International Meeting, FLUP, 26th June 2019

The Challenges of Design: Imagination, Aesthetics and New Technology

University of Porto, Faculty of Arts,  26th June 2019
Department of Philosophy (Tower B, 1st floor)

“Design is a passage to the new. Design is not only a term for describing certain categories of objects or solutions; it is also a process and a medium for envisioning something new. This process takes place in the intersection of material and immaterial properties, sensual and conceptual meaning, actuality and possibility. Design deals with the possible” (M. Folkmann, The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design, Cambridge, MIT, 2013, p. 20).

Today the term “design” denotes different forms of activity in which technology, knowledge, imagination, creativity and communication intersect. In fact, there are many historical illustrations of design that could contribute of discussing those correlate issues. What is the nature of imagination and image at play in design? What does design become when it is applied to information, and not just to objects? What does the design become once it is applied to data? The scope of this conference is to investigate the status of the image in design regarding to earlier perspectives about imagination and knowledge depiction and, in particular, when design meets artificial intelligence and computational media. At the core lies the complex theme of data visualization. What happens in the transition from the bit to the image on a screen?

Talks:

S. Vial: Being and Screen: A Phenomenology of Technology and Design 

A. Malheiro: Design and Information: Toward an Archeology of Conceptual Relations  

E. Terrone: Digital Images and the Ontology of Depiction

C. Pedro: Trees and Circles: Knowledge Through Practice in a Sixteenth-century Board Game

Jos de Mul: Metadesign. Imagination in the Age of Digital Recombination

L. Possati: The Paradox of Data Visualization for the Philosophy of Information

D. Rodighiero: Mapping Networks on Spherical Surface for a Less Reductive Spatiality

J. Higueira: Rounding Trees and Triangulating Heavens: Medieval Designs of Knowledge

Organizers:
Luca M. Possati (Universidade do Porto) - Alberto Romele (Catholic University of Lille) - José Higuera (Universidade do Porto) - Lídia Queiroz (Universidade do Porto) 
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto — Research project From Data to Wisdom. Philosophizing Data Visualizations in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity (13th-17th Century) - FDTW (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029717).

Sponsor:
Fondazione Scienza e Vita (Roma)

IF and project funding:
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia / Universidade do Porto.