Distabling | Acts of Emergent Design Research
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Seating available, Wheelchair accessibleDistabling showcases current research projects of High Degree Research (HDR) candidates in the RMIT School of Design. Using a table as both a concept and a physical platform, it hosts a series of activities conducted by HDR students at different stages of their research, sharing unfinished outputs and thought processes. Building on the concept of an ecology of practices, researchers collaborate across different topics of inquiry and engage in a spectrum of acts, from exhibitions to workshops, involving multiple forms of engagements and interactions with the audience.
In its second edition, this event is intended to be a generative space for unveiling ongoing transdisciplinary design research projects that engage with the current global social, political, and environmental crisis, exploring the inclusion of different sources of knowledge, exceptional, contradictory, and non-linear processes of research, methodological assemblages, and ethical and ontological inquiries for design practitioners.
The event is led by a group of doctoral researchers from the School of Design working across design disciplines and exploring a diversity of topics such as material decay, national identities, uncertainty, cosmologies, bureaucratic institutions, and expanded senses, among others.
Participants
Isabella Brandalise is a designer, researcher and educator with a practice in designing for the public realm. She is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University, investigating ways in which institutional structures can be opened up and reconfigured through imagination exercises that reconcile rationality and irrationality, poetics and politics, humour and seriousness. She holds a master’s degree in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School for Design and in Contemporary Art from the University of Brasília.
Javier de Urquijo Isoard is an industrial designer delving into the multifaceted relationships between humans and soil ecologies. His research challenges traditional design approaches by placing emphasis on disposal processes and the transformative power of decay within circular paradigms. Through the formulation of a biomaterial palette, Javier explores how design collaborations with nonhuman ecologies can inform the formulation, transformation, and disposal of materials within design ecologies.
Alan is a communication designer and former advertising practitioner with over two decades of experience in Singapore’s creative industry with a Master of Communication Design graduate from RMIT and a current PhD candidate in the School of Design. Their research practice focuses on nation-branding, emphasising co-design, scenario-building, and creative storytelling as key components of my current academic exploration.
Andres is a Chilean architect turned into strategic and service designer with a special interest in spatial social dynamics around identity and place. Currently a PhD student at the School of Design at RMIT University, Andres is researching transformational ways of being in and with practice with a southern, decolonial and pluriversal perspective.
Mengke Lian is a PhD Candidate at the RMIT School of Design focusing on tangible interactions with technology and the critical discourse in artifact creation. She investigates the complex ways in which human perception, action, and entanglement with the environment unfold. As a passionate explorer and keen observer, she is dedicated to creating hybrid, interactive wearable devices and installations.
Through practice research, Steven Santer is developing a more-than-human design praxis founded on a range of Speculative Realist philosophical concepts, for the concept of critical ecological representations to emerge. Steven is a PhD candidate with the School of Design at RMIT, Melbourne and is creatively engaged with the overlaps of Design Processes, (Object-Oriented) Philosophies, Technology, Ecological Awareness, and Futures from which to explore the chaotic, the invisible, and the complex problems that surround us.
Kel Glaister is an artist, researcher and a parkour coach, with a focus on parkour vision and playable urban spaces. She is a founding director of Melbourne in Motion, a parkour and movement-coaching organisation with a focus on access, diversity and justice. Kel’s research is centred around forms of embodied knowledge, specifically parkour vision, and their potential contribution to the urban spaces around us; to help create playable cities, and to further spatial and mobility justice through embodied action.
Adhi is a designer-maker and craft design researcher from Indonesia. He focuses his research on kriya, a term for traditional Indonesian craft, particularly pottery. His current PhD research delves into how the form of traditional ceramic pottery embodies cultural practices of the society surrounding it, as well as personifies its maker. In addition to his research, Adhi is a lecturer at the Institut Teknologi Bandung. He also founded a design consultancy bureau called “Viewpoint” and hosts an Indonesian language podcast about general design called “Bicara Desain”
Georgie is a designer, researcher and educator based on the lands of the Kulin Nation. With a background in graphic design, media and communications, her research and practice is focused around bringing together processes of designing and futuring to co-create pluriversal futures. Her primary interest lies in dissecting the concept of “futures” within design, delving into the ethical implications embedded within these notions. Currently, she is navigating designed futures through the lens of space/placemaking in her doctoral studies at RMIT.
Gideon is a cartoonist, lecturer, researcher, PhD student working on comic publishing industry’s white paper for governmental policy making. He spends the day procrastinating, making comics, and doom-scrolling dog videos.
Steph is a Filipino transdisciplinary designer and researcher based on the unceded lands of the eastern Kulin Nation. Currently the publication designer for Overland Literary Journal, they have also featured visual and experiential designs in Blindside Gallery, Melbourne Design Week, M Pavilion, and Saluhan’s Pagbasa Archive. Their work combines social and environmental issues, exploring how design can be a lens to navigate just futures for more-than-human worlds.
Joseph Johnson is a graphic designer and researcher.
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Access
Seating available, Wheelchair accessibleDistabling showcases current research projects of High Degree Research (HDR) candidates in the RMIT School of Design. Using a table as both a concept and a physical platform, it hosts a series of activities conducted by HDR students at different stages of their research, sharing unfinished outputs and thought processes. Building on the concept of an ecology of practices, researchers collaborate across different topics of inquiry and engage in a spectrum of acts, from exhibitions to workshops, involving multiple forms of engagements and interactions with the audience.
In its second edition, this event is intended to be a generative space for unveiling ongoing transdisciplinary design research projects that engage with the current global social, political, and environmental crisis, exploring the inclusion of different sources of knowledge, exceptional, contradictory, and non-linear processes of research, methodological assemblages, and ethical and ontological inquiries for design practitioners.
The event is led by a group of doctoral researchers from the School of Design working across design disciplines and exploring a diversity of topics such as material decay, national identities, uncertainty, cosmologies, bureaucratic institutions, and expanded senses, among others.
Participants
Isabella Brandalise is a designer, researcher and educator with a practice in designing for the public realm. She is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University, investigating ways in which institutional structures can be opened up and reconfigured through imagination exercises that reconcile rationality and irrationality, poetics and politics, humour and seriousness. She holds a master’s degree in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School for Design and in Contemporary Art from the University of Brasília.
Javier de Urquijo Isoard is an industrial designer delving into the multifaceted relationships between humans and soil ecologies. His research challenges traditional design approaches by placing emphasis on disposal processes and the transformative power of decay within circular paradigms. Through the formulation of a biomaterial palette, Javier explores how design collaborations with nonhuman ecologies can inform the formulation, transformation, and disposal of materials within design ecologies.
Alan is a communication designer and former advertising practitioner with over two decades of experience in Singapore’s creative industry with a Master of Communication Design graduate from RMIT and a current PhD candidate in the School of Design. Their research practice focuses on nation-branding, emphasising co-design, scenario-building, and creative storytelling as key components of my current academic exploration.
Andres is a Chilean architect turned into strategic and service designer with a special interest in spatial social dynamics around identity and place. Currently a PhD student at the School of Design at RMIT University, Andres is researching transformational ways of being in and with practice with a southern, decolonial and pluriversal perspective.
Mengke Lian is a PhD Candidate at the RMIT School of Design focusing on tangible interactions with technology and the critical discourse in artifact creation. She investigates the complex ways in which human perception, action, and entanglement with the environment unfold. As a passionate explorer and keen observer, she is dedicated to creating hybrid, interactive wearable devices and installations.
Through practice research, Steven Santer is developing a more-than-human design praxis founded on a range of Speculative Realist philosophical concepts, for the concept of critical ecological representations to emerge. Steven is a PhD candidate with the School of Design at RMIT, Melbourne and is creatively engaged with the overlaps of Design Processes, (Object-Oriented) Philosophies, Technology, Ecological Awareness, and Futures from which to explore the chaotic, the invisible, and the complex problems that surround us.
Kel Glaister is an artist, researcher and a parkour coach, with a focus on parkour vision and playable urban spaces. She is a founding director of Melbourne in Motion, a parkour and movement-coaching organisation with a focus on access, diversity and justice. Kel’s research is centred around forms of embodied knowledge, specifically parkour vision, and their potential contribution to the urban spaces around us; to help create playable cities, and to further spatial and mobility justice through embodied action.
Adhi is a designer-maker and craft design researcher from Indonesia. He focuses his research on kriya, a term for traditional Indonesian craft, particularly pottery. His current PhD research delves into how the form of traditional ceramic pottery embodies cultural practices of the society surrounding it, as well as personifies its maker. In addition to his research, Adhi is a lecturer at the Institut Teknologi Bandung. He also founded a design consultancy bureau called “Viewpoint” and hosts an Indonesian language podcast about general design called “Bicara Desain”
Georgie is a designer, researcher and educator based on the lands of the Kulin Nation. With a background in graphic design, media and communications, her research and practice is focused around bringing together processes of designing and futuring to co-create pluriversal futures. Her primary interest lies in dissecting the concept of “futures” within design, delving into the ethical implications embedded within these notions. Currently, she is navigating designed futures through the lens of space/placemaking in her doctoral studies at RMIT.
Gideon is a cartoonist, lecturer, researcher, PhD student working on comic publishing industry’s white paper for governmental policy making. He spends the day procrastinating, making comics, and doom-scrolling dog videos.
Steph is a Filipino transdisciplinary designer and researcher based on the unceded lands of the eastern Kulin Nation. Currently the publication designer for Overland Literary Journal, they have also featured visual and experiential designs in Blindside Gallery, Melbourne Design Week, M Pavilion, and Saluhan’s Pagbasa Archive. Their work combines social and environmental issues, exploring how design can be a lens to navigate just futures for more-than-human worlds.
Joseph Johnson is a graphic designer and researcher.
