Theory
Practice
Art, Design &
Technology
Understand how ideas are articulated and expressed materially — so
that we know where and how to evolve ideas into material and how to
understand material as the embodiment of will and desire of human
agents. We do this to articulate and learn from past mistakes, codify
problems through theoretical frameworks, analyze existing practices
and specify future practices to address the challenges and problems the
world faces today.

Theory
Explication of “Practice”
Principles That Guide “Practice”
Practice
Processes By Which Made
Things Come To Be
The Creation and Circulation
of Culture

Ideas
Materialization
Design Art Engineering
Simply and less rigorously, theory are ideas, practice is a materialization
in form, understandable as an “idea made real”. Let’s focus on Design,
Art and Engineering

Ideas
Mathematics That Support The
Materialization of Ideas
Materialization Optimization and Efficiency
Airplanes, Software and
Faster USB Dongles
Engineering
Very important because mathematics is a useful descriptive language
that makes for efficient and durable materializations

Ideas
Principles and Philosophies based on
Aesthetics
Materialization
Dreams
Art
Art dreams, and dreams are of great practical importance, as well as
ways to imagine new possible worlds and transcend existing boundaries

Ideas
People Principles — Needs, Abilities,
Social Practices
Materialization
Good Chairs and Lamps
Design
Design is the one practice that has a large and descriptive language
through which people and their practices can be expressed and then
materialized through a wide range of

Design
Technology
Art
Should There Be An Inter-Discipline?
Can We Forge Together Design, Technology
And Art Through Some Kind of Scholarly
Alchemy?
Can We Harness The Power Of Each Separate
Discipline Into Something New?

Why Would We Do This?

1. Create New Hybrid Disciplines
Formed From The Leakiness of
Knowledge Networks
New “disciplines” form around hybrid knowledge making communities.
As knowledge circulates, ideas and practices and approaches to
knowledge making flow across disciplinary boundaries. Sometimes this
causes problems, sometimes it leads to new unexpected things.

Why?
Multiple Perspectives And Points-of-
View Lend “Fresh Eyes” On
Intractable Challenges And
Problems
New “disciplines” form around hybrid knowledge making communities

2. “Old” Privileged Knowledge
Loses Economic and Political
Potentials As It Commodifies
Another reason why we would do this — what was once privileged
knowledge inevitably spreads through access, through knowledge being
passed along across time/generations, through economic growth in
previously undeveloped geographies. Engineering, art, design
knowledge, theory and materializations commodify and are no longer
privileged to specific geo-political and economic regions

Why?
Engineering, Art, Design
Knowledge/Theory/
Materializations Commodify,
Weakening Geo-Political and
Economic Power
So, this is another reason to create new hybrid disciplines. To leverage
the possibility of new economic forms, new markets-of-opportunity for
things unknown.

3. Response To Increasing
Autodidactic Sensibilities Of “Digital
Kids” In The Networked Age
How to teach kids who already know how to learn?

Why?
Educational Institutions and
Traditional Bricks-and-Mortar
Scholarship Loses Relevance — It’s
Expensive Job Training At Worst
Need to devise new ways of learning, new knowledge and practice
domains — disciplinary scholarship is dying if it isn’t already dead. What
you need to know in many cases has nothing to do with what you learn,
and what you learn you can learn independent of often expensive
institutions.

1. Knowledge Leaks Through
Expeditious (Digital) Networks
In other words..thanks to the digital networked age

2. Access To Knowledge Is No
Longer A Geographic, Economic or
Demographic Privileged*
* Plenty of exceptions; experience and insight suggest that this is the
general trend.

3. Knowledge “Toolkits” (aka
Online Communities) Are
Everywhere, Wikipedia Is Cliff’s
Notes For Digital Kids
How one obtains knowledge is beyond the bricks-and-mortar
institutions

Good Cocktail Party Chat..But
“Disciplines” Are Long Dead As
Relevant Creators/Circulators of
Knowledge

What Are The Implications?
What Lies Beyond Disciplinary
Scholarship?

“Undisciplinarity”
Undisciplined (But Polite) Trouble
Makers
Iconoclasts and Outsiders
Avoid Reified Knowledge
Emphasize Multiple Distinct Practice
Communities — Design, Art, Engineering,
Anthropology

“Undisciplinarity”
They Learn How To Shuttle Excess
Knowledge Amongst Institutions, Across
Old Disciplinary Boundaries To Create
New Cultural Material