Making Meaning. Research Through Tool Design

This talk will introduce work at the intersection of textile materiality and electronic/digital functionality as a starting point to explore how an explicit focus on the present, possible, and potential tools of a practice can allow for a distinct approach towards design processes and knowledge creation. Given examples make a case for Research through Tool Design as an approach that shifts from foregrounding what we make and for whom, to focusing on how we make things and who makes them. The talk discusses inquiry and intervention into a tool space as means to suggest new kinships, manifest preferences or preferred ways of making, and point at alternative ways of knowing.

Irene Posch is a researcher and artist with a background in media and computer science. She is a Professor of Design & Technology at the University of Art and Design Linz. Her work explores the integration of technological development into the fields of art and craft, and vice versa, and social, cultural, technical and aesthetic implications thereof. She previously worked with the Ars Electronica Futurelab and has been an artist in residence at the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media Rotterdam (NL), the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center New York (US), the Tactile and Tactical Design Lab, University of Washington (US), at Creative Technologies at Teachers College, Columbia University New York (US) and Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, Ljubljana (SI). She was the key researcher of the artistic research project ‘Stitching Worlds’ at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, within the Industrial Design department headed by Fiona Raby, and obtained her doctoral degree at the Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology, TU Wien, advised by Geraldine Fitzpatrick. Her research and practice has been presented internationally at conferences and museums, among them the CHI, DIS, TEI, ISWC and IDC conferences, the ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), V&A London (UK), Ars Electronica Linz (AT), Loboratore Arte Alameda Mexico City (MX), Biennale International Design St. Etienne (FR), Works Gallery San Jose (US), Istanbul Design Biennial (TR), Jerusalem Design Biennial (IL), and the MAK Vienna (AT).

Teaching Artistic Strategies is a four-day symposium on research and pedagogy in the context of art and design institutions. It addresses the challenge of transferring academic knowledge to teaching programs, formats, and skills. The symposium is jointly organized by Dorothée King, Selena Savic and Fatma Kargin. IADE x MAKE/SENSE FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel.