3132 research outputs found
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Masks of Folly: Portrait of the Idiot
Get PDFMasks of Folly: Portrait of the Idiot is an MFA thesis exhibit by Grace An that creates a portrait of the Idiot or, fool. The Idiot is an exception, one who interrupts and blurs boundaries in the refusal of rationality. Using folly and profanation to ask questions. The mask as a concealment of intellect, ironically unmasks. Drawing from the concepts of Mikhail Bakhtin, the exhibit functions as polyphonic utterances by way of the multitude. Multi-voicedness and the cyclical nature of the carnivalized folk, removes the concept of the individual. The site of the Idiot, the carnival, is a space where power structures are temporarily suspended. Offering the character of the Idiot as an unfinalizable being
O E(X)U atrás da(s) Máscara(s) / The E(X)U Behind the Mask(s)
Get PDFExu is an Orixá, a God within the Candomblé religion, the deity closest to humans. Guardian of crossroads, he is the messenger that unites realms. Exu is foundational to Capoeira, his presence is often related to the legend of Besouro de Mangangá.
“Exu killed a bird yesterday with a rock he threw today”, says the ancient proverb. Exu crosses metaphysical boundaries and plays with the concept of time and space. His written name contains crossroads. Exu lifts bridges within our different selves.
Inspired by the proverb above, this research-art work aims to confront the linear concept of time with and through the mask(s) of E(X)U. It seeks to empower Brazilians, resist colonial oppression, and question imperial impositions of time and space.
The research-creation methodology is inspired by traditional Brazilian raft-making and sailing philosophies. Masks, poetry, performance, and video are the artistic planks bound together at a crossroads to create this work
An Insufficient Record//Exploring the photo-ethics of preserving of Black Vancouver
Get PDFAn Insufficient Record: The Photo Ethics of preserving Black Vancouver theorizes the afterlife of the City of Vancouver photographic archive, concerning the history of insufficient representation of Black Vancouverites and their lives in public space. A conduit for dialogical and collaborative collecting methodologies, the proposed exhibit intervenes with the archive, outlining a curatorial approach that identifies, contextualizes, and makes accessible reflections of the multiplicity of Blackness in Vancouver. Re-presenting and re-positioning 17 gelatin mugshots acquired from the City of Vancouver archive, An Insufficient Record malleablizes the varying vital relationship between the image and its object of representation, assessing the photographic constructions of race, the politics of human rights, identity formations, national narratives, and cultural memory. Juxtaposed within a new and speculatively valuable resource, the mugshots are presented with 50 portraits of Black and African self-identifying people, taken with clear subject autonomy. The archival images are assembled from official municipal holdings, provincial holdings, public arts and culture organizations, and special collections. Challenging the insufficient depository of knowledge contributing to the historical trajectory of restricting representations of Blackness to caricature, ethnographic object, or criminal, the proposed exhibit takes on a kind of cultural translation, examining the possibilities and structural limitations of transforming penal spectatorship to a participatory re-shaping and reading of the carceral images. An Insufficient Record exposes the strategic erasure of nuanced Black representation, which enables the City of Vancouver’s insufficient fonds to exist without question or complication. Speculating the role of curation and documentation in supporting collective movements beyond the public archive, the proposed exhibit visualizes and reinforces Black personal, political, and social presence. The curatorial space-making gesture imagines a system of photographic presentation and organization that engages Black Vancouver communities in the re-representation of their histories, and responds to demands to participate in national discourses of belonging to Canada’s past and present, readdressing historiographical challenges and their impact on archival record
The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Stress Test for Learning Organizations
Get PDFThis research project seeks to evaluate Peter Senge’s concept of the Learning Organization as a framework upon which employers can rely to address the unmet needs of employees in the context of the “the Great Resignation.” Senge's concept was formalized as an organizational structural model and leadership modeling tool in his The Fifth Discipline first published in 1990. The Learning Organization framework outlines five key disciplines that an organization can implement to strike a balance between organizational success and employee engagement, and which may be the solution to weathering stressful events such as the global pandemic we are currently experiencing. Senge’s framework has been widely integrated into managerial practices since its initial publication, but organizations can find it difficult to maintain its tenets when outside influences induce pressure on them.
We are seeing the impacts of the external influence of a global pandemic on organizations resulting in the Great Resignation. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a ripe context within which to assess organizational responses in the global job market as employees are leaving their current employers. Employees are stating they are leaving their jobs because their organizations are not providing transparency, trust, collaborative work environments, a culture of inclusion and belonging, nor career development and upskilling.
How might the Learning Organization framework aid organizations in their responses to disruptions in the workforce? Through a literature review and Causal Layered Analysis this project assesses the causes of the Great Resignation, and of employee needs, organizational stressors, and the benefits of a Learning Organization. This research project argues that when all five disciplines of the Learning Organization are embedded within the organizational culture of a given company, that company has built a resilience to external and internal stressors that can allow it to meet the employees needs in the workplace
Neuro Space: The distance between our psyche and the computer.
No full textNeuro data (ND) is the compilation and use of data drawn directly from the brain, which we can measure using Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) with Electroencephalography (EEG). This thesis demonstrates the need for producing documentation on neuro data and the BCI using discursive methods to reveal issues that occur below the surface of public discussion, articulating how computer integration effects brain function. There are public gaps in the mental health sector addressing our neuro-digital health. Since 2018 there have been a large amount of papers and journals questioning technology’s relation to decreased brain health. In the four years from 2018 to 2022 there has been more literature produced than from 1950-2017. Yet, as of December 2021 there is still no dedicated section for technological addiction in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Psychiatry. This research takes up the call for an interdisciplinary audience to look at their neuro data and brain to computer interaction
Design details for overdose education and take‐home naloxone kits: Codesign with family medicine, emergency department, addictions medicine and community
Get PDFIntroduction
Overdose education and naloxone distribution (OEND) programmes equip and train people who are likely to witness an opioid overdose to respond with effective first aid interventions. Despite OEND expansion across North America, overdose rates are increasing, raising questions about how to improve OEND programmes. We conducted an iterative series of codesign stakeholder workshops to develop a prototype for take-home naloxone (THN)-kit (i.e., two doses of intranasal naloxone and training on how to administer it).
Methods
We recruited people who use opioids, frontline healthcare providers and public health representatives to participate in codesign workshops covering questions related to THN-kit prototypes, training on how to use it, and implementation, including refinement of design artefacts using personas and journey maps. Completed over 9 months, the workshops were audio-recorded and transcribed with visible results of the workshops (i.e., sticky notes, sketches) archived. We used thematic analyses of these materials to identify design requirements for THN-kits and training.
Results
We facilitated 13 codesign workshops to identify and address gaps in existing opioid overdose education training and THN-kits and emphasize timely response and stigma in future THN-kit design. Using an iterative process, we created 15 prototypes, 3 candidate prototypes and a final prototype THN-kit from the synthesis of the codesign workshops.
Conclusion
The final prototype is available for a variety of implementation and evaluation processes. The THN-kit offers an integrated solution combining ultra-brief training animation and physical packaging of nasal naloxone to be distributed in family practice clinics, emergency departments, addiction medicine clinics and community settings.
Patient or Public Contribution
The codesign process was deliberately structured to involve community members (the public), with multiple opportunities for public contribution. In addition, patient/public participation was a principle for the management and structuring of the research team
How Many Ecologies? From Bateson to Guattari and back again
Get PDFFifty years ago, 1972 saw the publication of two broadly systems-theoretic books, both of which, by any reckoning, had a significant impact: Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind and Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus.
In this short paper, I extract and summarise some moments from a larger study I am working on, in which I speculatively read Bateson and Guattari (and with Deleuze) together. This is partly an exercise in historically and conceptually unpacking the various brief though significant references to Bateson that are to be found in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. But it is also a transversal historical speculation, in which I suggest that we can find a much bigger, much more interesting and largely unflagged pattern of responses to Bateson in their work.
Extending recent scholarship that has started to re-explore Deleuze and Guattari’s relationship to Bateson, I argue that, in fact, there are no less than three distinct periods of—always a combination of explicit and implicit— engagement. Firstly, in Anti-Oedipus, they acknowledge and work creatively with Bateson’s double-bind concept, even whilst being critical. However, I argue that their engagement with Bateson is much more extensive and interesting than a normative reading suggests.
In their second joint work, A Thousand Plateaus, published in 1980, their previously critical concerns about Bateson seem to have abated, and in addition to a couple of short, respectful remarks at a few points in their text, they also acknowledge the concept of the “plateaux” and the “rhizome” as borrowed from Bateson.
And finally, a decade later again, in Guattari’s sole-authored The Three Ecologies, the central concept is once again developed out of Bateson, and moreover, Guattari gives Bateson the opening epigraph.
I revisit this material not simply out of historical curiosity nor simply to contribute to a gap in the existing understanding of the relations between these important bodies of work. Rather, I argue that reading these texts together today presents significant new openings and new work for us to do, important work pertaining to how we think about ourselves ecologically, and our responses to anthropogenic environmental change and the dangers and possibilities of a conscious political project of ecological planning
Unravelling Safety Through Place, People and Things
Get PDFSystems theory highlights that understanding underlying structures is critical to knowing why systems behave the way they do and reinforce that these structures are a key point of intervention for systems change (Meadows, 2008). The pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis have brought forth proof of how everything is connected at multiple levels and how one small change at the micro level brings about a massive effect. Mapping, reading, and making sense of systemic interrelationships in the staggeringly complex situation to lead to safety has become a high priority.
Safety has been one of the most critical factors for human system evolutions, be it the design of civilizations, food security or the race towards weaponization. Humans have continually designed to create objects and environments that create a sense of safety and comfort for them. The meaning of safety remains the same, despite changing circumstances and contradictions of scale. Depending on the socio-economic background, experiences of spaces are different for different people
STOP! The Curse of Change
No full textChange has become the norm. There are many positives to a change-culture, but change also has negative effects. Sometimes these effects are calculated, but often they are not foreseen. This raises questions about change. Are we as aware of the benefits as well as the drawbacks of change processes? When is it not worth it? When should we leave fragile systems that have grown over decades, or more, un-disturbed?
We claim that many change processes fail. They do not succeed in creating an intended new direction. They end up changing nothing, and one can argue that they consume energy that would have been better spent elsewhere.
This is an invitation to a conversation about when to STOP.
The curse of change
There is a general emphasis on change in our society. Change is dominantly regarded as positive and needed. We need to “change existing situations into preferred ones”, as Herbert Simon expresses in his definition of design (Simon, 1969). Change is not only regarded as important in society, but it is the bases and precondition for the design profession, even more so in contemporary society when design is moving from form-giving and aesthetics to societal objectives.
Change processes are so common that societal and organisations reforms are the new normal. Typically, organisations are joined and merged to release economies of scale and benefits of synergies.
Let’s STOP a moment and take a step back. What are the implications, who are the victims, what are the failures of our change-culture? What are the counter-intuitive kickbacks from the complex systems we try to change?
We will facilitate a conversation (not a discussion) about these topics.
Here are some words for thought and inspiration
We organise our society according to modernist logic rather than culture. This implies that we are less aware of the time needed to rebuild cultures during and after changes have taken place. Therefore, we often do not see the expected synergies, collaborations and silo-bridging after, for example, merging organisations.
Change processes often meet protests and resistance. Every change, however enthusiastic one can feel about it, also generates tears. Is resistance negative? What about the affected bystanders (Wagenknecht, 2017)?
It is hard to deny that change often is about fixing serious issues, and many things have become much better because of change. Globally, child mortality has never been lower. This is fantastic but also connected to overpopulation (Rosling, n.d.)
So one strong driver seems to be our urge to fix things: being designers. Are we biased towards finding problems? Are our eyes trimmed to see issues even where there are none?
Is this a western phenomenon mostly? Not exclusively when looking at LEAN, a Japanese philosophy in which continuous improvements are central.
Moreover, how is change connected to our economy of growth? The idea that society has to develop is inseparable from the idea that it has to grow. On the horizon, there is the vision and promises of utopia, the perfect society. How much energy is drained into change processes deemed to fail from the outset?
In change management culture, there is little emphasis on the costs of change other than the standard cost-benefit analyses. It is hard to find studies of what the total costs of change processes are, including short-term effects like loss of efficiency due to disruption or loss of people quitting.
Do organisations need to find a new equilibrium after change processes or is change the new “steady state»? Are organisations organisms or complex systems with complex environments where most systems are made up of unofficial links and unofficial assets? These are, for example, the individual and collective knowledge and experience of teams.
We believe that we change a situation from one state to another. But isn’t any situation organisation or system a continuous fluctuating sum of local interactions? We cannot define what an organisation is (Stacey, 1996). We believe that enormous recourses are wasted to map the status, while status is a moving target. Everything changes while we map, even as an effect of the mapping.
Energy consumption of change processes:
- We believe we need to look deeply at the energy spent on change processes.
- Dr Joseph Tainter has a theory about why complex societies collapse. Very bluntly, his theory says that as societies develop, ever more problems are solved to improve society at large. But, as time goes the problems left to solve are smaller and solving them takes ever more energy. Continuing up this road requires ever more energy. The Romans did it through conquest, our world through fossil fuel (Tainter, 1988). Lecture series
- Are change processes themselves productive?
Activity descriptions
This is a slow conversation of 2-3 hours and could continue on afterwards in a restaurant or other casual setting. First, we engage in a small trialogue where we interview each other with a question or three (must be quite short). Then one person from each trio is invited into a circle of facilitated dialogue. The others listen.
Dialogue is not discussion. We don’t dictate a dialogue. But there are some rules:
1. Listen, be curious, and try to understand why others say what they say
2. Hold back, think through whether what you want to say is based on what others have said; perhaps we have now moved on in the dialogue so then you have to wait/forget what you wanted to say
3. Build on what others have said
4. Say what needs to be said; don’t be politically correct
No one can raise their hand to say something; you have to find an “opening” in the dialogue yourself and take the floor when it’s natural (that’s why point 2 above becomes important)
Facilitators remind others about the rules, such as avoiding discussions. This is primarily done by asking questions. There will always be some participants who don’t get to say their point – and that’s the perfect impulse to take you to the restaurant
Systemic-self and Pluriverse: A design research framework for pluriverse
Get PDF“Systemic-self and Pluriverse” is situated at the intersection of design research and systemic design framework. As a part of evolving research methods in my practice, the question of personal motivation and aspirations has been central to the decision-making. In my practice, as a design entrepreneur and researcher, my quest for meaningful intervention, outsider (etic) being an intruder while conducting research has made me question design research methods and approach to contextual inquiry. The role of design and the approach to framing the ‘problem’ and whose problem is one solving has been a dilemma across the problem framing stage of the project.
This activity provokes the need to equip designer and design students to become aware of their position as a researcher and designers before intervening in a social system