[Open Design + Hardware] Fwd: DESIGN-HISTORY Digest - 23 Nov 2015 to 24 Nov 2015 - Special issue (#2015-41)

[Irene Maldini]

Herewith a call for papers for 4T 2016 ETHICS OF [RE] PRODUCTION
May 12-13, 2016, İzmir Center of Architecture

“Our era prefers the images to the things, the copy to the original the
representation to the reality, appearance to being.” (Feuerbach, The
Essence of Christianity, 1857)
Feuerbach’s pronouncements marks the symptomatic loss at the heart of
modern experience: loss of tradition, loss of the Creator, loss of a
connection one formed with what one produced, and loss of a solid ground.
These losses were mediated through the hopeful belief on human rationality,
science and progress.
It was ironic that, despite the radical changes, this new era did not
challenge the traditional belief in the singularity of Truth and reality,
but simply replaced its referent from metaphysical to scientific. New
developments, however, initiated questions on this singularity, starting
with the invention of photography, blurring the boundaries between the
original and its duplicates, the real and the appearance of the real,
scientific documentation and artistic representation. In this framework,
Feuerbach’s statements in the “Essence of Christianity,” were more than a
discussion on religion, but an embodiment of the frustrations and
alienation an individual felt in the modern era with all its novelties. Not
surprisingly, this quote was used extensively in visual studies in the
twentieth century.
A century after Feuerbach, as the belief on the Truth is abandoned, and the
discourse on multiple realities began, philosophers like Baudrillard and
Deleuze re-addressed these questions in different ways. Their discourse was
no longer based on a singular, mechanical, and modern world but one that
became multiple, digital and postmodern. In one century, as our experience
of the world turned more fleeting, so did the production systems,
transforming from manual to mechanical and to digital, challenging
materiality, authorship and permanence. While the beginning of the
twentieth century witnessed discussions on whether mass production systems
were impoverishing art or were they finally presenting opportunities for
the realization of “total work of art,” the twenty-first century seemed to
have left its high aspirations behind and fully immersed itself in the
aestheticization of the capitalist experience.
So what happens to the question of ethics all through these
transformations? Do we still need to demarcate the line between an original
and the copy when reality itself is suspect? Or is it even relevant to talk
about the original? Where do we locate the producer, the product, the
process and the client/spectator in this discussion? What are the
emancipatory design practices that our new era allows that were not a
possibility before?
This year’s symposium focuses on the ethics of [re-]production in design
and throughout design history. Papers are invited to focus on one of the
following thematic categories or their intersections in the context of
different fields including but not limited to design and cultural studies.

RE-PRODUCTION OF IDENTITY: ORIGINAL, COPY, MIMICRY
How can the relationship between original and copy be re-interpreted in the
digital age?
What are the cultural implications of the cult of the original in modern
societies?
What is the impact of design in the construction and production of
identities?
How can mimicry be used as an ethical design strategy?
How does the fluidity of digital age mobilize fluidity of identities?

RE-PRODUCTION AND AUTHOR-ITY:OPEN SOURCE, CO-CREATION, HACKING
“What is an author” in the digital age?
How can hacking be ethically located in the field of design?
What is the role of open source initiatives in design?
What are emancipatory potentials of co-creation today?
How design can be organized as a cooperative process?

RE-PRODUCTION AS REALITY, SIMULATION, HYPER-REALITY, AUGMENTED REALITY
How do representations produce social and cultural realities?
To what extent does design contribute to the management of perception?
What are the potentials of simulacrum as a denial of the original / copy
model?
How are virtual and simulated environments consumed in contemporary
societies?
What are the ethical issues that are mobilized in new understandings of
reality?

CALL FOR PAPERS
Those who are interested in contributing papers to the eleventh 4T
Symposium are invited to submit a title and an abstract of 250-300 words
through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=4t2016) by
January 29th 2016. Registration to EasyChair is essential in order to
submit abstracts. The symposium language is English, therefore
all abstracts, presentations and papers should be in English. For any
further questions please contact Bahar Emgin (bahar.emgin at yasar.edu.tr).
Selected proposals will be announced on February 29th, 2016.

ORGANIZING BOARD
Tevfik Balcıoğlu, Gülsüm Baydar
Şebnem Yücel, Ahenk Yılmaz
Ömer Durmaz, Ö. Osman Demirbaş
Gökhan Mura, A. Can Özcan
Dilek Himam, Gökçeçiçek Savaşır
Özlem Taşkın Erten

COORDINATOR
Bahar Emgin

ASSISTANT COORDINATORS
Yasemin Oksel Ferraris, Gizem Özmen

CONCEPT AND DESIGN
Umut Altıntaş

GRAPHIC APPLICATIONS
Orkun Destici
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/opendesign/attachments/20151124/c902126b/attachment.html>