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| ON TIME AND DESIGN |
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Closely linked to the development of our society, design is manifested in the formal and aesthetic context, as well as in the everyday cultural framework. Design is a mirror of our society. The confrontation with design thus tends to deal the cultural, social, economic and aesthetic aspects of our society.
Space and time are important themes of the philosophical and intellectual discourse and their relevance remains unchallenged.
We are currently experiencing in our everyday lives a significant change in temporal phenomena that, to a very considerable extent, is connected to design. The core of this change is apparently the fact that real space and the notion of distance are increasingly becoming irrelevant.
"Here is Singapore and here is Calcutta and here is Rotterdam, these are the suburbs of the virtual city. The electronic networks encourage the development of this virtual city. The data highway will create a virtual city. In the course of this hyper-centralisation – something that has never occurred before – world time is created. In the past cities developed in the framework of local spaces of time, therefore the history of France is different to that of Germany or Italy. The ZEITZONEN (time zones), the difference between day and night, still played an important role. In the future there will be no more local time, there will only be world time, simultaneity, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, live. Interactivity and data highways will establish new scales at the level of world time. The sole reference point will be astronomical time, the universal time of the astronomers and the astrophysicists."
From: Paul Virilio in "Kontext: Die Metropole - eine Metastase", Swiss radio DRS 2, 18 April 1995.
Different concepts engage with each other, a ubiquitous time zone of global acceleration meets local time zones of controlled deceleration. Different time zones are overlaid and produce interferences, overcoming and dealing with these represents an additional challenge for the individual and society as a whole. The effects of this are visible in production processes, educational and training concepts, business strategies, research, and individual careers.
ON DESIGN 06
The conference invites visitors and participants to take the time to look more closely at these different time zones and to develop an understanding of them. It is seen as a gradual approach that will offer a variety of answers. Visitors to the conference have the opportunity to determine their own focal points, in this way each visitor can experience his or her own conference.
The dialogues about time and design are addressed to a specialist design public as well as to a more general public with an interest in design. The choice of speakers guarantees that the discussion on these themes will take place at a broad, diverse and application-related level, ranging from highly specialized insights to the general overview. The inclusion of business people, museum directors and teachers illustrates the linking of various approaches. The programme is a clear acknowledgement of design as a cultural factor, without ignoring the great relevance of business people and the economy.
Starting from an understanding of design as applied art we search for a method of communicating design that is both creative and applicable. Design has the advantage of possessing a very direct language of communication. Objects and graphics must be legible and decipherable for the user and the consumer. A design conference can and should mediate in a similar way. Design practice and design theory seldom have points of contact, which makes it desirable this relationship should be intensified through the discourse.
The conference has a matrix-like structure. The parallel organisation of the discussion rounds in different spaces offers conference visitors manifold opportunities to organise their own conference. It also represents a challenge to visitors to decide on their own strategy and dramaturgy.
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