Let’s take, as an example, a tree fork.
= strong. Because of its interwoven fibres, it is one of the strongest parts of a tree. Hence it was traditionally used for elements that had to withstand particularly strong stresses, such as boat hulls or ladders.
= suggestive. Because of its idiosyncratic geometry, it was worshiped – after being worked into with an axe and flipped around – as an anthropomorphic “pole god”. Such idols were used in fertility cults and sacrificial practices.
= worthless. Its form is just too irregular and unruly, making it very challenging to standardize. Hence it gets used as fuel or is shredded into fibres and glued together to produce normed stock materials such as MDF or OSB.
= en vogue. Precisely because it is irregular and strong, it is currently experiencing a revival. It can be used for non-standard building components: digitized, catalogued, parametricised and then minimally yet precisely CNC-machined.
= …
This term we will explore the fertile tension between the newest of technologies and the oldest of material and ritual practices. In the test tube of our design laboratory, we will mix technological emergence and current desires with lively histories and narratives and probe and develop the results of this reaction as physical prototypes. A collaboration with the Thuringian Museum for Pre- and Ancient History (the Bauhaus’ direct neighbour in Weimar) will be our starting point. Its spaces and collection will become an initial catalyst for the development of our own speculative design practices.
This means we will use technologies like 3D-scanning, digital modelling and simulation, digital fabrication (CNC-machining & 3D-Printing) to rediscover and revive traditional ways of understanding and using materials as »alive«, many of which have been lost through industrialization. We want to learn from the past and, especially in the face of resource scarcity and climate emergency, develop future proof approaches to use resources in mindful, sustainable but also imaginative ways.
Going further, we also want to speculatively re-invent the museum’s cultic and ritual artefacts and the social and spiritual practices they embody. Students will choose a specific artefact, explore it contextually, materially and technically (a.o. using photogrammetry), re-actualise or translate it speculatively using contemporary (digital) fabrication tools and then re-contextualise it in our postdigital world as a speculative praxis. Confronted with your own experiences and interests, we want to take these object as a provocation to design contemporary and future rituals, artefacts and narratives that explore the desires, hopes and fears of our own age.
The specific format of each individual project will gradually take shape from there on over the course of the term. The role of the Museum is not prescribed: it might become a site for spatial interventions, subversions and rituals, but it can also serve »merely« as a initial spark of inspiration or a space of resonance. It is key to see our design processes as open-ended, driven by context, but also by our own curiosity and personal interests. The studio wants to give you the space and time to develop your individual approach and to develop ways of working that are less interested in proving than in finding out. We strive for precision, but are equally lead by intuition, the will to take risks and a spirit of invention.
In addition to weekly supervisions of your individual project, the project module will include:
*Postdigital: the digital is in the process of dissolving – it is everywhere, like the air we breathe; the digital as such is not very exciting – more exciting is what we do with it; the digital can be fabricated physically and the physical can be digitized, both nearly instantaneously – what is key is that we learn to navigate the in-between fluently and with ease and to use these constant translations playfully and speculatively.
Prehistoric: from the era before written accounts. There are no narrations, only finds – giving us all the more space for speculation.
Ongoingness/Ongoing: a central concept in Donna Haraway’s more recent techno-feminist writing. It can be understood to mean many things:
Questions:
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