Curating Media and Design — CFP: DIS'12 Workshops - DIY Biology, Designing Wellbeing and Slow technology (due March)

CFP: DIS’12 Workshops - DIY Biology, Designing Wellbeing and Slow technology (due March)

A couple of workshops for the upcoming DIS conference in Newcastle have been announced. Submissions have opened.

Workshop submissions due March 2012. See individual call for exact dates. ACM Conference Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) June 2012, Newcastle UK.

Slow Technology: Critical Reflection and Future Directions - We invite participants to submit a short written position paper as well as a depiction of an artifact perceived to be constitutive of Slow Technology. The written portion consists of a short 1-2 page submission formatted using the ACM DIS 2012 template that responds to the statement “Slow Technology is…” This introductory statement is intended to provoke the author(s) to take a specific position on the Slow Technology agenda and offer their conceptualization of what Slow Technology is. This workshop paper could (but is not required to) use the author(s) own philosophical, theoretical, empirical, or design/craft-based work to support their position. Read more.

(DIY)biology, Designing for Open Source Science - Our one-day DIS’12 workshop will bring together a diverse group of designers and HCI researchers, as well as biologists, bioartists, and members of the DIYbio community to critically re-envision the role HCI might play at the intersection of biology, computation and DIY. We will engage directly with DIYbio initiatives to explore the materials, practices and challenges of garage biology. Drawing on presentations from participants who work with organic materials, hands-on biology activities (such as extracting DNA), and structured discussions, we hope to address themes such as: opportunities and implications for integrating organic materials into interactive systems; technologies that support and hinder public engagement with science; and HCI’s role in the public discourse around bioethics and biosafety. Read more.

Designing Wellbeing - This two-day workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers, designers and practitioners who are currently working on wellbeing in the field of interaction design or health care, or are interested in the topic. Read more.

Perspectives on Participation: Evaluating cross-disciplinary tools, methods, and practices - In this workshop we aim to explore the growing fascination with participation across design, art, social science and the sciences in recent years. We find ourselves in a situation where the boundaries between participatory tools and methods from specific disciplines are becoming blurred. Researchers and practitioners must now negotiate the appropriateness of methods and tools given the different epistemologies and practices across various disciplines. There comes a temptation to develop or use new methods and processes without necessarily understanding those that have been used before. There is often little reflection on why we might want to involve people in design and artistic practices, nor understand the motivations of those who do participate and what they take from the process. At the same time, project and funding commitments may mean participation becomes an end in itself as opposed to a means for improving research processes and products. Read more.

Thanks to Fil Salustri for keeping his eyes open for interesting design calls on his blog http://designcalls.wordpress.com/