PerForm the Unseen

In this course students will research "unseen" issues and render them tangible through (iterative) design processes in which formgiving "the development, assessment, and determination of form" takes centre stage.

Designers can use their aesthetic sensibilities and communicative skills to support engagement with individual and collective concerns. Through their work, designers can spark and sustain public debate about these issues or revive controversies about long standing taboos. Matters of concern, moreover, of which many are intangible.

Students will use an interdisciplinary set of skills to investigate how body language, individual perception and context influence the meaning of form in relation to design physical and/or digital artefacts. Students will investigate the communicative potential of form by means of embodied sketching and prototyping, experimental image and shape studies, observing and discussing.

Students will develop their form studies into a design intervention that seeks to render tangible an "unseen" issue they chose to investigate. At the end of the course, they will evaluate the "performance" of their design intervention by means of a public presentation.

The study goals of this course will be assessed by:

- Group assignment (40%)

- Individual written exam (60%)

During the course each week we will discuss with peers and teacher(s) to exchange experiences and outcomes.

In an individual visual expression the student will perform the research, the design process, and the final outcomes/design of small and large assignments.

The student must reflect and evaluate on the experiences, theory, and discussions in class.

A final evaluation will be written.

Next to the individual expression the students will be assessed on the group work: the design of a meaningful and coherent final form expression as an interdependent whole.