Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

Joining Up: evaluating technologically augmented interdisciplinary crosscultural
collaboration
MCARTHUR, Ian / College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales / Australia
MILLER, Brad / College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales / Australia
Design education / Cross-cultural / Multidisciplinary / Collaboration
/ Interactive media
RARE EARTH: Hacking the City is an open studioLAB encouraging
students from China and Australia to collaborate using Shanghai as a
laboratory for investigating ideas for the future of cities, immersive interactive
environments, and cross-cultural co-creation. This paper discusses
the opportunities, constraints and outcomes of the studioLAB
and proposes insights pertaining to a pliant model for Cross-Cultural
Interdisciplinary Collaboration (CCIC).
1. Introduction
Globally networked social, economic and geopolitical systems
mean humans are ever more interdependent, in ever more immediate
ways. Despite this the extremes, contradictions and
consequences of wild capitalism perpetuate a reality where China,
Islam and the ‘West’ are on a collision course. Unless these diverse
models of culture and capital find constructive engagement,
economic, social and ecological collapse are realistic scenarios
(Nolan, 2010). The aim of this research is to propose ways design
educationalists can challenge students from different cultures to
collaborate on envisaging and co-languaging as yet unimagined
futures. This strategy repositions design as a multidisciplinary,
culturally adaptive, social platform for creating shared visions
about our collective sustainable future. Ezio Manzini (2007, p1.)
laments that,
…unfortunately, looking around…I see the majority of designers
(and design researchers) happily continuing to work in a
business-as-usual mode, oiling the wheels of a catastrophic
consumption machine. There are several reasons for this worrying
situation, but … one of the major ones is the lack of shared visions.
(Ezio Manzini, 2007:1)
The scale of the global challenges impels us to envisage what to
date has been unthinkable. In particular, China’s re-emergence
signifies complex political and cultural challenges to developing
shared visions complimentary to both Asia and the ‘West’.
Today, more than ever, the stakes of design are very high, raising
at every turn urgent economic, political, social, and philosophical
issues. The relation between design and its context is particularly
salient in a rapidly transforming space like contemporary China...
not because China leads the world in the field of design, but because
China today is where design issues are raised in perhaps their most
problematic and provocative form. (Designing China, 2009)
In response to this unprecedented exigence, our research hypothesises
a model for Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Collaboration
(CCIC) deployed within immersive networked studios that
foster the capacity of students’ working in creative disciplines
to think in more ‘joined up’ ways about how humans engage in
designing our world.
2. COFA Collaborative Studios
‘RARE EARTH: Hacking the City’ is an intensive studioLAB where
students from China and Australia developed dynamic content
together using a live database. Held in Shanghai (September
2011), RARE EARTH emphasised experimental improvisation
(the hack) and use of interactive media to facilitate cross-cultural
collaboration. Conceived at the College of Fine Arts (COFA),
University of New South Wales, the project explored the future
of cities, immersive interactive environments, and transcultural
collaboration with faculty and students from Donghua University
(DHU), Shanghai. RARE EARTH is the second collaboration
between Collabor8 (C8) 1 , COFA’s innovative Porosity Studio, and
DHU, the first being eSCAPE Studio 2 (2009).
Since 2003, C8 has developed insights and recommendations
pertinent to a matrix of cultural and communication issues encountered
during online and face-to-face studio interactions between
students in China and Australia. The multidisciplinary collaborations
with Porosity Studio 3 encouraged students to test their
individual practices at the scale of architecture and the city. “The
relationship between the city and public space are key concerns
– hence the name Porosity which speaks to the need for architecture
to be porous in relation to public space” (Goodwin, 2009).
An Interactive Media Platform (IMP) 4 was integrated into RARE
EARTH as a means to document, facilitate and exhibit the studioLAB
process and outcomes. The IMP draws on a database of
images, sound and videos to display content as an immersive
environment. Participants create, tag and upload their content
to a Flickr database that regularly updates the IMP forming the
installation. These data ‘moments’ are animated by custom software
and a live video camera feed and then sequentially embedded
into a strip of images presented horizontally. The platform
employs synchronised projections in a large-scale installation
format supported by multi-channel sound that responds to a
machine-vision tracking system. The interactivity of the system
enables users to control the display of individual visual elements
1 Ian McArthur instigated The Collabor8 Project to enable design students in
Australia and China to collaborate.
2 eSCAPE Studio can be found at: http://porosity.c8.omnium.net.au/outline/
3 Professor Richard Goodwin established Porosity Studio in 1996.
4 The IMP augment_me was developed by COFA design academic Brad Miller.
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7