KHiB » Ressurser » Ansatte » Faglig ansatte » Frid-Jimenez, Amber »
FoU rapport for 2010
Fokusområde
La Lucha Sin Fin is a research project exploring the role of design in network cultures and the production of urban space. The project examines the ethical, aesthetic and architectural challenges of physically engaging the dynamic information that defines our networked lives. Advanced research in new media technology often ignores the potential negative effects of its use, substituting an idealized vision of the future for the gritty and complex realities of everyday life. La Lucha Sin Fin engages new technology critically, addressing design issues related to social media and the production of urban space. The ideological framing of the project draws from theories of urban utopias, expressed through architecture, information design, art and urbanism.
La Lucha Sin Fin investigates the ways in which three social movements -- a spiritual community, a grassroots political movement, and a contemporary global corporation -- have used architecture and design to differentiate themselves from the cultural backdrop against which they operate. Specifically, the research focuses on the role of architecture and design in two particular areas that pertain to the three cases: 1) charisma and 2) eclecticism.
The first area, charismatic authority, is common to the three case. All three social movements have powerful, likeable and shrewd individuals at the helm. La Lucha Sin Fin asks how the personality of these leaders affect the development of ideologies and the movements that coalesce around them. The project will investigate cases where the authority figure is aligned with the larger ideology and also when ideological inconsistencies in authority figures places them in conflict to the communities that form around them. Latin American political movements are of particular interest in this area, as they have more often relied on recognizable figures of authority figures than on consistent ideology. La Lucha Sin Fin will examine specifically how the events leading up to and following the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948 were indicative of, or distinct from, this regional tendency.
The second area common to all three cases is a notion of eclecticism – to offer something to everyone in a catch-all approach, whether strategic or unintentional. For example, the first community that the project will study, an intentional spiritual community, incorporated elements of multiple faiths including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and invited people from various religions to incorporate their own rituals and practices into its ideology, which had been based largely on an interpretative version of Christianity at the time of its founding. This use of eclecticism helped the community expand its reach and increase its membership. I will consider the role that eclecticism plays in generating community in all three cases.
The research and analysis of all three cases will require research that draws from original archives specific to each. This research will provide the aesthetic and conceptual framework for design experimentation that includes drawings, diagrams, simulations and presentations related to the topic.
Motivation
Contemporary developments in urban planning have been characterized by a renewed interest in urban-scale utopian plans. Masdar City, New Songdo City, and myriad virtual environments are contemporary manifestations of a rich history of utopian schemes that pose idealized technological solutions to society’s ills. Pervasive wars, climate change, pollution, and the global economic crises only increase the appeal of these utopian dreams. Developments in social media, network technology and intelligent systems parallel many of these same trends. The semantic web, machine learning and ubiquitous computing all substitute an idealized vision of the future for the gritty realities of everyday life. Although the outcome of contemporary urban and virtual utopias remains to be seen, the historical record suggests that they often create far-reaching problems worse than those they were intended to resolve. La Lucha Sin Fin will use contemporary technology to respond to past community visions and their related social issues, offering a reappraisal of these projects while imagining new potentials of the relationship of social networks and the production of urban space.
La Lucha Sin Fin addresses a critical issue in contemporary design education.The popularity of online social networks and related new media has increased exponentially over the past five years. Industry leaders like Facebook and Google have called upon designers from the field of communication, architecture, fashion and film making to help in the effort to construct online social spaces. Design education, on the other hand, has lagged behind, largely ignoring the political, social and anthropological dimensions of their role as designers of new social spaces. Politicians understand the power of persuasion and charisma when communicating to their delegations. La Lucha Sin Fin seeks to apply design to this understanding in an interdisciplinary effort to merge the designer’s new role with the imperatives of an expanded social field of new media.