DMDN271

IDDN/DMDN 271 HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AND DIGITAL MEDIA DESIGN

Technology helps to shape culture through negotiating the relationship between human beings and their environment. In this manner technology facilitates human involvement in the world and so can be understood as composing connections or linkages between humans and reality. Things-in-use, therefore, can be understood and mediators of human-world relationships; technology forms an active medium which influences human perceptions, actions, experiences and existence.

Industrial design and digital media design are activities which contribute to the complex interactions between technology and people. How can we describe and understand these interactions? How can we deal with these interactions in the design of products, processes and systems? The nature of these interactions demands a multidisciplinary point of view in order to enable new ways of conceptualising the relationships between technology and people. A strictly functional approach to technology pays far too little attention to the human beings who work with devices on a daily basis and live among them day and night.

This course considers how design and production can be used to reflect new social values and to change dominant cultural practices, through addressing design as both a process and a result of a process. The aim of this course is to expand your understanding of industrial design and digital media design and develop your critical thinking so that you will have an opportunity to analyse the interrelationship between research, design, humans and the world.

The underlying challenge for all work in this course is to prepare students to engage with theory in their own design practice. By observing and analysing historical approaches to this relationship and setting the foundation for understanding the theory of digital media and industrial design, students will start articulating their own approach in using theory in everyday design practice.

While the lectures will be the core forum for discussion of new knowledge in this course, individual study and preparation of the seminars will play another significant role in the process. The lectures will provide a basic introduction to the key concepts and a series of examples of how to take some of that analysis further. Students are then expected to undertake literature research and conduct a similar type of analysis for their assignments. While the lectures and seminars will address many relevant issues, it is essential to read regularly from the outset of the course and to work on developing individual reading, analysing and interpreting abilities and verbal and writing skills.

Coordinator:
Anne Niemetz
E-mail: anne.niemetz(at)vuw.ac.nz

Primary course deliverer:
Luke Feast
Email: lukefeast(at)gmail.com

Tutors:
Patricia Bruner
Email: Patricia.Z.Bruner(at)xtra.co.nz

Dhyana Beaumont
Email: dhyana.beaumont(at)gmail.com

Johann Nortje
Email: nortjejohann(at)gmail.com