Making Magic Machines

Abstract

How can we design experiences that explore ideas and notions of the unknown? The aim of the work outlined here is to create short, intense, workshop-like experiences that generate strong commitments, and expose underlying personal desires as drivers for new ideas. I would like to propose a material practice, which uses open-ended making to engage in the imagination of new things. Informed by a concern or a longing, this exploration employs familiar yet mundane materials - such as candy and cardboard - through which several planes collide: the possible, the unknown, the feared and the desired. The process is aimed at allowing a broad range of knowledge to materialise - through ways that are less normative, and less constrained by commercial and technological concerns, and to emerge instead as far-fetched ideas that offer a kind of knowledge, which belongs to no one. The format has evolved over time, from relatively elaborate workshops for technology prototyping, towards the point where they are now focussed on the making of work that is about technology, rather than of technology.

Link to the thesis in Diva