Day 2

The digital spaces and realities of our connected world are in constant flux. In the past 30 years, we have transitioned from the flat, slow loading, broken link, early machinations of the World Wide Web to 100-million user online virtual worlds.

‘Unfolding Spaces’ views metaverses, the digital environments we inhabit, as a visionary, almost utopian space of learning, research, and open communication.

During the programme, we will discuss, present, debate and test interactions within a metaverse, and consider its potentials for education and research on five layers: space, hybridity, power structures, liveness, and building together. Casting aside the dystopian problematic of spending our lives online while the world around us decays, ‘Unfolding Spaces’ will investigate the opportunities of a metaverse as a more utopian place, part of a desirable future where education and research can prosper: A geographically distributed venue which offers new tools, relevancy and context to the physical world in which we coexist.

Unfolding Spaces is hosted by the Professorships of Design Academy Eindhoven.

10:00-10:15 → Introduction: Design Education and its Metaverse(s)
Annika Frye will introduce the themes of hybridity and building the metaverse for design education and research, as well as critisise current developments around the metaverse.

10:15-11:00 → Wenting Cheng
Wenting Cheng from Hubei University of Technology, Sino-German Industrial Design School in Wuhan, China will discuss practices of hybrid teaching and how to engage students in digital spaces.

11:15-12:00 → Bianca Herlo
Bianca Herlo will talk about questions of ethics and equality in digital spaces, in particular when looking at current developments around the web 3.0.

11:15-12:00 → Opening the Digital Interior – The Infinite Display
Matylda Krzykowski will reflect on ways to overcome power structures in digital learning spaces. She will present those using her lecture format »The Desktop Exhibition«.

12:00-14:00 → Lunch Break

14:00-14:45 → Panel Discussion: How can we use the idea of the Metaverse for our practice as educators?
In the panel discussion Annika Frye, Bianca Herlo and Ilse Meulendijks will wrap up the previous talks and discuss possible applications to teaching practices.

14:45-15:30 → Benjamin Unterluggauer: Multi-Dimensional Thinking in Creative Design Research
Benjamin Unterluggauer’s work deals with the question of ordering information. How something is ordered is closely related to questions of representation. He is asking about the specifics of ordering systems in the creative design research process. He thus succeeds in making an interesting contribution to questions of design methodology that have been important to design research since late modernism. He puts these questions to a new level by adding current discourses of digitization and collaboration to the methodological question. The focus is then not on the designer as an expert, as in late modernism, but on the collective. The tool that he has built together with Joscha Büning will be part of the Workshop session later this afternoon.

15:45-18:00 → Workshop: Identity in Digital Spaces
The images produced by smartphone cameras are not photographs, they are computations. And as smartphone imagery becomes a primary medium for self-representation, the programming within camera systems develops a fundamental role in how we perceive ourselves, and others. In this workshop we will explore the ways in which the software behind the digital image informs our ability to envisage ourselves, as we create alternative image-making processes to produce new forms of expression. Participants of this 2-hour workshop should bring a smartphone and laptop.
Lead by Vincent Thornhill.

15:45-18:00 → Workshop: New Ways to Connect Knowledge and Research
The Workshop will be centered around new ways of visualizing and connecting knoewledge in digital spaces. An online tool that is developed by Benjamin Unterluggauer and Joscha Brüning will be the starting point for experimentation.
Required: A Laptop

16:30-18:00 → Workshop: Building the Metaverse
We are Using 3D-scanning to create assets from objects that can be found in and around the academy. Further, we will explore what aesthetic potentials of the technology. During the workshop, the scanned objects will be edited and uploaded to our own digital world. Lead by Annika Frye and Marcel van Nispen.
Required: A digital device (A Laptop computer or Iphone 13 or Ipad 11 or higher)