by Fernanda Torre

Lars von Trier’s movie Melancholia is a great exercise in manipulating a cinema audience’s experience. That’s how I felt when I left the cinema house – for me the world had truly came to an end and was somehow reborn after the final credits. Lars Von Trier prepares his audience with a series of superb photographic moments that reference the world’s greatest painters while alluding to the end of the world. The Surrealist garden with Magritte like bushes, the girl on the water just like the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Milliais had pictured, the constant reference to the “Return from the Hunters” from Pieter Bruegel… All the moments seem to contribute to the end of the story and the end of time.

by Mahmoud Keshavarz

Deleuze’s first book Empiricism and Subjectivity (1953) examines David Hume’s theory of human nature. It is an inspirational, challenging and engaging work for those who think of ‘experience’ in relation to ‘political subjectivity’. What makes this book extremely interesting is Deleuze’s drawing forth a new aspect of political ontology/epistemology from Hume’s ideas. Political empiricism examines how subjectivity might be recognized through a system of experimental data. Deleuze follows notions such as ‘the given’,’ time’, ‘situation’ and ‘difference’ in order to define relations between mind, subjectivity, imagination and experience. Although this book does not elaborate Deleuze’s subsequent notions of resistance and emancipation, it nonetheless provides an initial outline of how a system of beliefs makes a static structure of experiences for human beings.

by Rolf Hughes

Debbie Chachra, a materials scientist at the Olin College of Engineering, Boston, studies natural plastic – so called “bee plastic”. This plastic is resistant to biodegrading and, being produced by a species of bee native to New England, is made without the use of fossil fuels and therefore may one day become a source of natural, non-oil-based plastics, replacing part of the global fossil fuel industry.[1] Liam Young and Darryl Chen investigate the cultural consequences of emerging biological and technological futures via future urban scenarios located in the projective worlds of speculation and fiction which betray, in the words of Geoff Manaugh, an interest in “the murky borders between the synthetic and the geological, the organic and the mass-produced.” (Noting that the images of their project “Postcards from a Green Future” are “almost farcically green” – “it’s sustainability redone as Grand Guignol” – Manaugh asks, “What if those verdant fields of green out there are actually cloned and genetically-modified? What if that well-trimmed nature is simply an exhibition on display?”).[2] Rachel Armstrong pursues “living architecture” to explore “cutting-edge, sustainable technologies by developing metabolic materials in an experimental setting.” Armstrong comments, “These materials possess some of the properties of living systems and couple artificial structures to natural ones in the anticipation that our buildings will undergo an ‘origins of life’ style transition from inert to living matter and become part of the biosphere. By generating metabolic materials it is hoped that cities will be able to replace the energy they draw from the environment, respond to the needs of their populations and eventually become regarded as alive in the same way that we think about parks or gardens. Since metabolic materials are made from terrestrial chemistry they are not exclusive to First World countries and have the potential to transform urban environments worldwide.”[3]

What further potential metaphors and disciplinary hybrids arise from a conception of research informed by paradigms of theoretical hybridity, temporal multi-valence, ‘post-disciplinary’ creativity, and risk-taking, innovative, yet action-oriented practice?

[2] From http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010561.html (accessed 7 February 2011). Liam Young and Darryl Chen’s website is “Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today”: http://www.tomorrowsthoughtstoday.com/ (accessed 7 February 2011).

[3] Rachel Armstrong website: http://www.rachelarmstrong.me/ (accessed 7 February 2011).

by Josefin Vargö

NONOBJECT is a design group driven by Suncica Lukic, Branko Lukic, Steve Takayama and Steve Vassallo. Their work is focused and developed around their nonobject philosophy involving what they call ‘the experience space’.
They will soon publish the book NONOBJECT which will come out in October 2010, and might be worth to check out.
It could be interesting to read about their take on ‘the experience space’ and what that entails.

To find out more about them go to: http://www.nonobject.com/
More info about the book: http://www.nonobjectbook.com/book.html

This may seem a surprise but here is an example of experience design beyond experience. Composed when Beethoven was completely deaf, it begins as emotional conflagration – a strident unison of G’s extends over three octaves, and one and one-half bars which are followed with one hundred and twenty-six consecutive bars noted as forte or beyond. Its structure is comprised of stark, sometimes toothed contrasts where sections break off precipitously; cool tension subsides into warmth. The Grosse Fugue is an acoustic experience to which Beethoven had no direct access; it maps creative experience beyond the senses.

The future of education? At EDG we work with themes not disciplines and to do some basic reading check out Mark C. Taylor’s op-ed piece in The New York Times. That’s the future and that’s EDG.

Ronald Jones