January-February 2014 Interni
76 / INdesign Crossover
To hypothesize scenarios, to modify existing production processes, are the most important things in the world of design today,” Stam explains. Similarly, experimenting with ‘hands-on’ projects grants students independence in practice, and that individual experimental method that is fundamental in today’s world of work, as companies increasingly tend to delegate and gather research from outside the firm. “The tradition system of education is in a phase of change, not only due to the crisis that is altering the normal modes of access to work, but also because new technologies have accelerated a change in the cognitive paradigm of the generation of people in their twenties,” says Stefano Mirti, director of the new Online Masters in Relational Design of the ABADIR Academy of Catania. “Like YouTube, which gathers thousands of disconnected fragments, young people reason from the particular to the general, from induction to deduction. So teaching with traditional methods becomes ineffective.” Mirti has conducted experiments on the potential of social media and the management of online communities with the Whoami and Ceramic Futures projects, covering the functioning of a horizontal type of communication, or one based on different registers of relation and ranking among people, aspects that will be reflected in the teaching approach of the program. At first the course is subdivided into twelve modules of 24 days each, in very different disciplines (from basic
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to automotive design, community design to crafts), with theoretical lectures and online reviews, conferences of experts via streaming, one weekend per month of workshops with partner companies, and two weekends of summer camp for a total of 500 training hours. A mixture of analog and digital, because the value of face-to-face relationships should not be underestimated. Again in this case, the masters focuses on a system of practical, hands-on workshops. “The graduates will not be sector experts. The school is conceived more like a phone book than as a toolbox: the students will learn to relate to a myriad of disciplines, developing social and relational skills, invisible but fundamental abilities for the contemporary designer,” Mirti concludes. Italian schools have few conceptual laboratories where students and teachers interact on the same level on the ontological and social
From the course in Digit al C ra ft s o f the B A program o f the Wil lem de Kooning Academie H oge school o f R ot ter dam, the proje ct “Mess age in the Bo t tle ” by Hilk o van Idsinga , Rose Gr oo t an d Ermi van O ers . T he s tu dent s ha ve incorpora te d in a me chanic al machine , a remin der o f tra ditional t ool s , a soun d sensor tha t makes the bot tle turn, et ching Morse co de me ss age s. Digit al com bine s with anal og in a poetic proje ct roo te d in the col le ctive imaginar y.
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