Shual

A lecture at Parsons – The New School of Design, NY

About the Networked Design Talks

With the rise of the Internet over the past few decades we have witnessed the rise of networked culture. The effects of this transition extend far beyond the use of tools: they change the ways we communicate with each other and the ways we manage, construct and perceive our individual and group identities. This cultural shift requires the creative industry to reexamine its use of messages, symbols and aesthetics and to study their function within a constantly changing networked environment. The Networked Design Talks represent the first step of an academic research initiative in this area undertaken by Parsons AAS Graphic Design faculty members led by the Program’s Director, Katarzyna Gruda.

Sponsored by the School of Art, Media & Technology at Parsons, the New School for Design.

Can Design By Committee Work? The case for open source design

“Design by committee”, “too many cooks in the kitchen” and other terms have been used derogatively to imply that the creative process breaks when it involves too many individuals. At the same time, the software world has been completely revolutionized by the open source, networked collaborative process. The one field in which the open source process lags behind the more conventional models involves graphic and interaction designs – two fields critical to software development that have not nourished similar collaboration models. What are the challenges of networked collaboration in the creative process? Can and how might they be solved? Or is it just that designers don’t like to work together? Mushon will be tackling these questions in the light of his creative work and along with the research done in his Open Source Design class taught in Parsons’ AAS Program in Graphic Design.

About Mushon Zer-Aviv

Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, an educator and a media activist from Tel-Aviv, based in NY. His work explores media in public space and public space in media. In his creative research he focuses on the perception of territory and borders and the way they are shaped through politics, culture, networks and the World Wide Web. He is the co-founder of ShiftSpace.org * an open source layer above any website; Shual.com * a foxy design studio; YouAreNotHere.org * a dislocative tourism agency; Kriegspiel * a computer game based on Guy Debord’s Game of War; and the Tel Aviv node of the Upgrade international network. Mushon is an honorary resident at Eyebeam * an art and technology center in New York. He teaches new media research at NYU and open source design at Parsons the New School of Design.