COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will examine interdisciplinary collaboration through practice. Our practice will be an investigation of the function of memory and history in the experience of public or shared spaces.
The course is an experiment in integrating research and the classroom.
As such, the method of the course - interdisciplinary collaboration - is as important as the subject - memory and space.
Our subject will be broad, and is intended to function as a catalyst for action and understanding across disciplines.
Our method will be experimental, and is intended to generate new knowledge.
STUDENT WORKS IN PROGRESS
GOALS
- To develop transferable methods and techniques for interdisciplinary collaboration on creative projects. (We would eventually like to apply these techniques, with your help and credit, toward a distributed set of conceptual and technical tools.)
- To identify, with the students, separate desired research goals across disciplines, and achieve them together. These may include artworks, user studies, papers, performances, new hardware or software.
- To develop a clearer understanding and record of disciplinary distinctions
RATIONALE
In our experience of the built environment, there is a tension between our personal and collective memories or histories of place. Whether we focus on social forces, landscape and architecture, or technological mediation, every approach at examining this tension comes with so much history and tradition that points of view become entrenched. Assumptions go unquestioned. Tactics are not analyzed. Results are left uninterpreted. These overlooked features are vital to critical engagement within any discipline and make contributions like user studies, artworks, papers, performances, research, or new tools
In this course, we will examine the tension between personal and collective memory through work in small interdisciplinary collaborative teams. This is intended to highlight the practices from each of the disciplines represented, and just as importantly create an environment where access to personal and collective experience is immediately available.
SUPPORT
This course is part of the research of the Science of Design project, an effort headed by Assistant Professors Brian Bailey and Kevin Hamilton, based at the ORCHID Lab at the Department of Computer Science of UIUC. The project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant.