To introduce new insights on science and make them more available for the public, a collaboration with The Experience Design Group, was initiated by participants on the Center for Molecular Medicine course 2010. Contacts were made with Professors Ronald Jones and Rolf Hughes and after several brain storming sessions two ideas were born. One was to create a common research course, “Innovative Thinking: Science meets Art”, held at both KI and Konstfack and the other was to make a gallery with artworks from the researchers at CMM.

A group of first year EDG students designed an installation for TILLSAMANS IKEA Exhibition during LOVE 2010 Festival in Stockholm. The installation consists of 1125 fixed cootie catchers and hundreds of unfolded ones. Visitors pick one, fold it and explore areas in Stockholm following its chance logic.

Nina Bacun, Minjeong Cha, Martin Jones, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Chittrapar Lerttaweewit, Anders Mellbratt, Bonnie Swift and Josefin Vargö led by Jenny Althoff, participated in the project. Tillsammans exhibition ran from 6-19 June 2010.

More info

Farvash Razavi and Eray Cayli two newly graduated EDG students, won the two main awards at Konstfack. Farvash Razavi won the award decided by Konstfack professors.

Eray Cayli won the Rektorsstipendiet (Rector’s Scholarship). Eray set up an Institution called ‘Postmodernamuseet’. Check out the trailer of the documentary Eray made for this institution here and more materials on his website.

In addition, Ami Izaki and Willow Tyrer won two other awards from the department. Willow won the ‘Nils Johan Sjöstedts Stiftelse’ for her social behavioural studies in how errors affect the queuing system.

Bret Ascerli, Eray Cayli, Jan Carleklev, Farvash Razavi, Ami Izak, Maria Paz and Willow Tyrer exhibited their work, curated by Liv Stoltz, as part of the Konstfack Spring Exhibition.

The EDG Exhibition was located in front of Konstfack’s library. Check the online catalog here.

Dr. Ronald Jones has been invited to participate in a three-day workshop (May 19-21) hosted by Nobile to envision the future of Stockholm especially in regards to Entrepreneurship, the Arts, Design, Social Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, Luxury, Architecture, Research and Education.

EDG 1 students used their experience design skills to create Mixology, an evening in which participants could create new cuisine experiences by making the culinary arts interdisciplinary. Ever try white caviar and green peppers atop a doughy piece of warm cinnamon bread? Yummy.

On May 20th Konstfack’s annual MFA exhibition opens. This year’s EDG exhibition features Brett Ascarelli, Jan Carleklev, Eray Cayli, Ami Izaki, Maria Paz, Farvash Razavi and Willow Tyrer.  It was curated by Liv Stoltz. Oral thesis defences will be on 25- 26th May in Svarta Havet, Konstfack.

Dr. Ronald Jones and Dr. Rolf Hughes held a research seminar on artistic research at Konstfack with the above title. The seminar has led to a proposal to co-author a paper with colleagues in the field in the UK and Belgium.

Vijai Maia, a first year EDG Master student will travel to Zagreb, Croatia to participate in the artists in-residence program at Autonomous Cultural Centre Medika, home of the Antibiotik program, starting 10th June 2010.

On June 2-5, 2010, two thousand change-makers – entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders – from around the world are coming to The 5th Global YES Summit – Rework the World, in Leksand, Sweden because they don’t just talk a good story, they create them. They are creating new business models, new partnerships and new investment opportunities. Dr. Ronald Jones, Peter Majanen, and Dr. Emma Stenström will represent the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship and the Experience Design Group delivering a seminar on The Future of Talent.

The Queens Museum of Art, New York, will host Nina Bacun, first year Masters student at EDG, as an intern during the summer of 2010. She will contribute to a project entitled Humanfactory a collaboration between the Queens Museum of Art and Mildred´s Lane, Pennsylvania.

Mahmoud Keshavarz, a first year student at EDG, will present a paper in the “Critical Design” section of upcoming Cumulus Conference in Belgium. This year’s theme of Cumulus is “Borderline: Pushing Design over the Limit”. His paper explores this hypothesis: How can experience design make design activism permanent and durable. In his paper he defines various definitions of “Experience Design” by different disciplines and he has tried to use the interdisciplinary nature of experience design as a metaphor to show how much experience design could improve design activism in the new era. Mahmoud will present this paper on 27th of May at the Media & Design Academy, Genk, Belgium.

Four first year EDG students alongside students from other design schools in Sweden participated in a two day IKEA workshop in Älmhult. The theme of the workshop, which was led by “designboost”, was “Tillsammans” which means “Together”. Each school presented its proposal at the end of the workshop and will present their final proposals on 6th of May. All schools will participate with their final design concepts at the Tillsammans Exhibition in June 2010 in Stockholm.

Dr. Ronald Jones and Dr. Rolf Hughes held a workshop on “Design Thinking and Experience Prototyping” at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship.

On 27th April, Ann Marie Orru, ARB RIBA, will lead Invention Lab.  She is both an architect and a research curator. Ann takes inspiration by bringing together different disciplines and inspiring them to create an ecologically-responsible design through innovative thinking, research, and practice.
In the Invention Lab , Ms. Orru will present various research problems around the topic of biomimicry.
Read about her work here:

www.scene-thinking.com

and here:

www.annamariaorru.com

Rolf Hughes has been elected as one of seven members on the Committee for Artistic Research and Development in Sweden’s National Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). He will serve as a member from 2010-2012. The Committee supports research and initiates strategic questions concerning artistic research and artistic development. Read about their work here.

Eray Cayli, a second year EDG student will present a paper entitled “Ways of Peeing: Traces of Modernity In the Public Lavatory”, on 13-14 May 2010 at the “Deciphering The Object” conference organized by Izmir University of Economics, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design in Turkey.

Willow Tyler, a second year student at EDG has been awarded a 6 month internship at IDEO of Munich. Willow will work as a communication designer there. She also designed this website for Experience Design Group.

“Protest Artifacts: Objects as Design Activism” is a paper by Mahmoud Keshavarz, first year MFA student at EDG which has been accepted for Fiscar2010. Mahmoud will present his paper on 24th May at Aalto University, School of Art and Design Helsinki. By applying Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, he examines how artifacts can assume an activist role in societies.

Jaeuk Jung, a second year EDG year student has been one of seven Konstfack’s representatives in Milan Design week 14–19th April 2010 with his project, Amber Chair. The exhibition was inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’ book “The Savage Mind”, and curated by Ikko Yokoyama, head of Konstfack exhibitions. For more information check Konstfack Milan Exhibtion’s website

The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris will republish Ronald Jones’ essay on Yael Bartana entitled “War and Peace,” (first published in frieze, Issue 114, April http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/war_and_peace ) in a catalog for Bartana’s exhibition at the museum.

“Mobile Fresh Air” is a project by first year Experience Design MFA student Mahmoud Keshavarz created for [Un] Real Estate, a course taught on the Experience Design Group by Ramia Mazé and Martin Avila.
It has been published on Design Philosophy Politics as a side project of “Design Philosophy Papers Journal” with a greater focus on political design by Anne-Marie Willis and Tony Fry. For further details please visit Design Philosophy Politics.

Dr. Ronald Jones, Director of EDG, delivered a paper titled ”Strategies of Social Media” at the symposium Photography Today, Tomorrow, held at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

On March 19th and 20th Ronald Jones and Banny Banerjee, Director of Stanford’s d. School, brought together thought leaders from the Design Institute of IIT, Parsons School of Design, California College of the Arts, Design London (RCA and Imperial College), Business Week, and the National Institute of Design in India for the third annual summit devoted to the Future of Design. The institutions represented have formed an international consortium and will continue to meet annually in order to present symposium, papers and workshops. In June of this year they will publish a co-authored white paper titled Design Intelligence. Nick Kaye of SSES, and Peter Majanen, faculty at EDG and SSES also attended.

Dr Rolf Hughes gave the keynote lecture titled “Leopards in the Temple: Circus Arts Research” at a circus arts conference 18-22 March involving renowned international circus performers, physical theatre practitioners and clowns. The event was organized by Andreas Sjönberg.

Rolf Hughes was guest critic for the Architecture and Gender: Performing Writing graduate course led by Professor Katja Grillner and Dr Malin Zimm.

“Reflections on Supervising” a recent article by Dr. Rolf Hughes, Professor at EDG and Director of Research at Konstfack, has been published on “Reflection 13”. “Reflections” is a cycle of publications presenting developments in the fields of design, teaching and research at the Saint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels and Ghent, where Dr Hughes is Senior Professor in Research Design. You can access the PDF file of “Reflection 13” and Dr Hughes’s Article here.

Dr. Emma Stenström and Dr. Ronald Jones held a seminar titled Interdisciplnarity in Business and Culture at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.

Rolf Hughes was one of three guest critics at the Bartlett School of Architecture annual PhD conference and exhibition. His comments on the research projects arising from the design and theory/history-led PhD programmes, led by Professor Jonathan Hill, Professor Jane Rendell, and Dr Barbara Penner, will be published in a forthcoming publication from the Bartlett.

Dr. Rolf Hughes and Dr. Ronald Jones co-authored the chapter “Modern 2.0: Post-criticality and transdisciplinarity” to be published in Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism. Towards hybrid modes of inquiry, edited by Nel Janssens and Isabelle Doucet (Springer-Verlag, forthcoming 2010)

Jaeuk Jung, a second year EDG student, has made a strategic collaboration with THONET GmbH in order to realize one of his conceptual experience design projects with the chair No.14, today known as 214, designed by Michael Thonet in the 19th century. The chair will be presented in Salone del Mobile, Milan Design Week 2010.

Inaugurating a new series of graduate seminars at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels and Ghent (where Hughes is Senior Professor in Research Design), Rolf Hughes and Gerard de Zeeuw held joint lectures and led a discussion on the subject of metaphor and research thinking for doctoral candidates on the Sint-Lucas Research by Design programme.

Dr. Ronald Jones led a seminar for students of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College, London on “Experience design and Interdisciplinary.”

Dr. Ronald Jones published a chapter titled ”Fail Again, Fail Better” in the book Learning Mind: Experience into Art, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacqueline Bass for the University of California Press.

Dr. Ronald Jones, Peter Majanen and Dr. Emma Stenström led the third annual Future Forecasting Think Tank at the National Institute of Design, India.  This year’s topic was The Future of Talent.

Stina Wessman, a first year student at EDG, has been awarded a 6 month internship at the global design firm IDEO. She will start her work from first of April 2010.

Eary Cayli, a second year EDG student, will present a paper entitled “Design in Times of Crisis: The ‘Utility Scheme’ Example from 1940s Britain”, as part of the international seminar “War Perspectives: Architecture and Planning in Italy and beyond (1938-1945)” in Milano. The seminar will take place at the Politecnico di Milano on 21th-22nd of January.