LIKE EVERY YEAR, DAE STIMULATES TALENTED STUDENTS THROUGH AWARDS AND GRANTS, FUNDED BY DIFFERENT FUNDS AND PARTNERS. THIS GRADUATION SHOW (OPEN 17 – 25TH OCTOBER 2015) THE 4 WINNERS OF THE KEEP AN EYE GRANT WILL BE ANNOUNCED.
KEEP AN EYE GRANT:
Keep an Eye Grant is awarded to develop talent in the creative field to students with a vision for their talent and future career. The grant is an initiative by the Keep an Eye Foundation, www.keepaneye.nl.
WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO MEET THE NOMINATED STUDENTS:
This week: the second Social Design master students, and the two Information Design masters nominated for the Keep an Eye Grant and the Gijs Bakker Award. For the full list of nominees and more information about the grants and awards, see awards 2015
Fiona du Mesnidot | Domestic Theatre - Another Dollhouse (not by Ibsen)
MA Social Design
This design research is inspired by theatre and aims to challenge and question our perception of the ordinary.
If we look at society as a theatre stage, we are all simultaneously actors and spectators. To define our social character in this play and to assert it we dress in elaborate costumes, we relate to objects as props, we stage ourselves, and we perform. We also look at others in the same way: how they dress, how they relate to things, how they act…to understand which role they are playing.
Societal norms serve as the script while our individual performances can be called social representation, accumulating into a global play that can be understood as social order and cultural identity. As a social designer, my part in the play is to question this script on its different scales and to undermine the norms.
Given that I used theatre’s structure as a metaphor for our social context, I developed a design methodology based on theatrical elements. As the designer I thus became scriptwriter and stage director. From the perspective of design as an attitude, an awareness machine, and a critical and political tool, I work to combine it with the historically critical function of theatre. My results re-script, re-stage and re-act the spectacle of our everyday in a disruptive way.
Here starts the representation. The lights fade on the audience. The curtains open on a domestic stage: door, window, staircase and props… Another dollhouse*.”
* From A Doll’s House, a three-act play by Henrik Ibsen. 1879.
Hannah Hiecke | The Wandering Hole - a Wanderatlas of the In-Between
MA Information Design
“At a speed of 2,3 cm per hour the brown coal mining hole Garzweiler II ‘wanders’ through the landscape of Germany. Until 2045 everything has to give way to the extraction of brown coal. Ecological systems and social entities are put under enormous strain.
Today’s continued dependence on fossil sources of energy becomes a tangible reality within a project such as Garzweiler II, a brown coal mining hole moving steadily through the landscape of the German North Rhine Westphalia region, 24 hours every day.
The Wandering Hole researches the practices and consequences of brown coal mining. In 1995 the project Garzweiler II was approved by the government in order to provide a constant and reliable supply of energy. Independence of foreign supplies was a major argument to approve a substantial extension of the mining area, up to 4.800 hectares until 2045. Resulting in a long-lasting process of transformation. Affected by this process are: 15 historical towns, about 7.000 re-settlers and nature. Inhabitants have to deal with the consequences on a daily basis. They live in an in-between condition. Trapped between old and new. In-between recollection and hope, loss and gain, cultivated homeland and valuable resources. In-between consent and protest. In-between questioning and clarity. In-between here and there. In-between past, present and future tenses.
The design project emphasizes and visualizes this long-lasting transformation phase and the multifaceted involved interest groups. Until today the route of the hole is clear. Garzweiler II is still moving ahead. Yet, it remains unclear how far the mining hole will wander. Here, Germany’s federal government has the final say.
Beyond that, this issue is not only topical within Germany. Similar issues arise worldwide where national energy policies collide with regional and individual interests.”
Vincent Thornhill | The HD Self - Hyper-Definition
MA Information Design
“As our production and consumption of images increases, encouraged by the formats and systems of the digital image, the visual becomes more than just representation. Image use begins to form both a visual and philosophical paradigm with the potential to liberate us from the restrictions of a singular sense of identity.
The current production and consumption of images has the potential to liberate us from the restrictions of a singular sense of identity. In this research and design project I investigate the digital image in relation to self-image. When much of today’s image circulation derives from a human desire for recognition — hardwired by our needs as social animals — an understanding of the reality of images becomes urgent. The re-examination of the broader sense of ‘image’, in conjunction with tracing the rise and enactment of images, attempts to dissolve the limiting and deterministic distinction between the real, and image representation.
The orientational paradigm of the digital image disrupts the linear perspective we use to structure our experiences. Where this ‘one point perspective’ can be seen as a limiting subject–object relationship, the digital image breaks apart this dichotomy, using multiplicity — the pixel, the camera, the screen — to illuminate our plurality. In doing so, the digital image can show us the reality of our image, simultaneously more defined and more distorted than we were able to perceive.”