Review of My Book “Transdisciplinary Design”

Giorgio Cipolletta

Transdisziplinäre Design: un remix di possibilità / a remix of possibilities

The review appeared originally at Noemalab.eu

Nowadays the natural sciences should be open to arts, specifically the playful nature that arts have in toying with scientific observations. In this context the transdisciplinary method could promote interesting ways of thinking, and one way is through metaphor. In this scenario, art is rethought as a process where science and technology are integrated in a communication system, understanding and recognizing the complex natural process of evolution of art. On this matter, Transdisziplinäre Design – published by the Passagen Verlag of Vienna in XMedia series – is a great tool for understanding a new way of knowledge. Transdisziplinäre Design is an unusual book, it is published half in German and half in English. In this collection of essays and creating writing we find some essays written by Alan N. Shapiro (visiting Full Professor of Transdisciplinary Design at the Heterotopia Institute Graduate Program at the Folkwang Univerisity of the Arts in Essen, Germany) and by his academic colleagues.

In this book there is a representative overview of the subjects which are covered in the prototype concept of the curriculum for teaching transdiciplinary design. The book is divided into nine exciting chapters, from fiction to creative writing, from philosophy and tv-series to architecture, from embodiment to technology, from Hypermodern to designer and maker. Each topic contains a different issue from a different point of view. We can use this book without a direct order, we can use it in own our terms, depending on our interest. Transdisziplinäre Design floats between hypermodernity and deconstruction, passing through the thought by Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou, Zizek, and many others.

Transdisciplinarity, evoked by all authors in this book, is a great tool for understanding the complexity of the world, and transdisciplinary design is one of many possible way for facing complex problems. In other words, Transdisziplinäre Design is a hybrid between theory and practice. What is the difference between interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity? (Nolan Bazinet). What is the role of fiction in the creative act of the designer? (Alan Shapiro and Florian Arnold). Martine Weise, Caroline Fuchs, Nicole Maggio, Eicke Riggers, Elina Nikoaleva have analyzed how we can find – from Mad Men with the changeling of Donald Drapper, to the numbers of short tv-series Prisoners by Nick Hurran- the re-evoking of the global village by Marshall McLuhan, then passing through the nothingness and the wild being of the tv-series Lost, highlighting philosophical and sociological problems of our time expressed through transmedia and serial narration.

What place do media theory and architecture occupy in transdiciplinary design? (Eicke Riggers, Anne-Clara Sthal and Ramina Kalashnykova). If it is true that architecture, as well as design, is an interface of man and technology, then it seems only logical to look closely at their multifarious and even poetic methods, transferring, manipulating, and transforming into a mutation of digital windows. Why are embodiment, performance, and biographical self-examination vital to the education of the designer? The body movement paradigm in society is explained by a dialogue between a man and machine in an issue by Regan O’Brain, recreating a sort of a perfomance between Matrixial Theory and Co-poiesis. Shapiro with Steve Valk highlight the social choreography offering the reader a new approach in post-normal times and at the same time they reflect on the knowledge of knowledge as a construction in movement. Transdisciplinarity moves between a “in vitro” cognicentrism and a practice of “in vivo” education. A new way of thinking redefines the concept of design that thus becomes socially and culturally responsible. The book also recalls the concept of Biodesign -where the architect mixes both life as a process and design as a project- recuperating the notion of Bioart coined by artist Eduardo Kac, who inserts life into any form of biotexture component, biodesign, biofabrication, biofiction and bioaesthetics. Hybrid design is beginning to contain different paradigms, meanings, ways of knowing, analysis of practices and design processes. Design transforms itself as a tool for inclusive network development, radically transforming our activities, services, businesses, public administrations, and environments.

According to Shapiro, the artist needs to regain the symbolic dimension in his work, moving away from the strictly graceful or decorative function. For example, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain are new possibilities. Algorithms can also be ethical, not just computer operations. Software code must be conceived first and foremost as technology and not as support. In other words Blockchain technology provides a public challenge. Just like the IoT represents the relationship between human subjects and non-human objects. At this point you wonder what the AI is ​​from the perspective of design. How do queer, transgender, and feminist theories affect design and technology? Like the codes, can software be confused with poetry and narrative? (Mike Rösgen, Anja Weisinger, Michael Klosinski, Anne Karrenbrock).

These are other questions that arise from reading Transdisziplinäre Design. In fact, in this transversal architecture of the book, Anja Weisinger gets closer to engaging technologies of desire with an interesting design approach towards queer transdisciplinary. According to the author, the machine constantly moulds our thinking and behavior. Finally, Shapiro goes through the concept of modernism and postmodernism, recalling Baudrillard’s hypereference and Virilio’s speed, to reach a new approach to hypermodernism, where post-hysteria indicates a new space, a fourth not Euclidean dimension. Transdisziplinäre Design celebrates a wild creativity, a look into the future through science fiction and new forms of writing, a recurring cybernetic epistemology against the cybernetic control models that dominate our social and individual lives.

Transdisziplinäre Design follows new orientations, different existences and different times, focussing the attention on the transdisciplinary approach as a new methodology that escapes knowledge sharing and self-referencing. Transdisciplinarity could be thought in terms of beyond the bounds of knowledge, and also resets the terms of interdisciplinarity (in terms of between, among) for a new, transitional, hybrid, and variable dimension. Transdisciplinarity is a new territory where mono-disciplines tend to remix for a knowledge of knowledge: disciplines in transition. The design could be a tool to rebuild a profound reflection on the complexity of society which goes further. Technologies are embodied in our culture and transform even our body-mind. This short-circuit could only be accepted by changing our point of view. Transdisziplinäre Design offers us many creative and thoughtful possibilities.