Course Listing: UTransLab: Designed Realities 1 & 2
Taught by designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, the Designed Realities UTransLab aims to stretch the imagination in ways that not only help to reimagine how things might be otherwise, but also, to question the way we think about reality and our relationship to it. It does this by experimenting with and developing different ways of seeing the world made tangible through design, video, photography, images, objects or experimental writing. An important focus of the lab is on exploring new ways of representing designed realities (provocative futures, parallel worlds, alternative realities, and so on), that go beyond the hackneyed design languages and tropes of futures thinking and mainstream science fiction in order to stimulate further imagining rather than communicating a vision of how things will, or should be. Students can either develop an entirely new project in response to a set brief or explore an aspect of their ongoing thesis or research work, for example by experimenting with new conceptual lenses, methods or media. Students can work in teams or individually.
The studio is in two parts. Section A (UTNS 5108) consists of a 5 day Winter Break intensive, while Section B (UTNS 5106) takes the form of a weekly 3 hour class during the Spring Semester. Students should take both parts of the course. For a glimpse of related work and ideas, please visit www.designedrealities.org
Please email designedrealities@newschool.edu if you would like to register for this course and include a brief outline of your motivation for taking the class, a PDF of project work, a link to a portfolio website, or a writing sample.
Section A, Winter Intensive: January 13th-17th, 9.30am to 6.00pm
Section B, Spring Semester: Mondays 4.00-6.45pm