anew #2 Redesigning Industry (June 2019) - MA Industrial Design, KABK

Master Industrial Design Royal Academy of Art, The Hague Prinsessegracht 4 2514 AN The Hague www.kabk.nl m.roozenburg@kabk.nl z.roelse@kabk.nl Editors/Contributors Zara Roelse (Coordinator Master Industrial Design) Merel Kamp (Tutor Theory & Writing and MID communication) Maaike Roozenburg (Head Master Industrial Design) Teresa Feldmann Federica Marella Alessandro Celli Kevin Shek Marion Dupuis Honor Newman

anew #2 redesigning industry (a publication by) Master Industrial Design, Royal Academy of art, The Hague

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Graphic Design Mahtab Zamanifar and Michelle Janssen (Design office, Graphic Design Department, Royal Academy of Art) Graduating students 2018 – 2019 Alicja Czop, Johanna Gßnzl, Federica Marrella, Cecilia Polonara, Jan Sengers, Daphne Story, Leon Wezenberg, Marsha Wichers.

First year students 2018 - 2019 Elina Alekseeva, Alesandro Celli, Marion Dupuis, Teresa Feldmann, Elena Genesio, Isabella Monaco, Sandipan Nath, Honor Newman, Lucija Novosel, Kevin Shek.

Printing Lenoirschuring, The Netherlands

with thanks for their contribution Master industrial Design would like to thank: Ista Boszhard, Gijsbert Dijker, Chantal Hendriksen, Ron Lambi (Chillabs / Brightlands Chemelot Campus), Cecilia Raspanti (Waag TextileLab), Jantien Roozenburg Copyright Master Industrial Design, KABK The Hague/The Netherlands June 2019

2018/2019

Marbles and marble powder used as a component in an experimental filament for 3D printing connected to a broader material research on calcium carbonate and seawater, by Elina Alekseeva.

Introduction

MASTER INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: Re-designing industry

At MID we believe that industrial design shapes the world of tomorrow.

Index Master Industrial Design: Re-designing industry

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Books, books, books; an overview of our graduates’ thesis publications

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Million males away: A conversation about patriarchy and design

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Collaborating, sharing and sustainable innovation; an interview with Ista Boszhard of Waag’s TextileLab

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Hyperobject

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Material research

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A drawing lesson with Sketch Doctor Shek

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Hands-on digital manufacturing

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Digitized production and power naps; MID X Brightlands Chemelot Campus

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Transplanting aesthetics

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When I altered nature

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Algorithmic faith

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Staff

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Master Industrial Design education profile and practical information

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Industry, a complex, manmade system of consumer wishes, product design and engineering, assembly lines, human and material resources, transportation, business models, advertising campaigns and waste. A system that expanded and intensified after spinning looms where placed together in the first cotton mill in Britain kicking off the Industrial Revolution. A system that we designed. By now this industry causes more problems than it solves. It drains the planet of its resources and chokes it with products and pollution instead of truly contributing to the well being of its inhabitants.

The industrial system is usually approached in terms of efficiency and profit, excluding essential aspects such as well-being, equality, (cultural) diversity and ecological health. We believe that by questioning and redesigning the conventions in the industrial system, industrial designers can contribute to a sustainable, meaningful and inclusive world. Which means that at the MID we foster disruptive approaches: We seek alternative models for production and business and explore new and existing materials and manufacturing techniques. Therefor research plays a crucial role at the MID. Design research deals with material culture: it looks into the connection between humans and material objects and the social, cultural, economical and ecological role these objects and their production play. This research is then implemented and materialised in aesthetically distinctive and meaningful products and projects.

At MID we collaborate with the industrial field to understand processes and developments and to allow for our designers to become agents of change within the system. This year we were fortunate to work with companies and research institutions such as De Waag TextileLab Amsterdam and Brightlands Chemelot Campus of Smart materials and Sustainable manufacturing.

Under the guidance of TextileLab Amsterdam, design researcher Yassine Salihine and designer Lenneke Langenhuijsen, our first year students worked on design projects focussing on the unethical and environmentally unfriendly realities of the current textile and clothing industry. In their design research they explored and mapped the systems and chains at work in the industry. They worked both at the

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level of the fibre and at the level of the economical and cultural meaning of its fabrication process. The resulting designs –presented during a sold-out event at De Waag, Amsterdam– are speculative and innovative, materialising new directions and perspectives for the textile industry.

During the second semester we dived into the world of digital fabrication technologies: transforming atoms into bits and vice versa. Questions on the forefront in this project were: What do these new production technologies truly have to offer to improve the world? How can digital manufacturing provoke the, we believe, necessary revolution that will make our lives more sustainable, our products more divers and the global division of wealth more just? Based on these questions students developed projects and products guided by designer and researcher Dries Verbruggen of Studio Unfold, using the state of the art lab facilities of Brightlands. You can find more about these projects in this magazine.

We are very proud to show you this year’s graduates’ research and projects during the Graduation Show and in the next pages. Each of these projects is based on meticulous and passionate design research, which resulted in distinct and outstanding designs. Courageous in subject, they deal with complex as well as urgent matters: from queerness of industrial products to microplastics and from the impact of the use of botox to patriarchy.

We are keen to show you our take on industrial design in a selection of projects, interviews and images by our students and teachers.

Hope you enjoy it!

Maaike Roozenburg Head of Master Industrial Design

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BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS;

an overview of our graduates’ thesis publications

Conrado Bergemann Modularity: Formless Designs in a Formidable World

Modularity offers flexibility and boundless options.

Modularity ranges from rearranging parts into new configurations, to multi- and re-purposing and home-fixes and hacks. Environments where resources or spare parts are limited (such as islands or remote areas) often show examples of a lively modular imagination. Can modularity be used to tackle questions of sustainable production and consumption?

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Johanna Günzl Hidden kingdom; exploring the uncharted paths of a hyperobject

Federica Marella A million males away

Philosopher Timothy Morton equals micro-plastics to a ‘hyperobject’ – an object so massively distributed in time and space that it is impossible to point to or capture. But is this really impossible? Can micro-plastics perhaps be mapped? And, once mapped, what design solutions could follow for this pressing environmental issue?

Although the equality between men and women has generally improved, we still live in a patriarchal society.

Textile crafts such as knitting, weaving or crocheting have always been considered female pass-times and as such not been taken seriously as an artistic or design practice. What potentially subversive power do these crafts, specifically those traditionally practiced by the women in the Italian region of Calabria, have today?

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Cecilia Polonara The bonding habits; change the habits-of-use across food packaging

Jan Sengers The death of John Doe; an exploration of gender and queerness within myself and the field of design

Recycling food packaging materials is not a satisfactory solution for our current waste-crisis, since it uses too much energy and recycled material always need to bemixed with virgin materials. The problem with packaging materials is that their life span, does not match their length-of-use. What design options are revealed when you start from the physical movements certain types of packaging invite us to make?

The world is still mostly made up of binaries; male/ female, gay/straight. Products are marketed for either men or women and as such they are strongly and clearly gendered. It this binary thinking perpetuated by design? What could be the transformative power of design when design itself becomes more queer? How can design help the joyfully blur boundaries and erase the binary (through products or otherwise)?

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Daphne Story Pressure to be perfect

Marsha Wichers Face design

Our market-driven, neo-liberal society with its meritocratic environments (schools, the work place, social media) encourages perfectionism and reaps the benefits of the perfectionist’s work. Yet whenever the perfectionist gets into trouble, it being a burn-out or depression, it is considered an individual problem. Can design help to make society less obsessed with performance and as such kinder to the perfectionist?

Since the 1970’s there has been a tremendous increase in the number of people using botox for purely aesthetic reasons. Through botox the range of facial expressions a person can make is dramatically reduced. Reading the ‘motionless mask’ botox produces is impossible. What is the effect of botox on interpersonal communication? What design solutions can be thought of to replace botox by less invasive methods of improving the image of the self?

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Leon Wezenberg Sol 354: the diary of a mars maker

Alicja Czop Dare to feel

Man is going to Mars. The first generations of humans on Mars will have limited resources for the production of essentials and limited space (in their homes). Can the principles of the Maker Movement be applied in space and on Mars specifically? Can products be devised which can be produced and recycled locally and which require a minimum of (local) resources?

The millennial seems to have a strenuous relationship with intimacy. This may be related to the omnipresence –from an early age– of technology and social media in the millennial’s life. What is intimacy to millennials? And is it possible to design objects or products that cause them to feel more comfortable about intimacy?

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MILLION MALES AWAY:

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A conversation about patriarchy and design

Depatriarchise Design is a practice-led research platform that examines the complicity of design in the reproduction of oppressive systems, focusing predominantly on patriarchy. The platform is currently run by design journalist Anja Neidhardt and industrial designer Maya Ober, the founder of this disruptive digital project. During my research process, I decided to talk with them to learn more about the social mechanism and patriarchal standards behind the current design system. What follows is conversation of kindred spirits.

Interview by Federica Marella

[FM] As a white, European woman I have a personal interest in the subject of gender equality, which is why it became my graduation theme. What was your motivation to address issues of gender and intersectionality and create “Depatriarchise Design�?

[Maya] At some point during my career as an industrial designer I noticed how much industrial design and its community are disconnected from political issues. The only political issue that has been present within the design discourse is the question of sustainability and the environment, and perhaps some social design issues.

And still I would say, political issues are generally treated in a very superficial and western-colonial way. My interest in these issues did not originate from design itself but rather from political activism of a different nature in which I have been involved. At some point i felt the need to translate my activism into my design practice since I noticed the huge dissonance between these two parts of my life.

Depatriarchise Design also originated from frustration: during your design studies,

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you are taught that everyone has the same chances. You are led to believe in this capitalist illusion that if you work hard everything will be ok. But the reality is different. Gender stereotypes affect how I am understood: I am never just a designer, I am always ‘female designer’. This is the reality of all female practitioners and influences the way our clients or colleagues relate to us and speak to us. People have stereotypical expectations and question our competences as female industrial designers.

[Anja] As for me, I studied communication design but I always worked as a journalist.

During my work, I noticed that some topics that are not represented in the media.

When I discovered the platform that Maya had created I was really happy to pitch these topics and write about them. This was the start of our collaboration.

[FM] How do you experience gender stereotypes in your professional life?

[Maya] Industrial design is perceived as a very technical field. As women designers our professional abilities are perceived through the social construct of femininity.

This construct is oppressive. For instance: women are supposedly not capable of technical thinking or of performing in the field of industrial design in general.

It happened to me a million times that my competences were questioned for no reason. Once, I supervised a construction site of an urban project which I had designed with my colleagues. Even though I had made all the plans and I knew exactly where everything should be located I had this huge discussion with the construction workers and the engineer who was supervising the construction.

They had put one element 100 meter further than indicated on the plan. So basically they had read the construction plans wrong. Nevertheless they felt entitled to argue with me and tried to prove me wrong. They had four qualified female industrial designers and architects in front of them— but would direct the technical questions to the only male colleague –who was a typographer. These kinds of things happen all the time.

[Anja] Similar things happen in journalism. When I started to work and to conduct interviews I could sense that the interviewees did not expect a young female journalist and were sceptic. Only after talking about my experience, educational background and qualifications, did this attitude towards me change and would I be treated with respect.

[Maya] Industrial design is perceived as a very technical field. As women designers our professional abilities are perceived through the social construct of femininity.

This construct is oppressive. For instance: women are supposedly not capable of technical thinking or of performing in the field of industrial design in general.

It happened to me a million times that my competences were questioned for no reason. Once, I supervised a construction site of an urban project which I had designed with my colleagues. Even though I had made all the plans and I knew exactly where everything should be located I had this huge discussion with the construction workers and the engineer who was supervising the construction.

They had put one element 100 meter further than indicated on the plan. So basically they had read the construction plans wrong. Nevertheless they felt entitled to argue with me and tried to prove me wrong. They had four qualified female industrial designers and architects in front of them— but would direct the technical questions to the only male colleague –who was a typographer. These kinds of things happen all the time.

[Anja] Similar things happen in journalism. When I started to work and to conduct in-

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terviews I could sense that the interviewees did not expect a young female journalist and were sceptic. Only after talking about my experience, educational background and qualifications, did this attitude towards me change and would I be treated with respect.

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Ortner, Sherry B; Is female to male as nature is to culture? Woman, culture, and society. (1974) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 68-87

[FM] Why do people tend to think that ‘the technological’ is a masculine domain?

[Maya] This is very much related to the social construct of femininity, which is, in turn, related to how the female body is perceived. The female body is connected to reproduction and as such women became automatically bound to the domestic sphere, the home. As a consequence, women were excluded from the public arena, from participation in political life, from making decisions, from deciding about curricula etcetera. Because of their role in reproduction, women are perceived as belonging to nature. Technology is seen as the opposite of nature: technology means bending nature and this act is reserved for men1. I believe this construct of femininity is deeply rooted in our society: women are not expected or encouraged to act “against” nature and the process of socialisation reinforces the idea of their attachment to “nature” and to the domestic. Women often feel more insecure working with tools or working with computers; this is just another result of socialisation.

[FM] In relation to this: ‘craft’ was and is often considered a female domain and as such not considered ‘design’. How is this way of thinking related to patriarchal patterns and to the sexual division of labour?

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[FM] Design critic Cheryl Buckley2 explains how women have always been excluded historiography —even though participating in the design discourse in different roles as critics, designers or objects of product advertising. If you open any design history book you will find only male designers in it. All the design stars are male. If women are included, then usually as an exception to the rule. Whenever I mention this the typical reaction is something like: “Things are changing, there are also famous female designers like Hella Jongerius”. And every time I hear this kind of sentence I feel thatthis is a sort of confirmation that she is really just an exception as I was trying to state at the beginning of my conversation.

Buckley, Cheryl; Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design. (Autumn 1986) The MIT Press, Design Issues, Vol. 3, No. 2

[Maya] The question is: Who decided about this distinction between craft and design? I think that when we talk about craft there are three oppressive systems which intersect: patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. All the artefacts produced by women in the domestic sphere weren’t regarded as design, because these objects did not function in the capitalist economy: They were not for sale, not mass-produced or commercialised but ‘just’ created for domestic usage. Furthermore, when we discuss design we discuss it mostly from a Western perspective.

In this view everything that happens in the global North is considered design and everything that happens in the global South is considered craft. And if the South part of craft is regarded as design is because the Europeans brought it there. This is a very colonialist relationship.

[Anja] It also has to do with the fact that all reproductive labour and the work that is done in the household is, until today, not regarded as “real” work. Even the creation of pots or knitting are not perceived as design, but as crafts. If they would happen outside of the home, let’s say in a factory, people would be more likely to label them (industrial) design.

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[Maya] Indeed female designers are still perceived as exceptions to the norm. Hella Jongerius, Patricia Urquiola, Zaha Hadid and India Mahdavi are not simply referred to as designers and architects, their gender is always underlined, as if they were a kind of strange, unusual beings within the predominantly white, male design scene. They are always perceived through their otherness, in this case their gender. The same mechanism can be observed looking at design history. Therefore, we should talk about the foundations of design: we should talk about what discourses define good design, [Anja] If we would all base our discussions on topics or on ways of working instead of personalities then the discourse of design history and theory would be completely different. Of course names still play a role in this game but the focus would be on more important things.

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Matrix; Making Space. Women and the man-made environment. First published in 1984 by Pluto Press Limited.

[FM] How is the fact that design has been a male prerogative reflected in our physical environment and our experience thereof?

[Anja] The female collective Matrix describes3 how architecture and urban design use norms and standards that are very much linked to the male perspective and to male bodies. So not only women but everyone who is different or perceived as “the other” struggles to navigate these man-made spaces. If you use a wheelchair or push a pram, and can’t enter a building because it has only stairs and no ramps or elevators, then this design really discriminates against you.

[Maya] Our urban environment is very oppressive to women and also not very safe.

For instance in the evening or night I avoid underground passages which are extremely dark and provide little possibility to escape. Urban planning and design influence where I feel entitled and safe to go and where I don’t. They influence the accessibility of the public space, which is by default designed as accessible to men, because it was mainly designed by men. I agree with Anja and think the urban fabric disregards the needs of female users, people of colour and disabled users or generally everyone who doesn’t follow the white male norm.

[FM] Do you meet designers who try to provide solutions for the problem of gender inequality through Depatriarchize Design?

[Maya] I think we shouldn’t think about designers as solution providers, because it is a modernist lie that designers could provide solutions to tackle complex societal issues like patriarchy. Patriarchy is one of the oldest oppressive systems, so to think that design could in some way just solve it is very arrogant. But I think that there are designers, who question the norms of the discipline and the dominant visual languages. This is more important than providing some kind of solution. The real issue – for us designers – is to pose the right questions and to see where our competences to act lie.

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PROJECT: MID X WAAG TEXTILELAB A kombucha leather bra, air-purifying folding screens made from wool, and new clothes made from yarn obtained by unravelling overstock items from major fashion chains... Students following the Master’s programme in Industrial Design (MID) have been exploring new, sustainable materials, and revenue models for the textile industry under the supervision of Lenneke Langenhuijsen (Buro Belén), and in close collaboration with Waag’s TextileLab Amsterdam, founded by Cecilia Raspanti and Ista Boszhard. The outcome of this collaboration was recently presented in a sold-out Waag.

Text by Merel Kamp

Waag’s TextileLab often works with students, creatives and researchers. Do you also collaborate with the textile industry?

‘Currently, we are doing that in the context of the Textile Clothing Business Labs project –a European project that enabled us to set up this lab – where everything revolves around partnerships between textile labs and the industry, and developing new business models. On a regular basis we also do material tests for fashion brands interested in dyeing textiles with bacteria. But real collaborations continue to be complicated because the textile industry tends to be relatively closed off. We never simply perform the operational tasks and want to collaborate exclusively with parties who are not only open to innovation, but also frank about their problems and ideas. We are happy to share our research agenda with external parties, if they are willing to share things with us in return; otherwise it would just be a one-way street. So it continues to be a journey of exploration, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. We can see that changes are slowly taking shape.’

Is collaborating with a group of students like these from

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‘Het gaat niet om de individuele ontwerper, het gaat om het grote verhaal.’

MID mainly interesting for the students, or also for you as TextileLab? ‘Every encounter with an external party is a kind of reality check for us, a means to assess whether our work and the ideas we have developed also resonate with people from different backgrounds. It meant a lot to us to work with such a diverse group of people.

Their reactions to our work will contribute to our process of research and reflection. And we also found out that the students had a very different approach to our own main question at TextileLab – that broad question concerning alternatives to the textile industry.’

In what sense?

‘In general, students seem to find it difficult to adopt a truly critical attitude with regard to this question. They are selling themselves short by not questioning the things that are handed to them and therefore get stuck with: “What would be a sustainable alternative for this or that material?”. In fact, you want them to move towards a broader question, like: “In what way do we actually think about material in general?” When you put the question like that, you are bound to arrive at completely different perspectives. Should we replace plastic with something else? No, it can be an amazing material if only we would think about and use it differently. One of your tutors, Yassine Salihine, encouraged the students to embed their research questions in their own personal narratives. Starting with yourself and your own personal interests enables you to look at things in a more critical way and encourages you to ask yourself: “How do I relate to this?”.’ ‘To us, sustainability also means doing something that appeals to you.’

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Why is that personal approach necessary for adopting a critical attitude?

‘According to us at the Lab, starting with yourself is the most sustainable way to work. It enables you to think less in systems and roles and more about approaching the problems as a human being. We think that sustainability also means doing something that appeals to you. Of course, we all have to do things we don’t enjoy sometimes, but it would be strange if we were setting up systems we do not feel at home in ourselves. So that personal aspect functions like some kind of signposting during your process. In a system that is as rigid and complex as the textile industry, it is extremely difficult to find out in what areas you can start to make a change. Recognising and seeing opportunities – and problems – is crucial, although it will take quite some time before the students get to that point and start asking their own, uniquely personal research questions.

For that reason, contextual research and this personal approach are vital.’

How does a research process like that work?

‘It can, but doesn’t have to, start from the material. Whenever you start making something, problems or questions will arise from your encounter with the material. If you start with extensive reading and analysing, it could well be that you will reach the conclusion that something doesn’t work on a material level much too late. The process of making will also immediately give you something concrete to talk about. In this way, the making process and material research on a small scale can help you identify larger problems. This is an important starting point for our lab. Besides that, it is important that you continue to ask questions and recognise the value of the small findings

‘Duurzaamheid betekent voor ons ook: iets doen wat je aanspreekt.’

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from that material research that at first sight may not seen important, but in actual fact can contain precious information. In the end, to us it is all about combining material research, reflection and product design.

Why should students start making rope out of flax again when we already know how that is done? Aren’t they all just reinventing the wheel?

‘In some way they are, yes. At the same time, you simply cannot avoid carrying out certain processes. You should at least understand the wheel before you can reinvent it, and therefore you have to find out something about the basics and the craftmanship involved. In general, people would do well to spend more time exploring what has already been done, and subsequently depart from that instead of starting from scratch. And that’s why it would also be great if research results were widely shared and open source.’ It’s not about the individual designer, it’s about the bigger picture.

At the same time, it seems as if designers always have to come up with something original. Building on the work of others, as is common in the scientific community, is not standard practice in the design world.

‘That’s true. It has to do with revenue models and how people are educated. Our work at Waag's TextileLab is completely open source. We are transparent and share everything, including our failures. We have noticed that people really appreciate being part of a network where they can contribute to the research. More and more people are recognising the added value of that openness, shared language and interdisciplinarity as opposed to working on something by yourself and protecting your idea. For us, this way of thinking and working is embedded in our methodology.

Note: In this interview, Ista Boszhard is also expressing the views of Cecilia Raspanti; the entire text concerns their shared and jointly developed body of thought.

About Ista Boszhard Ista Boszhard studied Design at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam, graduating with a thesis on interdisciplinary education and the value of art. Ista also participated in an interdisciplinary Master’s programme at the University of Utrecht. Together with Cecilia Raspanti, Ista founded Waag’s TextileLab. Apart from her activities for TextileLab, she supervises graduation projects at the AMFI and is affiliated to the minor Design Thinking & Doing.

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HYBEROBJECT

A quick chat designed to tell you everything you need to know about a buzzword you (may not) need to know about.

Age of the hyperobjects: objects which have vitality to them but can’t be touched.

Their effects may be experienced nevertheless.

Name: Hyperobjects Age: ushered in the age of the Anthropocene Appearance: not visible to the human gaze

Text by Zara Roelse

U can’t touch this?

No, not like MC Hammer. Timothy Morton, professor at Rice University, was actually inspired by Björk’s 1996 single Hyperballad when he conjured the term.

Ah, ok. But, an object that can’t be touched?

Morton introduced the concept of hyperobjects to describe objects so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity.

Spatiotemporal specificity?

What Morton means are objects transcending localization, think global warming, Styrofoam, radioactive plutonium and microplastics.

It all sounds very strange to me.

That’s a good thing! Hyperobjects confront us with the strangeness of the world. They are Morton’s tool for doing away with a romantic notion of nature that he attributes to environmentalism. By insisting on the “weirdness” and “strange strangeness” of natural as well as human-made objects and environments, Morton seeks to unsettle any aspirations toward harmony or balance with a nature.

So, are humans responsible for creating these hyperobjects?

According to Morton hyperobjects were already here, and slowly but surely, we understood what they were already saying. “They contacted us”.

What are you talking about?

For science fiction fans such as myself the suggestion that alien objects have come knocking on our door is hard not to like.

Uhm, not very scientific then ...

Apparently the more data we have about hyperobjects, the less we know about them and the more we realize we can never truly know them.

I’m afraid this is lost on me, should we just ignore them then?

Morton himself concludes that we can do one of two things. One is to forget everything we have just found out about hyperobjects. The other is to allow for the existence of these contradictory entities.

Do say: In a strange way, every object is a hyperobject.

Don’t say: When is season three of Stranger Things coming out?

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Marion - Mussel Shell

Daphne - Ramie

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Alicja - jute twine

Isabella - Sisal

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Leon - Hemp

Marion - Mussel shell

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Isabella - Sisal

Conrado - Algae

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Alicja - Jute twine

Daphne - Ramie

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Conrado - Algae

Alicja - Jute twine

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Honor - Wool

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Lesson

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DRAWING LESSON

Do you think you cannot draw?

Are you the kind of person that starts drawing in the corner of a blank sheet of paper? Sketch doctor Shek comes to your aid! Following this tutorial everyone can draw an armchair...... from their armchair. It is that easy.

Try it!

Sketch doctor Shek says: ‘Don’t be afraid to make line mistakes, because the black fineliner and texture will hide these imperfections. It helps to start with a blue pencil or gray fineliner to find the right perspective.

I sketched this chair digitally with Sketchbook Pro, but the steps are also suitable for sketching on paper and with markers. Let’s start!’

(image 1) ‘Draw a box and find your perspective in height, width and depth. This is will help to define your view angle and proportions.’ (image 7) ‘Cut the edges of the fabric texture. Make it fit into the sketch.’

Kevin Shek

(image 2) ‘Add thicker lines of the outer edges of the box to give more attention or contrast and draw a little box at the bottom. This will be a set-up of the chair legs.’ (image 8) ‘Define where the light comes from and then use your black brush to add shadows.’

Drawing Lesson

(image 3) ‘Sketch four chair legs into the little box at the bottom and draw some construction lines of the seat back of the chair.’ (image 9) ‘Cut the shadows to the edges of the sketch.’

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(image 4) ‘Use your construction lines as a guide to design the geometry of the chair.

It’s okay to make rough lines, because it’s a rough sketch.’ (image 10) ‘Add some highlights by using a white brush.’

(image 5) ‘Adding black lines in fineliner will help to increase to contrast of the chair and shade the geometry.

If you made mistakes with blue pencil, you won’t see them anymore.’ (image 11) ‘Add a colored background and ground shadow for more realistic shading and contrast.’

(image 6) ‘Find a fabric texture and copy paste it into the sketch. It is also possible to fill with gray color.’ (image 12) ‘Add the final details, such as the name, and improve some highlights and shadows.’

Sketch Doctor Shek says: ‘Well done! I knew you could do it!’

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The Master Industrial Design is proud to present her new podcast: DESIGN JOURNEY. Design Journey brings interesting stories about the world of the (industrial) designer. This podcast was initiated by Zara Roelse and Merel Kamp and is produced by the Master Industrial Design. Both Zara and Merel are part of the team of the Master Industrial Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK).

Zara en Merel speak to alumni and teachers of the Master Industrials Design about their work and how it relates to topical issues such as sustainability and the future of industrial production. The first three episodes feature: MID alumna Lillian van Daal, designer and MID teacher Lenneke Langenhuijsen of design duo Buro BelĂŠn and designer and MID teacher Dries Verbruggen of design studio Unfold.

Subscribe to design journey in Itunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. With special thanks to sound technician Rein Wijnja at River Studio, Alkmaar.

Images of trial & error

HANDS-ON DIGITAL MANUFACTURING

Digital Manufacturing For A Better World 33

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DIGITIZED PRODUCTION AND POWER NAPS MID X Brightlands Chemelot Campus

Text by Merel Kamp

What are the possibilities and (societal) implications of digital manufacturing? 3D printing techniques are often accompanied by statements about sustainability and democratization. 3D printing can replace the costly and time-consuming technique of injection molding. With low start-up costs and accessible technology it enables everyone to potentially start a (local) production line and as such subverts the classical ‘economy of scale’. Sounds wonderful, but this is mostly theory: The techniques and new materials are there, or being developed by parties such as Brightlands, but meaningful and societally beneficial implementations often lag behind.

Take 3D Printing with CO2 for instance. Brightlands developed an impressive technique to make this possible. But what to do with it? Possibility does not equal use, let alone sensible applications. ‘The scientist and technicians at Brightlands develop new techniques and materials and look at this process solely from the scientific or technological angle’ says Maaike Roozenburg, head of the Master Industrial Design. ‘Our students expertise is complementary to their expertise. Where Brightlands asks ‘what’ and ‘how’ our students ask ‘why’. As designers and creatives they can think about and design both meaningful and useful implementations of new materials and technologies.’

‘I do see a gap between researchers, who develop interesting materials and technologies, and designers, who can develop relevant products and uses’, says student Elina. ‘The two should be working together more closely.’ She feels this collaboration was an opportunity to connect with people and technologies that would otherwise be inaccessible to her. Student Sandipan agrees, adding: ‘We got valuable feedback and references of relevant people from the field that can be useful for our projects.’ Student Honor was quite surprised to notice that meaningful and useful implementations of new materials and technologies do not seem to be a priority for industry and has some doubts: ‘There was indeed the possibility to use equipment we wouldn’t necessarily have access to otherwise. But I am not sure the corporate world marries well with the conceptual, free ethos of KABK. ‘ But it is in fact perhaps precisely this sometimes uncomfortable marriage that MID is interested in: ‘We educate our students to question and

Images by Teresa Feldmann

This semester the Master Industrial Design collaborated with Brightlands Chemelot Campus a ‘creative breeding ground for innovation in smart materials and sustainable manufacturing’.

The Chemelot Campus, located at the Royal DSM site, offers high tech and state of the art machinery, technical know how and academic expertise all in one place.

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re-design industry’, says Roozenburg, ‘so I am happy that our students are critical. That is their job.’

And like every marriage this one was hard work in more than one way: The Brightlands Campus is located in Geleen, the South of the Netherlands, which meant: getting up early for a long commute by train. ‘I got a lot of reading done during these trips’’, says Honor. Sandipan prefered working on his presentations in the morning. The return journey was for power naps, talking and listening to music.

This collaborative design project was led by designer Dries Verbruggen of design studio Unfold, Antwerp and facilitated by Ron Lambi, business developer at Chillabs

Image by Elina Alekseeva

Dries Verbruggen, designer (Unfold Design Studio) and teacher at MID: ‘When the 3D printer first entered our awareness, it did so usually accompanied by a utopian ideal that we would all become our own producers at home. But sewing machines have been around for ages, yet we don’t all produce –let alone mend– our own clothes.

3D printing is basically an advanced version of the hot glue gun. As a technique as such it is perhaps not that interesting. What is interesting is the possibility to produce from digital file; this allows for the production without tooling and molds. Start-up costs and investments are much lower with digital manufacturing, which allows for the production of small batches. In this way industrial tools become the tools of digital craftspeople. Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a gap between industrial, high volume production and crafty small scale production. Digital manufacturing allows us to fill in this gap.’

Ron Lambi, business developer Chillabs: ‘Connecting the spheres of industry, business and education is one of our main goals here at CHILL (Chemelot Innovation & Learning Labs), part of the Brightlands Community. In developing new applications and products you cannot do without industrial designers. Yet it is precisely this area which is under developed at Brightlands, especially when it comes to additive manufacturing. That is why for us, collaborations like these are interesting.’

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TRANSPLANTING AESTHETICS

Images by Honor Newman

Text by Merel Kamp

Can aesthetics be transplanted? Can the design of a sugar pot be used for designing a saucer or a chair? Bas van Beek’s design assignment for the second semester was all about form.

Students were asked to pick at least 50 objects older than 90 years –through a process of curating and research. From the resulting collection an object with unique aesthetic qualities was chosen and digitalized with the use of CAD-software.

This digital replica was the starting point of a design-process.

‘The formal part of designing –developing an aesthetic as opposed to developing a concept– is something that is hardly taught in academies nowadays’, says van Beek, ‘As always we can learn from our predecessors: In my opinion objects from before the 1930’s are especially rich when it comes to form. Their designers are dead and cannot be invited for guest-lectures. What is left for us is to learn from the designs themselves.’

In order ‘to learn from the designs’ students deconstructed their digital replica: They took aesthetic qualities from the digital replica and applied them elsewhere, in new objects with a different function. ‘This process of reverse-engineering can be seen as a sort of dialogue with the original designer’, says van Beek. The set goal of this dialogue was to design a collection of five objects and produce these by either CNC-milling or 3D printing.

Featured here on these pages is the work of MID student Honor Newman: “We collected and analysed objects that possessed features of the divine form of man; legs, arms, neck back and head. I chose a watering can and a West African neck rest.

I took elements of their forms and morphed them into new objects: a chair, stool and Iron.”

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WHEN I ALTERED NATURE

Text by Teresa Feldmann

Almost twenty years ago a certain building boom took off in my native Estonia. People living in crammed Soviet-era apartment blocks were dreaming of an ideal home, one that’s rooted deeply in our cultural identity: a detached house with a generous garden encircling it. In our sparsely populated country we have plenty of empty land, so space is not an issue. Developers were quick to monetise this potential, and numerous blueprints were drawn up for new neighbourhoods on edges of towns or in remote fields.

So it happened that my parents hopped on the bandwagon and bought a piece of land that was conveniently located on the edge of our small town. That was in 2002. The place looked pretty bleak. In fact it was a wasteland created by Soviet troops who were based there for several decades and who had only left in 1994. To this day, the landscape is partially shaped by the once ploughing tanks, as well as concrete defense structures, originally to block anyone entering the area in a vehicle.

Gradually the new landowners started “culturing” this rugged landscape, molding it according to their discretion and taste. We moved in our newly built house in 2005, exactly three years later.

Cultivating the flower and tree garden was next on the agenda.

My father, who spends a good deal of time observing nature, noted that in the first year the only visible wildlife inhabiting the area were crows and white wagtails (Motacilla alba). The latter became especially bold when the new landowners tried to sow seeds, such as lawn grass. For birds it was a new source of food. In the winter of the second or third year, the much-anticipated small birds started appearing in our ‘hood: various species of tits (genus parus): great tit, blue tit, marsh tit; finches (family Fringillidae): Eurasian bullfinch, European greenfinch, European goldfinch, hawfinch; Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea), to name a few. Of course, birds were drawn in by the feeding stations filled with treats such as seeds and suet blocks -- a welcome sustenance in sub-zero temperatures.

Because of these feeding stations, the next residents to settle in our hood were the squirrels.When squirrels ate there, no bird dared to disturb them. In summer, though, they take little interest in human offerings but then come the hedgehogs. Now a hedgehog takes up summer residence in our garden every year, living in the hedge (hence the name?) we’ve planted to mark the borders.

Of course we feed it in a hope it returns again and again. So new fauna was settling in the ‘hood. On the flipside, when summer came, and people tended to their berry bushes and fruit trees, the birds became competitors for human residents. Particularly the common blackbird (Turdus merula) and Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius) were stripping the garden from all edible matter.

Feverishly we wrapped the redcurrant bush, black chokeberry

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The so-called Tank Hill, an artificial m

The so-called Tank Feeding station on photo are the great tit, marsh tit, Eu artificial mound.

In some parts, former military base sti

Autumn foliage. The (useless) balloon sc

Fabrics and Fabrication

n our cherry tree. Birds present in this uropean greenfinch, hawfinch. Hill, an

ill manifests itself through landscape.

carecrow can be seen in the background.

bush, and cherry tree in a green plastic net. We also hanged one of those balloon scarecrows on a tree branch but the more intelligent Eurasian jays simply ignored it and continued their forage.

With so many houses now erected in this once empty land, certain animals were quick to takeadvantage of it. One summer there was a woodpecker (genus Picus) who was destroying properties. I woke up in the mornings to a loud knocking noise piercing in through walls. It was a very persistent woodpecker, and shooing it away wasn’t effective at all. The damage to the buildings was visible from afar. We couldn’t figure out why it swapped pecking trees for buildings. What was the source of this sudden wrath? Could we even interpret it as wrath?

With our human settlement we have visibly altered the flora and fauna of that habitat. We prefer to concentrate on the species that have joined us and stayed. But some, like the field mice, have disappeared altogether. In her paper, Crist (2013) warns against turning the Earth into a “smart gardened planet”. It’s a metaphor but in my neighbourhood I can see it in action, literally: our neighbours are avid gardeners. They’ve planted this smooth, carefully manicured blanket of grass, a prime example of monoculture. I haven’t taken any samples but I assume the diversity of insects is severely thwarted in this lush... green... desert. In summer the lawn is mown at least three times a week. Geometric flower beds and small ornamental trees form a tidy ensemble. Metal fence borders their property. Yet they won some local award for having one of the most “beautiful” gardens.

Humans sometimes go into overdrive in taming natural landscapes according to prevalent “beauty” standards. My family is more mindful about the effects (or are we just lazy?). Still we have helped to create this habitat of a typical city park where the small birds, squirrels, hedgehogs can coexist with humans, perhaps even thrive.

I can only speculate whether our human impact has helped or harmed this ecosystem. Would it have healed if left alone? Would it have evolved from that wasteland shaped by decades of military intrusion into something better than we have created now?

Crist, E., (2013). On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature. Environmental Humanities, vol. 3, 2013, pp. 129-147.

mound.

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ALGORITHMIC FAITH

This might lead to arguments against the word “prediction” applied to algorithms, as their outcome is more likely to be a projection. But what plays an important role is the perception that non-specialists have in this regard: the awareness that people have about these technologies is likely to be very different from specialists’ one.

Introduction The last few decades have seen an exponential growth in digital technological development, and as a result we are today fully immersed in invisible networks of intertwined infrastructures. In this context, our ability to understand what is actually happening “behind the scenes” is becoming undoubtedly vague and insubstantial.

However, in many cases we blindly and unconsciously rely on these systems, taking their outcomes as objective truth, even though we barely know how they work. Just take as an example Google Maps suggesting which restaurants to show us and the percentage according to which we might like them based on our preferences. It might be subjective, but it undoubtedly influences whether we will go to one of them or not.

A similarity can be established in this regard, comparing contemporary ways of relying on third-party computational predictions without fully understanding them, and ancient fortune telling methods, such as the interpretation of oracles and omens.

As Jenneke Evers (PhD researcher in e-Law at Leiden University) pointed out during an interview we had in May 2019, the main difference between the two is that algorithmic models present both knowable and unknowable steps throughout the process, whereas divination methods are almost completely mysterious to the eyes of non-diviners1.

1

Text by Alessandro Celli

In this highly digitized age, we have come to trust the algorithm, its predictions and prognoses, as we once trusted oracles, poses MID student Alessandro Celli. Since data and algorithms are biased, this attitude is misguided and holds a considerable risk. We need to develop a metaphoric literacy to better understand the role of the algorithm in our lives.

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2

Walter Burkert, Greek Religion.

Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 116-118

Nevertheless, even though these two procedures’ context and medium are deeply different, human behaviour is substantially the same when it comes to relying on these external sources of information upon which we base our decisions.

Fortune telling Predicting the future is a practice that dates back to the second millennium BC, and has been practiced throughout cultures ever since. There has been a huge variety of fortune telling methods and techniques, deeply intertwined with the populations and cultures in which they were practiced.

In the Near East (Greece and Egypt) a common divination practice was consulting an Oracle, which consisted of a “frenzied woman from whose lips the god speaks”2. A popular example is the one of Pythia (8th century BC), the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, who was widely renowned for her prophecies dictated by the spirit of the god Apollo. In order to speak with the oracle, supplicants would have to travel to Delphi, collect gifts, mentally prepare and pass priests’ interviews. Once they managed to get in touch with the oracle, they asked the desired question about their future and Pythia would give them the answer, that had to be further interpreted as she spoke gibberish while being in a trance-like state.

Other methods to foretell the future involved (and still involve) the interpretation of omens, namely natural phenomena or signs that were believed to carry information about the future or communicate in behalf of gods. A specialist, called the diviner, had the ability to interpret these signals and translate them into answers or forecasts. For example, scapulimancy was a practice used in East Asia (~400 BC – 400 AD) to foretell the future by boiling a ram’s shoulder blade or a turtle’s plastron until it showed cracks on the surface, and its patterns were then read and interpreted by the diviner. In a similar fashion, haruspicy (~1900 BC in Babylonia and Near East, ~100 BC in Etruscan religion) was the divinatory practice of reading omens from the liver and entrails of a sacrificed animal.

The step in between These methods have a basic fundamental structure in common, which allows a connection between the human world and the realm of the divine or other dimensions. In this system the supplicant places their faith and trust in the diviner’s hands, for the very reason that the process of interpretation of signs or communication with other entities cannot be understood.

There is therefore a step that human cognitive abilities can’t surpass, and behind which an obscure and mysterious process occurs.

An interface between different realms does exist in this scenario (besides religious beliefs) in the form of either an oracle or an omen, and it acts as a medium to gather information otherwise impossible to reach. This interface is not questioned but blindly trusted by the human who seeks insight in their own future. It is this boundary between the known (intelligible) and the unknown (unintelligible) that defines fortune telling practices and divination methods.

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Hao, Karen. Self-driving cars may be more likely to hit you if you have dark skin, MIT Technology Review, Artificial Intelligence, 2019, https://www. technologyreview.com/f/613064/self-driving-carsare-coming-but-accidents-may-not-be-evenly-distributed/

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Hao, Karen. AI is sending people to jail – and getting it wrong, MIT Technology Review, AI Ethics, 2019, https://www.technologyreview. com/s/612775/algorithms-criminal-justice-ai/

5

Hao, Karen. This is how AI bias really happens – and why it’s hard to fix it, MIT Technology Review, AI Ethics, 2019, https:// www.technologyreview.com/s/612876/thisis-how-ai-bias-really-happensand-why-itsso-hard-to-fix/

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Algorithms and AI In the contemporary scenario of ever-growing new digital technologies there are systems that are becoming increasingly complex and opaque. A continuous and ubiquitous flow of information and data is gathered from all kinds of sources and some of it is processed through algorithms which use methods that are unexplainable to humans –we might not understand how an algorithm has come up with certain outcomes– such as deep learning methods, to produce outputs that facilitate our understanding of what surrounds us and what might happen in the future.

Although this is a very simplified version of how these complex methods work, “obscure” processes do exist and have subtly taken part of our daily lives (for example the extent to which Google has become part of our lives, collecting personal data and offering us tailor-made suggestions and predictions in exchange).

The tremendous amount of data collected doesn’t necessarily imply that the outcomes of a certain computational process are objective and absolute, particularly since what is gathered is usually “noisy” information. Data on its own does not generate any kind of effect until it is processed through an algorithm, which extracts patterns, features or other information out of it to return intelligible results for us.

Deep learning is just one of the many domains where these aspects can be addressed, more in general in the field of machine learning methods.

These algorithms often come from individuals (coders, programmers, etc.) who might also decide what kind of data is fed into them, how it has to be interpreted, what the important characteristics to be considered are and how deep-learning methods are trained. It is in this scenario that many cases of biased algorithms have been recorded (such as self-driving cars that are more likely to hit people with darker skin tones3, or police facial recognition systems that are more prone to associate a low-income person as a recidivist criminal4 5), due to the fact that the result generated from biased information will be distorted as well.

Furthermore, if no one erases noise from biased data, then flaws will remain intact throughout the process. It is impossible for us to understand and read how they come up with certain results, for these methods automatically evolve and are “self-taught”. Moral and ethical values are intrinsically embedded in them and evolve throughout the process, hence offering outcomes that are far from being objective truths. What they offer instead are defective truths, that might present various problems such as heavy biases, safety inconsistencies and privacy issues.

Nevertheless, it is common to experience a feeling of security and trust towards these technologies, as if what we are dealing with comes from a place detached from the human realm.

These algorithms, sometimes defined as blackboxes, delineate the boundaries within which we can understand and develop an agency towards computational systems. To cite Bruno Latour, a blackbox is “the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its in-

6

Latour, Bruno.

Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies.

Harvard University Press, 1999, p.304.

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puts and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.”6 As a result, since data – which often comes from unknown sources – is processed through algorithms that are mostly obscure to us, the very fact that we rely on their outputs for many things implies a component of faith towards these methods.

Computational predictions More specifically, computational predictions are methods that process data (from the past) to project it into the future, therefore creating forecasts upon which we rely but often times cannot grasp completely.

We are more and more passively dependent on these systems, from self-driven cars that, in a dangerous situation, predict its outcome and decide how to act, to financial trading forecasts, and from Facebook friend suggestions to AI personal assistants that recommend us what we might need at the grocery store. Even while typing on our smartphone our next words are constantly anticipated, as if our algorithmic self was always one step ahead.

Connections of this kind between us and future perspectives are a widely common mechanisms that, although invisible, have an extensive impact on our digital interactions.

For this reason, algorithmic predictions might be compared to ancient fortune telling methods, where a person is given a hint, suggestion, or answer about the future that is trusted even if the way it is generated is not completely understood.

However, it is particularly relevant that these methods upon which we base most of our “digital actions” become tangible and visible in order to gather a more accessible and intuitive understanding, rather than pretending to have a full knowledge about them.

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Algorithmic faith To strengthen the above mentioned similarity, new contemporary practices of fortune telling and predictions can be visualized inside the data infrastructures and computational networks upon which we constantly rely.

Like precious stones, animal bones or Pythia’s unintelligible words used to be interpreted to have a glimpse of what’s beyond our perception of time and reality, in the same way other kinds of technologies can establish a connection between us and what’s behind the blackbox.

Since digital manufacturing processes are inherently based on data, in many cases the connection between physical means of production and the virtual world is easy to establish. For example, the concept of topology optimization for 3D models (a mathematical method that optimizes material layout within a given design space) might be applied with economic or social data organized by machine learning algorithms. In the same way, online platforms such as GrabCad or Thingiverse7 might influence what comes out of a 3D printer based on how the files available for download are algorithmically sorted out for us.

To stretch this idea further, imagine an AI Assistant whose words are taken as prophecies, or a 3D printer that generates objects, constructed upon the actual data used in computational predictions, that have to be interpreted in order to expand our knowledge. Being terminals (from the Latin word terminalis: “pertaining to a boundary or to the end, final”) of the vast invisible network that we are not able to grasp completely, their purposemight be read as a way of giving us just a glimpse, a fragmentary insight of a dimension that contains all sorts of information about us, our lives and our future.

Following the logic behind computational predictions, starting from past data that is then processed by blackbox algorithms to become forecasts, some steps of these methods can be extracted. What happens when we take place in between some of these steps?

Online platforms revolving around the idea of sharing – within a community – open-source 3D models as well as instructions on how to produce something yourself (e.g. with a 3D printer at your disposal).

In this regard, one way of visualizing them is through metaphors. They might not increase the technical comprehension we have in regard to technologies, but they can explain how and why a certain mechanism is perceived in a particular way. Consequently, the relationship between them and us can get clearer.

There is an evident and unavoidable tension between learning something through one of these metaphors and, on the contrary, being content with a much simpler explanation.

The former case can be illustrated with the example of the word Net: it metaphorically alludes to an invisible mesh of infrastructures that are somehow connected through all sorts of tangible and intangible mediums. It is self-explanatory and does not (completely) hide what is actually happening in reality, leaving space for further learning. On the other hand, a too simplistic metaphor commonly used is the Wizard (Wizard Setup, Wizard configuration, etc.). It tells us that there is something that is taken care of for us from the machine, but does not allow additional explanations.

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One way of visualizing this is replacing the algorithm with something more familiar, making comprehension more accessible. The figure of the oracle is in this sense already established in our historical memory, and is therefore a more concrete and visible way of displaying the same mechanism.

Instead of leaving to the algorithms the obscure operation of interpreting older data to gather insights about the future, this step can be substituted by humans.

A 3D printer delivers a physical representation of ancient traces of past events (crimes, climate changes, diseases, economic crises, etc.), taken from the endless sea of data used in every field. Then we interpret them, extracting relevant signs to foretell the future.

Inputs and outputs are substantially the same, but the mysterious step-in-between is performed by humans instead of machines. The outcomes, as a result, are comparable in both cases, since none of the two can be fully understood.

Still, making part of the process exposed and visible, our connection to it becomes more evident and explicitly questionable.

Even if this hypothesis is farfetched, it might make sense if applied in a context in which our ability to understand what surrounds us requires ever-growing specific sets of skills and greater knowledge.

My aim is not to give a divine or religious aura to algorithms and artificial intelligence, since it would create more problems than solutions. It is rather to concretely display how our relationship with them often just “runs in the background” without even noticing it, and how it is a reliance that has its foundation on our lack of knowledge.

I believe that human behaviour towards these new technologies is not new, as trusting the unknown to gain insight on something is deeply rooted in the ancient cultures and populations from which we come. The context is profoundly different, but the same schematics can be read in either cases.

Unfortunately, relying on silent algorithms might not be nearly as interesting and exciting as it should have been asking a question to a living oracle.

Sources: Delistraty, Cody. The surprising historical significance of fortune-telling. 2016, https://daily.jstor.org/surprising-historical-significance-fortune-telling/ Eidinow, Esther. Oracles and models: ancient and modern ways of telling the future. 2018, https://theconversation.com/oracles-andmodels-ancient-and-modern-ways-of-telling-the-future-90124 Bridle, James. New Dark Age: Technology, Knowledge and the End of the Future. Verso, 2018.

Greenfield, Adam. Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.

Verso, 2018.

Latour, Bruno. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, 1999.

Allahyari, Morehshin and Rourke, Daniel. The 3D additivist cookbook. 2017, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam.

Jacob Mikanowski, How to read the bones like a Scapulimancer, 2016, https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-read-bones-like-a-scapulimancer/ Disnovation.org, Predictive art bot. 2018.

Recio, Maximo. Data Worship, 2017.

Brooks, Rodney. The seven deadly sins of AI predctions. 2017, https:// www.technologyreview.com/s/609048/the-seven-deadly-sins-ofai-predictions/

Steyerl, Hito. A sea of Data: Apophenia and pattern (mis-)recognition. 2016, e-flux journal #72, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/72/60480/a-sea-of-data-apophenia-and-pattern-mis-recognition/ BBC Radio 4, The Digital Human, podcast, 2012 – ongoing Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, 1985 Hüman After All, Weapons of reason #6. Towards Superintelligence, magazine, 2019 Hao, Karen. Self-driving cars may be more likely to hit you if you have dark skin, MIT Technology Review, Artificial Intelligence, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613064/self-driving-carsare-coming-but-accidents-may-not-be-evenly-distributed/ Hao, Karen. AI is sending people to jail – and getting it wrong, MIT Technology Review, AI Ethics, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612775/algorithms-criminal-justice-ai/ Hao, Karen. This is how AI bias really happens – and why it’s hard to fix it, MIT Technology Review, AI Ethics, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612876/this-is-how-ai-bias-really-happensandwhy-its-so-hard-to-fix/

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46 Maaike Roozenburg – Head of the Master Industrial Design After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Maaike Roozenburg founded Studio Maaike Roozenburg in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The studio initiates objects and products pivoting on the junction of design, heritage and emerging digital technologies with a focus on exploring how historical utensils and design can offer material for meaningful design for the present. Her products and projects deal with time, authenticity and identity. The studio collaborates with archaeologists, craftsmen, historians, technical engineers, programmers and philosophers and works for institutions such as museums, archives, heritage- and archaeological departments and universities. In the Master Industrial Design, Maaike combines her professional practice and love for design education Zara Roelse – Coordinator of the Master Industrial Design Zara Roelse studied Media & Culture in Amsterdam and graduated with a Bachelor in New Media in 2007. After graduating she worked as a project coordinator at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam before moving across the pond to work at Somerset House and The English Concert in London.

In May 2017 she started working as programme coordinator for the Master Industrial Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) where she is responsible for the effective running of the department. Zara assists students, staff, and external partners in all practical aspects of their projects, supporting the delivery of the MA curriculum.

David Derksen – Teacher Design Project David Derksen graduated in 2009 at the Design Academy Eindhoven and completed his MSc degree in 2011 at Industrial Design TU Delft. During his studies he started his studio in Rotterdam where he works on new lighting, furniture and other interior products. He alternates between industrial design and more experimental projects where he is pushing the boundaries of materials. David works on self initiated projects as well as commissioned ones. David is a member of the core teaching team since 2017.

Bas van Beek – Teacher Design Skills In his work Bas van Beek criticizes market mechanisms, branding, poor conceptu-

alism and uncritical designer cults. He studies archive material, restores and adjusts designs that are often either not produced or published. He was the head of the designLAB department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

His work is in the collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Zeeuws Museum Middelburg, Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven and Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch.at the Bas is a member of the core teaching team of the Master Industrial Design since 2018.

Erlynne Bakkers – Teacher Professionalizing Creativity With a 30 year track record in the development of meaningful products with a highly innovative character, Erlynne Bakkers takes responsibility for concept development, technology implementation and product architecture.

She is able to stimulate the creativity of other professionals and reveals the intrinsic value of innovation within organisations. Erlynne either initiated or was involved in the development of a wide variety of recognisable products and businesses. due to her strong entrepreneurial approach and her extensive background in mechanical engineering and industrial product design world wide. Erlynne is a member of the core teaching team at the Master Industrial Design since 2005.

Eddo Hartmann – Teacher Communication Skills Eddo Hartmann lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated with distinctions from the Department of Photography at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) in 1996. Eddo’s approach is grounded in the 19th century photographic tradition. He takes careful consideration for gaining detail wherever possible. His cityscapes, interiors and portraits show this intensive effort.

Apart from his personal oeuvre, Eddo is also active as a freelance photographer for advertising agencies, design studios and editorials in the Netherlands and abroad. His images were exhibited in various galleries and museums including Huis Marseille Amsterdam, The Lumiere Brothers in Moscow, The Museum Dr Guislain in Ghent and The Seoul Museum of Art. His work can be found in private and public collections. Eddo received numerous nominations and awards from The Dutch photographers Association (DuPho) and the Association of photographers in London (AOP). He was longlisted for the Swiss ‘Prix Prictet’

in 2012 and the ‘Dutchdoc Award’ in 2013 for his book ‘Here Lives My Home’ Martijn van de Wiel – Teacher Exploratory Sketching Martijn van de Wiel is a creative entrepreneur, founder of Sketchdrive and creator of the Design Sketching label. He is based in The Hague where he operates from his downtown studio surrounded by artists and creative professionals from all disciplines. Most of his activities evolve around the Inspirational Power of Sketching, a subject he is highly passionate about. Martijn created the Design Sketching label to share insight and experience on the subject of ‘sketching to create’. With a background in Industrial Design and more than 15 years experience in teaching courses and workshops at international design schools and innovative companies, Martijn has developed a unique approach in effective training of the sketching skill. Martijn teaches Exploratory Sketching at the Master Industrial Design since 2018.

Yassine Salihine – Teacher Design Research Yassine Salihine resides in Rotterdam where he runs his own industrial design studio. He provides concept development, design and forecasting services to clients in a wide range of industries.

He pushes projects forward with critical thinking, holistic design methods and thorough research that results in concrete solutions. Yassine studied Journalism at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg. He also is an alumnus of the Post Graduate Course Industrial Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, which was the predecessor of the current Master. His research philosophy is deeply rooted in journalism as he was an infographics editor and head of the Infographics Department of the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

Yassine Salihine is a core tutor Design Research at the Master Industrial Design programme since 2017.

Merel Kamp – Teacher Theoretical Skills Merel Kamp is a freelance journalist and maker with a background in philosophy, design and woodworking.

She currently writes for (Dutch) media such as Trouw, Filosofie Magazine and DUDE on the subjects of philosophy, technology and ecology and is part of the philosophical book-review team of Dutch newspaper Trouw. Together with the Master's coordinator, Zara Roelse, Merel works on producing interesting

Staff programme-related content for on- and off-line communication. Merel joined the teacher team in 2017.

Cynthia Hathaway – Tutor Graduation Project Hathaway Designs designs meeting spaces for voices and productions that are not always heard or acknowledged by the mainstream but are vital for the development of resilient communities.

The productions of Hathaway Designs are working prototypes, built in collaboration with local inhabitants, and upon shared values, placed in a context to collect qualitative data, highlight local resources (human, natural and animal), and kick start self-organization. Hathaway's designs create open, public spaces for interaction, production and debate, and a new sense of citizenry in places of disconnection.

Cynthia Hathaway has been Artistic Director of the FunLab, a Masters program of the Design Academy Eindhoven, and Co-Director of System D Academy at the Sandberg, and Co-Founder of the Department of Search with Melle Smets.

Thomas Vailly – Tutor Graduation Project Thomas Vailly is focusing on materials, processes and systems in product design.

His mechanical engineer diploma at University of Technology of Compiègne triggered a fascination for processes and transformation of matter. This concern was combined to a reflexion on system of production and consumption whilst following the Masters programme at the Design Academy Eindhoven. His work explores themes of industrial production, mass consumption and production, commodification and transformation of substances.

Thomas Vailly is the co-curator of C-Fabriek (DDW12, Eindhoven), a design exhibition focused on new design processes and low tech production technic. In 2013, together with Ohaly and Fiebig, he won the Frame Moooi. Interior design award.

Dries Verbruggen – Teacher Design Project Graduated at the Design Academy Eindhoven, department of Man and Living in 2002. Together with Claire Warnier he established design studio Unfold. The studio, founded in 2002 develops projects that investigate new ways of creating, manufacturing, financing and distributing in a changing context. A context in which we see a merging of aspects of the pre-industrial craft economy with high tech industrial production methods and digital

47 communication networks. A context that has the potential to shift power, from industrial producers and those regulating infrastructure to the individual designer and the consumer.Besides Unfold he works as a mentor at the Masters Department at the Design Academy Eindhoven and previously held positions at Colorado State University, USA; LUCA School of Arts, university college of art and design, BE and at the ICT & Media Design department of the Fontys University of Applied Sciences, NL. Lenneke Langenhuijsen – Teacher Design Project Lenneke Langenhuijsen graduated cum laude at the Design Academy Eindhoven with her project Wooden Textiles. This project is professionalized and established in 2014. Now known as Cambials (www.cambials.com). Lenneke was one of the finalists in the Doen Material Prize in 2011, the Green Design Competition in 2012 and won Open Design Italia in 2013. Together with Brecht Duijf, Lenneke established Buro BELÉN. BELÉN designs from material. By broadening and expanding the material qualities of spaces, objects and products, BELÉN creates tangible design for the future. Central to their approach are the intuitive, emotional and physical aspects of design, resulting in products and visions that show unexpected applications of material and colours, as well as revaluations of conventional techniques. BELÉN works on material and colour concepts in the field of product design, interior design and exhibition design.

They have been commissioned by Georg Jensen, Villa Noailles Hyères, Textiellab Tilburg, amongst others.Their work has been exhibited at Textile Museum Tilburg, Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, Palazzo Clerici Milano.Together, Brecht and Lenneke received a subsidy form the DOEN Foundation for 'creative sustainable entrepreneurs'.

Joris van Tubergen – Teacher Design Project Joris van Tubergen is a designer, inventor and expert in the field of 3D printing.

His knowledge and techniques are used in several projects and installations renowned by leading (international) galleries and museums. With his clear way of explaining his vision on the future of 3D printing and the future role of digital fabrication in society he is a frequently asked speaker for international and national broadcasts on television,

interviews and public lectures. He teaches digital fabrication at several educational institutions a.o. TU Delft, HKU, ArtEZ and WDKA. Joris studied Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His very early fascination for digital production resulted in 2008 in joining the startup of Fablab Protospace in Utrecht. Until now he still is the Creative Director at Protospace.

Since the start of the Fablab, he has supported the development of the RepRap – an open source 3D printer that you can build yourself. In 2010, the popular RepRap masterclasses at Protospace resulted in the development of Ultimaker: At the moment a world leading desktop 3D printer firm.

Joris Hofstede - Teacher Presentation Skills After his studies in visual communication and graphic design at the Art Institute in Utrecht Joris Hofstede started Barking Dogs, a graphic design company with a strong focus on digital communication and web design.

During the career that followed, Joris went from e-commerce and digital specialist to creative director and strategist in several national and international advertising agencies. He quit his last endeavor, LikeFriends in 2015, giving up his partnership after realizing that advertising no longer fitted his ambition nor his lifestyle. He now works as a freelance strategist and is currently in the process of starting a new agency with the ambition to save the world. As an agency partner and a creative strategist for national and international A-brands, Joris has a lot of experience in presenting work, ideas and products that sometimes offer true value and sometimes are quite worthless: “If you think that selling your own creative vision is hard, try selling a new sort of breakfast cereal with too much sugar and extra nuts.”

Jeroen Kummer – Teacher Presentation Design Skills Jeroen is co-founder and creative director of Kummer & Herrman.

Educated as a graphic designer, Jeroen is constantly searching for the various roles design can play, not for its own benefit, but to structure, enhance, empower or enlighten the story it contains. Within K&H's creative team Jeroen plays a central inspirational role, leaving a mark on every K&H project. Together with Arthur, Jeroen has been leading K&H since they founded the office together in 1998.

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Master Industrial Design: Education profile and practical information Recognized as the oldest course in the field of Design and Industrial Design in the Netherlands, the study programme has been taught at the KABK since 1950. It builds on this long tradition in Industrial Design and focuses on translating a strong personal vision into applied design. Using artistic research, cultural consciousness and technical innovation in the industry as a basis to work from.

Today’s world creates the need and necessity for designers who can help us address the challenges we face. We believe that the field of industrial production encloses the possibility for designers to shape the world of tomorrow. By reconsidering and redesigning the conventions in the world of industrial production, designers can contribute to a more conscious, meaningful and culturally diverse world.

Applied Design The Master Industrial Design (MID) programme is perfect for the designer who wants to design products within an applied context. The need for these designs can come from different angles; a briefing from a client or the designer’s personal vision or assigned issue.

The designer’s approach is focussed on meeting the criteria that are formed by the context in which a product is made and used. Within the MID programme the ability to create is challenged and sharpened to apply personal design skills to specific needs and criteria that come from working within a complex industrial and societal context.

The design can be anything: it can be a mass-produced consumer product or a single unique object. It can be a digital application, a system or even a brand or material.

Design Research The MID course is focussed on setting up a design project in which a specific research question forms the starting point and basis of the design. Artistic research and methodical design is eminent to the approach the course takes. Artistic research is focused on deducting and construing meaning and is complementary to scientific research in which obtaining knowledge is the primary target.

Within the design projects of MID we research the meaning within the industrial field; materials, techniques, production methods and products. Scientific research can be applied within projects but will be complemented with artistic research that reflects on the context of culture, history, identity and society.

The method and approach of the research can differ. It is related to the objective, of the research or research question(thesis). It can be hands-on investigation into materials, cultural-historic research on utensils or tools and the way products are/where used. The research is always in support of the overall design concept and is set up accordingly.

The results of the research are materialised and captured in a design. Throughout a project research and design influence each other. Within MID we design research and research design.

Industrial Field We use a broad definition of ‘industry’ to incorporate new developments and traditions in the field. We approach industry as a coherent whole that includes concept, product, material development, production, technology, distribution, communication, market, user, design and positioning. Lifetime, maintenance, ageing, repair and disassembly are also regarded as important factors.

Our focus is to educate designers that aim to work in a meaningful and critical way within the industry. Through exploration and research into industrial processes and production methods our students are able to mend, bend and optimise the chain of production thus creating more relevant and sustainable approaches to product design and consumption. Industrial Design as the intersection of culture, economy and ecology.

Character of the course The Master is a compact programme with an extensive network in the industrial field. The teachers involved in MID all work in the industry and bring their network and expertise to the collective knowledge and culture of the course. The programme contains projects directly from the industry and includes excursions as well as workshops from external professionals. Overall the programme has a strong link to the work field. The small scale of the department allows for an intense and personal study trajectory and high quality, creative, professional coaching. At the same time MID is part of the KABK and has access to their comprehensive network and extended facilities.

Admission requirements General Requirements - Bachelor’s Degree - Proficient in both spoken and written English.

- Level of English: IELTS 6 or TOEFL 83-internet based test Specific Requirements The admission and selection procedure is based on two elements that are equally important: a portfolio and a motivation letter.

Selected candidates will be invited for an interview.

Application deadlines The Master Industrial Design processes applications on a rolling basis from October to May. There is a limited number of places available for the master, a maximum of fifteen talented designers will be selected for the programme.

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ONE SCREW TO RULE THEM ALL; BEFORE MAN GOES TO MARS, WE NEED TO QUESTION THE BASICS. TEXT AND IMAGE BY LEON WEZENBERG

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Imagine, your boss asks you: “Could you work on a pitch for a new client this week?” What you hear is: “He expects it to be perfect! Don’t mess this up! Do it now!”

This way of thinking is very common for perfectionists. Perfectionism has become an omnipresent phenomenon in Western societies, where the pressure to perform is high, and good is often not good enough.

Daphne herself has been dealing with her own perfectionism and always felt she had to be perfect to meet society’s high expectations. She detected that many people feel pressure to be perfect nowadays. In her design she investigated the source of this pressure and sought for ways to release it. She noticed that perfectionism is often seen as a positive quality: Perfectionists are described as the perfect employees, because they work hard, never give up and are precise. But many people are not aware of the possible negative effects of perfectionism, such as stress and burn-out. They also don’t know what triggers the pattern of perfectionism and that society plays a part in this.

To get a better understanding, Daphne developed a mind web together with a perfectionism coach, which structures the pattern of perfectionism. This mind web was then translated into a VR visualisation.

The final VR experience is created for non-perfectionists: By virtually stepping into the mind of a perfectionist they can experience the thoughts behind the drive for perfection and the impact this can have up close and personal.

With this VR experience Daphne wants to build a bridge between perfectionists and non-perfectionists and facilitate an open dialogue about the role of perfection and performance in our society. It starts with acknowledging that perfectionism is not just a valuable asset to be exploited, but also a condition of a person, who needs to be protected, for perfectionism comes at a price for everyone involved. By investing in knowledge of perfectionism and teaching people to recognize the first symptoms of serious related problems such as stress and burnout, we can turn perfectionism into a strong and more positive quality for everyone.

PROJECT FACE DESIGN TEXT AND IMAGE BY MARSHA WICHERS

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Everyday products are built to solve a task, and those tasks serve a special need in their appropriate environment. A drill in one’s hand is tasked to make holes and a fan on a desk is tasked to produce a cool breeze. To have even more options available would require an over consumption of different products, that would be stationary during most of their lifetime. But what do all these items (tools, fans, mixers) have in common? The very essence of a motorized product is in fact the cycle that gives it life, like a beating heart. They are all animated by a motor which is in essence doing the same thing. If you need a hole or a breeze, you probably need something to go in circles.

From this observation questions emerged: How could something so essential be limited to only one purpose? Or rather, what if the motor was free to become something else? How would it be best used in-between tasks? And more importantly, how would it impact demand for certain products? The final design for a modular motor is formed to give these answers. By creating a multi-functional, nomadic motor, Bergemann aims to increase user-options while reducing the consumption of engines.

Having an interchangeable engine would dramatically reduce volume and add more access to options from a single unit. The only thing necessary remaining is a component that allows the motor to alter its identity and capabilities for different appliances. The simplicity of this packaged engine allows it to function like a building block for a new device, turning users into makers by improvising new solutions or turning a toolbox into a digital library with the inclusion of a 3D printer. The motor allows others to fill in the blanks, hopefully encouraging an open source community to produce new alterations of the engine, growing a large list of options that can be easily assembled when needed. Including new iterations for custom versions or making obscure equipment more attainable. So, if anyone has the slightest idea for an invention, or wants to solve a specific problem, they can try it. They don’t have to give up just because they are afraid to start from scratch.

Cosmetic procedures to the face have become popular and accessible.

The use of Botox is very popular, also for younger people. But this trend of facial enhancement also leads to questions.

When does one cross the border of what still looks natural? And is it still okay to do nothing and just let your face reflect your age? How much Botox can be used before you lose too much facial expression? How does Botox affect our facial communication? These are the questions that drive this ongoing design research project.

Botox works against wrinkles by relaxing facial muscles, but few people realize that it also profoundly affects our facial expressions. Facial expressions are important for interpersonal communication, but also for feeling emotions and expressing them. Will we still understand one another if we can no longer fully utilize our facial expressions in non-verbal communication? This question is explored by visualizing facial expressions before and after full facial Botox injections. Facial emotion reading software (FaceReader®) helps to objectify the facial expressions. See how difficult it is to show surprise when you can’t lift your brows!

With a background as a cosmetic doctor and an artist-designer, Marsha combined her knowledge of medical technical possibilities with an ‘out of the box’ design approach. She took her own face as a starting point for visualizing different design possibilities, and to start a discussion about societal issues regarding facial enhancement.

How can industrial design contribute to creating a stronger connection between modern society and a natural way of living in order to contribute to a more sustainable future?

The project “New Habits Of Use” is based on research called “The Bonding habits”. This research studies the waste problem in our society.

Packaging makes up a majority of all our waste worldwide and is usually trashed within six months. The research examines how packaging is used and which are its characteristics in relation to its users. The aim of the project is to create a collaboration between our contemporary way of living and the ecosystem, looking at objects in a different light.

For that purpose, a Design Manifesto was conceived to specify a set of design rules, based on which every kind of product can be redesigned.

This Manifesto is based on four features taken from the analysis of packaging and products.These features are: material, shape, gesture, and the length of use of a product and its packaging.

Some of the rules the Manifesto dictates: Materials are replaced with natural and simple materials. The gesture and shape of the product are re-designed to get a look as close as possible to what we may find in nature. The length of use of the packaging should match the length of use of the product it contains in order to reduce waste. And the product needs to be mass-producible and have a recognizable look.

Three everyday objects were re-designed as a physical representation of the Manifesto.

The first object is a box for chickpeas, designed to substitute the current chickpea packaging. The material of the overall product is the same for both the inside (product) and the outside (packaging): dried chickpeas. This makes the entire product edible – including packaging.

You can boil the chickpea box as you boil the product inside.

The second object, a spoon made entirely from sugar, is the perfect combination of two objects: the sugar packet and the spoon. These objects are used by millions of people every day. In fact, 400 millions of coffee sticks and sugar packets are trashed every day. The sugar spoon makes the coffee break funnier and environmentally friendly.

The third and last object is a pencil made entirely out of dried spices.

It gives you the possibility to bring into the kitchen an instrument that all of us have at home, a penknife. With this penknife, you can sharpen your spices directly onto your food. The dried spices no longer need additional packaging.

STEP IN THE MIND OF A PERFECTIONIST. TEXT AND IMAGE BY DAPHNE STORY www.marshawichers.com

How do intimate relationships look and have they been changed by modern technology? If so, is this a change we just have to accept, or that benefits us? These questions were the starting point for an investigation into intimacy. Interviewing a group of Millennials, Alicja Czop got the opportunity to understand a wide variety of different views on the way in which technology has altered intimacy, whilst getting to know herself better. Her investigation was a learning process about emotions and needs, based on real people’s stories.

Intimacy is a journey of self-discovery, it is a process of letting others into your private zone and understanding other people’s emotions.

The aim of this project is to connect people by creating a space which will give users increased possibilities to maintain their relations in real life.

Intimacy is strongly based on touch and smell. ‘Dare to Feel’ is a series of products for the home environment which will create an intimate and safe environment to release emotions by using these key senses.

Experiencing a sense of touch and smell was a base of the design process. The reason was to give a space for a user to play around with it and discover how it affects him/her.

The low seat sofa is a space to spend time together or to be on your own with your own emotions by splitting it into two armchairs. The upholstery material used for this object is velvet which allows an emotional and tactile experience. To give a warm and natural touch to the sofa, walnut wood was used for the finishing.

Based on the feedback from Millennials, our sense of smell is an essential element of intimacy as well as varying temperatures of light. In line with this, a glass, light-based object was created. The increasing temperature of light releases an aroma which can bring intimate memories back or create completely new ones.

The colors, materials, and shapes in both of the designed objects create an environment that is not only a comfortable place for the individual or a couple but will give a feeling of safety to open up about emotions.

DEFINING A MODULAR MOTOR TEXT AND IMAGE BY CONRADO BERGEMANN Did you know that the design of the world’s most advanced transportation system, the rocket, is determined by the width of a horse’s ass? The rockets are made in a factory in Utah and transported by train to the launch site. The US railroad is built with the same dimensions that were used for building horse wagons. These wagons fit the back ends of two horses.

In situations like going to Mars it is good to question the standards that we take for granted. We need to decolonize from Earth, otherwise we will be stuck with all kinds of decisions and mistakes made in our earthly past. This project is about re-designing the standards, like the screw, and questioning everything around them. Based on scientific data, historical facts and following my own method of working I start from the most elementary layer, the units of measurement, advancing to the most technical details of the object. In this way the object decolonizes from Earth and becomes adapted to Mars.

We don’t know who will be first on Mars; it might be the Europeans, the Americans, the Chinese. What we do know is that iit will be a mess: If we don’t create a universal Mars measure, we will still have the problem with the inch and meter, and therefore we lose the opportunity to create interchangeable objects on Mars, which is very important in order to become independent from Earth. The same accounts for screws and other standardized objects which are slightly different all over the world.

Hence the archetype of standardization: the screw. It is a simple yet complex object which influences our lives daily. You might not see them very often because designers don’t seem to like the looks of them but they are hidden in almost every object that we use.

The screw makes a junction of materials, but the junction is also demountable, and this is very important. (Imagine repairing a tiny part of your car, but everything is glued together.) We use screws very often, but without thinking about what they are. They are so common, that we take them for granted.

The screw actually is a bit of over-standardized, which ironically leads to it becoming less standardized. All those different heads and threads have different qualities. In Europe we mainly use the Philips drive, in Russia they mainly use the Pozidriv and in Canada the Square slot is used a lot. Bringing such a large amount of screws and tools to Mars is unnecessary and very expensive. What we need is one screw to rule them all. One universal Martian screw, adapted to the conditions on Mars.

NEW HABITS OF USE CHANGE THE WAY WE ARE USING OBJECTS FOR HUMAN LIFE. TEXT AND IMAGE BY CECILIA POLONARA

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DARE TO FEEL: USE YOUR SENSES AND ENTER THE WORLD OF INTIMACY TEXT AND IMAGE: ALICJA CZOP

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MICRO MATTERS TEXT AND IMAGE BY JOHANNA GÜNZL What is a designer’s action space when tackling globally dispersed and abstract problems like microplastic pollution? Microplastics are an immaterial and invisible matter to us like fine dust or radioactivity.

These “hyperobjects”, a concept suggested by the philosopher Timothy Morton, are a creeping danger to our lungs and stomachs. Yet, misconceptions about when we produce them and how they travel through our world make it hard to understand how we could reduce them.

In her research, Johanna investigates the many origins of microplastics and challenges us to reconsider the design of everyday objects. At the heart of her thesis research are a new categorization system for microplastics and a framework for designers to tackle hyperobjects.

With her design, Micro Matters, Johanna aims to create a safe learning environment in which we discover how we produce microplastics and cause their dispersion. This learning environment is the microcosmos of a household where synthetic furniture and laundry contribute largely to the microplastic pollution on our planet. The final product is an air purifier hanging from the ceiling, a balloon with the working mechanism of a lung. It expands and contracts responsively, thereby inhaling dusty air and exhaling clean air through its filter wall. As the product senses microplastics in the dust it starts to hyperventilate, showing the need to clean the air and indicating that microplastics are present in the room – a learning tool to show when they occur.

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OLQUA; OBJECT LANGUAGE FOR QUEER ARTEFACTS TEXT AND IMAGE BY JAN SENGERS How can you create more visibility for gender identity and queerness through the creation of objects?

Starting from a personal exploration of my gender identity, my research quickly became a battle cry as it progressed. As designers we create objects that have a certain meaning and we enter them into the system, our society. It is in this way that designers have helped construct meaning around the gender binary and the accompanying roles that still govern the way we think about gender identity and gender expression through products that have been created. This binary thinking confines itself to generalities and labels, and it is time we make space for the fluid richness of queerness! That is why the aim is to go beyond the binary, reinvent gender roles and to create positive visibility through the creation of visual artefacts. These visual artefacts already exist in the form of images – visualizations of queerness in art and/or photographs – and I wanted to add another layer of visibility through physical objects. Artefacts that reflect the current position of queerness within our society.

I translated this into ‘olqua – object language for queer artefacts’. The language plays with three notions derived from my thesis: fluidity (queerness), tension (pressure of having to conform to the norm or go against it) and performance (the constructs of society in which we operate). Tension is embodied with cord and shapes the fluid textile pieces, both using the structure of performance to build upon, which is translated into wood. Through combining these materials the notions will take shape, all three expressed differently in the creation of each object.

The queer objects that I designed with the language are different from the super polished products we know and will purely be objects offering a gesture to the viewer. They will take up space and serve as a physical protest within the space they will be exhibited in. In their abstraction we will see struggle, while also showing their inherent expression. The queer physical artefacts will excite people and try to spark a conversation in them. The language acts as the onset of a new movement in which we start creating artefacts anew from the beginning and will not be linked to the old system of products and its binary thinking. In the near future I hope to publish the language, so other people can create their own personal queer artefacts and spread the word!

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0 It is with pride that we present to you our second batch of graduates on these pages. During one year they worked on their design projects addressing issues both topical and personal, such as queerness, perfectionism, microplastics and patriarchy.

At MID we strongly believe that relevant design is rooted in design research. The projects you see on these pages were developed during a design research trajectory (semester 1, guided by Yassine Salihine & Merel Kamp), followed by a design and prototyping trajectory (semester 2, guided by Cynthia Hathaway, Thomas Vially and Erlynne Bakkers). The outcome of the design research trajectory is a design thesis and the outcome of the research and design trajectory together is a final design or prototype. You can find more information on the theses of these graduates in Anew #2, the yearly MID magazine.

THIS YEAR’S ALUMNI! DESIGN ROOTED IN RESEARCH THE FEMINIST TEXTILE GLOSSARY; GENERATE YOUR ACTIVISM! TEXT AND IMAGE BY FEDERICA MARELLA How would you call the invisible mental distress caused by the pressure of an oppressive social system like patriarchy? If there was no term to define this condition before, you can now find it in The Feminist Textile Glossary and spread it out! This project started from questioning how design can transform, challenge and re-shape the patriarchal system and what are the tools that we as designers and human beings can bring to the table to challenge these social standards and cultural norms. Patriarchy is one of the oldest oppressive systems and promotes violence, dominance and control. Although the equality between men and women has generally improved, we still live in a patriarchal society today, which causes problems for people of all genders. Growing up as a white Western-European woman somewhere along the way I realised the experiences I’ve been living were unavoidably influenced by my belonging to a certain gender within a particular social machinery: patriarchy.

The intent of my design project is to take language as a vehicle for activist revolution and textile crafts as the tool of its physical and visual representation. During my research I discovered an intersection between the condition of oppression experienced by women in the public and social sphere -represented by the Bauhaus school- and in the private domain, embodied into the domestic environment. In both cases textile crafts —which have been historically considered “feminine” activities and often devalued or ignored precisely because of their feminisation according to patriarchal standards — represent a visible medium to understand the process of devaluation connected to the female labour. As such they have become a symbol of female oppression and of women’s relegation to the domestic sphere, which stands in contrast with the independent life in the public sphere reserved for men.

The project aims to demonstrate that textile activities can be re-contextualized and turned around from being oppressive and coercive to being cathartic and cohesive. The Feminist Textile Glossary will embody this empowering vision: it’s a product in the form of a physical dictionary which aims to capture the many shades of feeling, facts and conditions which have always existed into our patriarchal reality but that have always been neglected from a social and, consequently, from a linguistic perspective. Each term of the glossary is then translated into a piece of graphical and embroidered output thanks to a data processing system and used to set up and decorate a portable, urban tent. The function of the tent is symbolic and practical at the same time: it is a physical and itinerant occupation of a public space that travels from city to city. It is the visual embodiment of new feminist concepts, it is the transloaction of textile crafts from the private sphere to the public sphere in the most visible way. More than anything else, it is a meeting point enabling an activist debate on feminist issues. Join our movement, make your propaganda more creative!

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