On the 14th and 15th May 2012 the international conference Design as Symptom: Things, Signs and their Effects will take place at the Faculty of Design and Art of Free University of Bolzano-Bozen. 

There is no doubt that design today is more than ever a symptom of contemporary culture. It seems today that there is no thing or surface that is not the work of a designer. Design covers everything and everyone in a dense network of quite subtle relations, clever allusions and ironic background references. In design, society shows how it is and also how it wants to be; its knowledge, secret desires, cravings and suppressed longings are no less apparent than its neuroses and psychological abysses. The question however is: What exactly is it that design shows? And how is it shown? What is communicated and how? What is the effect of signs in our rapid, frequently automated everyday perception? Can design indeed speak, or does the specific nature of design by itself allow us to form an emotional relationship with the world?

The international conference Design as Symptom: Things, Signs and their Effects asks the question of signs and self-signing in objects according to the relationship of things, signs and their effects. It wil be held on 14 and 15 May 2012 in Bozen/Bolzano and will be organised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg H. Gleiter (specialist in aesthetics) and Dipl.-Ing. Jan Bovelet M.A. of the Faculty for Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. The conference Design as Symptom – Things, Signs and their Effects invites notable designers and architects, as well as personalities from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, design and architectural theory to Bozen in order to ask the question of design as a living symptom of present culture.

Contributors will be attending from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Iran, Lebanon and Italy. The lectures will be in English, Italian and German. The conference is being held in co-operation with the Museion, the Bozen/Bolzano Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, and will take place in the lecture hall of the Museion.

Following the conference, on 16 and 17 May two student design workshops will raise the question of the reciprocal working of theoretical insights and practical design work. The workshops are being organised by Prof. Antonino Benincasa and Prof. Christian Upmeier. Both are professors of Visual Communication. The noted designers Peter Crnokrak (London) and Resa Abedini (Beirut/Tehran) have kindly agreed to participate in the workshops.

Tickets: 

Two days € 50

One day € 30 per day

Advance sales € 40 (for online registration up to 10 May 2012)

Student tickets:

Two days € 20

One day € 12   

hannelore.schwabl1@unibz.it 


Where

When
May 14 to 15, 2012

Inscription
Manela Degasperi

Faculty of Design and Art
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Universitätsplatz 1 - piazza Università, 1
39100 Bozen-Bolzano
Italy
T: 39 0471 015006
F: 39 0471 015009
manuela.degasperi2@unibz.it

Scientific director
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jörg H. Gleiter