PRIMER19 Workshop by Leticia Cartier Oxley; Plasticity & Social Dreaming: B...
Event Information
Description
Join us for PRIMER19 Workshops Saturday, June 15, 2019!
All PRIMER19 workshops are open to the public as an extension of the PRIMER19 Conference programming occurring at Parsons, The New School on June 13-14, 2019*.
This year's PRIMER conference theme, FUTURES FOR ALL, highlights the wisdom and power of creating diverse spaces for interrogating the 'inevitable'. We intend to bring together participants from across industries and academia to share ideas, methods and projects that examine the reciprocal relationship between design, the world we live in, and the futures we want.
Workshop Info
Title: Plasticity & Social Dreaming: Bioplastics & Biology-inspired Prototyping
Presenter: Leticia Cartier Oxley; Program Associate at Genspace
Leticia Cartier Oxley is the Program Associate at Genspace, a community biology laboratory located in Brooklyn. She is a recent graduate from the MA Design Studies program at Parsons School of Design with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Literature from Regis University.
Leticia’s work situates itself at the intersection of design theory and praxis. With a focus on Speculative Design, Leticia was part of the Designed Realities Lab at Parsons, which uses design as a catalyst for interdisciplinary discourse and imagining. With an emphasis on prototypes and design fictions, her work suggests that design can be used as a method of inquiry and that imagination can be a political force within society.
Workshop Overview
Combining biology and speculative design, this workshop looks at prototyping as a communicative tool and rehearsal of situations. Learning to create a new bioplastic alongside a proposed scenario, this workshop questions what can be learned from material explorations and design as a method of inquiry.
Science and Design are inextricably linked: both seek to understand the natural world and create and systematize possible solutions. Designers take science and develop the interfaces with which we interact with knowledge, codes, and discoveries from the life sciences. Traditionally, design has often relied on metaphors and analogies from the natural world to situate itself in the realm of everyday experience. With the amplified urgency of climate change and technological complexity, a shift in design mentality has inspired the intermingling and use of biology and living organisms as mechanisms and materials for design.
In this workshop, participants will learn about biodesign from speculative design case studies and hands-on activities by creating a prototype using lo-fi materials and making their own bioplastic. Because design must address ever-increasing complexity, designers can use the tools of science to design more sustainably, address ethical issues, and apply designer perspective to scientific questions.
Focusing on the designer’s greatest ally—the prototype—the workshop activity looks at strategies in which designers can test possible consequences of outcomes of designs before they are widely adopted. The purpose of prototyping is to operationalize research. The creative tension embodied by the prototype comes from its peculiar position in the design process. At the same time, it refines research problems and questions through multiple iterations, but it also translates abstract and incomplete ideas to material possibilities. Prototypes, however embryonic, are evolutionary precursors to final products, and thus occupy a double ontological status as materialized models of a potential real thing (“This!”), and as a proposition (“This?”). It is this ambiguity and what this allows, that gives prototypes their capacity for communication and their faculty for research.
Unique to our time, designers no longer face the barrier of entry of formal training to engage with biotechnology, nor are digital technologies siloed away from interacting and or seen as not contributing to natural processes. Across disciplines, prototyping has been adopted as a methodological approach and as a way to materialize solutions.
This workshop examines the operational and speculative roles of prototyping to rehearse and contemplate possible futures across disciplines. By bringing together multiple disciplines to
prototype multiple scenarios, participants will not only question the ethics of specific design scenarios but the ecology of design practice. Is it possible to move the prototype away from metaphors but to a dialogue that is explicit, collaborative, and capable of propelling real-world change? How do the materials we use engage with and reflect our worldviews?
Key Workshop Takeaways
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An engaged perspective of design as a method of inquiry
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New hands on experience with biodesign
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A protocol to explore and play with new materials
Special Notes
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PRIMER19 workshops are scheduled for A.M. and P.M. While this workshop is currently scheduled for the A.M. time slot, the final starting time may vary depending on scheduling needs. Workshop ticket holders will be notified accordingly.
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Attendees who purchase a PRIMER19 conference ticket receive a discount off of all PRIMER19 related workshops. Please check your confirmation email or contact theprimerconference@gmail.com for discount-related questions or problems.
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Student Tickers are available to purchase for individuals who (a) purchase using their official .edu email address AND (b) show a valid, current student ID/verification when checking into the conference and workshop.
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If you want to attend the PRIMER19 conference or affiliated workshops but are experiencing economic hardship, please visit the extenuating circumstances page on our website and we'd be happy to work with you!
Other PRIMER19 Workshops:
PRIMER19 Workshop by Andrés Valencia The Future is Human: A Toolkit for Progress
PRIMER19 Workshop by Frank Spencer: Wicked Opportunities: Innovation Through Foresight
PRIMER19 Workshop by Pierre Shaw & Kishan San: Platforms and Their Protagonists
PRIMER19 Workshop by Chirryl-Lee Ryan: Impact The World Isn't Ready For
PRIMER19 Workshop by Grace Turtle & Andreu Belsunces: Automated Control Wars
*What is PRIMER?
PRIMER conference was created to prepare you for the future and to equip you to help shape it. It is the annual conference (in the US and Europe) produced by the Design Futures Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in San Francisco, CA and the annual gathering for the Speculative Futures community with 20 (and growing) chapters worldwide.
We welcome anyone to join us! Conference attendees (and localized MeetUp members) span a wide array of designers, artists, technologists, makers, students, and organizations whose work focuses on questioning and rethinking our technologies, products, and systems, or proposes alternative narratives and future worlds.
Stay connected! For more information and updates, join our mailing list and follow us on social media.
