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Doors of Perception 3: On Matter
``` Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 19:22:57 +0100 To: adams@interval.com From: wendela@design-inst.nl (Wendela Smit) Subject: Doors of Perception 3: On Matter
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - INFO-ECO, Amsterdam, 7-11 November 1995
15 August 1995
Dear reader,
The third Doors of Perception conference, from 7 - 11 November this year, will ask: "In what ways can Informationtechnology and design contribute to a sustainable environment?"
The event aims to:- develop scenarios for a convergence of 'info' and 'eco'- make these scenarios visible and therefore capable of being acted upon- foster projects and collaborations, and stimulate business
The event consists of:- a full-time, workshop based programme (6 - 11 November)- a series of 4 seminars (7 - 10 November)- an all day Big Event on (11 November)
A brochure with the Final Programme will be published in September.
If you would like to participate in one of the workshops as described in the attached documentation, please complete and return the following 'Call For Participation' by 4 September. (Feel free to submit a joint application from yourself and colleagues or clients.)
We will soon open a Website for Doors 3, that will be called DOME. The address will be http://www.dome@design-inst.nl from 1 September. Information about the first two Doors of Perception Conferences can be found @: http://www.mediamatic.nl/doors If there is any problem with our new Dome address, the corrections will be found at the Doors Site @ Mediamatic.
On behalf of the Doors of Perception 3 - Executive Team, John Thackara, Josephine Grieve, Caroline Nevejan
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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - REGISTRATION FORM Doors of Perception 3 - Info-Eco Workshops, 6 - 11 november 1995
Last name......................................
Firstname......................................
Street address.................................
City...........................................
Zip Code.......................................
Country........................................
Telephone .....................................
Fax............................................
Email..........................................
WWW address....................................
Title/Position.................................
Company/Organisation...........................
Specialised in.................................
Student (post graduate) in (subject)...........
University/Academy/School......................
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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Our ideal workshop will focus on a live project or business; its participants will come from mixed disciplines, and will deliver a clear and stimulating presentation; it will live on as a project after November. It is against those criteria that we are inviting - and will select - a maximum of 180 workshop participants. Bearing in mind that 1,100 people came to Doors 2 for three full days, we will have to be selective. But there are 500 places available for each seminar and 750 for the 'Big Event'.
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WORKSHOPS
Please indicate in order of preference which workshop you would like to join - ie '1' = first, '2' = second, '3'= third choice:
A - FEEDBACK ( ) Mapping Global Processes ( ) Urban Footprints ( ) Designing Desires
B - CARING FOR MATTER ( ) Info-Eco Tourist ( ) Beyond Being There ( ) Electronic Songlines ( ) Eternally Yours
C - Info-Eco Communities ( ) Info-Eco work : Communities of Business ( ) Virtual versus Real Communities ( ) Info-Eco Social Care ( ) Info-Eco Education ( ) Health and Inefficiency ( ) The daily 'We'
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PRICES The participation fee for the Complete Programme includes: documentation; coffee and tea served during the 'Big Event'; an evening Concert and Party as part of the the 'Big Event' on 11 November. We will send you an invoice after registration.- Seminar DFL. 35- 'Big Event' DFL. 875- Seminars & 'Big Event' DFL. 1,000- Complete Programme DFL. 1,765 (Workshop, Seminars, 'Big Event') (A limited number of bursaries is available for Dutch independent practitioners and students)
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Please attach a short motivation (text, storyboard, illustration; max 200 words and/or one A4 sheet) on the subject: "Why I would like to join the ................................workshop" and send it together with this registration form to: Annelou Evelein, Netherlands Design Institute, Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam, fax: + 31(0)20 6201031
I have completed the 'Call for Participation' form and I have attached a personal statement.
Signature................................
Date.....................................
Annelou Evelein/Helen Vreedeveld Keizersgracht 609 NL-1017 DS Amsterdam tel: +31(0)20 5516506 / 5516512 fax: +31(0)20 6201031 e mail: doors@design-inst.nl
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3: INFO-ECO Amsterdam, 7-11 November 1995
PROJECT SUMMARY
On 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 November this year, the third Doors of Perception conference will address a big question: how can information technology and design contribute to sustainability? By what creative process might we speed up the flow of information, and slow down the consumption of matter and energy? How can we dematerialise services and products that will otherwise devastate the planet's resources?
Doors 3 is about the mental and material changes we have to make in order to achieve a sustainable future. The format is a series of high-intensity workshops and seminars that will first consider info-eco scenarios, and then make them visible. Doors 3 involves different disciplines collaborating in a design process whose participants will experience new ways of working together - with information technology and global networks as powerful tools. Participants from 11 different countries are already connecting in pilot workshops in Toronto, Melbourne, Milan, Utrecht and London. Their results will be passed on to the November events - with the idea that some projects will gather further momentum and grow .
Experts, policy makers, business people, designers, artists, philosophers and scientists will participate in Doors 3 in different ways: there will be a workshop-plus-seminar based programme for 180 people full-time over five days; an evening seminar series for a total of 500 people each time over four days; and a one-day 'Big Event' for 750 people at the end. There will be a parallel conference and discussion programme on-line, and high level media coverage.
THE MAIN EVENTS
SEMINARS - Exploring Zones of Convergence between Info and Eco Communities- 'Think 20' Scenarios- Collective Intelligence- Mental and Material- Connectivity and Community
DESIGN WORKSHOPS A programme of 12 high-intensity workshops, each involving experts and a mixed group of professionals, will be given the task of exploring the implications of info-eco scenarios - and of making these scenarios visible and capable of being acted upon. The workshops are divided in three groups:- Feedback - using information technology to refocus our attention on the consequences of our actions for the planet- Caring for Matter - using information technology to foster an enhanced sense of responsibility for matter- Info-Eco Communities - local and virtual communities - of people and businesses - using information technology to re-organise products and services to achieve sustainability
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3- Big Event An all-day programme at which first results of the workshops and seminars will be presented to 750 people and the international media
LATE SHOW AND LIVE TELEVISION Daily meeting point of people, ideas and the media at Amsterdam's arts centre De Balie
ON-LINE COMMUNICATIONS ENVIRONMENT On-line Internet environment for the project, providing public access to its results, created jointly by the Doors 3 team and the celebrated Amsterdam Digital City Internet Environment
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - BACKGROUND
The first two Doors of Perception conferences attracted worldwide attention for their focus on the cultural and social implications of interactive multimedia. Of the 1100 people from 30 countries who attended Doors of Perception 2 in 1994, 200 were journalists. Visitors from many disciplines agreed on the need to locate new information systems within a cultural, social and economic context - to start with people, not with technology.
Meanwhile, the eco community has amassed solid evidence that a radical decrease in our consumption of matter and energy - by a factor of 10 to 20 - will be needed, within a generation, if we are to achieve a sustainable world. This means re-organizing all kinds of processes and products so that, in total, they consume about 10% of the energy they do today. A cultural shift of this magnitude will not be achieved by technology alone - but neither will it be achieved without technology. Dematerialisation on such a scale can only be achieved by intense economic and cultural creativity - stimulated by, but not relying on, new technologies, and involving a dynamic collaboration between businesses, experts, and the creative input of untold individuals.
Information technology affords a new way of communicating. It touches our heads and our hearts, stimulates our senses, and enhances our knowledge. The visceral appeal of connectivity to millions of people is reflected in the explosive growth of the Internet. Information technology also dematerialises much that it touches, and consumes little matter and energy. It is the driving force behind a deep re-organisation of production and distribution in the New Economy. But still we ask: what is it all for? Doors of Perception 3 is about the coming together of creative innovators determined to look for an answer in the multiple challenges of creating a sustainable future.
THE SEMINARS
=46our potential zones of convergence between info and eco communities will be addressed in the seminars which take place between 7-10 November. Expert speakers will open each seminar with short papers.
SEMINAR 1 - FACTOR 20 SCENARIOS What are we to make of forecasts that we must improve global eco efficiency by a factor of 20 within 50 years? In this opening seminar, Doors of Perception 3 is put into context: what does 'Factor 20' mean, and how big a jump will be needed to achieve it? How might we connect 'top down' policies with 'bottom-up' social, cultural and business innovations needed to act on them? Speakers will include experts who develop scenarios about the future of ecology, economy, and information technology. Commissioners: Professor Ezio Manzini, Domus Academy, Milan; Professor Chris Ryan, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne
SEMINAR 2 - COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE Information technology is making it possible for people to communicate with each other via machines - and not just one-to-one, but also many-to-many. How real is the prospect that these tools will foster the collective intelligence - not just the exchange of data - that we will need to achieve a sustainable future? What precedents are there in society for the network intelligence afforded by new technology? Do network designers sufficiently understand natural and biological - as well as technological - system models? Leading philosophers will be joined by researchers and developers of distributed intelligent networks. Commissioners: Professor Derrick de Kerckhove, Director, McLuhan Program In Culture and Technology, Toronto; Professor Pierre L=E9vy, author of 'L'intelligence Collective', Paris; Josephine Grieve, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam
SEMINAR 3 - MENTAL AND MATERIAL What is the specificity of the human race within nature? In designing information networks bigger than ourselves, have we made ourselves blind to the vital signs that tell us about the health of the planet? Have we forgotten the fact that human intelligence is bound up with having a body, and that our bodies can only exist as part of a planetary eco-system? And if we have forgotten this, what is the antidote? If sustainability demands that we speed up information, and slow down matter, how do we protect the sensual element in human intelligence? Commissioner: John Thackara, Director, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterd= am
SEMINAR 4 - CONNECTIVITY AND COMMUNITY Intense social creativity will be needed to achieve sustainable lifestyles - and much of that creativity will take place at the level of 'the community'. But what is a 'community', and to what extend can information technology stimulate collective action among people - or enterprises - that exist in different places? Do information networks empower - or do they dissolve the shared values, and networks of relations, that are found in real communities? Do information networks foster better human relationships, or do they devalue the lived experience of family and kinship relationships? What of the argument that if you join networks together, all you get is a bigger network? Commissioner: Professor Ezio Manzini, Domus Academy, Milan
THE WORKSHOPS
There will be 12 workshops, each with about 15 participants, in central Amsterdam.Their role is to make new ideas visible to design concepts and processes more than objects. They will thus expose participants to new ways of working together. Some workshops will focus on real enterprises at the leading edge of business; others will develop new product and service concepts, system and process designs. Each workshop will be asked to present its findings in the form of storyboards. Participants in each workshop - professionals from a variety of disciplines, and some graduate students - will be selected by workshop commissioners and the programme team from among 'Call For Participation' forms submitted.
GROUP A - Feedback We need to be confronted with the consequences of our actions for the health of the planet. Astonishing data from satellite remote sensing are being combined with geographical information systems to bring city planners, policy makers and strategists new insights. But these insights, when locked in laboratories, are slow to influence our everyday relationship with the planet. How might a combination of computer graphic simulations and immersive media enhance our understanding of complex natural processes? How might information technologies refocus our attention on our bodies and on the earth? And in particular, how might scientists work with designers and communication experts to deliver this information in such a way that we relate to it personally?
A1 - Mapping Global Processes Many powerful simulations of phenomena like ozone-holes and climate already run in laboratories; how might they be projected into society? Design and art have the potential to act as the interpreter of these data, making creative connections between specialist areas of knowledge. They may also engage new audiences by communicating complex problems, and possible solutions with clarity and wit. How might these data be disseminated in schools, in science centres, or by television? The workshop will bring together social and scientific historians; psychologists expert on feedback and attitudinal change; designers and artists; and experts from the front-line of remote-sensing, GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and related computer simulations. Commissioners: Professor Gillian Crampton Smith, Royal College of Art, London; David Cross, Senior Research Fellow, Royal College of Art, London =09 A2 - Urban Footprints The eco-performance of the planet is a too big and abstract story to engage many people - but cities and towns are easier to grasp as entities. How best should information we already know about the 'eco-footprint' of a city be exploited? How might the 'eco-agenda' be added to discussions about the impact of telematics on urbanism ? The workshop will involve development of the 'Green Maps' project. Commissioners: Professor Chris Ryan, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Melbourne; Wendy Brawer, Modern World Design, O2 Network, New York
A3 - Designing Desires: Fluid Functionality and Less as More We blame consumerism for its wastefulness - but could we not learn from the numerous and subtle ways in which it stimulates our desires? What new ideals could direct the way we cultivate desires with our product design and guide us to a more sustainable end? Should we only marvel at the psychological power of status symbols, fashion, and fetishism, to stimulate demand? Could 'anti-matter' status objects be virtual? Could we also use Internet upgraded product functionality, life-style affirmation exercises, eco-impact visulisations and new product/desire combinations to realise our new ideals? Commissioners: Niels Peter Flint, O2 International, Denmark; Sytze Kalisvaart, O2 Global Network, Delft
GROUP B - CARING FOR MATTER The ecological vision emphasizes the material presence of the planet itself; ubiquitous information creates a sense of immateriality and rootlessness. How might we use new information and communication tools to enhance our sense of, and responsibility formatter and place?
B1 - Travels to the Edge: the Info-Eco Tourist The damaging impact of mass tourism is made worse by the tendency of modern travel to de-sensitise us to nature and culture: we move vacuously from airport to hotel, to beach - blind to the damage we may be causing not only to the natural environment, but also to indigenous, human-made cultures. Is mass travel environmentally sustainable? How might information technology enhance the concept of eco-tourism? This workshop will develop ideas and projects explored at the RMIT International Design Winter School in Melbourne in July 1995. Commissioner: Professor Chris Ryan, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne
B2 - Beyond Being There / Hi-Touch Telematics Using telematics to replace environmentally damaging business travel and commuting sounds logical. But a much deeper understanding of the social and physical contexts of communication is needed before any impact on damaging mobility will be made. This workshop will focus on three questions: the design of integrated real and simulated space; the design of extended sensoriality; and the design of communication patterns and processes. Commissioner: Professor Marco Susani, Research Director, Domus Academy, Mila= n
B3 - Electronic Songlines In many cultures, shared values and laws on the environment are communicated through stories, myths and rituals. In such countries as India, Australia and Indonesia, experimental uses of information technology as new ways to propagate these myths are being explored. How might global information networks foster a better interaction between (highly mis-named) 'developed' cultures and those wiser than our own? The workshop will develop scenarios for modern electronic storylines. Commissioner: Josephine Grieve, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam; Jogi Panghal, New Delhi; Mark Pesce, developer of VRML, California
B4 - Eternally Yours How might industry modify its reliance on the rapid innovation of short-life products? Why are people increasingly surrounding themselves with products they feel less and less attached to? Should we design less desirability into hard products, or make hardware the 'carrier' of infinitely mutable soft attributes? Could we enrich information technology to counteract the growing ephemerality of our environment? What happens if communications concepts like those underlying West African music are set free in the digital world? Commissioner: Liesbeth Bonekamp, Ed van Hinte , Henk Muis, Eternally Yours Research Group, Wijk bij Duurstede
GROUP C - INFO-ECO COMMUNITIES Although research and expert opinion are important, a sustainable future will not be achieved only by the top-down promulgation of policies and scenarios by governments and think-tanks. Innovation is a social process as much as a technical one. Nor is technology neutral: automation destroys jobs and communities; global manufacturing often speeds up the wasteful consumption of matter. Yet information technology will be vital as an element of the intense social innovation in thousands of communities, that will be needed to achieve a 'Factor 20' way of life.
C1 - Info-Eco Work: Communities of Business Behind the rhetoric, the reality of much so-called tele-working is that it is un-skilled and isolating. New telework concepts are needed that enhance social contact, which value both mental and physical skills, and which re-evaluate the relationship between work and leisure. Can re-humanised forms of work replace automation with inter-dependent, trans-local communities? What are the main elements of this agenda? Participants will analyse and criticize emerging business models, and visualise their conclusions using examples of new business concepts. Commissioner: Debra Cash, New Century Enterprises, Harvard Graduate School for Design, Boston
C2 - Virtual versus Real Communities This workshop will search for the characteristics of virtual communities and in which way they relate to Real Life communities. We'll try to define in what way such virtual reality communitiescan be useful in a professional context: is it possible to make this environment secure, to identify the other person, to get a true conception of the other party? Is it possible to trust? What would be the design criteria? And what would be the true profit? Attendees will be invited to meet eachother in a special Moo-room; this communication-experience will eventually result in meeting in the flesh at the conference. Commissioner: Kristi van Riet, Mediamatic, Amsterdam
C3 - Info-Eco Social Care The concept of health is changing to encompass social and cultural factors as well as purely bodily ones. What are the consequences of a virtualisation of social relationships? Positive connotations - such as new social connections - may easily be cancelled out by negative ones, such as increased social isolation. How might telematics improve the social connectedness of those, such as old people, whom society has isolated? How may informatics alter current models of 'social service'? The workshop will focus on a specific telematic application for old people. Commissioner: Fran=E7ois Jegou, Delta, Paris; Bert Mulder, VOTA, European Design Age Network (DAN), Bussum
C4 - Info-Eco Education Might advanced networks and interactive multimedia offer new opportunities to design learning experiences that entertain and educate us all - singly, or in communities - about issues of ecological sustainability? Against this optimistic scenario must be put the 'innovation gap' that afflicts educational software. Drawing on the experience of multimedia programmes already developed by Friends of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and others, the workshop will create the specification and storyboards for a new educational software tool. Commissioners: Michael Polman, Antenna, Nijmegen; Dick Rijken, Centre for Interaction Design, Utrecht School for the Arts, Hilversum; Larry Keeley, Doblin Group, Chicago
C5 - Health and Inefficiency The root of all our eco-sorrows may be efficiency and for that matter, health. This conceptual workshop starts from the radical assumption that it is the human talent for efficiency that got us in trouble in the first place. We'll explore the possibilities of developing inefficient and improductive pastimes that are as fulfilling as work and progress can be. Current entertainment and art are just not good enough to keep people from working. Should we turn the worlds population into environmentally responsable couch potatoes that can look back on a rich and fruitful existence when they die young? Or will the world solve its own problems? Commissioner: Willem Velthoven, Mediamatic, Amsterdam; Tom Ray, ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories, Kyoto
C6 - Info-Eco Communications - The daily 'We' Confronted by predictions that the paper-based newspaper will soon be killed off by on-line personalised information services, newspaper publishers reply that their products play a social role in the community too. What new connections might be made between local newspapers and environmental programmes - for example, in the distribution of eco information and advice? But if a radical reduction in paper consumption is nonetheless necessary, what information systems might replace the local newspaper? Commissioner: Carel Kuitenbrouwer, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam
PLENARY EVENTS
LATE SHOW AND LIVE TELEVISION AT DE BALIE Workshop and seminar participants, journalists, and members of the public, will be able to meet at a late night programme of talks and discussions, which will be televised, at Amsterdam's well-known arts centre, De Balie. Commissioner: Marleen Stikker, Director, Society for Old & New Media, co-ordinator, Digital City, Amsterdam
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - BIG EVENT AT PARADISO At the end of the week, on Saturday 11 November, the all-day 'Big Event' begins with presentations of the results of each workshop, and a report-back from the seminars, using a variety of display techniques, performance and media tools. These presentations are followed by keynote lectures delivered by seven prominent and insightful speakers. Commissioner: Caroline Nevejan, Paradiso, Amsterdam
COMMUNICATION + DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS =09 MEDIA Doors of Perception is established as an important international meeting point for journalists who write or broadcast about the social and cultural consequences of interactive multimedia. The 1994 conference was covered by the major Dutch dailies; by such global papers as the London Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, and Mainichi Shimbun; and by highly 'connected' magazines like the Village Voice and Wired. For 1995, this same level of newspaper coverage will be supplemented by talks and TV chat shows involving Dutch and other European networks and producers. Manager: Josephine Grieve, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam =09 PUBLICATIONS AND REPORTS The proceedings of all workshops and seminars will be recorded and edited for publication, as paper or on-line. Manager: wendela smit, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam =09 MULTI-MEDIA AND ON-LINE PUBLICATION The organisers of Doors of Perception 3 include experienced pioneers in the use of the Internet, World Wide Web, videoconferencing, MOOs, and other media environments with the capacity to engage individuals around the world. The use of multimedia to disseminate results is already part of the Doors of Perception culture in the CD ROM of Doors of Perception 1 , and the World Wide Web site of Doors of Perception 2. Doors of Perception 3 will include Internet and World Wide Web events and an on-line working environment called 'Doors On Matter Environment' (DOME) before, during and after the November programme. Knowledge environment: Marleen Stikker, Director, Society for Old & New Media, co-ordinator, Digital City, Amsterdam
TIMETABLE 1995-1996
=46ebruary International Programme Group: Meeting 1 April International Programme Group: Meeting 2 July 17 Publication of 'Call for Participation' September 1 Publication of the Doors 3 brochure September 1 Knowledge environment on-line September 4 Deadline for applications September 20 Notification letters + communications September 22 International Programme Group: Meeting 3 November 7 Workshops begin November 8 Seminars begin November 11 Info-Eco 'Big Event'=09 January 1996 International Programme Group: Meeting 4
ORGANISATION
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - International Programme Team- John Thackara, Director Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam (chair)- Dr Connie Bakker, eco-design consultant , co-organiser O2 International Event, Rotterdam- Prof. Gillian Crampton Smith, Royal College of Art, London (+ David Cross)- Niels Peter Flint, O2 International, Denmark- Josephine Grieve, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam- Fran=E7ois Jegou, Design =E0 la long terme, Paris- Prof. Derrick de Kerckhove, Director, McLuhan Program, Toronto- Prof. Ezio Manzini, Domus Academy, Milan (+ Elena Pacenti)- Bert Mulder, VOTA, Bussum- Caroline Nevejan, Paradiso, Society for Old & New Media, Amsterdam- Carlo Pesso, OECD, Paris- Michael Polman, co-ordinator, ANTENNA, Nijmegen- Dick Rijken, Centre for Interaction Design (HKU), Hilversum=09- Prof. Chris Ryan, Director Design Centre, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology- Marleen Stikker, De Balie, Society for Old & New Media , The Digital City, Amsterdam- Prof. Marco Susani, Domus Academy, Milan- Willem Velthoven, Director, Mediamatic, Amsterdam
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - Executive team- John Thackara (chair)- Josephine Grieve and Caroline Nevejan (co-producers)- Marleen Stikker (knowledge environment)- Michiel Harnisch (financial controller)
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 3 - Production Team- Helen Vreedeveld (production co-ordinator)- Connie Bakker (workshops co-ordinator)- Wendela Smit (documentation manager)- Anthony Chapman (technical production)- Annelou Evelein (general co-ordinator)
CONTACT DETAILS Helen Vreedeveld and Yvonne Janssen Netherlands Design Institute Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel + 31 (0)20 55 16 506 / 55 16 504 =46ax + 31 (0)20 62 01 031 E mail: doors@design-inst.nl DOME: http://www.dds.nl/dome (from September/October) ```
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