Nuanced Insights
Featured Re-thinking Through Materials: A move towards Material Literacy through the Practice of Ramkinkar Baij and Mrinalini Mukherjee View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tanvi Jain, Shatarupa Thakurta Roy
Since the twentieth century, artists around the world have experimented with myriad materials and techniques. However, the dominant mind/matter dichotomy in antique philosophy has degenerated the role of material as passive matter, and this intrinsically hierarchical model has been echoed since the Aristotelian era. The scholars failed to challenge art history’s disciplinary boundaries due to the lack of correspondence with artists’ creative process. The study investigates the artistic process, taking into account the effect of physical properties and social connotations of materials in order to fully grasp the meaning of an artwork. The essay critically analyses material sensibility in the practice of twentieth-century Indian artists Ramkinkar Baij and Mrinalini Mukherjee. The study proposes that, firstly, rather than analyzing the finished artworks, an understanding of the process and experience of the artists contribute to “material literacy” and in turn a nuanced understanding of the artwork; secondly, materials and the process of making influence the artwork and the artistic style; and thirdly, contextually grounded reading of the artist’s material and process gives a holistic understanding of the artworks. The study adopts the methodology of narrative analysis to understand the embodied experience and the creative process of the artists. The article purposely chooses the two exponents of Indian art whose works have been discussed in great lengths; however, the marginalized discussion of materials overlooked an essential narrative. Furthermore, the choice of deceased artists as case studies lays radical potential of archival data and raises new methodological opportunities for investigating the phenomenological experiences.
Biodesign Practices : An Experiment on the Epigenetic Limits of the Bombyx Mori
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Derya Irkdas Dogu
Organized living-matter (organisms) represent a remarkable form of dualism, a dualism partly physical and partly metaphysical and it arises from the fact that organisms possess both a genotype and a phenotype. Although the genotype contains all the information for an organism’s existence, it is how its constituting-matter behaves while interacting with environmental factors that defines its phenotype. These phenotypic properties (environmental dependent properties) are seen as important as the genotypic properties in the taxonomy of a specific species. Therefore, what a living-system will be can be partially defined by the designer as its phenotype is defined by the way the base substance interacts with environmental factors. This paper presents a biodesign experiment that was conducted to condition the Bombyx Mori’s genotype by putting pressure on its environment to explore its sense of adaptation. The primary aim of this experiment is to test the epigenetic limits of the living-system by introducing different geometric alternatives to spin the silk instead of building cocoons. This way, we test a cross-species collaborative approach to introduce an alternative to existing sericulture practices. This paper presents a biodesign experiment where bombyx’s genotype is conditioned by putting pressure on its environment to explore the potential that resides in its sense of adaptation. Design of surfaces and structures created to make this experiment successful were primarily aimed at changing these parameters; as the epigenetic limits of the living-system are tested with different geometric alternatives.
The Role of Design on the Development of Family Firms' Dynamic Innovation Capabilities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Selin Gulden, Ozlem Er
This research examines the innovation capabilities of design-intensive family firms (FFs), operating in office-furniture manufacturing industry in Turkey. In this multidisciplinary study, two main themes are used from family business (FB) and innovation literature. Familiness theory and its three dimensions - involvement, essences, and organizational identity - are used as a way to understand the resources of family involvement in these firms. Dynamic innovation capability (DIC) framework and its three forms are used to examine these firms’ processes of using resources to sense and seize opportunities, and to reconfigure assets and structures in a changing business environment, an emerging market context. The findings from the case study reveal three roles of design that contribute to the development of DICs of FFs. These are (1) idea generation through external resources, (2) value addition through high-quality products, and (3) vision accumulation through the founder. These findings highlight the interaction between design and innovation practices of FFs and provide insights on how a family-owned and -managed manufacturing company operating in a design-intensive industry would achieve innovation in an emerging market: (1) The collaborative approach to idea generation through external sources is used for sensing innovation opportunities, (2) the value addition is achieved with high-quality products often through investment in production technologies and process innovations, and rarely through investment in R&D and design and product innovations, for seizing innovation opportunities; and (3) the vision for innovation is adopted through the founder, mainly related to the educational status and personality traits, for reconfiguring assets and structures.
