rmit school of architecture + design SENSORIA Festival of Design Education melbourne australia july 26- 30 2004
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This July, RMIT’s School of Architecture + Design will be hosting the Sensoria conference, a ‘festival of design education’. Set against the backdrop of Melbourne’s Central Business District, this conference will be a series of symposiums, exhibitions and events seeking to generate ideas, inspiration, discussion and debate for the next generation of designers.
Sensoria is inviting both local and international theorists, practitioners, students and graduates of all design disciplines and the larger sphere of cultural production to investigate and question what it means to design for and experience the world through a ‘sensuous intellect’.
From the objects and constructed environments of our surroundings, three avenues of enquiry are put forward: ‘Materia’, ‘Media’ and ‘Phenomena’. These avenues raise a number of questions; what design languages and strategies that define the contemporary urban environment can be developed in shaping the senses, materiality, images and interactivity with media? How can tomorrow’s designers develop approaches for the design of our surroundings that manipulate these tangible and intangible aspects of our perceptions? How does design engage with the senses both imaginatively and viscerally?
Sensoria draws from such discourses which have been emerging in recent publications and projects in spatial design. The catalogue of re-engineered materials, Material World; Innovative Structures and Finishes for Interiors (2002) published by Birkhauser, defines a new era of sustainability within renewable materials as well as possibilities within the synthetic specification of material properties on a molecular scale. The video game, Samurai Romanesque created by Dwango integrates wireless Internet service within the mobile handset allowing the cyber conditions of feudal Japan to reflect conditions in the real world. Finally, the media pavilion Blur by US architects Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio, designed for the 2002 Swiss Expo immersed its visitors in a sensory experience through sight deprivation. From over 30,000 nozzles, sprayed mist enveloped its steel exoskeleton to produce a diaphanous floating cloud that literally blurred over Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.
Sensoria will concentrate on such ideas and objectives within ‘Materia’, ‘Media’ and ‘Phenomena’, while blending demarcations between the various design disciplines, including architecture, fashion, industrial, interior and landscape design. It will be an opportunity for the design community and general public to engage with ideas and far reaching exploration of possibilities of objects and spaces we use in our everyday lives.
Sensoria is in association with Melbourne’s first annual the State of Design Festival. This is an eight day event beginning July 28th celebrating the creativity of established designers through a Victorian Government design initiative.
The combination of State Government, design professions and design educators working in unison to create a range of activities, openings, lectures and events promises to make Melbourne a provocative and exciting place for all those interested in the future of design.
for more information on Sensoria, log on to http://sensoria.tce.rmit.edu.au
SENSORIA media - possible projects -- 2004/03/22 00:53 EST reply
SENSORIA media - possible projects
The following are three areas of Sensoria for which media could be integrated into the program. The focus is to generate, through convergent technologies, a ubiquitous platform for attendees to engage with discussions (both formal and informal) and environments in a thought provoking and playful manner
Symposium Engagements
Attendees text message questions, comments and statements to the various symposiums- before or during. These are sent to individual databases and they are then displayed on large panels of e-paper located in close proximity of symposium speakers.
High Beam Driver Lane
A media clip program is curated for this space – displaying projects from attendees, work from the SIAL program, student work (if applicable) from BDes?, possible work from RMIT multi-media program:
Live Web-cam in adjacent bar in Laneway / for live feed during days of Symposiums
Other: Cyber gliffs: sent via internet connection (see manifest) Interactive wireless Internet games played from the mobile handset SMS text sent (see symposium engagements)
Manifest
To add a subtle/invisible veneer of convergent/ubiquitous technology:
Ideas: E paper wall of SMS text sent (see symposium engagements)
Cyber Gliff Stand: Photos taken and placed in 10-15 sec animation postcard sent immediately to email addresses via wireless Internet
Sound Installation to work with content of evening – possible interactivity with setting of spontaneous mobile phone ring tones
Infrared sensors operating pneumatic devices, lighting, sound [how could this engage with sound, movement, moisture, light???]?