5th Istanbul Design Biennial, Crtitical Cooking Show

Hi Yanjun, Shomit, Christy,

The 2020 5th Istanbul Design Biennial already passed.  But I wanted to draw attention to its theme: Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one, and the Kitchen:

"The Kitchen will be a place of action and experimentation, where a range of guests will be hosting on rotation transforming the space, the menu and the conversations. Through food we will access the pluriverses that our post-human existence touches upon and constructs.”

It may be interesting to see their documentation and what was exhibited.

Cooking shows are a popular television format featuring food preparation, often involving celebrity chefs and personalities, usually highly produced. During the 2020 quarantine, people turned to social media as a space to share recipes and ideas more informally, from the intimacy of their own kitchens. Inspired by the richness of this evolving genre, the Critical Cooking Show offers a diverse range of styles and tones, from food demonstrations to fictional stories or home-made documentaries. 


Begin forwarded message:
 
December 11, 2019
Istanbul Design Biennial Share

(1) Interior of Diyarbakır Deva Hammam. SALT Research, Ali Saim Ülgen Archive. (2) Open-Air Theater in Kültürpark, İzmir International Fair. SALT Research, Photograph and Postcard Archive. (3) Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) restaurant kitchen. SALT Research, Hayati Tabanlıoğlu Archive. (4) Ceramic pots. SALT Research, Sadi Diren Archive.

5th Istanbul Design Biennial
Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one
September 26–November 8, 2020 

Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) 
Sadi Konuralp Caddesi No: 5 
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Binası 
34433 Şişhane İstanbul
Turkey 

tasarimbienali.iksv.org 
Instagram / Facebook / Twitter

Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, titled Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one, will be curated by Mariana Pestana and take place on September 26–November 8, 2020.

Starting off from the idea that design comprises the devices, platforms and interfaces through which we relate to one another, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial will revise the notion of empathy, to reimagine a role for design concerned with feelings, affects and relations.

Invented in the 1910s, the word empathy is nowadays used to describe the capacity to perceive other people’s expressions and feelings, but in the beginning of the 20th century it was much more generous in that it encompassed the relations between bodies other than the human. Now, 100 years after its inception, it seems like the right time to revisit the original sentiment of the term. The ecological crisis we live in can be directly linked with notions of progress and development based on practices of extraction and exploration. The post-human paradigm posits that all things have their own relations with the world, that there is no human/non-human divide but a multinatural continuum across all living and non-living entities.

In a time marked by technological speed and environmental crisis, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial is attentive to practices of care, rituals of connection, and things we can feel with. Curious about new-animism or indigenous perspectivism, it absorbs southern and eastern influences in the way it thinks about the relations between things, between people, and both. The 2020 edition privileges local knowledges and territorial practices in face of the increasing homogeny of a globalizing world.

Some of the fundamental questions that this edition raises are, what structures of collective feeling does design put forward, and how may we design for, and from, more than one perspective, more than one dimension, more than one body? Under the contemporary post-human philosophical gaze, and in face of the current technological horizon, these gestures gain a whole new potential.

Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one celebrates commensality and other protocols for sharing. Interested in tables, pots and dinner sets but also virtual reality headsets, digital currencies and online chat rooms, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial will welcome myth and ceremony. It will be about how design brings us together.

The biennial will comprise an Observatory and a Kitchen, which will manifest in two separate venues. The Observatory will be an exhibition from which to watch, record and perform practices of empathy in the contemporary world. The Kitchen will be a place of action and experimentation, where a range of guests will be hosting on rotation transforming the space, the menu and the conversations. Through food we will access the pluriverses that our post-human existence touches upon and constructs. An open call will be announced in January for projects and events that revolve around the Kitchen.

The biennial will also for the first time form a Young Curators Group, made up of curators based in Istanbul, working as part of the curatorial team of the biennial. This group will be responsible for contextualizing the theme of the biennial locally by connecting to practitioners, thinkers and makers in the city, and establishing links between the programme and historical approaches in Turkey.

Joining Mariana Pestana for the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial’s curatorial team will be Billie Muraben (Assistant Curator & Deputy Editor) and Sumitra Upham (Curator of Programmes).

The Istanbul-based group Future Anecdotes will undertake the exhibition design of the biennial, while Studio Maria João Macedo will do the graphic design.

The details of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial programme will be announced in 2020. The media and professional preview will be on September 24 and 25, 2020.

For further information about the theme and the curatorial team: tasarimbienali.iksv.org/en

For media inquiries: media@iksv.org

For high-resolution images: http://www.iksvphoto.com/#/folder/29acct
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vegetal intelligence and new new materialism, supplementing our AI curriculum

Dear Colleagues, 

Nonstandard computation and materials science are beginning to meet in work that is both techno-scientifically and philosophically fresh, provocative!

For our bibliography for AME's AI curriculum:


Susan Stepney, "The neglected pillar of material computation”, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena 237.9, 2008, 1157-1164.


Susan Stepney, Professor Computer Science, York UK

Michaela Eder, Wolfgang Schäffner, Ingo Burgert, and Peter Fratzl, "Wood and the activity of dead tissue”, Adv. Mater. 2020, 2001412. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202001412


Thanks to Adrian Freed for drawing attention to Stepney et al in that Phys. D volume years ago.

Related references would be most welcome!

Reimagining Art & Value Flows: The Sphere as Digital Commons, 3-5 November 2020

Reimagining Art & Value Flows: 

The Sphere as Digital Commons


When: Nov. 3rd to 5th 2020
Where: Stockholm: STIM-Huset, Södra Teatern, Hagströmer Biblioteket.

Why: This 3 days initial working session will kickstart The Sphere multi-dimensional R&D process around art & value flows and contributive accounting.

RSVP: info@salorantadevylder.com

“An idea always exists as engaged in a matter – that is, as ‘mattering’. A problem is always a practical problem, never a universal problem mattering for everybody. Learning is always local.”

Isabelle Stengers


WE ARE NOW OPENING UP FOR MORE DIGITAL PARTICIPATION. LINKS TO EACH EVENT WILL BE POSTED THE SAME DAY IN THE SCHEDULE BELOW. WE WILL USE ZOOM.
LINKS FOR TUESDAY ARE UP NOW | LINKS FOR WEDNESDAY ARE UP NOW!

Introduction to the United Nations Development Program

Dear Synthesis Folks and friends,

Notes from Behind the Scenes: Preparing the landing strip for our #NextGen Accelerator Labs (PART 1,  PART 2)

These Medium articles provide some background to the #NextGen people in the United Nations Development Program with whom Vangelis and I are working to build the alternate reality + role playing scenario game:  “Navigating Crisis 2020” …

The allied younger generations in that program seem be maturely embedded in their respective nations' socio-political and economic milieus, open to ways of thinking that are fresh for that sector,  and committed to ameliorating effects of structural violence.   This comes across with some urgency in my direct conversations with some of the younger staff in South Asia, Africa, South America.  

It will be interesting to see how we can step up our game with experiential / enactive methods that are more rigorous, affectively engaged, and thoughtful than the “innovation” or “accelerator” exercises typical in the “progressive” business / design / technology  world.  It will also be enlightening to work outside the ideological scaffolding of commercial high tech typical of media labs in the United States and Western Europe.  Minimax design in action: from unplugged … custom tech, in that order.

Xin Wei

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UNDP awards Synthesis Sea Change 2020 horizon scan

Good news: the United Nations Development Program has awarded Synthesis / ASU the contract for doing the Horizon Scan for emerging techniques, technologies, design methods, and learning sites that prepare the United Nations Development Program staff and constituents to meet unpredictable, inextricably entangled sociotechnical and environmental challenges.     Thanks to Sander for lending his experience and reputation to this brief but intense project.  And thanks to Theo Eckhardt and Emily Fassett for working intricately with the United Nations and Knowledge Enterprise to forge this exceptional consultancy.  

Project Title:
Sea Change 2020
Duration:
29 September 2020 - 31 December 2020
Principal faculty:
Prof. Sha Xin Wei, AME, Synthesis, ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems
Prof. Sander van der Leeuw, SHESC, ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems 
Dr. Brandon Mechtley, Synthesis, Synthesis
+ a PhD research assistant with Synthesis


 (This is independent of the Alternate Reality game / RPG that Synthesis is developing for UNDP's #NextGen event, also this Fall.)                                                                                           
Xin Wei
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Synthesis B21 Prototyping Social Forms: Ylfa Muindi developing “im-mediate relations” with forests and other “ex-dividuated” non-human others

Dear Building21 friends and Prototyping Social Forms folks:  

Thursday June 18, we’ll be meeting in the PSF zoom room at 3:00 - 4:30pm (ET), a half-hour later than usual. If that works for people, we’ll confirm this as our regular schedule.

Tomorrow’s speaker is Ylfa Muindi, who will describe her approach to facilitating encounters with the natural world. Her talk will focus on a current work-in-progress: a series of audio programs that will guide listeners through synesthetic exercises so as to prepare them for a variety natural encounters. This new project aims to connect people from many different walks of life, but especially those who feel alienated from forests, to the incredible lives within forests via a variety of storytelling experiences which are designed to work our empathy muscles, expand our sensual capacities (using all available senses to experience the natural world around us), and deepen our connection to and respect for nature.

You can hear more about the project in this podcast interview, starring both Ylfa and Muindi:

A conversation w/ Ylfa Muindi, about a work-in-progress. Ylfa is working a series of audio programs that will guide listeners through a series of synesthetic exercises and natural encounters.  Ylfa’s work aims (i) to heighten our senses for “ex-dividual” experiences and (ii) to encourage us to develop “immediate relations” with forests and other “ex-dividuated” non-human others. We invite you to take a listen and to share this conversation with others.

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