Design Dialogues 2

 

Term 2 design dialogues, our second showcase for the masters in design for emergent futures, took place on the 29th of April 2022. Compared to the previous design dialogues, preparing for this one seemed to come at a much more rapid pace, with much less time to plan and get everything together with my classmates. I think this was due in part to the fact that there was a micro challenge right before, so most of our focus was on that. However, since we had already experienced putting on and taking part of a design dialogues previously, we knew more of what to expect and were able to organize ourselves rather quickly. The communication exercise we did with Kate the week beforehand was interesting because it helped us visualize and define what kinds of larger groups we could consider ourselves a part of and in that way we were able to group ourselves for the physical layout of design dialogues in IAAC. I was a part of the general group entitled grow lab. I feel that I fit well in this group because of my work with living species and interest in growing materials. At design dialogues, I displayed work of bioremediation experiments and then 3-D printing with oyster shells, open-source incubator, and photobioreactor that was constructed during the challenge week. While I was nervous to present at this design dialogues, it ended up being really enjoyable and passed by very quickly. Being able to see your work in one space displayed nicely after you’ve worked so hard on it is really satisfying.

What I particularly enjoyed at design dialogues was being able to speak to and interact with other people outside of IAAC, specifically students from neighboring design school Bau and Elisava. It was interesting to speak with them about my projects and their experiences at their design schools. As well, someone who was interested in pursuing MDEF the following year had a conversation with me, and it was insightful for myself to think about how I would describe the program to him and what I had gained from it.

 

Seeing projects from my peers is always exciting, and allows me to see what inspires others and in turn inspires me. Our course has many areas that interest my classmates, and seeing how they all come together in one space gives me a lot of hope. One project I particularly liked was Juaquin’s embodied recognition. It was really cool that he brought in a live dancer as part of the experiment and we were all able to watch as her body movements struck the metal balls and elicited sounds as she went. To me, it really put design in motion and showed how the live performance could have a bigger impression on the audience than individuals simply going up to a stand. I also found Fiorella’s project ideas really intriguing, with fruits, smells, and their souls. I wish I had gotten more time to talk to everyone to see what design dialogues was all about for them, including with Tatiana since I had missed her design intervention when I was sick.

 

The second design dialogues was a great way to wrap up term two. Going into it, Pippa and I were a bit disappointed because we didn’t have the chance to fully get the incubator working, but we were reminded that design dialogues is a checkpoint rather than a display of final projects. I am excited to see what comes for the third term and know that design dialogues three, or MDEFest, will be even more impressive, engaging, and fulfilling than this past experience being a part of design dialogues.