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Interrogative Design Workshop
Instructor: Krysztof Wodiczko
Office: N52-396
Telephone:617-253-4415
Send e-mail: wodiczko@mit.edu
Units: 3-3-6
Level: H
Prerequisites:
Can design for needs produced by unacceptable conditions create new conditions to make those needs obsolete? In hope of finding a positive answer, this design workshop responds to needs that should not, but unfortunately, do exist in today's troubled world. The course addresses design media and technology as both ethical and aesthetic practice. Development of projects finalized as functional objects, environments, computer programs, and others are supported by relevant theoretical studies and informed discussion. The workshop poses new questions, exposes hidden issues, and creates inspirational and experimental situations for emerging critical discourse.
This course will focus on the production of visual art for public spaces outside the conventional gallery/museum context. Tangential to this investigation will be discussions that engage social, political and urban issues relevant to this expanded public context. Traditional approaches of enhancement and commemoration will be contrasted to more temporal and critical methodologies. In this light, historical models will be studied and discussed, including the Soviet Constructivist experiments, the Situationists, Conceptual Art and more recent interventionist strategies. Readings and slide lectures will be presented for discussion.
