and Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara (theoretical physicist) as they explore how science is running into the ultimate disruption – the unknown – and what new ideas will bridge the gaps in our understanding of life, the Earth and the cosmos.

Belief: Bigna Pfenninger (founding editor, The Drawbridge, a quarterly literary project) will lead a discussion with Charles Pasternak (academic, scientist, and author) and Joann Fletcher (academic and archeologist) that questions what happens when our deepest beliefs are overturned.

Design: Stephan Bayley (author, cultural critic, and founder of the Design Museum) will discuss major disruptions that could be on the horizon in architecture, planning and industrial design and how they will improve our lives with Thom Mayne (Pritzker Prize-winning architect, currently building the tallest building in Europe), Peter Head (Director of Arup and head of Planning and Integrated Urbanism) and Chris Lefteri (materials expert and product designer).

Richard Addis and other Dialogues participants have initiated early conversations on a blog developed specifically for the Dialogues (blog.globaldialogues.eu). Those interested in sharing their own perspectives on these critical issues are encouraged to take part in the Dialogues and post their comments on the blog.

The event is limited to 500 seats. You can register to attend the event here.

Art Center College of Design
Since its founding in 1930, Art Center College of Design has been a global leader in art and design education. Located in Pasadena, California, Art Center offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in all visual disciplines, and public programs for all ages and levels of experience. Named the #1 U.S. industrial design school by Design Intelligence, Art Center has exerted a profound impact on society and culture. Art Center alumni hold the top designer positions at BMW, SEAT, Audi, and Nissan, and are internationally prominent in industrial design, communication design, film and photography, and media design as well. With its long-standing service to the United Nations and other nonprofit agencies, Art Center is also the first design school to receive Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status.

The Art Center-Barcelona Project, initiated at the invitation of the Barcelona and Catalonia governments, revitalizes Art Center’s long-standing European presence and makes Barcelona—with its peerless design history and dynamism—the focal point for a series of highly innovative programs in advanced design education and research. In partnership with the renowned ESADE Business School, the Project will include executive education courses for designers and corporate managers, as well as R&D industry collaborations, postgraduate training, and faculty exchanges. In addition, the Project will produce a series of public forums on the larger role of design and innovation, beginning with the Art Center Global Dialogues in March 2008.

ESADE
Founded in 1958, ESADE is a leader in two areas: the ESADE Business School and the ESADE University Faculties. Ranked the #1 business school by The Wall Street Journal for the past two years, ESADE has campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, and Buenos Aires, and collaborates with over 100 universities and business schools worldwide. Each year, more than 6,000 students participate in ESADE’s Executive Education and MBA programs, as well as undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programs in law and business administration. With its network of 28,000 alumni occupying positions of responsibility in enterprises around the globe, and through its historical links with the corporate world and society, ESADE is a lively platform for innovation, debate, and social involvement.

ACCD, Announcements, architecture, Art Center, Art Center College of Design, Art Center Global Dialogues, Barcelona, blogs, change, collaboration, communications, conference, Conversations, design, disruption, Disruptive, Disruptive Thinking, economic development, education, ESADE, ESADE Business School, europe, events, future, future trends, Global Dialogues, ideas, innovation, media, mobility, networks entrepreneurship, opportunities, Pasadena, social activism, social development, spain, sustainability, Trends, universal, urbanism

Women in Mobile 16 - Yasmine Abbas

2 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele September 23rd, 2006 in Women in Mobile, Mobile Lifestyle, Usability, Moblog, Experience Design

Sometimes one discovers blogs like rare pearls, usually not very known, a bit tucked away between the feeds of our information forest, yet often refreshing, thought-provoking, and stimulating our mobility senses. I stumbled a couple of times upon Yasmine’s blog while “re-searching” on augmented reality and mobility subjects.

I got intrigued by her “my body is a hypertext” and her takes on home + mobility baring in mind her multicultural background. I leave the discovery pleasure for you to learn about her explorations, meanwhile discover something more about Yasmine in this Women in Mobile interview.

Yasmine Abbas, is a French DPLG architect and holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. At MIT, she explored the spatial impact of new technologies. She is now a Doctor of Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2006); at Harvard she focused on how neo-nomads reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of “multiple mobilities”. She founded neo-nomad, a digital platform dedicated to design and mobility in the digital world.

A neo-nomad herself, she carries “home” in two standard suitcases, each of 158cm (adding length, width, and height), and weighting 32kg maximum, as well as one additional carry on item of 55×40x20cm weighting a maximum of 10kg.

BACKGROUND / WORK

- Can you explain more about your work and background?

I am an architect, and a researcher. I am originally trained to build; yet building does not necessarily mean… partitioning. I have always been interested in the questions of ephemerality and mobility in architecture, ideas of flexibility and porous/extensible/flesh-like boundaries, the intersection between the digital and the physical; and all what that meant for the building environment. Long before I studied nomads, and came across the Plug-in Cities, Walking Cities and Instant City Airship projects of Archigram (1964, 1964, 1968), I had read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1974) which I find rather close in terms of philosophy. I started experimenting with my design looking at theater machinery—mechanical mobility, and social mobility. Later at MIT, I explored Intelligent Kinetic Systems, in designing responsive structures (building models with Lego sensors and motors that we had to program—small programming). Because I am a cultural hybrid, and because I have lived in different countries, and traveled a fair amount, I understand “building” as something different than producing rigid walls, or backdrops for projections. At Harvard I have been working on neo-nomads, digitally geared travelers and how they dwell-in. Recreating a sense of home in any space that looks like a hotel room is a matter of relations between people, objects and spaces. These relations are clearly a matter of habits, and usages. For that matter, I have developed acute “soft” skills and a method of analysis, what I call ethNOMOgraphy (from the Greek root “Nomos” which means nomad) because it involves doing ethnography while on the move through “moblogging” and “hypertexting.” I have also suggested scenarios of usage like the HOmeTEL which explores the remote spatial appropriation of a hotel room, using digital means.

- Are you more social, business or technical oriented?

So far and in order of interest the social orientation has come first, then business, and technical. However, to me, an understanding of the three is critical because if everyone has a role to play in a multidisciplinary environment (to share a strong orientation), being able to communicate within the workplace or to any other actor of public change is even more important. I can say that my background is an asset because everything, from social to physics can inspire architects, and we learn very early to work together to build for people and understand contemporary demands. I am myself particularly interested in today’s everyday and how people mark their territory, which has shrunk beyond skin in the age of the Internet and ubiquitous computing… Design (and we are responsible for designing far more than objects or architecture; when coming up with the iPod for example, Apple, envisioned a new life style; it is a total revolution) must address the fact that the contemporary is a “moving target” (to use the words of a scholar I have worked for); thus design has also to do to with the notion of “what is essential” in life… now—and paradoxically what will stay essential across time; hence my focus on people, the everyday, technology, the multiple mobilities (mental, physical and digital) and nomads, because of their acute sense of adaptation and their understanding of what is necessary to carry; what is home when on the move.

I am in fact calling for a design responsibility! I am questioning for example the building of traditional office towers (often environmentally hazardous) as a workplace when work practices have changed: people work from home, consult abroad, work in teams of specialist localized in different countries… Another example… what is the shape of the library of the future when Google collaborate with prestigious schools to produce a digital library? My work on neo-nomad, the digitally geared individuals, synthesizes these observations by observing “hypertextual” practices, social (as Francois Ascher has noted), but also spatial. We have to think about people throughout all the processes of design and development.

- What brought/brings you into mobile?

What brought me to mobile is trying to understand this very human need for wanting to be grounded, and how people were actually doing it in this age of multiple mobilities that we are building… Always asking… if there is one thing that you would take with you, what would it be, and why? I think we are entering a post-consumerist society. We are going beyond the threshold of the technology craze. We actually can reflect on the applications and use them wisely. More and more people rent and use cars (they share public goods) only when they need it, and are used to changing places, spaces, collecting places, tags and information. Interestingly, one of my research points develops the fact that the digital (paradoxically) relates to the bio~ (body/biology/ecosystem/organism) as neo-nomads use responsive objects, spaces, technology and services… when they need it. Understanding where all this leads, how all this happens involves other skills and methods of inquiry than purely technical ones. My interest in mobile also comes from the observation that we have always wanted a freedom/flexibility of movements, though for sure we are bound to t he infrastructure we build for it.

DIGITAL LIFESTYLE

- How does mobile technological progress influences your daily routine in your work?

I have realized also how much I could pack efficiently, if I could store digitally all my paper work. I still need to keep physical administrative documents. Really… it is piling… I don’t like stuff. That is what digital nomadology does to me.

In terms of travel, I like being stress-free… booking ahead of time, my iPod to “tune-out” (said one of my interviewees; Harvard Doctor of Design Research), being able to connect or just linger (I have my habits), observing, doing my field work, and maybe “moblogging”. I like to disconnect as well, but I am an Internet junkie and it is hard to quit. My Blog has been an essential research tool. It enables me to collect links, moments (situations), formulate my thoughts, publish my work, and connect with researchers in the same field. If I don’t debate ideas with them over blog comments, we often do pursue that through e-mails. I don’t mind sharing my ideas with people, leaving them on open-source, but not many are careful at acknowledging from where they come from.

- Which tools you use to publish, blog or moblog your work? Which applications and services do you use regularely on your phone? Would you use your device to interact with other machines?

I would be happy if I did not have to carry a cellphone, an iPod, a digital camera, an umbrella? , my numerous transportation tickets, ID and bank/store cards… A hybrid phone… My cellphone IS my purse (that is an interesting integrated design challenge!). So you just swipe your bag to go through gates. The advantage of a bag as opposed to a tattoo (see my body is a hypertext project) or a chip under your skin is that the former can be put aside. I like the idea of being able to disconnect… well… to still have a little control, however illusionary, over unwanted intrusions. I would download mp3 on my phone, and maybe text or e-mail, share them with my friends. I would like to get the latest NOKIA… but apparently, even if I purchase it, it wouldn’t be used at its very best here in the USA, because of the infrastructure! Not that I like advertising for this or that brand, but I have experienced the comfortable usability of their product long time ago… Isn’t it also interesting to think how the notion of territoriality shifts with the digital?

- Would you download mp3 tunes on your phone? Share them with friends? Any thoughts on DRM?

In terms of Digital Restriction Management… people expect being able to get information. So companies owe to give a minimum.

- What about Mobile TV?

I like too much observing people for watching movies or programs while on the move, immobile in a moving train. Yet I recall that summer inviting friends over for diner in the backyard, hanging white sheets, a mobile computer plugged to a projector and speakers. Someone in the yard nearby shouted “you are the best neighbors ever”! So I guess, Mobile TV, if it can allow their usability/spatial extensions for times of rest in any spatial setting, without having to carry much…

GEEK STUFF

- What about Web 2.0? Do you use it? What does it mean to you? Does/will these evolutions influence mobile technology?

Web 2.0 is an evolution not a revolution. I found the pattern normal, the result of observations, reflection and usability studies. I REALLY like tagging.

- What are your favourite mobile user-generated content projects?

Del-icio-us, flickr, wikipedia… always amazed by the quantity of information we give because we like sharing, or maybe just because we like to be heard. I haven’t developed content for wikipedia yet.

I envisage scenarios of usage, and assess their validity through interview processes and observations. I post them on my blog. I would like more reactions from my peers. I look forward to develop some of these scenario with… geeks Collaboration is the key!

- MoSoSo + wi-fi + urban networks =

the way to personalize the city, and mark your territory, territory which can overlap with other ones… nomad-2.0 I believe. It is also for me “biological” and “frugal” ways to think about the city (notions developed in my Doctor of Design thesis, 2006) as I said earlier as we use services and share information when we need it. It is like being able to see at once where selected things happen (parking spots for example), in a personal grow-shrinking territory. I think we have always wanted that… seeing many things and happening in different places at once.

FUTURE OF MOBILE

- How do you see the future of mobile?

It certainly leads to the making of ecologic spaces and communities based on individual choices.

- What do you think about the Fixed-Mobile-Internet convergence?

It is bound to be. Mobility also includes the time of stopping. So it is a matter of balance, between what to carry and the infrastructure.

- 3G vs. Wi-Fi?

I don’t think it matters for users, as long as his reception signal doesn’t break out. Swapping should be allowed!

- What differences do you see of mobile use in USA – Europe - Asia?

Can people work together?

- What is gonna be the next *big thing* in mobile?

HOmeTELs

- The next mobile trend(s)?