The Digital Dreamhacker: Crowdscoursing the dream imaginary

The project (2012) is a collaboration with Eleanor Dare - presented in ISEA 2013 Sydney

The digital Dreamhacker is an application that collects dream themes reported by individual dreamers and turns them into crowdsourced imagery. These dream visualisations are then uploaded onto the Social Web allowing for further commentary and collective interpretation. This way, we focus on the social context of dreams, creating visualisations that are neither a depiction of individual imaginings or a means of enhancing artistic skill, but a reframing of dreams within the technical and social imaginary, which forms our collective understandings and expectations of social life. We outline a research strategy in which social media, supported by methods that emanate from both critical design and network analysis, are innovative contexts for exploring the connection between technology, culture and our individual ‘imaginings’, including our dreams.

read our paper http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/9749

Design, story-making and play through child- adult partnerships(PhD research)

My PhD research in Goldsmiths, Department of Design (co-funded by the ‘Greek Institute of National Scholarships’ and Goldsmiths Design Department is situated between design learning, co-design and design collaboration; in particular, it explores the social, collaborative and educational role of the designer, through design partnerships and the use of ‘story-making’. As part of my research I have devised, organized and run major design partnerships (Internationally and in the UK) between Universities museums and schools.
In the name of civic collaboration, my research and practice disrupts hierarchies between adult, child, teacher learner

Workshops between December 2007 and March 2011

Abstract

This thesis explores how designing and story-making capabilities can be combined and used as everyday inventiveness for all. It examines the learning that arises out of “getting lost” in child-play and fictional speculation when combined with an iterative design process. The research highlights the value of this combination for individual self-discovery, criticality, fostering social engagement and responsibility.

This thesis reviews existing cases where designing and playfulness have been combined and highlights the lack of examples where design is recognised as a valuable everyday process for everyone. At the same time, it explores the consequences of losing the childhood expertise with the onset of adulthood.

In this context, this thesis examines a partnership between adult designers and children working together on an imaginary design brief. The aim is to explore the possibility for children to acquire capabilities and experience how they might stream their playfulness into their adult roles as everyday designers, researchers and story-makers. At the same time, this thesis explores if and how the adult designers can temporarily plunge back to a childhood state and learn from the children.

The research involved undertaking and analysing a series of explorations with children or adult participants that led to the final adult-child partnerships. While, the “learning in action” nature of these engagements bears similarities with “Action Research”, this thesis trials a new approach introducing story-making as a research method.

The thesis findings propose a new method that allows adults to look at the world through the lenses of child expertise and for children to value their own expertise and experience its applications in adulthood. The thesis is primarily directed at designers and the design education research community, although its findings are relevant for educators, parents and everyone that is interested in creativity in life. 

parts of this research have been presented and published in

2013 /  Media Arts Festival, Honf Fab Lab, Indonesia
2011 / 7th Creative Engagements Speaking with Children - Mansfield College Oxford

2011 / PATT 25 & CRIPT 8: Perspectives on Learning in Design & Technology Education

2011 / Between Narrative and Embodiment, Czech Memorial Scrolls Museum, London

2010 / After fiction - Copenhagen University

2010 / Modelling, Designing, Society. Ken Banes Seminar Series - Goldsmiths, TERU

2010 / Aesthetics and History - Stockholm University

2010 / Inter-Art. Metaphors in Aesthetic Theory - Freu University Berlin

2009 / 5th Creative Engagements, Thinking with Children - Mansfield College Oxford

2009 / Forms of Engagement, Concepts of Politics - Copenhagen University

2009 / Desperately Seeking Authenticity - Goldsmiths, London

2008 / Once Upon a tine to Ever After - Thursday club, Goldsmiths, London

find some of my papers here

Cultural probes - Interaction research studio - Goldsmiths

The storybook probe

In 2009, I worked as a researcher at the 'Interaction Research Studio' at Goldsmiths - Department of Design, where we collaboratively created the storybook probe called 'Around my home in 80 days': a book that invites its readers- participants to create narratives and designs about their homes with a view to inspire designers-researchers who work with domestic interaction design. 

probes

Later, I was involved in the creation other cultural research probes: 'a design-led approach to understanding users that stressed empathy and engagement'. These included 'collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from people—not comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary clues about their lives and thoughts'.

how to make cinema without film- collective workshop in Copenhagen university

The Phi books project

Since 2008 I have initiated and run a very well-received research project in collaboration with Eleanor Dare (Goldsmiths-Computing department) called the 'the Phi books': a project that uses the house as a metaphor for collaboration; the notion of collaboration, consent and shared authorship is being explored while creating participatory narratives, algorithms and designs about the participant's mental or physical houses. This has resulted in digital applications, book productions, conference presentations and theatrical performances in Copenhagen University, Berlin University, Goldsmiths University of London, Istanbul Sabanci University, and Stockholm University; also exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert museum London, publications with Leonardo Journal and a book chapter in an edition called 'Writing between disciplines'. 

see more here

The family cook book Newcastle culture Lab

The ‘family cookbook’ created for the ambient kitchen (Olivier, P. et al, 2009) at Newcastle Culture Lab in 2008 a design object that mutates and evolves according to the activities of the user of the kitchen. This led to the creation of individual family cookbooks for potential users to log and narrate family narratives through recipes and kitchen stories. This illustrated for me how the combined activities of telling stories and physical making might provide a vehicle for exploring how social interactions, bonding and individual identities are formed, create and perpetuate cultural traditions and memory.

The cookbook in Greek tradition is an object that is often inherited from one’s mother when starting a new family, a cultural signifier of the emotional and social importance attached to preparing food, eating and gathering around the table in maintaining a happy family. As in many cultures, family recipes are symbolic objects closely connected with place and time echoing histories and revealing roots. Thus the ‘family cookbook’ design aimed to provide.