summ( )n

Even plumbers these days are future-oriented; the writing on the car says “Total installation – with an eye on the future!”

As a follow up of our recent tour to the Klockgebouw, we’ve been invited to come and see the offices in the neighboring building, where the offices will be available for rent from April 1. This time an open tour (which was attended by 50+ people) has started with a general intro into a future vision of the Strijp-S (which was impressive, but also ve-e-e-ry long term too).

I spotted on a wall a large diagram presenting possible lighting solution of this future city-in-city (above is just a small fragment of it, about 10 percent). I spotted on the map a project to reincarnate Poeme electronique, the famous Philips pavilion at the Brussels’ World Expo in 1958. Coincidentally enough, at this very moment I am working on a presentation for the Russian Union of Designers later this month, where I start with the case of Poeme electronique. And now I also have a (relatively) promising end of the slide-show too

I’ve recently came across a very interesting piece, by Florian Schneider, published in the latest, March issue of e-Flux and called (Extended) Footnotes On Education. Not only it is a profound analysis of the unfolding crisis of the contemporary educational system, unable to cope with rapid socio-technological changes around us – it is also an excellent examples of an ‘applied Deleuze’. The article is a short yet sharp articulation of how the Deleuzian way of thinking (in this case inspired by one of his earlier works, Difference and Repetition) can be successfully used to understand a complex issues of contemporary education.

I also like Schneider’s own concepts too, for example, very crispy Ekstitutions (emerging now vis-a-vis existing Institutions). In some sense those can be compared to the ‘Pancakes’ (as opposed to the “Pyramids’) structures that have been fresh in my memory since the meeting last Friday. But at this meeting I sensed (may be wrongly) a much more antagonistic attitude, perfectly expressed in one of the posters used to call the meeting:

Schneider writes about much more complex relationships between these two structures:

“The challenge that ekstitutions permanently face is the question of organizing, while in institutional contexts the challenge is, on the contrary, the question of unorganizing. How can they become ever more flexible, lean, dynamic, efficient, and innovative? In contrast, ekstitutions struggle with the task of bare survival. What rules may be necessary in order to render possible the mere existence of an ekstitution?”

[Btw, and as a side note: the word that pops in my mind when reading such a description is of course 'dialectics', a notion strictly banned in the post-modern way of thinking, and among Deleuzians in particular].

Schneider continues with another excellent observation:

“Ekstitutions have usually appeared as alternatives to institutions, or at least they have emerged in that order. There are of course numerous examples of ekstitutions that have first evolved and then been swallowed up by institutions. The opposite direction is still hard to even imagine, since an institution would rather cease to exist than abandon the pretense of its own infinitude.”

and then [sorry, a long quote, but excellently worded]:

“Today it seems that institutions and ekstitutions correspond to complementary rather than antagonistic modalities. What once appeared a challenge to the traditional educational framework, turns out in the current situation to be a correlate that compensates for the deficits of institutional frameworks that are gradually losing their conceits.

“At the same time, new coalitions appear: in the past few years, waves of protest have emerged against cuts in public education, the rise of tuition fees, and staff layoffs. Rather than original propositions or sharp conclusions, these movements demonstrate a new desire for alliances across the boundaries of groups that are reduced to clienteles once education becomes a business.”

It is a deep, thoughtful analysis of the current situation, and at the same time an almost ready-to-use practical toolkit (or at least a framework to develop such one), to be used in contemporary organizational and social research, and non only of the educational development. He actually literally suggest one tool to use, namely his Virtual Studio concept. In fact, he almost word by words repeats what I was trying to express during the meeting with the Pancakers:

” A studio as such is configured as a working environment that is not confined to the individual but opens up to possible worlds, to a multitude of collaborations, in unforeseeable and unexpected ways. Such collaborations are not directed towards a notion of the “common”: distinguished by logistics or infrastructure, studios can be used for very different purposes and by very different occupants; or the same occupants can constantly reconfigure a studio according to changing goals and needs.”

Excellent work, highly recommend to read it to everyone even remotely interested in ‘possible futures’ and ‘transformations’ towards them.

These are not just two nice images. They are here to somewhat symbolically describe the meeting I attended this Friday in Amsterdam. I wrote earlier in December 2009 about the Pancake Society gathering in Philips Design, called by Josephine Green; to be honest, I was afraid it would be one of those one-off meetings, full of initial enthusiasm but with no serious follow-ups. I am so happy to be wrong!

Not only the community members continued to communicate with each other, but they also opened a virtual home (a Ning-based web community called Pyramid 2 Pancake Movement), and eventually called for another ‘real’ meeting, to be hosted by the ABN-AMRO’s Dialogue House in Amsterdam this time.

The meeting was a bit smaller than expected (few people couldn’t make it at the end), but it happened, and the team was great, and conversation was both inspiring and pragmatic. There is a much stronger commitment of the team, a growing feeling of a collective action, but also a few real action points, to be followed and hopefully accomplished.

Kudos to all (and also a good present for my birthday

ps: Image-wise, it may be worth noticing that pictures are taken from (almost) exactly the same place, before and after the meeting.

Another day, another trip, this time to the University of Twente, in the Dutch city of Enschede. It was a long-lasting plan to come and see their virtual reality lab (or rather immersive experience room), as they call it themselves. But my first encounter with the university campus was very immersive even before I’ve reached the Dept. of Engineering where we were supposed to have you meeting.

The whole campus is seemingly one large construction place, and a beautiful one too! I was impressed by the new building of the Science and Technology Department (the one with the red strip on the picture above), and later spent some time exploring other corners of the campus; a really nice place, combining high-tech structures and completely tranquil nature.

We’ve been invited by the Prof. Wim Poelman, with whom we had a very rich and inspiring two hour long discussion, not only on how the experience room in our ‘future sensing’ exercise later this year, but also on how new materials, and new technologies in general can be used to inspire and to provoke the participants.

Then we had a chance to see the room (a large hall, in fact), with all facilities to create an multisensorial immersive experiences. The most interesting dimension is that the room would allow us to do such exercises with a group of people (with three groups simultaneously, in fact), a real treasure for our plans.

We didn’t see the room in ‘action’, but the facilities and technologies were abundant, so you can think of quite interesting possible scenarios acted out, or played in such a space.

Summ()n does not necessarily need a rep office at the moment, but we are increasingly often think of a creative studio of sort, where we would be able to place our installation, and we could host our creative sessions with people (so far they always run at various temporary places). Using a very kind invitation by Yelena Kharitonova, from CaravanCultura, we had a chance to sneak into the premises of the Klokgebouw (or Clock Building), the main building of the Strijp-S complex in Eindhoven.

Strijp-S is a former manufacturing stronghold of Philips, the company that until very recently was the key business forces in Eindhoven, who first moved its headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, and then gradually relocated most of its factories from the city to various other places in the world. What was left is a giant area that could either become yet another decaying urban ruin or reborn itself as a new place. The city administration together with a few business partners apparently prefer the second way, and already for few years invest into a redevelopment of the area and its transformation into a modern creative and inspiring space.

We knew that Strijp-S traditionally hosts an annual Dutch Design Week and also the STRP festival of electronic media art (and since last year also a new festival of the new urban art, Flux-S). But I was not aware that there is also quite a large community of creative studios, small and not so small business that already lives in the building on a permanent base. One of the members is Jean-Paul Marsman (whom I briefly met earlier, and who, as far as I know, is a designers of the CaravanCultura‘s visual identity).

This time we had a chance to visit his art studio ‘for real’, a total retinal delight. But this was not the only studio, in fact we managed to look at three or four, (ab)using the hospitality of people. To all my surprise, I was recognized by Maarten Hendriks, CEO of the Little Mountain, who apparently was my students in TU/e when I was teaching there few years ago! The world is still small. Being there, one can immediately feel the creative buzz from all the corners, and it was a very inspiring and rewarding experience (and hopefully not the last one).

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As announced earlier in this blog, Otto and myself joined the second annual conference by the Dutch Design Initieatief, this time held in Wijnfort, in Lent, near Nijmegen. When I read “fort” in the description, I initially thought about a decorative pseudo-medieval construction of some sort, but to my surprise it was really a former military building, later converted in a modern congress centrum. The atmosphere of the place was macabre and very homey at the same time, and played a big role in boosting the creativity of the participants, I believe.

The program was quite full for us, spreading from the morning with a masterclass for students, then presenting the same material for the participants, and also participating in a very intensive two-hour long interview by Cor Hospes. The morning session was opened by Rianne Valkenburg, Director of Research at the Design Initiatief:

There was a couple of very interesting presentations, by Mario Ramirez, from University of Breda, and then by Remko van der Lugt who told about ‘Service Design’. Otto was leading our part, with an interactive presentation of the key future developments of the Netherlands we explored last year.

The afternoon started with a short presentation by myself (which I obviously don’t have any pictures of), which was an attempt to fit the content of a sizable book into about 20 min of a talk . I traditionally ended with an image of Alice, with the message the key to success is a personal transformation.

I think I may have missed the timing just slightly, the new Alice blockbuster by Burton is to be released in Holland from March 10 only, but well. The rest of the day was in fact not a conference as usual, but rather a series of intensive workshops where about a hundred of the participants created solutions for a few most interesting domains: future of energy, future of food, future of knowledge and future of well-being and vitality.

In total, 16 teams developed and later presented their concepts, ranging from a new information system to search for local healthy food, to the swallable devices aimed at tracking and managing your health profile, to a new knowledge systems for kids, and many other futuristic, yet feasible ideas. The winner < drum >… didn’t take it all, but received a hefty 20,000 euro check from the Design Initiatief to further develop their concept and eventually covert it into a successful business.

For me the the conference was also a great opportunity to meet many old friends and colleagues, but also new interesting people. Closer to the evening, Marco Bevolo presented his art-slides on how the very idea of design should be seen, and finally Adjiedj Bakas, a prominent Dutch trendwatcher shared the latest watched trends (five in total).