Goldsmiths - University of London

'Mediating Practices: Design, Politics and their Publics'

Annual Symposium & Exhibition

Leverhulme Goldsmiths Media Research Centre

28 November 2010

organized by Project three, 'The Mediatised View'

This symposium is focused on design as a mediating practice; both in the narrowcast sense of how it contributes to the production of new forms of ‘media’, and, also, in the wider sense that design is itself a mediatory practice; conditioning the spaces and objects of our everyday practices and, in and through this, effecting the way we are, and mediating the very sense of ourselves, as individuals and communities.

So the symposium is not only focused on the design of media and its objects (this as well, of course) but also on the way design shapes our ways of being and belonging more generally.

The symposium speakers will reflect on the political, social, technological and ecological implications of design interventions in media, and, in mediating the spaces, objects and practices of living - including its effect on selfhood, public life and social relations. In what it addresses the symposium will not merely be focused on ‘thin slicing’ current media spaces and practices - to study, analyse and pronounce on contemporary trends and forms - but will also be concerned with appreciating and having critical purchase on future possibilities for design (as one of the key agencies through which our lives are mediated). All speakers, to a larger or smaller extent, will be concerned with the possibilities and processes by which futures are gained – unpicking the retentive and protentive dynamics at work in producing what is ‘now’ (our contemporary conditions). Further, the speakers will through their different positions, tease out the ethical imperatives for design (as profession) and designers (as individuals) in the choices to be made in producing futures; the ethical imperatives in the changes that design can effect and in the changes that can (and should) be effected within design practice to carry through the transformations.

The symposium has speakers from industry and academia, theorists and practitioners, nationally based and international, who will present ideas and projects that will address the concerns of design as a concourse of ‘mediatising practices’.