Author: Anna Ozhigova

LECTURE #01: Andrey Sudarikov – playdisplay

Andrey Sudarikov is a designer from Russia, founder and creative director of PlayDisplay company based in Moscow. In this lecture, he talked about four projects, creation processes, and the problems they encountered at the design stage.

Also, the message went through the entire presentation that in any project it is important how the team interacts with each other and with the customer. How important it is to take into account the human factor, the customer himself and his understanding of the project and especially for international projects – cultural characteristics.

LECTURE #3: Astrid Kury „Why Collaborate?”

Astrid Cury is the director and culturologist at the „Akademie Graz“. She told how important cooperation is and why creative people, especially designers, artists, etc. should cooperate as much as possible.

Astrid asks this question: „In which world do you want to live in? In an egoistic, competitive, isolated one or in one where we share our ideas to get to the best outcome?“

She says collaboration has many benefits:

• unique ideas
• perfect equation of form and content
• increases social relevance and impact
• includes work on democracy
• to promote social cohesion and enable equal access

But in the beginning, the collaborative process is always very complicated. People should find a way of interaction that is comfortable for them and develop a clear structure so that it is easier for everyone to work.

LECTURE #4: Florian Doppel-Prix “is it art or can we toss it?”

During this lecture, I realized that, like in the previous lecture from Astrid Kury, you cannot work in isolation from other people. And it can be completely different people, professions and areas of activity. Everything can intersect even within the framework of one project. Especially if we are talking about creative specialties.

Almost all the projects that he showed are interactive and work to immerse the visitor of the exhibition in a certain atmosphere.

LECTURE #5: Burcin Cem Arabacioglu “sustainability from interior design perspective”

In this lecture, Professor at the University of Istanbul, where this city is also a city of design in Turkey, spoke about environmental friendliness, sustainability and conscious design in terms of architecture and interior design. This topic is very close and interesting to me, since I did this at my bachelor’s degree. But, to my great chagrin, it was extremely difficult to follow the lecture due to the low quality of the sound, which did not allow me to concentrate.

LECTURE #6: Sylwia ulicka “questioning material culture”

Despite the fact that Sylvia had amazing lecture material on the ideas of sustainability and eco-efficiency, it was a disappointment to see her reading all the articles from the sheet.

In this lecture, Sylvia casts doubt on the material culture, it refers to the fact that we as designers must strive to achieve sustainability in everything, and for this it is necessary to identify as many ways tools and techniques, as well as to understand what and are better.

“Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet there own needs.”

In my opinion, this proposal very well summarizes the goal to which we must strive in society.

LECTURE #7: Ursula tischer “keynote at relating systems thinking and design symposium”

Despite the fact that this symposium and presentation by Ursula Tisher was recorded back in 2015, this topic is still very relevant. At this presentation, Tisher talked about the problems of social and environmental policy.

She sees that one of the variants to solve this problem is attracting and educating as many people as possible, giving them the opportunity to see or even participate in the process of creating the product. Also, she calls “entertainment” as an important factor that will attract people to this. As an example, she shows a trash can, which produces a variety of sounds, when a person throws something inside.

“We trashing the planet, we crashing the planet and not even have fun!”

LECTURE #9: Wolfgang Schlag “radio work”

Wolfgang Hose is a journalist who shared his experience and spoke in his lecture about the advent of radio and its formation as a source of mass information. What was the radio at the dawn of its formation and what it is now.

I agree with his final conclusion – the radio will not leave. Rather, it is just beginning to regain popularity. Over the past couple of years, the number of people who began to listen to more radio in my environment has increased significantly. I myself began quite often to listen to various radio podcasts on topics of interest to me.

Wolfgang Hose is a journalist who shared his experience and spoke in his lecture about the advent of radio and its formation as a source of mass information. What was the radio at the dawn of its formation and what it is now.

It was very interesting to know how the first broadcast was carried out. It was in Pittsburgh. And in the beginning, there were about 40,000 listeners, but over time, over the course of two years, that number grew to about 500,000, which showed great success and potential.

Modern radio was formed in 1967 and had two main channels – pop radio and cultural channel. 1967 was a turning point in the history of not only the radio, but also the music industry. A large-scale Woodstock festival took place, the Beatles were at the peak of popularity, jazz and other musical genres were gaining popularity. Of course, as the largest source of information, the radio did not stand aside.

Of course, later, the industry developed, topics no longer fit into the framework of this broadcaster. Radio channels began to be divided by genres and topics. And at the end, Wolfgang talks about what modern technology has achieved. Today, every person has the opportunity to record their own podcast without leaving home. All you need is a good microphone and laptop.

I agree with his final conclusion – the radio will not leave. Rather, it is just beginning to regain popularity. Over the past couple of years, the number of people who began to listen to more radio in my environment has increased significantly. I myself began quite often to listen to various radio podcasts on topics of interest to me.

Despite the fact that this symposium and presentation by Ursula Tisher was recorded back in 2015, this topic is still very relevant. At this presentation, Tisher talked about the problems of social and environmental policy.

I was stunned when she said that only 1% of what is produced and produced every day will still work fully and will retain its worthy appearance after 6 months! It’s really terrible, terrible to realize with what a waste of humanity belongs to the nature of the resource. And we are all responsible for this! Every designer today must think several times before to create something. We must ask ourselves: “What do I want to create? Is it necessary? Is that really a useful thing? How to make this thing more environmentally friendly, recyclable and long-lived?”

She sees that one of the variants to solve this problem is attracting and educating as many people as possible, giving them the opportunity to see or even participate in the process of creating the product. Also, she calls “entertainment” as an important factor that will attract people to this. As an example, she shows a trash can, which produces a variety of sounds, when a person throws something inside.

“We trashing the planet, we crashing the planet and not even have fun!”

Despite the fact that Sylvia had amazing lecture material on the ideas of sustainability and eco-efficiency, it was a disappointment to see her reading all the articles from the sheet.

In this lecture, Sylvia casts doubt on the material culture, it refers to the fact that we as designers must strive to achieve sustainability in everything, and for this it is necessary to identify as many ways tools and techniques, as well as to understand what and are better.

Despite the huge amount of talk about this on the part of politicians, really significant things have not been done, there is never a residual effort to do this.

As a rule, such projects require more resources and costs, and economic growth is always a priority. And sustainability must take into account many factors: social, environmental, economic.

Sylvia also presented the projects of her students who work in this field and are engaged in this approach. Showing these examples, Sylvia encourages designers, especially the new generation, to be bolder, not afraid to protest, to be sincere, not afraid to ask questions to themselves and society, not afraid to answer them and work, taking off their pink glasses.

“Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet there own needs.”

In my opinion, this proposal very well summarizes the goal to which we must strive in society.

In this lecture, Professor at the University of Istanbul, where this city is also a city of design in Turkey, spoke about environmental friendliness, sustainability and conscious design in terms of architecture and interior design. This topic is very close and interesting to me, since I did this at my bachelor’s degree. But, to my great chagrin, it was extremely difficult to follow the lecture due to the low quality of the sound, which did not allow me to concentrate.

The lecture begins with a story about Istanbul and the problems that it encountered, and which can and should be solved. Project concepts today often cannot be sustainable and environmentally friendly due to the pursuit by construction companies of other goals that do not intersect with the interests of the environment and, in some cases, even a resident of the city! I observe the same trend in my own country, although in recent years in large cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow the situation with the construction of new architecture has been slowly improving.

I believe that this situation should be improved by educating of people, explaining and showing also what is good and what is bad. After all, people – this is the main consumer. A Mr. Burcin said that the concept of sustainability is not initialized and understandable for most people.

Sustainable city should be a place with a minimum energy requirement which can not be renewed. TTo achieve sustainability in cities, there are Briam criteria for interior designers that include health and satisfaction with energy water and materials that classify cities and help improve the situation.

In the end, to improve something globally, you need to start with a small step – from yourself. And starting with ourselves, we will be able to implement large-scale changes, building a sustainable and environmental friendly environment in bricks, preserving our planet and life at all.

During this lecture, I realized that, like in the previous lecture from Astrid Kury, you cannot work in isolation from other people. And it can be completely different people, professions and areas of activity. Everything can intersect even within the framework of one project. Especially if we are talking about creative specialties.

During the lecture, he also spoke about the projects on which he worked during his career in the last 20 years. They were all more associated with the art of music, sounds and various media. He presented a great job Cat-X – the company, which specializes mainly in exhibition design and multimedia.

Almost all the projects that he showed are interactive and work to immerse the visitor of the exhibition in a certain atmosphere.

After watching this lecture, the art of creating an exhibition became more understandable for me. It’s not as simple as it seems, there is always something can go wrong, you can always be unpredictable problems that need to be solved.

He also mentioned at the end that interesting and funny things are not what runs the company and keeps it moving. Here are some important stuff that can help in the creative process:

• It’s about content, not technology
• Prototyping, but not rocket science
• Budgets are critical
• Computers can do some of your work, but it don’t make it easy
• 40/40/20% rule

The rule of 100% consists of

• 40% of specific and technical knowledge
• 40% of common sense, basic knowledge
• 20% is a luck but you shouldn’t believe it and continue to work and improve yourself