Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics

Anne Sophie Gauvin
Lucia Giuliano
Stefano Mirti
Accademia di Belle Arti
ABADIR
Design,
schools
& lots of
mythopoetics

Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Mythopoeic or mythopeic
1. Of or relating to the making of myths.
2. Serving to create or engender myths;
productive in mythmaking
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mythopoeia

Index
1. The community is the message.
Living in the social-media world
2. Learning through narratives.
Formfollowsfiction
3. Some of our stories.
DesignRoyale,Whoami,CeramicFuturesandDesign101
4.Questions and doubts.
PS.

The community is the messageDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
The community
is the message.
1.

A few days ago a friend asked me: “But why should I learn to use
social media?” This is a question that doesn’t have an answer.
It’s as if someone were to ask me: “Why should I learn to play
the saxophone?” The question is put in a peculiar way, but it is
possible to come up with a series of sensitivities and insights that
we can gain and understand thanks to intense involvement with
new social media.
Here are 12 points with which to start a conversation:

New media?
New media don’t exist (and conversely neither do
old media).
Generosity
If you’re not generous, nothing (significant) will
ever come of using social media.
Digital flâneurs
If you find that detail is able to fascinate other
people, a breath-taking film begins.
1.
2.
3.

Where does the money come from?
It doesn’t. Or if it does, it comes through
absolutely unpredictable mechanisms.
Deductive?
No. Inductive. The Web is made up of millions
of extraordinary unsystematised (and
unsystematisable) fragments.
Humour
Humour is a fundamental ingredient. This was
already true for an exclusively analogue world, but
it has become indispensable in a digital planet.
4.
5.
6.

Visual imagination
The landscape does not exist. What does exist are
spectacles of interpretation that we put on when
we look around us.
The 1% Rule
In the worlds of the Web there is this very simple
formula: 90-9-1. In a given digital community, out
of 100 participants there will be 90 who use the
medium in a passive way, 9 who are sporadically
active and 1 who generates almost all the content.
Experts
They don’t exist. At best, there are people who try
and try, making mistakes over and over again.
7.
8.
9.

Hierarchies
Hierarchies and dynamics of power exist, but they
are simply implicit, unspoken.
Watch out!
A digital layer has appeared in our lives. But this
does not mean that the early analogue layers have
disappeared.
The community is the message
McLuhan taught us that “the medium is the
message”. Perhaps what we are seeing here
is another step in a different direction: the
community is the message.
10.
11.
12.
Here the link to the original article: Stefano Mirti, “The community is the message”, Abitare 532, May 2013:
http://www.abitare.it/en/internet-2/the-community-is-the-message

Learning through narrativesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Learning
through
narratives.
Form follows fiction
2.

To use design as if it were a tale, a story, a litmus paper with – as ingredients – our fears, our
vanity, our manifest desires and those unmentionable, without forgetting irony and the taste of
paradox.
In the first place design is desire. Necessities can be faced if we understand them first of all as
desires. Designing a better world was a dream of the last century: why should we commit the
same mistakes again?
Perhaps it would already be sufficient a design able to describe the world, able to make visible
the most ambiguous and difficult physical and conceptual places: those that nobody wants to
think about.
At most, if we want to be really ambitious, a design that tries to open up some daylights towards
other possible worlds.
Form follows fiction
Here the link to the original article: Walter Aprile, Stefano Mirti, “12 notes and ideas on design (and
on teaching it in a cynical and cheating world)”. In: Hans Hoger, design research, Editrice Abitare
Segesta, Milano, 2008): http://designismanipulation.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/12-notes-and-
ideas-on-design-and-on-teaching-it-in-a-cynical-and-cheating-world/

If we agree that form shouldn’t follow function, we decide to enter into a new realm.
A world where design is in first instance a narrative exercise used to tell stories and to work on
the symbolic value of space, objects, buildings, graphics.
The designer as a story-teller.
A writer tells his stories writing a novel. A musician uses the music to reach the same purpose.
A movie-maker uses film... ...and a designer does exactly the same exercise using his specific
tools.
Before elaborating on this, we did the exercise to see which are the most interesting design
schools (from our specific point of view). Schools where the school itself is a great narrative
exercise. Places where the student enters and falls directly into a great and fascinating story.
Some of them belong to the past, some of them are active now.
In all cases, they are places where the knowledge dissemination happens within a very powerful
narrative scheme.
Where the school is a mythmaking institution

Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Learning through narratives
Architectural Association
from 1847
This independent school of architecture, one of the most prestigious
and famous in the world was “in/famously founded by a pack of
troublesome students”.
www.aaschool.ac.uk
www.bauhaus.de
Bauhaus
1919 –1933
This school brought together the most outstanding masters and
students seeking to reverse the split between art and production by
returning to the crafts as the foundation of all artistic activity.

THE PRINCIPLES
Resilience
over strength
Pull
over push
Risk
over safety
Systems
over objects
Compasses
over maps
Practice
over theory
Disobedience
over compliance
Emergence
over authority
Learning
over education
Black Mountain College
1933 –1957
Operating in an isolated rural location, this informal and collaborative
school, with an interdisciplinary approach, encouraged experimental
intelligence and plurality.
www.blackmountaincollegeproject.org
MIT Media Lab
from 1985
“At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined. Interdisciplinary
researchers design technologies for people to create a better future.”
www.media.mit.edu

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea
2001 –2005
Ivrea explored business in addition to design and technology for
developing innovative products and services, giving people new
ways to interact through communication, network and information
technology.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_Design_Institute_Ivrea
Institute without Bounderies
from 2003
A Toronto-based studio that works towards collaborative design action
and seeks to achieve social, ecological and economic innovation
where everyone seek to live, learn, work, and play together as a global
community.
www.worldhouse.ca

www.khanacademy.org
Khan Academy
from 2006
“Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. Whether
you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning
to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a
leg up in earthly biology.”
P2PU
from 2009
An online open learning community allowing users to organize and
participate in courses and study groups to learn about specific topics.
A DIY wiki-type mentality where anyone can create a course as well as
take one.
www.p2pu.org

www.tradeschool.coop
Trade School
from 2010
A self-organized learning space where students barter with teachers
for instruction. Anyone can teach or take a class.
Code Academy
from 2012
Committed to building the best learning experience inside and out,
the Code Academy’s vision is that every student should have the
opportunity to learn how to code, allowing much importance to
computer science and computer programming as part of the core
curriculum in education.
www.codecademy.com

Some of our storiesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Some of our stories.
Design Royale, Whoami,
Ceramic Futures, Design 101
3.

Some of our storiesDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Our small (and heterogeneous) team has been working on a new narrative-based “design”
educational model adapted to the age of digital information.
We beleive communities to be the best places to learn, understand who we are and what kind
of attitudes we have (or miss) within a group, find others who share the same visions and
ideas and with whom to collaborate with in the future.
Communities in which to mix on-line and off-line activities. Places for participants to get to
know each other, share references, play together and influence others.
Communities in which to test one’s social influence. Places for learning to communicate and
transfer knowledge in the most efficient way.
Communities as sources of interest and reference to others. Places in which participants
become coauthors of an important collection of content and material.
Design Royale, Whoami, Ceramic Futures, Design 101

Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics Some of our stories
Design Royale
www.design-royale.com
@d_royale on Twitter
design-royale on Facebook
videoleaks on Vimeo
An experimental project for
the 2011 Milan Design week
made by people from all over
the world and built through
human relationships. All of
this for one night at the secret
garden, a magical hidden
space where everyone was
invited.

https://www.facebook.com/
groups/197692343597186
Some of our stories
Design Royale

Whoami:
the design game
www.whoami.it
@WHOAMIgame on Twitter
whoamigame on Facebook
#whoamigame on Instagram
An on-line / off-line design
game where players and
gamemasters complete
hands-on challenges to share
within facebook-based rooms.
Players can meet in the
physical world during 3-day
workshops taking place in
Milan or at Abadir, in Catania.
Active since January 2013.

Whoami:
the design game
www.whoami.it/community
A community of players and
gamemasters.

www.whoami.it/community
Some of our stories
Whoami:
the design game
A player’s profile accessible
from the community

Whoami:
the design game
www.facebook.com/groups/
WHOAMItyperoom
Type room led by Ko Sliggers.

Ceramic futures: from
poetry to Science
Fiction
www.ceramicfutures.com
@CeramicFutures on Twitter
CeramicFutures on Facebook
#CeramicFutures on Instagram
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
An on-line / off-line design
challenge between students
from the Glasgow School of
Art, IED Roma, Politecnico di
Milano and Abadir Academy.
The project is promoted by
Cofindustria Ceramica and
runs between June and August
2013

poetry to Science
Fiction
ALESSANDRO CERTANI
IED Roma
CAROL BELL
Glasgow School of Art
ALBERTO IACOVONI
IED Roma
CLEMENTINA GENTILE
Accademia Abadir
ALAN VARGAS
Politecnico di Milano
ANNE LARSEN
IED Roma
ALEC HARRISON
ENRICA MASI
Politecnico di Milano
LUCIA GIULIANO
Accademia Abadir
MARK LEROY
www.ceramicfutures.com/
community
A community of students and
tutors from 4 different schools.

350 39 16 21100 7
da aggiustare
Some of our stories
poetry to Science
Fiction
www.ceramicfutures.com/
community
A student’s profile accessible
from the community

poetry to Science
Fiction
MY FIRST PROTOTYPE
TESTING FORMS
LUCA ROSSI
ENRICA MASSI
HOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACTHOME ABOUT COMMUNITY DIARY CONTACT
I'm quite happy about my first tests... :)
www.ceramicfutures.com/diary
The diary is where the works are
shared, commented, voted.

Design 101
(or design basics)
www.iversity.org/courses/
design-101
Our course proposal for a
MOOC (massive open on-
line course) won the Iversity
“MOOC production fellowship”
competition. Financed by the
German government, it will
start in fall 2013.

Questions and doubtsDesign, schools & lots of mythopoetics
Questions and doubts
P.S.
4.

Confucius taught us a very simple truth: “If I hear, I forget. If I see, I remember. If I make,
I undertstand”. This was true 2500 years ago as well as today. But today we have new
and social media. Today we have a new generation of people who are born in a social
media world (with various cognitive consequences).
Does this imply some changes in the above mentioned truth?
What kind of changes? Positive, negative, both?
Think of Marshall McLuhan. “The medium is the message” he said.
But then, what happens when the community becomes the message?
P.S. #1

We live in a social-media based world. This has
a fair number of eery implications. Implications,
questions and doubts that no one is able to answer
(for the time being). Foremost, the social media
world, is it Orwellian? No. George Orwell was wrong.
We don’t live in the 1984 dystopia. Aldous Huxley
was the right one. We actually live in the Brave New
World.
Orwell feared that truth would be concealed from us.
Huxley feared that truth would be drowned in a sea
of irrelevance.
In “1984” people are controlled by inflicting pain.
In “Brave New World”, people are controlled by
inflicting pleasure.
In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin
us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
P.S. #2
Read the original visual essay by Stuart McMillen at: http://www.highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell

Stefano Mirti
@stefi_idlab (on Twitter and Instagram)
www.facebook.com/stefano.mirti.3
Lucia Giuliano
@luciagiuliano (on Twitter)
@lucigiu (on Instagram)
Anne-Sophie Gauvin
@asgauvin (on Twitter and Instagram)

Design, schools & lots of mythopoetics

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