Description: Prerequisites: Open for all regardless of discipline. The course is specifically relevant for PhD students within architecture, urban design, industrial design, interaction design, human-computer-interaction, planning, mobilities studies, urban geography and other disciplines with a focus on the situational dimension of social and situated practice.
Learning objectives: The participants will obtain knowledge about the state-of-the art theories within the ‘material turn’ and object-oriented analysis perspectives. The participants will obtain competencies in reflecting over their research projects in relation to the theories presented. The participants will develop skills in designing a material research agenda and discuss implementation hereof in their research projects.
Teaching methods: The course is organized around presentations by the lectures coupled combined with the participant’s reflections over their own projects in an open ‘research workshop’ atmosphere.
Criteria for assessment: Active participation and engagement with the course literature, the plenary sessions and reflections over one’s project in relation to the theme of the course.
Course description: The course take point of departure in the recent theoretical developments within fields such as Actor Network Theory, Assemblage theory, Object Oriented Philosophy, Alien Phenomenology, and Non-representational theories and link these to a ‘situational perspective’ of empirical analysis. The ‘staging mobilities’ model of situational analysis (Jensen 2013) will be used as point of departure and will theoretically be linked to the before mentioned theoretical fields and to empirical cases across architecture, urban design, interaction design, as well as to ethnographies of exurban, rural and remote settings. The key focus is to understand the materialities of design as an interface between social agents/users, material spaces/infrastructures/technologies, and the embodiment of user practices. The course explores how design, materiality, embodiment, ambiences, and affordances can be linked for a better understanding of social and situated practice. The aim is to create a dialogue platform for design-related research focusing on the pragmatic conditions of situational practice (e.g. asking the pragmatic question ‘what affords or prevents this particular situation?’) The course is closely linked to the organizer’s efforts in establishing a research field within ‘mobilities design’ and will be inviting the participants to reflect upon a new form of ‘material pragmatism’. The course is organized around presentations by the lectures coupled combined with the participant’s reflections over their own projects in an open ‘research workshop’ atmosphere. The intellectual background reaches from the classic studies of Edward Hall, James Gibson, Kevin Lynch, and Erving Goffman towards the contemporary thinking by people such as Bruno Latour, Nigel Thrift, Albena Yaneva, Gillian Rose, Monica Degen, Begum Basdas, Tim Ingold, Anne Galloway, Phillip Vannini, and Ole B. Jensen. A modest amount of key readings will be selected for the participants to read well in advance. The course is relevant for PhD students within architecture, urban design, industrial design, interaction design, human-computer-interaction, planning, mobilities studies, urban geography and other disciplines with a focus on the situational dimension of social and situated practice.
Key literature:
BOGOST, I. (2012) Alien phenomenology, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press (excerpts)
INGOLD, T. (2010) Being alive, Routledge, London (excerpts)
JENSEN, O. B. (2013) Staging Mobilities, London: Routledge (excerpts)
JENSEN, O. B. (2014) Designing Mobilities, Aalborg: Aalborg University Press (excerpts)
JENSEN, O. B. & P. VANNINI (forthcoming) Blue sky matter: toward an (in-flight) understanding of the sensuousness of mobilities design, The Australian Geographer, Special Issue
LATOUR, B. & A. YANEVA (2008) "Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move": An ANT's vies of Architecture, in Geiser, R. (Ed.) (2008) Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research, Basel: Birkhäuser, pp. 80-89
VANINNI, P. (2012) Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Time on Canada's West Coast, London: Routledge (excerpts)
VANNINI, P. (2014) Nonrepresentational Theory and Methodologies: Re-envisioning Research (excerpts)
Organizer: Professor, Ole B. Jensen, obje@create.aau.dk
Lecturers: Professor, Ole B. Jensen, AAU and Professor Phillip Vannini, Royal Roads University, Canada
ECTS: 3 with participation/5 with participation and written essay
Time: 2 - 4 June, 2015
Place: Aalborg University, Rendsburggade 14
Zip code: 9000
City: Aalborg
Number of seats: 15
Deadline: 1 April, 2015
- Teacher: Ole B. Jensen