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

Practice

Explication of “Practice”

Processes By Which Made Things Come To Be

Principles That Guide “Practice”

The Creation and Circulation of Culture

Ideas

Materialization

EngineeringArtDesign

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

Materialization

Mathematics That Support The Materialization of Ideas

Airplanes, Software and Faster USB Dongles

Optimization and Efficiency

Engineering

Very important because mathematics is a useful descriptive language that makes for efficient and durable materializations

Principles and Philosophies based on Aesthetics

Art

Dreams

Ideas

Materialization

Art dreams, and dreams are of great practical importance, as well as ways to imagine new possible worlds and transcend existing boundaries

People Principles — Needs, Abilities, Social Practices

Design

Good Chairs and Lamps

Ideas

Materialization

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

DesignTechnology

ArtShould 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.

Multiple Perspectives And Points-of-View Lend “Fresh Eyes” On Intractable Challenges And

Problems

Why?

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

Engineering, Art, Design Knowledge/Theory/

Materializations Commodify, Weakening Geo-Political and

Economic Power

Why?

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?

Educational Institutions and Traditional Bricks-and-Mortar

Scholarship Loses Relevance — It’s Expensive Job Training At Worst

Why?

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”

Avoid Reified Knowledge

Undisciplined (But Polite) Trouble Makers

Iconoclasts and Outsiders

Emphasize Multiple Distinct Practice Communities — Design, Art, Engineering,

Anthropology

They Learn How To Shuttle Excess Knowledge Amongst Institutions, Across Old Disciplinary Boundaries To Create

New Cultural Material

“Undisciplinarity”