Remediating Things

A workshop under the title Remediating Things: Translating Ideas – Designing Knowledge, initiated by the Swiss Design Network and ixdm, held at Hochschule Luzern.

The overarching questions for this two-day workshop are as follows: Can ideas become material objects? How does one experience theory in a technologically-situated age? How do we think about things in an age that has dematerialized, pixelated them? What role do the senses play in this process? And does this change the way we think in general – about things and about how we interact with things?

The questions will be addressed in a mix of readings, discussions, field-observations, exercises and rapid making stuff. The writings of Vilèm Flusser provide the theoretical framework as well as readings on the notion of “remediation” (Bolter/Grusin). The theoretical and practical engagement will evolve around a “thing” that the participants are asked to bring along and that is re-thought and re-made in the process of its remediation. The workshop is guided by an international team of experts on Vilèm Flusser and on media epistemology and practice.