Undesign

Undesign brings together leading artists, designers and theorists working at the intersection of art and design. The text focuses on design practices, and conceptual approaches, which challenge the traditional notion that design should emphasise its utility over aesthetic or other non-functional considerations. This publication brings to light emerging practices that consider the social, political and aesthetic potential of "undesigning" our complex designed world. In documenting these new developments, the book highlights the overlaps with science, engineering, biotechnology and hacktivism, which operate at the intersection of art and design.

The recent surge of interest in digital ecosystems is not only transforming the business landscape, but also poses several human and organizational challenges. Due to the pervasive effects of the transformation on firms and societies alike, both scholars and practitioners are interested in understanding the key mechanisms behind digital ecosystems, their emergence and evolution. In order to disentangle such factors, this book presents a collection of research papers focusing on the relationship between technologies (e.g. digital platforms, AI, infrastructure) and behaviours (e.g. digital learning, knowledge sharing, decision-making). Moreover, it provides critical insights into how digital ecosystems can shape value creation and benefit various stakeholders. The plurality of perspectives offered makes the book particularly relevant for users, companies, scientists and governments. The content is based on a selection of the best papers – original double-blind peer-reviewed contributions – presented at the annual conference of the Italian chapter of the AIS, which took place in Pavia, Italy in October 2018.

Over the past fifty years, design and branding have become omnipotent in the market and have made their way to other domains as well. Given their potential to divide humans into categories and label their worth and value, design and branding can wield immense but currently unharnessed powers of social change. Groups designed as devalued can be undesigned, redesigned and rebranded to seamlessly and equivalently participate in community, work and civic life. This innovative book argues that disability as a concept and category is created, reified, and segregated through current design and branding that begs for creative change. Transcending models of disability that locate it either as an embodied medical condition or as a socially constructed entity, this book challenges the very existence and usefulness of the category itself. Proposing and illustrating creative and responsible design, DePoy and Gilson include thinking and action strategies that are useful and potent for "undesigning", redesigning, and rebranding to meet the full range of human needs and to enhance full participation in local through global communities. Divided into two parts, the first section presents a critical examination of disability as a designed and branded phenomenon, exploring what exactly is being designed and branded and how. The second part investigates the redesign of disability and provides principles for redesign and rebranding illustrated with examples from high-tech to place-based sustainable strategies. The book provides a unique and contemporary framework for thinking about disability as well as providing relevant design and branding guidance to designers and engineers interested in embodiment issues.

Embodiment and Cultural Differences focuses on the body as the equilibrium limit between the memory of time already passed and the dynamic where of unexpected happenings. The body’s ecology is fulfilled in the surrounding environment within this variable limit. Each embodiment operation is, in fact, an experimental setting that consists of the unrepeatable executive instants through which, like a musical score, the body synchronises human consciousness with the context of action. What distinguishes the architecture of this book is that, collectively, it constitutes a challenge to the digital media paradigm, in which the body is treated simply as a two dimensional icon of space and time; a relatively “free form” with all kinds of narratives generated by the multimedia. The volume demonstrates how fundamentally different ways of experiencing time are also determined by the differing cultural use of bodily rhythms. Central to the understanding of this interdependence is the study of synchronisation – increasing knowledge through the investigation of how rhythm, music, chants, dance, prayer and other harmonising practices support social integration. The book also touches upon the anxieties, fears, and ambivalences affecting contemporary European societies, particularly those that have followed in the wake of terrorist attacks and the influx of refugee populations. The participating authors are all members of the International Sociological Association, and part of the Research Committee 54 “The Body in the Social Sciences”. This is, in short, a book that will attract wide interest, especially from social scientists, researchers and academics in the social sciences, sociology, and digital studies, in addition to further afield, for example, in health, philosophy, education, and anthropology.