Karan Dudeja

Context Sensitivity & Emerging Practices

M.Des IAIDP, 1st Year

Description

Research, Policy, Philosophy and practice Engaging with information is a nuanced skill. Interpreting, organizing, processing, communication and reflection of/on information require ability for transdisciplinary thinking and problem solving.

The ability to understand context–sensitive issues and narratives emerge from a state of mind and being that is open, empathetic, reflective and critical. Intuition and practice are both key to insight on the field. As emerging fields IAIDP / EEC, require reflective practitioners who can engage with, create in and emerge frameworks of research, policy and practice as well as philosophical thought.

This unit focussed on investigating, researching and creating the kind of environment that is needed (physical, emotional, social, cultural, political) in order for information to be communicated, translated, or transacted; for thinking cultures to be set in education that emerge from a meaningful transect of ecological concerns.

Capabilities

1. Capability to inform and communicate through narrative.
2. Capability to perceive gestalts, navigate complexity and negotiate intelligences through transdisciplinary engagement.
3. Capability to interact and work with communities, contexts and limitations and sensitively negotiate boundaries.
4. Capability to transact meaning with audiences and build context-sensitive practices.

Focus

Students to have a hands-on experience of community based research practices and understanding of the context sensitive practices.

Exercises

1. A writeup(about 200 words) on the word ‘community’ supported by one image.
   Followed by an in-class discussion of each member’s outlook.
2. Film Screening, Focus areas for the film, to open a discussion on:
   
   • Community
   • Research Ethics
   • Narratives
   • Information Processing
   • Structuring and Data Gathering
   • Research methodology of the film maker
   • Film maker’s lens - of design or art
3. Community Based Research
   • Unpacking ‘community’ while participating
   • Develop awareness about the community dynamics
   • Formulate a research question
   • Formulate a research process for the above stated question
   • Divide themselves into groups of 2 or work individually
   • All observations and insights to be documented individually
4. Workshop(5 Days) at Dhaatu Puppetry

Emotional Design

B.Voc, 1st Year

Course Title

The way you make me feel

Description

Human activities over generations have made design all pervasive. But it's not all flat, there are certain qualities that separate great design from good design. And the distinction could be based on a few factors, where the 'emotional quotient' could be an integral one.

To see & feel how this comes into action, this class looked into the interconnections and dependencies that design and emotion have on each other, both in output and process, for the consumers and the creators respectively.

Focus

• What are Emotions?
• Relevance of learning about Emotions whilst designing.
• Theories on Emotions from the west and those in Indian Aesthetics(Natyashastra).
• What is Emotional Intelligence?
• Personal awareness and art therapy.
• Senses and Emotions in Design, with respect to the audience - consumer - user.
• Role of Intuition in our lives.
• Theories on Emotions in the Design Process.
• The tools to map Emotions while designing.
• Important pointers, literature and books for learning more on 'Emotions and Design'

Investigations

1. Emotions : General
• Definitions
• Classifications and Types and important theories
• Emotions, Moods, Feelings
• Emotional Intelligence
• Intuition
2. Emotions : in Design
• Don Norman’s Models
• Emotions via Elements and Principles of Design
• Trevor Van Gorp - ACT Model
• Experience Maps

Exercises

1. Personal Objects and our lives:
   Where the individual was required to bring an object from their room and talk about it in class, focussing on the object's significance for the respective owner.
2. Emotions and Images:
   Each participant was given a specific emotion, for which they were required to bring three images in class.
3. Screenings:
   • Short Film, Reason and Emotion
   • Film, Inside Out
   • Film, Inn Saei - The Power of Intuition
   • Film, Equals

Contexts, Paradoxes & Futures

B.Des, 2nd Year

Course Title

Working with Paradoxes - Multilingual Design

Description

There are written languages and spoken ones of the human; and there are the silent languages of the non-human. The diversity and richness of the world lies in the million languages that we use to communicate. In a global world, the challenges lie in allowing them to exist, grow, and add to the richness of culture and thought. As languages die, so do cultures and so do unique perceptions of the world, creating dominant flattened perspectives. Multilingual design, be it for print or digital technologies must understand the need to enable spaces for multilingual users to create, innovate, engage, articulate and inspire in their own languages with pride and ease. This unit looks at the politics and possibilities of creating multilingual design on different media and platforms.

Module Outline

Contexts, Paradoxes and Futures is an immersive experience that draws directly from real world contexts and quagmires of paradoxes in the frameworks of culture, environment and self. In this module, we will retrain our mind and responses by changing time scales and ask core questions about what is consciousness? How can conscious experience be translated while sense making and traversing layers of complexity? How does the future change and evolve through this retraining principle? What makes something paradoxical to us? How can the meaning of a word be designed as form? What is the relationship between form and function?, What will we make into the future? are all questions to problem solve in “Contexts, Paradoxes and Futures”. Media explorations can be context-sensitive.

Focus

• Understand the essence of contexts and paradoxes
• Understand the relevance of Space and context
• Understand problem contexts
• Identifying more persuasive methods of communication to bring behavioral change
• Ability to identify structural frameworks
• Ability to comprehend problem statement, context, information flow dynamics, change agents and the structural framework
• Interdisciplinary – Transcending disciplines and understanding methodology
• Using skills and techniques to good purpose, by understanding market needs
• Designing sustainable products
• Recognize narrative functions: Analytical distinctions between story and plot and "narrative and communication"
• Unravel the ecosystem of Products Systems and Services

Exercises

1. Multilingual Atmospheres:
   Where the individuals were to bring three images to the class, of multilingualism in their surroundings.
2. Screenings:
   • Film, Babel

Readings

1. Hillier, Mathew. "The role of cultural context in multilingual website usability." Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 2, no. 1 (2003): 2-14.
2. Graeff, Erhardt. 2013. Diversity and Contention Online: Talks by Anselm Spoerri and Jisun An.
3. House, Juliane, and Jochen Rehbein. 2004. Multilingual communication. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
4. Atom. "Multilingual Design Principles".
5. Myths and Paradoxes about Multilingualism.
6. Translation Paradox.
7. The World Digital Library.
8. Tsui, Amy. 2007. Linguistic Paradoxes and Cultural Domination.
9. Miles, William F S. 2000. The Politics of Language Equilibrium in a Multilingual Society: Mauritius.

Others/Miscellaneous

F-321Y at Kochi Biennale

I worked on this collaboratively where my role was to take F-321Y for the 2019 Art Biennale in Kochi(Kerala, India). Also, help it with a bunch of its software needs before that.

By the way, it is a printer that thinks it's an artist. It likes to work with things like alphabets and numbers it learnt to print, it faces existential angsts and has figured that it needs money, for some reason to stay alive. Here's a video.

Later on, I was helping it in participating in #36DaysOfType, on Instagram again.