Evaluation Stages: Selection

1

Transformation of Cultural Environments

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

The focus of the Ph.D. is transformation of cultural environments in Denmark. /…/ Almost like “branding” the perception of the cultural environment becomes vital for the collective development plan, and case-examples show how the narrative of the cultural environment can work as a strategic baseline for a development scheme and join the municipality, investors and the local community in the same development direction. /…/  the Ph.D.-project explores a democratic development by means of design interventions in a selected cultural environment. Through architectural registrations, qualitative interviews and field notes the project investigates the impact of the design intervention. The main subjects of the paper will consist of: the method ‘Research by Design’ as a catalyst for site-specific development,

‘Research by Design’ in relation to co-creation, and the balance of designer and researcher /…/  ‘Research by Design’ is present in physical site-specific interventions in the cultural environments with the aim to inform and invite the local community toparticipate in the development. ‘Action Research’ will allow the researcher (myself) to work to ways: both as a designer/facilitator and as a researcher.

Keywords. 

cultural environments, heritage, research by design, action research, co-creation, citizen participation

/…/

Process oriented design intervention

/…/ 

The integration of the local community and relevant parties can vary from e.g.: actual cooperation /…/ to casual interaction with the design (using it, watching it, touching it) /…/. The effect of the implementation of the intervention will be documented before, during and after, and this is done through a field log with photographs and the investigations described above. The intervention will, as mentioned, strive to activate the cultural environment, open a dialogue and invite the local community and relevant parties to engage. /…/ The design interventions will work as catalysts

and strive to activate the respective area, and it has the purpose of exploring the opportunities and to change the perception of the area.

The Ph.D.-project originates from the perspective; that cultural environments contains both physical and social understandings and should be developed in relation to its context of social network and its physical context. The initial research question examines a social aspect of cultural environments, concerning the social network, the use and the relational value. In the second research question the understanding of cultural environments, as being part of and influencing its context, is central. The third research question explores the method by which cultural environments can be developed.

Amplified Realities

Files:  abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper sets out the first outline of a research into the relations between signal, control and spatio-temporality — the concrete entanglement of abstract space-time and social reality and of abstract machines and social bodies. More specifically, it seeks to explicate how signal processing technologies and respective abstract models and logic are incorporated into spatial practice, into the production of global networks of so-called ’smart’ cities in particular. Although the implications of electronic media are widely discussed in the current discourses on space, the actual problem of control and the social realities produced by it seem to remain just partially addressed. First, the increasing dependency on signal processing machines and transmission networks, coupled with the decrease in clarity of their inner workings, which is in part inherent in their expanding complexity, may create yet unknown types of normalization and exclusion. Second, signal processing technology significantly modifies our sense of space-time. It allows for seemingly unconfined communication, navigation and localization (which in turn changes habit, perception and lived space-time) but simultaneously enables spatially diffuse or ubiquitous forms of centralized control. Last, the discrepancies between different theoretical and philosophical angles (in broad terms: new materialism and dialectics) seem to distract attention away from the problem of control and its implications. This trans-disciplinary research is situated at the intersection of architecture and sonology. The methodology is to conduct a theoretical study intertwined with research through sono-spatial practice, which primarily focuses on sonic space and the agency of signal. Practice-driven research allows for the concretization of abstract models into spatio-temporal configurations and sonic manifestations (i.e. making them audible by means of sound installations, compositions and spatial designs), interaction with listeners and context as well as thorough engagement with the machine. The theoretical research focuses on two distinct and seemingly incompatible angles that correspond to the aforementioned discrepancies. On the one hand, it explores the technicity of signal processing. For example, how these technologies operate, convolute and develop over time. On the other hand, it critically analyzes how these technologies and techniques are incorporated into the production of space, into politico-economic practices and architectures of control.

Keywords.
us signal processing technologies; architectures of control; spatial practice; abstract machine; spatio-temporality

Atlas of Thresholds

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

The continuous wars and conflicts combined with climate change, energy resources, and inequitable financial systems resulted in displaced populations spreading through different parts of the world, especially from the global south to the global north. According to UNCHR, 70.8 million people so far have been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human right violations. Moreover, just in 2017, 4,4 million people sought protection abroad. These numbers prove that displacement is a more complex phenomenon that should be investigated concerning its political nature. To begin with, movement of displaced population across the international border(s) bring forth a more complex and comprehensible meaning to the concept of the border by the crossing act. Also, space can be lived, conceived, and perceived not only when it is fixed and stable, but also when it is movable and temporal. However, spatial strategies toward forced migration and refugees mostly seem to coincide with power relations. By exclusion or isolation from wider society, refugee narrative is built upon either on the humanitarian aids or the temporary solutions. The focal point of displacement and forced migration studies should be reconsidered because it is not isolated, uprooted or arrival environments that express and symbolize a person’s being and consciousness, but the common ground—including movement, journey and the stops along the way. Within this context, the research seeks to investigate the spatiality of forced movements and liminal phases by examining the mobility of border, its spatiotemporal constructions, and multiple formations throughout the journey of the refugee. Trying to expose political subjectivity of refugees and movement as a political act through spatial investigation, the time and space between arrival and uprooted living environment will be investigated. Critical mapping techniques and processes will be discussed to constitute a spatial narrative relying on both quantitative and qualitative data retrieved from Gaziantep and Izmir (cities of so-called transition country-Turkey), and they will be put into effect to represent the facts on the ground. At the intersection of migration, mapping, and border studies, there will be two additional parts of this research: an online platform to collect data and an “atlas” to contain that data. This process will include refugees and non-profit organization related to refugees. Undertaken by groups and networks, with feedback coming in from larger numbers of people, the result might be a process of creating a “common” territory from encountering difference/others. Hence, the participation of refugees is crucial in the research process. Even though atlases have been seen as a valuable source that provides information for the whole world, their content as maps, graphics, diagrams in various scales represents the world in terms of territorial divisions defined by nation-state borders. Thus, the main aim of the atlas is searching for “other” ways of documentation of displacement of beings/places/borders, which can also be understood as “suspended” in “betwixt and between” and trying to answer these questions: How data will be presented in relation with space, how a map/collection of maps can define a surface in interaction with its actors, and how multiple readings for the maps and their intended subjects can be produced?

Keywords.

mapping, displacement, migration, border studies, liminality

A Dialogic Approach to Urban Drifting

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

Collaborative poem-drawing is a verbal and meta-graphical expression of spatial thoughts and feelings. The works represent an unfinished dialogue of memories (and design dreams) that are related to a shared (and imagined) urban experience. They are fragile platforms of carefully layered traces of discussions between the two authors, from day to day. They are “remnants” of dialogues about places that are experienced (through derive sessions) or imagined (in design drawing sessions) not as entities outside ourselves, but between ourselves. As dialogic devices, these collaborative poem-drawings are bringing together two different ways of looking at the spatial reality, while avoiding closure of the finite meaning of the processed material.
Graphically representing the conceptual background of our desire: clouds of spatial amorphous envelopes (dreams and memories) are hovering above a semi-permeable membrane (our senses and our sensitivity to the given reality) laying upon vertical columns that rise from the “orthogonal” ground. These clouds are fragments of urban interpretations related to a specific place: their inscription into a format of collective poem-drawings represents the process of juxtaposition of the interpreted maps in scale (plans, photographs, sections) and their resonance in the present moment of re-creation of memory. They are a palimpsest of different degrees of reality: the tension between the Clouds of memory and the “Reality” in scale is what generates an abundance of meaning, each time a spatial memory is re-evoked into presence.

Finally, these collective poem-drawings are tools that aim to cultivate liberation from the Known in the present moment of inscription. The exhibition would include: 1.a discussion upon the artefacts (reflection on the process of making and reading the maps); 2.a collaborative drawing performance; 3.a (graphical and verbal) contextualization of the collective poem-drawing in the wider context of the PhD thesis. /…/

Keywords.

collective poem-drawing, dialogic, derive, urban interpretation, distortion of memories

/…/
Conclusion

Unlike the poem-drawings that are processual tools in a design task (few of them will be exhibited at the conference), the artifacts introduced in this sequence are flowers which sprouted from a trembling soil: without precise aspiration, without „why?‟ and „how?‟ and „what for?‟ They are there because they emerged as an urgent need to cultivate a spatial dialogue through means other than purely verbal meditations. Communicating in silence contributed to our thorough mutual understanding in relation to spatial doubts and questions. At the same time, we created a notation/artefact of that discussion that is transferable a wider range of indirect interlocutors.

The contribution to a collective learning environment, that such a research can bring, is the stimulation of the following points through search for order by the growth from the inside and releasing a particle of truth from the unrepeatable moment of creation: 1. learning to listen responsively (creative and critical compassion); 2. bringing a design decision / spatial judgement built upon such self-softening; 3. continuous recording and erasing of experienced spatial values: a simultaneous cultivation and destabilization of the value system, beyond any authority. /…/

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