WORKSHOPS

With the narrative of process increasingly gaining recognition as a kind of research artefact in its own right, we wanted to put into play the opportunity for delegates to come together as co-researchers in mini projects and confer on the shared action of creative research methodologies. Participants had the opportunity to reflect on design research as it happened and ended the workshops with a research output of some kind or another.

We chose four workshops that explored various elements of research through design, including hybrid technologies, tacit knowledge, and site specific making. Delegates need not have had any previous experience in the specific areas, only an open and enquiring mind.

The workshops took place across Edinburgh on the 21st March all day and were one to both delegates and non delegates with a £20 fee to cover materials and lunch.

Post-digital Making in the Print Workshop

Chris Wilson – Northumbria University

With the narrative of process increasingly gaining recognition as a kind of research artefact in its own right, we want to put into play the opportunity for delegates to come together as co-researchers in mini projects and confer on the shared action of creative research methodologies. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on design research as it happens and end the workshops with a research output of some kind or another. This may give rise to some form of new knowledge or insight that can be disseminated at the conference. Who knows, they may even be the start of new collaborations on bigger projects.

This workshop offers an opportunity to discuss participant’s interests in post-digital making and explore experimental methods of printmaking through the creation of a hand printed 8 page limited edition book. Guided by PhD candidate, graphic designer and printmaker Chris Wilson, the group will use traditional printmaking techniques and contemporary rapid manufacturing technologies to compose and print page layouts using typographic and illustrative elements. The book’s content will be generated by participants, who are asked to consider post-digital making methods, motivations, processes or implications and produce up to 300 words critiquing the subject prior to the workshop. To accompany the text submission a simple illustration or photograph will also be submitted in advance. Each participant will compose their own page layout using their submitted content, which will be converted into print blocks.

Participants are asked to supply their text and image by email before Monday 13th March to allow for the creation of laser engraved and 3D printed matrices, from which the book will be printed. The blocks will be used throughout the workshop to produce an edition of 50 books, which will be displayed at the conference.

Location: The Print Studio, Edinburgh College of Art, EH3 9DF

For further information and to submit text/images for the workshop please contact: Chris Wilson via christopher.wilson@northumbria.ac.uk

Aluminium Sandcasting: Waste Moulds from Waste

Ian Lambert – Edinburgh Napier University

This workshop invites participants to make sense of the factors arising from their immediate location that will give rise to a small creative act using hybrid pre-industrial and industrial processes, i.e. sandcasting, using a portable foundry for smelting scrap aluminium.

We will spend a morning at the seaside near Edinburgh (specific location and time dependent on tide times) using the sand on the beach to cast forms inspired by the resources to hand, in that location. Reflecting on these as a mini-practice-led research project we will attempt to reveal the new insights, however minor the impact, and create a research narrative.

It is in some ways a design researcher’s survival exercise – instead of food to sustain us we gather new knowledge.

Location: Starting at Edinburgh College of Art, EH3 9DF

For further information contact: Ian Lambert via i.lambert@napier.ac.uk

Flowing with the City

Vincent Van Uffelen, Rocio von Jungenfeld, and David Strang – University of Edinburgh

Our research workshop will explore how low-tech mapping techniques can reveal the complexity of flows that constitute the city and make these flows accessible to citizens. In this context, we do not aim to focus on the (visual) representation of quantifiable data (e.g. traffic, rain, geo-location) but on the often invisible and highly subjective representation of existing flows in the city. Based on one exemplary technique, we will discuss and test how simple technologies can be used in the pre-design phase to gain tacit knowledge of the flows of a city. It is our assumption that once brought to the surface, by means of our workshop methodology, the knowledge about the flows of humans, objects/matter, energy, or information will enable participants to make informed decisions about how these flows are used and how they can be re-channelled, altered or reinforced to design a city that flows in a way in which they, the citizens, want it to flow.

Location: University of Edinburgh University, City Centre

For further information contact: Rocio von Jungenfeld via ro@rociojungenfeld.eu

Interrogating the Unspoken

Dawn Mason and Matthew Partington – University of West of Endgland

Tom Sowden – Bath Spa University

Interrogating the Unspoken is a one-day provocation workshop, the aim of which is to identify the unspoken and intuited tacit knowledge of designers and makers. Collaboration with both people and materials is at the heart of the approach, as well as interrogating communication, assumptions and risk that are part of a making practice.

The objects that are made as part of this workshop will provide visual evidence of tacit knowledge, the breadth of approaches to design practice and critical enquiry through making. The body of work produced will add to the debates around materiality, collaboration and practice as research. It will also provide further opportunities for the interrogation and development of this form of research.

Location: Edinburgh Napier University, Merchiston Campus, EH10 5DT

Please be advised that the activities of each workshop will be recorded through film and photography, which may be disseminated at a later stage.