The set up of interactive system design exercise
In the beginning, the participants were introduced to a (broken)board titled “Maldonado’s environment,” with eight concepts (each concept consisted of a voice prompt orienting the participants within the theoretical discussions in the book). The board containing the voice prompts was paired with a matrix that helped participants connect Maldonado’s concepts with interactive (game design) concepts. The task was to work as a group to ultimately make these concepts visible in a system (a card game, board game) that other people can interact with and learn. As a group, we engaged in theory discussions and simultaneously discussions on interactive systems.
If hope is at the center of his theories, what forms of learning and knowledge sharing can do justice to this concept? How should one engage with the history of his ideas? Should this engagement be framed as an engagement with a system of information that is closed, already saturated, or is there more hope when rethinking this information as something to be mined and re-performed? Reclaiming hope is to think about what it is to deal with design, nature, revolution as transversally related concepts, what that means in the context of an information system, and in extension, what that means in the context of sense-making. Rather than only reading his texts, other texts written about him, we have broadened the spectrum for the readers. Now, the readers can also play with his ideas.