THINGS THAT MIGHT BE TRUE–Artistic Reflection
(2024)
author(s): Ingrid Rundberg
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
My PhD project, ‘Things That Might Be True’, is based on Carl DiSalvo’s concept of adversarial design (DiSalvo 2012), which differentiates between ‘design for politics’ and ‘political design’. DiSalvo defines the former as design that simplifies and streamlines people’s electoral actions and interactions with municipalities, healthcare, and the government. ‘Political design’, on the other hand, sparks debate, problematises, and suggests new ways of exploring specific themes and concepts. DiSalvo’s concept is built on Chantal Mouffe’s distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’.
I set out to question DiSalvo’s dichotomy. Through practical experiments, I expanded and processed adversarial design. My goal was to challenge the prevailing ideas in society on how citizens (should) connect with their inner political lives.
My project examined how visual communication design might help devise new methods and tools for the public to approach politics, and, by extension, expand the conversation about democracy on a personal as well as societal level. Through public engagement, dialogue, discussion, and introspection, I explored ways for citizens to listen to and connect with their inner political voice.
I conducted four participatory sub-projects: the lecture series ‘Things That Might Be True’; the Voices publication; the Inner Political Landscapes collage-making workshop; and the Political Confession workshop.
The findings of these four experiments led to the development and materialisation of a fictional new department: the Stemme Department. The department's activities display the artistic outcome of my PhD project and illustrate how people can come together to reflect and engage in dialogue with their political selves. In early March 2024, the Stemme Department’s activities were presented at Bergen Storsenter and Bergen Public Library during a four-day event, which included an exhibition, a workshop, and lectures.
My project expanded the dichotomy of adversarial design by suggesting the concept adopt an additional category: ‘political, political design’. Through an ambiguous and empathetic design practice, this additional category would mirror and borrow characteristics from both design for politics and political design.
My nature
(2021)
author(s): Kate-Elin Madsen
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Presentation of drawings and artistic research from 2018/19. Modules of drawings that are put together into large formats and recomposed.Experiments with photographic images, risograph printing and pencil drawing.
A growing interest in creativity is opening up new roles for the designer- but also creating a need for clarification of these roles
(2020)
author(s): Bente Irminger
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
In recent years, “Design Thinking” as an interdisciplinary innovation process has increasingly led trade and industry and the public sector to take an interest in the design profession. While this profession has traditionally been related to the design of products and shaping of surroundings, today design can also concern methods and processes, making the profession relevant for additional areas of society. In this article, we present some key characteristics of the design profession today, and also discuss which expectations and different designer roles newly qualified designers meet and may come to meet in the future.
My nature
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Kate
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
My nature
Nature is my source of inspiration – like many artists before me. My working process could be like that of a scientific process, but as an examination through an artistic approach.
I work with a kind of system that contain several single formats put together to form a larger drawing. The drawings contains a large number of copies of the same photograpic image which is interpreted through drawing. The modules are a photographic image taken from a tree – in one of the system – is the bark, in other it is the roots and the third thing is forms that grows out of the surface. The photograpic image is transfered via a risograph onto a surface that is suitable for drawing. The visual intrepretation happens in the organic structure, in the space between, in the rythms and in the lines. The drawing process is like drawing in pixels – while each module is a A3 format. Throughout the prosess the drawings are composisioned, arranged and rearranged, with the intention to form a new image still unknown and unseen - while some of the underlying and known image is still visible like fragments and fractals of the wholeness. In all the drawings is used soft pencils B – B9, all the works are from 2018. The size of 2 of the images are 164 x 236cm and 195 x 162cm. The third one has a looser composition where the empty space also play a role.
Crux of the Matter
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Dora Isleifsdottir, Åse Huus
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Crux of the Matter is an Artistic research endeavour in the making. It is (being) metadesigned through synergies and relationships created between three forums and publication platforms: PS Exploratory, Ymt, and Message. The Crux fora creates a cyclical and sustainable flow
of ideas, material, and foci for a synergetic iterative approach to find out how the artistic and empirical in Visual communication can coalesce to inspire professional, artistic,
and social agency through Editorial design. Crux is a flow of creative discourse through creative conversation and manifestations thereof.
Reflective Roaming – Design, ubiquitous fantasy, everyday reality
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Albert Cheng-Syun Tang
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
We click, we swipe, we scroll, we look for.
We follow, we register, we log in, we give away.
We post, we like, we wait, we reload.
We search, we stare, we roam, we place order.
We are guided, we are informed, we are visualized.
We are indexed, we are analyzed, we are regulated.
We are fed, we are conditioned, we are informatized.
Are we individualizing or being individualized?
Are we consuming or being consumed?
Are we controlling or being controlled?
Are we working or being worked?
Are we living or being lived?
Are we feeling connected after all?
The artistic research project Reflective Roaming — Design, ubiquitous fantasy, everyday reality is a critical inquiry into our conditions of living and being in the relationship between the “designing” and the “designed” in the contemporary informatized everyday. In this project, design is positioned as a means to question the status quo of the technocratic promises that fundamentally shapes personal, economical and socio-political dimensions in our everyday lives. What is the consequences of being fully engaged with the technological visions presented by tech corporate institutions? How is humanity positioned in the intersection of information technology and market? What does it mean to be human in the eyes of machines and, the ones behind?
Through foregrounding the unseen technological operations by visualizing and revealing the invisible relationships between design, information economy and humanity, the research processes and the artistic outcome Human Conditions investigated our (un)willingness of being physically and emotionally digitized and informatized, the relationship between the mediated desires and the ones who drive them, and the contemporary conditions of being in the ever-expanding, networked fabrication of almost every aspect of everyday life.
Exit earth
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Ashley Booth
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In the Exit earth project, we wish to investigate how can pictograms be used as a language for social/environmental statements and opinions?
Pictograms are simple signs that relay their information effortlessly. We are surrounded by thousands of them each day as the friendly couple on the doors of public toilets, on your smart phones and computers, as weather maps and road signs. They are there to inform or warn, or sometimes just to be decorative. Pictograms are becoming more and more popular, we see them, use them and make them, they are our helpers and supervisors presenting information. Pictograms are also responsible to the ideology of international language (beware slippery floors, Tidyman, Exit…). Isn’t that exactly what we need for the language of climate change?
The pictogram‘s days of slavery as pure bearers of information are over, they can now have an opportunity for self-expressiveness. Can they expand their obligations into newer fields of cultural identity and local expressiveness? Can they become opinionated figures encouraging us to challenge human values and discuss climate change? Build a global visual language that unites us?
By reusing and recomposing signs visually inspired by Margret Vivienne Calvert designs for UK road signs (1963) and ISO safety signs and ideologically inspired by the signs from Thierry Geoffroy picture series ‘TOO LATE’ we can create new climate comments and challenges.
Pictogram-me
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Linda H. Lien, Ashley Booth
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
An investigation of how pictograms can contribute to increased reflection on life’s complexity.
Methodomania
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Linda H. Lien, Bente Irminger
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In the artistic research project 'Not design, but design' we have explored social design and the extended designer role.
SENSOUS SCREENS FOR THE MOVING IMAGE
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Torkell Bernsen
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
SENSOUS SCREENS FOR THE MOVING IMAGE- Relationship and interplay in spatial installations
This essay emerges from a research project concerned with how physical spaces can incorporate digital screen content towards human experiences and interaction. An analysis of a video installation called: Silence Interrupted serves as a startingpoint for a discussion on the merging of space and screen, in this case with a main focus on how the visual content of a video image is orginized in relation to the installation space and the audience present. The following discussions finds itself in between the field of motion graphics and installation art and are motivated from a growing curiousity towards a better understanding of the use of screen media in various spatial environments.