Once more with feeling … to develop an individual approach to personal data. The way we navigate our desktop interfaces is defined by a cartesian approach to information architecture, as current design interfaces prescribe motion within a computational conceptual grid. However, we don’t move through a city as Google Maps suggests, from A to B; neither do we usually navigate the desktop with the same rhythmic motions. This workshop seeks to explore how concepts of psychogeography (which refers to non-cartesian navigation of the urban space) can be applied in a creative and affective way, encouraging participants to rethink visual information navigation through the spectrum of sentimentality, memories, identity & temporality (as opposed to date accessed, file name, etc).
Workshop Description:
- An introductory presentation of the theory and practice of psychogeographies, and how they could change our contemporary understanding of digital navigation.
- A group discussion leading to an exploration of techniques. Participants will be guided in visually applying psychogeographic techniques to their navigation of data, through techniques such as ideational drawing, mapping, collaging, illustration, writing, etc. In this visual rethink of their approach to personal data they will explore alternative methods of information navigation according to contemporary issues of readability, archiving, sentimentality, memories, identity and culture within the digital space. Reconsideration of how information is organised on a computer desktop in relation to temporality, mapping, interaction design (HCI), usage, eye tracking, typography, semiotics, human cognition and understanding will allow them to reconsider their relationships to their personal desktops. The individual influences of the participants will be explored, making them co-designers.
Participants must bring a laptop or sketchbook.
Workshop Presenters:
Stacey Pitsillides is a PhD candidate in Design. Her PhD topic considers creative responses to the digital archive framed through the question of what happens to our data after we die? (For more on this please see www.digitaldeath.eu.) Her research interests include Digital Identity, Collaboration, Personal Archiving and Digital Heritage. She is also a Visiting Lecturer in the Design Futures Department at the University of Greenwich and a freelance writer/consultant for Stromatolite Design Research Lab, and has been the co-facilitator of three ‘unconference’ events discussing issues of death and digitality.
www.digitaldeath.eu/
digitaldeathandbeyond.
@RestInPixels
Anastasios Maragiannis is Academic Leader and Senior Lecturer in the Design Futures Department at the University of Greenwich. Informed by design theory, his practice-based research focuses on how computational technologies and screen design impact on the existing principles and forms of static typography. His current work explores how innovative processes of design evolve within multidisciplinary design processes, and he is interested in how emerging practices in design as a discipline affect the virtual environments of today. He has taught design theory and practice at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in many UK and international institutions, including in Athens, Atlanta, Paris, Seattle, Ningbo-China, Istanbul, Berlin and Arizona, and has participated in and chaired various global conferences. His professional experience also includes design and consulting for web applications, interactivity and communication design. His work has been shown in the London BFI and the V&A Museum.
gre.academia.edu/
teraslab.co.uk
