sketches of the future

Do you find yourself drawing on napkins, keeping sketchbooks, pencilling in the margins of your fieldnotes or doodling while on the phone?

If so, this you will be interested in this sketching workshop:

We are seeking people who use sketching—for developing greater understanding, for conveying ideas as they are being formed, for communicating fully formed ideas, or for other reasons—to participate in a workshop to better understand the varied roles of sketching in design, research, and practice. Participants from all fields, with any skill level or experience in sketching, are welcome and encouraged. We are interested in how design methods are being adopted, adapted, and appropriated in various disciplines, using sketching as a concrete example and focal starting point. This workshop will therefore assemble a diverse group of participants to explore the methodological, epistemological, and practical issues, such as the tension between artifact production and knowledge production, that can arise in such work.

The workshop will involve presentations and discussions on the evolution and incorporation of design methods in a variety of disciplines, as well as hands-on sketching activities that will give participants the opportunity to try out a variety of sketching methods. This workshop seeks to document some of the myriad ways in which design methods, including but not limited to sketching, are being combined with approaches from other disciplines. Participants will also be encouraged to engage in a reflective dialogue examining the ramifications of these methodological crossovers and hybrids, both on the individuals involved and on their respective fields.

Potential attendees should submit a sketch and a statement. The sketch should come from their own work, though it need not be a sketch they have made, simply one they use. The sketch can take any form and is not limited to freehand drawings. The statement, up to 2 pages in DIS conference format, should describe the role that sketching plays in their work, using the submitted sketch as an example. Strong statements will reflect on the methodological issues in, and the implications of, using sketching in the author’s own field of work.

Submissions may be sent via email to the organizers (ericpsb and mkh46, both at cornell.edu). Submission Deadline: March 23, 2012Notification: April 6, 2012Workshop Date: June 11, 2012

For more information visit the workshop website.

Which reminds me, next on my reading list is Andrew Pickering's The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future, because it has been recommended, because Pickering resides at my university, and because it has a great title!

Image drawn by, and used with kind permission of my dad, John Harris.