Submission deadline June 1, 2012.

This call for submissions is for the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2012, taking place in Roskilde, Denmark, August 12-16, 2012. Workshop date is August 13. Participants interested to contribute to the workshop should no later than June 1 announce their intent to the organizers, makingfutures@sand14.com, by sending a short description of your case (2-4 pages). The workshop is organized by Medea’s Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M Nilsson & Richard Topgaard, and Laura Watts from Copenhagen IT University. Early registration fee for just the workshop is 300 DKK 600 DKK and for the whole conference 3000 DKK (half the price for students).

PDF version of this call.

THEME AND CHALLENGE
Participatory design has always been about alternative futures: in the practice of (often marginalized) groups in society it has, through design practice, tried to support democratic changes. This started as actions research oriented collaboration with local trade unions at the workplace challenging the use of technology and the management prerogative to define what may count as innovation (Bjerknes et al. 1987).

Today participatory design is more and more taking place beyond the workplace: in public spaces, as engagement with NGOs, and other often marginalized groups. This is in line with its democratic tradition, but it also opens up new ways that we might re-conceptualise innovation as a form of invention (Barry 1999), and challenge the particular, often hegemonic, approaches to future-making in the corporate workplace.

Contemporary managerial ideology embraces ‘the crowd’ as a source of innovation. For example in the form of ‘user driven innovation’, ‘crowd-sourcing’, and focus group testing, with a strong rhetoric of accessible and participative design as a key to ‘democratizing innovation’. All this is often, however, within the perspective of the successful corporation and an unaltered market logic, which privileges particular crowds and particular places as centres of innovation (Suchman 2002): frequently the urban crowd or the perceived exotic.

In the workshop we challenge this logic of innovation by exploring the potential of participatory design cases and fieldwork perspectives that demonstrate a repertoire of differently situated practices of ‘future-making’– futures made locally, in heterogeneous communities, and with marginalised publics (Björgvinsson et al. 2010).

The organizers of the workshop invite participants to share their stories of alternative future making. The first part of the workshop will create a relational map of such cases, and in the second we will explore common themes, relations, and resistances, as well as practical and theoretical challenges.

FORMAT OF THE WORKSHOP
Early participatory design was strongly influenced by the Future Workshop as developed by Robert Junk, a way to collaboratively envision and plan for locally grounded particular futures (often in opposition to a hegemonic view and practice) (Junk and Müllert 1981, Greenbaum and Kyng 1991). This workshop draws on that tradition, but with a shift of scope and form to also draw on current re-conceptualisations of innovation in anthropologies of design (Calvilo, Jiménez et al. 2010; Suchman 2011).

Whereas the Future Workshop provides a local ‘democratic’ alternative to centralized bureaucratic planning, this workshop gathers an assembly of local (often marginalized) participatory initiatives of future-making practices, and hopes to challenge generalized strategies for technology and market-driven innovation in multiple, diverse and creative ways.

The workshop uses a different format, focused on map-making and storytelling as a process for forming a landscape of multiple futures. During the workshop participants will create and map a landscape of futures – not a single utopian future but an ‘archipelago of futures’ constituted by all the participant’s cases. What they will construct is not an ideal, no-place, nowhere Utopia of Thomas More, but an assemblage of local, now, here futures. Once mapped they will then explore their encounters with these manifold cases and futures-in-the-making.

The expected outcome of the workshop will be a participatory crafted “guidebook” to these islands of the future and their connections (and distances) as sites of diverse forms of innovation.

MAPPING – ‘THE ARCHIPELAGO OF FUTURES’
Participants will bring cases, initiatives and fieldwork experiences of ‘futures being made’ to the workshop. This could be participatory cases of new collaborative public interventions, or sustainability projects, local social innovations, open and free production, maker spaces, do-it-yourself activities, etc.

These cases are initially seen as unique places or ‘islands’ (or another topological forms), and participants are asked to prepare invitations, a tour, of their respective case. These invitations should address the practices of future-making, and the hopes and challenges to the future of their island case. We suggest bringing pictures, samples and stories. (Instructions on format will be sent out on acceptance of workshop participation).

In the morning session of the workshop participants will give a guided tour of their island case, and collaboratively construct, and map as they go along, the archipelago of futures. During the session we will shape an emerging landscape of futures, mapping an archipelago of futures, searching for connections, collaborations and controversies.

STORYTELLING – ‘TRAVEL GUIDE TO THE FUTURES’
During the afternoon session participants will collaboratively engage in documenting the archipelago of futures by producing a ‘Travel Guide to The Futures’. This part of the workshop will explore the proximities of some futures, and distances of others; the shared challenges both within the cases themselves and of the experiences of the design practice. It will also consider the connections and resistances between these multiple forms of innovation practice. Through these discussions and sharing of stories, images, and texts from the cases, participants will generate a travel guide.

Drawing on avant garde mapping approaches such as psychogeography, and other situational interventions into mapping, the ‘Travel Guide to The Futures’ will include guides to participant’s cases (from the morning) and a series of cross-cutting themes that express the diversities and similarities of the cases (from the afternoon).

The travel guide will be produced as a bound book in a participatory low-tech DIY zine format, in a limited edition print run. There will also be an open and free version of the travel guide, free to download and open to redesign, and addition of new islands to the archipelago of the futures.

PARTICIPATION
Participants interested to contribute to the workshop should no later than June 1 announce their intent to the organizers, makingfutures@sand14.com, by sending a short description of your case (2-4 pages). The description should, as mentioned above, take the form of an invitation to “visit” your “island”/case including an outline of the specific (design and innovation) future-making practices in the case as well as hopes and challenges of those involved.

Although, as organizers we would like to assemble an archipelago of hundreds of futures, the active workshop format is a limit. So for making this zine of a ‘Travel Guide to the Futures’ at the workshop a maximum of 15 cases can be accepted (though there can be more than one participant per case). If forced to limit participation in the workshop we will, besides quality of description, especially look for diverse and promising cases and initiatives that address the theme and challenge of the workshop and involve groups in the margin of (or marginalized) by contemporary mainstream innovation theory and practice. Accepted contributions will be announced no later than June 6 (to allow for early bird registration).

We are looking forward to collaborating with you in this challenge to innovation design practice by investigating, mapping and communicating promising local, diverse, and multiple alternative futures.

REFERENCES
Barry, A. ‘Invention and Inertia’, Cambridge Anthropology 21.3. 1999. 62-70.

Bjerknes, G., Ehn, P. and Kyng, M. (Eds.) Computers and Democracy – A Scandinavian Challenge. Aldershot: Avebry. 1987.

Björgvinsson, E., Ehn, P. and Hillgren, P-A. Participatory design and “democratizing innovation. In PDC’10: Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, 41–50. New York: ACM Press. 2010

Calvilo, N., Jiménez, C.A. et al. Prototyping. Prototyping cultures: social experimentation, do-it-yourself science and beta-knowledge, Madrid, Spain, ARC Anthropological Research on the Contemporary. Available at http://anthropos-lab.net/studio/wp-content/uploads/ARCEpisode3-Prototyping.pdf. 2010.

Greenbaum, J. and Kyng, M. (eds) Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, USA. 1991.
Junk, R., and N. R. Müllert. Zukunjfrtwerkstätten—Wege zur Wiederbelebung der Demokratie. 1981.

Suchman, L. ‘Practice-Based Design of Information Systems: Notes from the Hyperdeveloped World’, The Information Society 18, 2002, 139-144.

Suchman, L. Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40: 1-18. 2011.

Image credit: Flickr user Uncleweed CC:BY-SA

Related posts
- Book project Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design and Democracy

Jeanette Ginslov is Medea’s Artist in Residence this spring. Her roots are as performer, choreographer and artistic director in South Africa, but for the last five years she has focused more on interdisciplinary platforms investigating the crossover between the media/dance/cinema/video and the internet. Her work centers around affect, haptic and digital materiality on several platforms: stage, screens, online and new media applications. Ginslov is currently working with Prof Susan Kozel at Medea on the project AffeXity that draws together screendance, visual imagery and mobile networked devices.

On May 14, Jeannette Ginslov gives a Medea Talk about the developmental stages of the AffeXity project, the interdependence of the collaborators, the relational and dynamic formation of technical and human intervention, the encounters of the carnal and the digital, the dialogic and temporal scaffolding of encounters of techne and the hands that attempt to capture affect.

Medea Talk with Jeanette Ginslov
When: Monday, May 14, 16:00-18:00
Where: at the MEDEA studio, Östra Varvsgatan 11, Malmö
Whom: The Medea Talk is for free and open to everyone. It is followed by Q&A and conversation.
More info about Affexity: affexity.org
Sign up: Limited availability, sign up here

More about AffeXity
AffeXity is a two year long research project. The first phase of research was conducted during Ginslov’s residency at the Laboratorium, Dansehallerne Copenhagen in November 2011. In the project’s final phase, they wish to see the project becoming a “social choreography”. Anyone will be invited to shoot and upload short screendance videos, using their “body in city” as a location of affect, archive their material onto a social media dance and technology platform and finally use Argon to facilitate a “performance” in their own city. These should reflect our premier of AffeXity in Malmö, November 2012.

More about Jeannette Ginslov
Her roots are in Performance Art, protest theatre and contemporary dance theatre within the context of an Apartheid South Africa as a performer, choreographer and artistic director. The classical and contemporary dance training in South Africa, New York and France afforded her the tools to practice and research sites of resistance through the body and movement. In 1998 she studied a Master of Arts in Choreography based on the Body and the Dance Factory as sites of Resistance, exploring postmodernist feminist dance practices and choreographic strategies.

She left South Africa in 2008, in order to study for an MSc in Media Arts and Imaging Screendance, at Dundee University Scotland. In 2009 she started exploring other sites and modes of production with the use of online platforms and became associate producer dance-tech.net. She is a moderator for content on dance-tech.net that uses the most advanced social software platforms and internet rich multimedia applications. She is also the creator of MoveStream that provides an interdisciplinary platform that investigating the crossover between the boundaries usually found in media/dance/cinema/video and the internet. It provides a fresh and adaptive evolving domain for the public to engage with culture, choreography and performance. As a networked phenomenon, it encourages a much needed flow and exchange in Screendance discourse.

Related articles:
- Mobile social choreographies: Choreographic insight as a basis for artistic research into mobile technologies – article published in Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
- Medea’s residency program
- The AffeXity project

The list of speakers are impressive and the topics range from Social Media and Transforming Audiences, to cases about Broadcasting in Crises, The Utöya massacre and the challenges that the BBC faces at the Olympics in London this summer. Take a look at the conference programme

The Conference is free of charge.

Date: May 17-19
Venue: Orkanen, Malmö University
Conference fee: Free of charge
Sign up: All you need to do is sign up here
Web: http://www.circom-regional.eu/
Twitter: @CircomConf

The conference is hosted by SVT and arranged together with following partners: Medea, Malmö University, Media Evolution, Malmö stad and Region Skåne.

Arabic Game Jam, Bambuser and Transmedia
Elisabet M Nilsson, Måns Adler and Asta Wellejus – all associated with Medea – will speak at the conference:

Arabic Game Jam (Friday May 18, at 15.10-15.50)
Yasemin Arhan Modéer, Media Evolution, Elisabet M Nilsson, Malmö University and Victor Ollén, Malmö city, Sweden.

Arabic Game Jam is a new method to visualize and acknowledge unutilized competence among the citizens of Malmö while developing and strengthening the already established industries with new skills and knowledge. It is also an example of the triple helix model, in which the city of Malmö, Media Evolution and Malmö University collaborated to create sustainable development.

During the last weekend in January this year, about 40 people participated in a Arabic Game Jam at Malmö University. The participants were professional game developers mixed with game enthusiasts, and people with knowledge of Arab culture that has never before created games. Together, they developed six innovative game concepts especially for the Arabic speaking markets. The event received a lot of media attention.

The background was an initiative from the City of Malmö, whom through interaction with external parties, aimed for creating new development processes in the different city neighborhoods. Representatives from the media cluster Media Evolution, and the research environment Medea at Malmö University was engaged from the start to see what needs and capabilities was found in the neighborhood Rosengård. A process based on trust and confidence in each other’s different skills took shape and resulted in a number of focus groups and workshops with Rosengårds citizens. The result was a long-term project on development of games as social innovation, which culminated in the gaming event Arabic Game Jam.

Read more about Arabic Game Jam and about the winners.

Watching the watchers (Friday May 18, at 13.00-13.50)
Måns Adler, Bambuser

Five years ago, Bambuser set out on a journey trying to democratize the technology of live video broadcasting. By stating the question: what would happen if everybody had a broadcasting bus in their pocket? Today, Bambuser has played a central role in the distribution of major political events like the Arabic spring and right now in Syria, where major media outlets like CNN, BBC, SkyNews and Al-Jazeera are re-broadcasting Bambuser users’ videos. But, the long term goal is even larger; when everybody affords to broadcast, people will also change what they will view. This will fundamentally change the overall business model of broadcasting. If it becomes a marginal cost to broadcast live video you will not be forced to get as many viewers as possible for your broadcasts. And a father will hopefully always watch his own daughter playing a game of soccer rather than premier league if they would compete.

Key tendencies in world broadcast and transmedia (Friday May 18, at 16.10-17.00)
Asta Wellejus, transmedia developer and producer

What are broadcasters doing in Europe? What is the talk of the town in Canada and Australia? What has changed in USA regarding alternate reality games in the last year, and why have some broadcasters fixated on webpages and others on games and others again on visualization of data generated by the users? Thes are a few of the topics being touched on in a talk about what is transmedia becoming, from a broadcast side of view, what seems to work and what doesn’t?