Virtual Colloquium: Post-human Design

Post-human Design – a critical reflection of current design positions, the role of the human, non-human agents, infrastructures, and processes.

In this colloquium, we will invite international positions from design, art, activism, and science, to discuss Post-human Design, its abilities and limitations, political dimension, its basic concepts, and practical implications. After the turn to user-centered and participatory design that started in the 1960s in Scandinavia, design concepts and their underlying philosophies have been massively influenced by technological developments like IoT, AI, data analytics, and academic discourses like Actor Network Theory. The “human” as such was de-focused and became an actor in networks just amongst other, non-human ones. What does that mean for our design practices, for our basic understanding of design, and our methods of researching? How do we include aspects of equality, post-western perspectives, accountability and sustainability into post-human design perspectives?

For our colloquium we invite perspectives of various actors from different parts of the globe in order to better understand the full scope of sustainable transformations of our societies, while considering quite different approaches, affordances as well as social and cultural implications. Together we want to reflect on our role as students, teachers, scholars and as the university.