Focused Discussions
The A4 Workshop View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Thomas Girard
This session considers a project about rapid conceptualization and realization through sketches and reference material. The conceptualization for this project originated from historical project ideas that were taught at the Bauhaus. In this project, students have one hour and one piece of A4 size paper to make something. The students can make whatever they want and are not given further direction beyond a brief introduction. Some of the hour students have is allocated by the student to decide what a story might be that they could tell around what they have. A timer is set to emphasize the significance of time and the use of time in the project. After the hour is over there is a critique session, where dialogue begins around stories the student have created about what they’ve made, thinking in terms of a way to introduce themselves and create discussion around design, as a segue into further studies and projects.
How Chinese Design Standards Contribute to Product Quality Issues
Focused Discussion Craig Seidelson
More goods are made in China than any country in the world. Many of these goods are made for export using imported designs. It is common for local engineers to change foreign drawings. Changes are much more than simply translating words, symbols, projections or units. Translated drawings can have different nominal dimensions and tolerances. They can even specify different materials. The reason is China's system of national, professional, and local standards. It is very difficult to make anything which falls outside these standards. Unfortunately, there are many weaknesses in China’s system of standards. The primary complaint is standards are written from the producer’s point of view. Focus is on defining what activities must be done. Little consideration is given to what the resulting customer quality level should be. Chinese design management can help explain why made in China products account for roughly 60% of all US Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls.
Decolonizing Knowledge Spaces: A Framework for Action
Focused Discussion Gaia Scagnetti
We all have been culturally colonized in more or less forceful ways and we behave to our society’s powers as a colony to the sovereign state. We recognize that overthrowing colonial authority has historically meant violence and conflict that still continues today. In its metaphorical version, however, decolonization is a conceptual breakthrough. We intuitively understand it and we viscerally feel it has something to do with each of our lives. Decolonization speaks to many because is at its core a conversation about supremacy: being in command of power, influence, assets, media or infrastructures; but the power appears to be always in someone else's hands – the media, the dominant culture, the wealthy, the employers. Decolonizing means to alter the dynamics of a system, not only changing who is in control but how power gets exercised. In our society, power is an issue of accessing, interpreting, communicating, and producing knowledge. In Decolonizing Knowledge Spaces, I will present a short history of this concept as a metaphorical framework and five practical propositions to question the way we assemble, understand and redistribute knowledge today. These strategies argue to subvert authority as a regulatory structure in the distribution of knowledge, ownership as an iterated economic organizational form, identity as a customary epistemology, access and resources as a governing arrangement of power, and control as the underlying aim of social assemblages.
Mind Booster Art and Society : Experiencing Creative Environment for Health and Wealth View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Olga Zbarskaya
The concept of mind booster art is one of OZCREDO inventions and advanced breakthrough in the social, scientific, humanitarian, medical, and artistic fields. We exhibited this art at the United Nations, museums, art halls, galleries, gala events, art auctions, and other reputable institutions. We also incorporated this imagery into healthcare and educational settings. This discussion will underline surprising feedback of healthcare and mental healthcare providers on Mind Booster Art, its impact on the environment, and possibilities. Mind Booster concept was formed based on scientific research into the world of creativity, perception, pattern recognition, stimulus generalization, concentration, idea elaboration, fluency, making conclusions, stereotyping, and many other matters. All properties of an image including its color, shape, dynamics, depth, and texture are combined to stimulate cognitive and emotional abilities while maximizing emotional fitness and creative problem solving. Interactions of these characteristics and optical illusions aim to flex the thought process and bring imagination to the next level. Symmetry, composition, balance, abstraction, density, and dynamics provoke shifts in perception as well as an openness to the novelty of out of the box thought process. Mind Booster Art utilizes scientific and philosophical ideas such as Socratic questioning method, ascendant movement, spiral of cancellations, paradigm shift, curved dynamic, optical gradualism, and more. This concept also entails some notions of logical consequences, cognitive restructuring, unexpected patterns, and surprising imagery transformations that promote flexibility of the mind, unusual connections, filling the blind spot, and elaborating ideas.
