Design & Innovation

Ruth-Mateus Berr

The cross-border research project Design & Innovation aims at creating a Slovak-Austrian research cooperation between leading institutions of design, museum and applied arts in Bratislava and Vienna, with the goal of exploring contemporary design strategies in times of the digital turn.

The research cooperation Design & Innovation connects institutions from the fields of design, art, research and museum work from Slovakia and Austria: the Slovak Design Center (SDC), the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava (VŠVU), the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna (MAK) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. It receives support within the framework of the EU program INTERREG V-A Slovakia–Austria. Accompanying the project, the VŠVU and the University of Applied Arts Vienna are offering their students a research-oriented seminar, led by Christina May Yan Carli, Ruth Mateus-Berr and Pia Scharler.

How can human beings make the best possible use of the ongoing digital revolution and how can we cope with predictable undesirable developments? What impact has the digital revolution to the fields of design, arts and architecture? What are the underlying theories? And what approaches and methods already exist?

In close collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava (VŠVU) young professionals and academics from various backgrounds are exchanging thoughts, positions, ideas and values around these themes, are entering into dialogue with experts participating in the project and are developing concepts, objects and artistic interventions. Working in interdisciplinary teams and applying the method of „social design thinking“ are playing an important role. Various aspects related to the core research questions come into account: the role and responsibility of design and designers in the 21st century; transdisciplinary correlations; copyright versus „open design“; the incorporation of new technologies and materials into design processes; social design and design strategies in response to social and societal demands, interfaces between man and machine; etc. The findings will be shared and discussed in a series of exhibitions accompanied by a range of fringe events taking place in Vienna and Bratislava. The series starts with the exhibition Human by Machine at the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna (03.07. – 28.07.2019) followed by the exhibition Human by Design at the Slovak Design Center in Bratislava (05.09. – 30.10.2019).

Human by Design

HUMAN BY DESIGN (c) crafting plastics! studio

 

Time
2018 - 2019
Location
Bratislava
Vienna
Team
Ruth Mateus-Berr (PL)
Christina May Yan Carli
Elisabeth Haid
Pia Scharler