IAFOR > The European Conference on Arts, Design & Education (ECADE) > ECADE2022 > Programme

Programme

This page provides details of presentations and other programming. For more information about presenters, please visit the Speakers page.

Final Programme

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The Conference Programme contains access information, session information and a detailed day-to-day presentation schedule.

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Conference Outline

All times are Western European Summer Time (GMT+1)

Thursday, July 07, 2022Friday, July 08, 2022Saturday, July 09, 2022Sunday, July 10, 2022Virtual Presentations

12:45-13:30: Conference Registration | Room 100e

13:30-13:45: Announcements & Welcome Address | Room 101 & Online
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR, Japan
Heitor Alvelos, University of Porto, Portugal

13:45-14:30: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
Beyond a Dialogue between the Sciences and the Arts in Times of Uncertainty
Manuel Heitor, Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, IN+/IST – University of Lisbon; former Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Government of Portugal
14:15-14:30: Q & A
Heitor Alvelos, University of Porto, Portugal (Moderator)

14:30-15:00: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
Design and Technology in Online Spaces: Health, Work, Education and the Future
Michael Menchaca, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, United States

15:00-15:15: Keynote Session Q & A
Anne Boddington, Kingston University, United Kingdom (Moderator)

15:15-16:00: Coffee Break & Poster Session | Room 100e
63681 | Application of Augmented Reality to Haptic Analog: The Challenges of Modern Three-dimensional Technology Serigraphic Imaging
63367 | Multisensory Approaches From Interactive Art to Inclusive Design

16:00-17:00: Featured Panel Discussion | Room 101 & Online
Research Integrity: Replicability and Reproducibility in Art & Design Research
Anne Boddington, Kingston University, United Kingdom (Respondent)
Heitor Alvelos, University of Porto, Portugal (Respondent)
Susana Barreto, University of Porto, Portugal (Moderator)

17:00-17:15: Conference Photograph | Room 101

17:15-17:45: Port Wine Tasting | Room 100e

18:30-19:30: Conference Welcome Reception | Porto city centre

09:30-10:00: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
How a Local Knowledge Network can Impact the Generation of Economic and Social Value within the Community
Clara Gonçalves, Inductiva Research Labs, Portugal

10:00-10:30: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
Viability and Sustainability of Creative Practices, Crafts and Traditional Industry Sectors
Lynn Sayers-McHattie, Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom

10:30-10:40: Keynote Sessions Q & A
Anne Boddington, Kingston University, United Kingdom (Moderator)

10:40-11:00: Coffee Break | Room 100e

11:00-12:15: Onsite Parallel Session 1
Room 111: Learning Practices in Art & Design Education
64228 | Exploring the Hybridization of Traditional Printing and Digital Fabrication Processes to Expand Design Innovation in the Classroom
64343 | Impact of Students’ Engagement in Innovative Projects to Enrich University Campus: Developing Competencies and Attributes towards Study and Career Success
63202 | Thinking with Design: On Developing an Agile Professional Mindset

Room 113: Design for Society
64400 | Design Research as an Instrument of Empathy and Resilience: A Case Study in Porto on Reclusion in a Collective House
63305 | Generative Design: Co-creation Process Between the Designer and Computational Thinking
64038 | Contributions of Design in the Creation of Cognitive Stimulation Artefacts for Portuguese People With Dementia

Room 115: Archiving & Preservation of Design and Data
64407 | Visual Digital Archives – Information Design for Content
64396 | Visual Explorations of Objective Data: The Meaning of Unexpected Results
63560 | Rising Up: Student Learning in the Post-pandemic Era

12:15-12:30: Coffee Break | Room 100e

12:30-13:20: Onsite Parallel Session 2
Room 111: Teaching and Learning the Arts (Workshop)
62717 | “Pet the Lizard”- Calming our Brain in Performance, Teaching and Life

Room 113: Teaching and Learning the Arts (Workshop)
62550 | Art Museum Docents: An Integral Part of Art Education

Room 115: Culture & Heritage
64364 | Shapes of Portuguese Heritage and Visual Culture
64414 | Designing Meaningful Experiences With the Power of Bearers and Mediators of Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Safeguarding Approach With Digital Technology

13:20-14:20: Lunch Break | Room 100e

14:20-15:10: Onsite Parallel Session 3
Room 111: Design and New Media
63306 | Goffman’s Dramaturgy and the Character Attachment Phenomenon: Identity Conceptions Through Fashion in the Virtual and Offline Realities
63359 | The Role of Advanced Typographic Taxonomy Systems vis-à-vis Modular, Variable and Parametric Typography

Room 113: Promoting Cultural Heritage in Art and Design (Workshop)
63973 | The Artistic Learning Experience Is Enhanced Through Music

Room 115: Visual Arts Practices
62581 | The Effectiveness of Integrating Metal and Textile to Creating Contemporary Artworks Inspired by Egyptian and Saudi Heritage
63225 | Eco – Handmade Solid Brick In Contemporary Sculpture

15:10-15:25: Coffee Break | Room 100e

15:25-16:40: Onsite Parallel Session 4
Room 111: Learning Practices in Art & Design Education
63516 | Design as a Facilitator to Changing Mindsets for Craftmanship Enterprises’ Resilience
64344 | Utilization of Science Fiction Drama in Higher Education: An Innovative Pedagogy for Brain Warm-up, Inspire Futuristic Views, and Foster Creativity
63326 | Digital Media and Sustainable Development Goals Breathe New Life Into the Artworks From the Soares Dos Reis National Museum

Room 113: Art and Design
64090 | Can Maps and Map Symbols Help Teaching Sustainable Development?
64215 | Design Education for Sustainability and New Social Changes
63362 | Ico-cymatic Backstage Design Process: Applying Vernacular Techniques and New Media Into Ephemeral Spaces for Art Installation in South America

Room 115: Culture & Heritage /Interdisciplinary Local Art & Design History
64415 | Curiosity as a Bridge for Free Choice Learning: Museum Experiences Designed Using Projection Mapping Technology at Cunyaya, Interpretation Center
64154 | Lettering Design in Raul Lino’s Work: Humanism, Nature and Tradition in Architecture, Graphic Arts and Design
63274 | Invisible Resilience: Interiority of Body and Architecture

16:40-16:50: Break

16:50-17:40: Onsite Parallel Session 5
Room 111: Interdisciplinary Art & Design Projects (Workshop)
63355 | Sonic Kinesthetic Forest: Listening to and Dancing With Trees

Room 113: Academic Practices Outside the Classroom (Workshop)
64253 | Nature/Form/Process: A Workshop as a Tool to Test Intended Changes to the Course – Biomaterials: Designing With Living Systems

09:30-10:00: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
Against the Method: Recovering the Senses in the Age of Hyperformatting
Mirian Nogueira Tavares, University of the Algarve, Portugal

10:00-10:30: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
Experiential Knowledge + Science + Art = Creative Ethnographic Drawing
Susana de Noronha, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal

10:30-10:40: Keynote Sessions Q & A
Cláudia Raquel Lima & Eliana Penedos-Santiago (Moderators)

10:40-11:00: Coffee Break | Room 100e

11:00-12:40: Onsite Parallel Session 1
Room 111: Interdisciplinary Art & Design Projects
63885 | Conceptualising, Designing and Implementing a Scented Adventure Trail for Kindergarten Children
63242 | Itinerant Spherical, Flat and Concave Surfaces: Disseminating Human Echolocation in Public Spaces
64411 | Reference Framework for Tacit Knowledge in Craft-based Manufacturing Processes, for Updating Their Practices With Digital Interventions. A Systematic Review
63646 | STEM to STEAM – The Effects of Incorporating the Arts into STEM Education

Room 113: Strategies for Promoting Creative Thinking
64397 | Creative Strategies for the Communication of Science in a Context of Digital Hegemony: Experiencing Hands-on Visual Arts Techniques
63269 | Material Design and Audio-visual Narratives for Pedagogy: Theoretical Premises and Evaluation Tools for Experimenting Stop-motion Animation as Teaching Method
64367 | Systematic Thinking
63097 | The Role of the Brief in Individual Versus Collaborative Design Ideation

Room 115: Research Methods in Art and Design
63283 | Human-centered Design as a Qualitative Research Methodology in the Area of Public Health
64032 | Photographic Mnemotopes: Phototextual Reports as a Research Tool for the Communication of the Memory of Places
64395 | The Cognitive Effect of Spatial Contiguity in Procedural Training Using Mixed Reality
63358 | Architectural Precedent Study: Innovative Methods Education and its Implication for Ethical Practice

12:40-13:40: Lunch Break | Room 100e

13:40-14:30: Onsite Parallel Session 2
Room 111: Design & Local Industries
64389 | Design by Extension – Potentiating University-industry Collaborations Through Active Learning
64390 | Sustainability, Aesthetics, and Value Proposals and Practices of Colombian Slow Fashion Brands

Room 113: Interdisciplinary Arts & Education
63757 | Tragedy to Triumph: Utilizing a Graphic Novel and Instructional Design to Sustain the Culture, Heritage and Resilience of a Community
63741 | Teaching about European Heritage – The Case of Polish European Heritage Label

Room 115: Strategies for Promoting Cultural Sustainability
64401 | Design for Innovation With Tradition: Towards a ‘New’ Cycle of Linen-making
64312 | Study Abroad Programs as Means to Connect Culture, Art, and Design

14:30-14:35: Short Break

14:35-15:25: Onsite Parallel Session 3
Room 111: Design for Society
64416 | Multidisciplinary Relations in the Collaborative Work Practices to the Service Design Process
63689 | Design for Healthcare Facilities Management: A Way Finding Project for the Braga Central Hospital’s External Care Unit

Room 113: Interdisciplinary Arts & Education
63768 | Teaching Without Student Feedback: The Lack of Nonverbal Communication in Online Design Education
62678 | Investigating Reciprocal Relationships in Performing Arts and Learning Processes

Room 115: Academic Practices Outside the Classroom
64362 | Design for Dasein: A Pedagogical Framework – The Case of PROJECT@X
63515 | Doctoral Side Effects: Damage Limitation Versus Unexpected Benefits to PhD Research in a Pandemic

15:25-15:40: Coffee Break | Room 100e

15:40-16:10: Keynote Presentation | Room 101 & Online
The Attention Economy
Jon Wozencroft, Touch, United Kingdom

16:10-16:25: Keynote Session Q & A
Heitor Alvelos, University of Porto, Portugal (Moderator)

16:25-16:40: Onsite Closing Session
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR, Japan

10:00-10:50: Online Parallel Session 1
Room A: Strategies for Promoting Creative Thinking
63334 | Influence of ‘Artefact’, ‘Activity’ and ‘Design Value’ based Need Statements on Solution Outcomes
63644 | Participatory Group Textile Practice as a Route to Support Mental Health and Social Interaction in Secondary School Pupils

Room B: Academic Practices Outside the Classroom
64417 | Artistic Spaces as a Web Connected With the Community: Coo195 and Entre as Case Studies
64369 | Typography Education as a Tool to Potentiate Art Nouveau Museums

10:50-11:00: Break

11:00-12:15: Online Parallel Session 2
Room A: Learning Practices in Art & Design Education
64210 | Educator Attitudes and Parent Concern Throughout Online Courses
63244 | Baroque of the East and West: Sowing the Seeds for Intersections in Teaching and Learning of Art, Design and Music
63363 | Didáctica Cocreativa In Situ

Room B: Interdisciplinary Arts & Design for Society
64371 | Designing an Adrenaline Auto-Injector: The Perception of Shape as an Affordance of Use
63078 | The Role of Design: A Humanitarian Approach and an Opportunity to Prepare Students for the Real Working World
62469 | Art as an Ideology Can Facilitate People’s Understanding of Climate Change and Help People Explore a Speculative Future

12:15-12:25: Break

12:25-14:05: Online Parallel Session 3
Room A: Culture & Heritage
62743 | Best Practices for Teaching a Course on Culture for EFL Undergraduate Students in Japan and Abroad: Based on Literature Review
63983 | Usability SMARTV3 Learning Management System Towards Art & Design Courses
63696 | The Design Studio as a Place of Study: Critique as Hermeneutic Conversation
63351 | Myriorama: Obsolete Technologies for a Contemporary Scenographic Practice and Thought

Room B: Interdisciplinary Arts & Design (until 14:30)
64394 | The Relationship Between Concept and Medium in Site-specific Art
64383 | Homeostatic Designs: How the Theories of Antonio Damasio Can Inform Design Thinking
64413 | A Biometric Method for Spatial Experience Analysis: A Case Study of Airport Design and Traveler Stress
63353 | The Competitive Transformation of Business Based on Agile Innovation Methods That Engage Visual Creatives as Business Process Leaders
63336 | Teaching the SDGs: Content-based Research and Virtual International Exchange via Multimedia

14:05-14:15: Break

14:15-15:30: Online Parallel Session 4
Room A: Learning Practices in Art & Design Education
64258 | The Development of an Internet-based Environmental Prenatal Health Program Using Art
64366 | Tell Me Your Story: Digital Storytelling as a Teaching and Communication Tool
63133 | Using Comics for Teaching Math to ESL Students

15:30-15:45: Online Closing Session
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR, Japan

63356 | Profiling the Instructional Designer: Towards a Systematisation of the Profession

63343 | Mechanical 2021: Educational Game Concept to Promote Sustainable Thinking and Cooperation in Brazilian Basic Education
64758 | The Effectiveness of Academic Literacy Courses in Postsecondary Institutions in Ontario: The Development of an Evaluation Tool
63649 | Cultural Sustainability: Diversified Education and Innovative Design Application of Yao Ethnic Festival Costume Cultural Inheritance
64084 | Achievement of Program Outcomes in Between Dance Students of Creative Art Program During a Pandemic and Endemic of COVID -19
63337 | Digital Transformation in Art Education for Pre-service and In-service Primary School Teachers: Potential and Challenges
64224 | Screen View of the World – The Study of the Dissemination of Media Façade Image Information in Space
63238 | Intercultural Attitudes, Preferences for World Music and Artworks From Different Cultures in the Context of Contemporary Music Pedagogy and Art Pedagogy
63727 | Symbolism of Selected Wax Prints in West Africa
63874 | The Study of the Visual Effects of Depth Creations and Perspectives in New Egyptian Archeological Discoveries
63272 | Designers in a Diverse Society of Change: Cultivation and Responsibilities
63319 | Collaborative Strategy for the Construction and Graphic Representation of a Cultural Ecosystem Involving Participatory Design
63521 | Using Design to Connect Children Through Playful Discovery
63466 | Drawing and Ideation Process at Design Education: A Systematic Literature Review
64368 | Creative Strategies for Making Technology-based Decisions in Education
64392 | Discussion on Teaching Design of Integrated Course of Picture Books in Primary School Based on Case Study
64352 | Effects of Social Media Features on Music Teaching and Learning During the Movement Control Order (MCO) Period
64227 | Black Life Matters: Did It Change Our Perception of Art?
63269 | Material Design and Audio-visual Narratives for Pedagogy: Theoretical Premises and Evaluation Tools for Experimenting Stop-motion Animation as Teaching Method

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on June 06, 2022. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Featured Presentations

  • Research Integrity: Replicability and Reproducibility in Art & Design Research
    Research Integrity: Replicability and Reproducibility in Art & Design Research
    Featured Panel Discussion: Heitor Alvelos, Susana Barreto & Anne Boddington
  • How a Local Knowledge Network Can Impact the Generation of Economic and Social Value Within the Community
    How a Local Knowledge Network Can Impact the Generation of Economic and Social Value Within the Community
    Keynote Presentation: Clara Gonçalves
  • Viability and Sustainability of Creative Practices, Crafts and Traditional Industry Sectors
    Viability and Sustainability of Creative Practices, Crafts and Traditional Industry Sectors
    Keynote Presentation: Lynn-Sayers McHattie
  • The Attention Economy
    The Attention Economy
    Keynote Presentation: Jon Wozencroft
  • Experiential Knowledge + Science + Art = Creative Ethnographic Drawing
    Experiential Knowledge + Science + Art = Creative Ethnographic Drawing
    Keynote Presentation: Susana de Noronha
  • Against the Method: Recovering the Senses in the Age of Hyperformatting
    Against the Method: Recovering the Senses in the Age of Hyperformatting
    Keynote Presentation: Mirian Nogueira Tavares
  • Beyond a Dialogue between the Sciences and the Arts in Times of Uncertainty
    Beyond a Dialogue between the Sciences and the Arts in Times of Uncertainty
    Keynote Presentation: Manuel Heitor
  • Design and Technology in Online Spaces: Health, Work, Education and the Future
    Design and Technology in Online Spaces: Health, Work, Education and the Future
    Keynote Presentation: Michael Menchaca

Conference Programme

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on June 06, 2022. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Research Integrity: Replicability and Reproducibility in Art & Design Research
Featured Panel Discussion: Heitor Alvelos, Susana Barreto & Anne Boddington

Research Integrity is a growing concern worldwide. It addresses both the behaviours, conduct and professionalism of researchers as well as how others have confidence and trust in the methods, findings, and insights of any publicly funded academic research.

This discussion will explore how many current research frameworks in which art and design researchers are working trend towards universality and to a ‘one size fits all’ construction of research. In practice, art and design research methodologies embrace and draw from medicine, health, and physical sciences to more interpretive realms of the social sciences and humanities that are by definition, contextual and culturally determined, and where the language of replicability and reproducibility may require reflection and nuance while also maintaining academic integrity and public trust in the research conducted and its findings.

https://embassy.science/wiki/Theme:A612e3c5-4f31-470f-b5bf-3751923848e8

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How a Local Knowledge Network Can Impact the Generation of Economic and Social Value Within the Community
Keynote Presentation: Clara Gonçalves

This presentation will examine 12 years of experience and evidence towards the creation of a community knowledge network based on a human-centred strategy and powered by a medium-sized university (32,000 students) in Portugal.

Creating a community of practice that drives R&D products into strategic future business opportunities was the “inspiration” from the start. One of the main results was the establishment of a large network of partnerships all over the world, always focused on organisations / institutions such as universities, accelerators, funding agencies, embassies, scientific and technological organisations (e.g. European Space Agency or Fraunhofer Institute in Germany), corporations, among many others.

At the same time, and as the project evolved, mobilising technology and releasing human capacity to face new challenges and shape a new socioeconomic system capable of offering opportunities for all as a community also required the definition of a strategy to empower the entire community (not just leaders) to co-create a new vision on 1) growth and competitiveness; 2) education, skills and work; 3) equality, diversity and inclusion.

Today the main challenges remain on the side of long-term sustainability partnerships with communities (local and foreign) and the constant creation of new forward-looking activities to infinity and beyond!

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Viability and Sustainability of Creative Practices, Crafts and Traditional Industry Sectors
Keynote Presentation: Lynn-Sayers McHattie

Contemporary practices of craft are increasingly associated with progressive agendas of gender emancipation, environmental sustainability and locally rooted ethical production and consumption. This presentation explores the ‘political economy of craft’ as an embodied and experiential practice, towards situating craft as a rich form of cultural wisdom. The research focuses on Fair Isle and Sanquhar knitting as a body of knowledges and practices - viewed as a form of material cultural assets - which can support the future sustainability of craft practitioners, in distributed geographical contexts. In so doing cultural assets yield an emotional and intellectual approach that literally unpicks the political economy of craft exposing its relations to production whilst at the same time binding the interdependencies between innovation and tradition that contribute to the cultural life of communities.

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The Attention Economy
Keynote Presentation: Jon Wozencroft

The attention economy was first theorised by political scientist Herbert A. Simon in 1971, sensing that the tendency towards information overload would create paralysis. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients”, he wrote. “Attention transactions" would replace financial transactions as the focus of our economic system, and especially in the worlds of politics, advertising and social media, so it came to be.

Intangible factors became paramount to the processes of promotion and distribution, namely immediacy, personalisation and free accessibility. "Attention economics" forms a potential consumer's attention as a resource – advertisers follow a model they called AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention is therefore the first stage in the process of converting non-believers and non-consumers. There is no time to digest, only to react, or not.

Progressively this directive takes over all aspects of communication, bringing us to the current conditions of widespread disinformation and its supposed remedy, the digital detox. If “ignorance is bliss”, in its latest guise, ignorance becomes essential for maintaining a certain level of mental health.

Disinformation fosters conspiracy theories, anxiety, incredulity, with the dangerous outcome that nobody believes anything anymore, or could that be the opposite?... Extremism emerges as the only way of attracting attention.

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Experiential Knowledge + Science + Art = Creative Ethnographic Drawing
Keynote Presentation: Susana de Noronha

Can a new format of illustrated social science, combining text and image, using visual and creative methodologies, facilitate and reinforce the outcomes and impact of our research in matters of health and illness? This presentation describes the outline and the heuristic possibilities of a novel qualitative methodology – creative ethnographic drawing – a hybrid approach I’ve been developing for the past five years. This transdisciplinary methodology evolved from a postdoctoral anthropological investigation focusing on the stories of Portuguese women with diverse cancer experiences, analysing how illness, resistance and death were experienced and conceptualised. With a view to a reinforced understanding of cancer, it underlines the experiential knowledge of those who live and feel it, patients, survivors, and bereaved relatives, bringing to the discussion whatever was regarded as relevant from their point of view. Combining firsthand experience and social science, enhanced by art, this methodology integrates embodied reasoning, speech, and drawing in the core of the investigation, using them as methodological resources and forms of knowledge, using my interlocutors’ words and stories to create a meaningful sequence of images.

With the potential to democratise science, producing a more accessible, readable and visible form of knowledge, creative visual methodologies can also broaden the way social studies understand reality and take action, diversifying what we can say, show, and do. Refusing their accessory or secondary participation in science, I use the ontological, heuristic, epistemological, and performative resources offered by artistic and visual practices, considering them as possible extensions of experience, that is, a part of the way illness can be felt, understood, and managed. Linking medical anthropology to the possibilities of a hybridization of ethnography, art, and visual methods, I emphasise what we can find in that combination. Methodologically, however, the drawings and paintings go beyond what is conventionally understood as scientific illustration. By adding metaphor and imagination to the creative process, with the use of specific shapes and colours, I was able to materialise ideas and facts that otherwise would not be translatable into conventional realistic illustration, aiming to broaden and facilitate the reader’s and viewer’s comprehension.

Resulting from informal conversations, the drawings are understood as collaborative and co-authored creations, bearing the names or pseudonyms of my interlocutors, seeking a balance between writing and speaking, reaffirming the undivided roles of the researcher and the interviewees in their conceptual formulation.

Image: Noronha, Susana (2016) These are my rings: me, my mother and my sister (Acrylic on paper)

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Against the Method: Recovering the Senses in the Age of Hyperformatting
Keynote Presentation: Mirian Nogueira Tavares

In 1975 the philosopher of science Paul Feyrebend wrote a work that, even today, provokes reactions: Against the Method. In the first edition, the book contained a subtitle: “Outline of an anarchic theory of the theory of knowledge,” which no longer appears in the 3rd edition revised by the author. In fact, with each new edition, the author revised, added and slightly altered the ideas that were initially shaped and which, according to him, was an incomplete work. Written as a letter to his friend Imre Lakatos, who died before he could give an answer that would also come in book form, Against the Method proposes a counter-method, or an anarchist epistemology, which called into question the positivism of science, and of the Academy, and proposed to restore chaos. A chaos producing divergent thoughts, which approached science as a complex, historical and philosophical whole.

Also, in the ‘70s, Edgar Morin began to write his most monumental work, three volumes which he generically called The Method. In the first volume, The Lost Paradigm: Human Nature, he presents his method, also a counter-method, for the understanding of science, and why not, of the world that formulated it. Complex Thought assumes the etymology of the word Complexus, from Latin – that which is woven together, to affirm that it is not possible to segment knowledge, that it exists in relation.

I intend to approach the question proposed by Feyrebend and, in another way, by Morin, to inquire the direction in which teaching, and the issues related to it, are taking in a contemporaneity too tied to technical thinking and a unidirectional view of scientific knowledge. Will we be able to continue teaching, despite the methods? Is there possible learning that is not measurable and not accounted for?

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Beyond a Dialogue between the Sciences and the Arts in Times of Uncertainty
Keynote Presentation: Manuel Heitor

Understanding “Human Agency” and the Need to Guarantee Responsible, People-centred and Climate-aware Systems for our Common Good in a Decentralised and AI Driven Digital Age

This lecture relies on the hypothesis that current challenges associated with increasing uncertainties of modern western societies must lead us to safer, cleaner and more resilient forms of digital governance and forms of institutional innovation that must necessarily be centred on people but, above all, be oriented through our collective knowledge. Recent unexpected threats to our common safety and public goods, including public health, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing activity of individual digital terrorism or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have shown that our societies are not as safe as we thought. In association with other recent political decisions and movements, such as Brexit among many other nationalistic movements and trends, we are facing unprecedented threats that should foster a clear call for action.

Evolving forms of technology governance, including the regulation of digital platforms and digital standards, should be oriented to promote “digital humanism” and guarantee a transdisciplinary approach to collective behaviours and the consideration of “human agency”. They should ensure that citizens, at large, have better knowledge of digital services and digital providers, together with improved user responsibility in an emerging decentralised digital age and AI-enabled innovations. Although most of the current debate is dominated by new technological advancements of products and services in the financial industry (i.e., Fintech), as well as related issues associated with blockchain in the context of cryptocurrencies, the acceleration of decentralisation and AI affects a quite diversified set of actors and sectors of activity and all of our daily life, from industry and critical infrastructures to the arts (e.g., NFTs, non-fungible tokens).

We focus this lecture on the need to guarantee our collective responsibility towards carbon neutrality, avoiding a climate disaster, as well as promoting our global safety. This requires new research on emerging forms of knowledge production and diffusion, together with the need to understand “collective behaviours” through new transdisciplinary approaches, moving beyond a dialogue between the sciences and the arts. Above all, these issues should contribute definitely to technology governance of decentralised digital networks and an increasingly massified use of AI.

A few case studies are provided, including sustainable land management for carbon neutrality, the preservation of coastal areas and the protection of space assets in the era of “New Space”.

Empowering users and citizens, at large, will promote the need to educate and train every single citizen, while ultimately avoiding dominant economic or political interests, as well as digital terrorism and related individual malfunctions. The rules of governance must boost research and innovation, foster growth and competitiveness and help smaller companies and start-ups to compete with very large players, in particular those who have the ability to copy their features, acquire them or block their business. New governance models must facilitate access and use of data by consumers, while providing incentives for them to invest in ways to generate value through data in association with “human agency”. It includes the combination of anonymized data from different sources to produce new and valuable insights and services. In addition, rules should evolve in a way to fight against “mendacity” and, in contrast, to foster "fact-checking". Also, to promote safeguard situations of illegal transfer of data without notification, for example by the “cloud” service provider without traceability, while promoting the development of interoperability standards so that data is reused across sectors.

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Design and Technology in Online Spaces: Health, Work, Education and the Future
Keynote Presentation: Michael Menchaca

Conventional wisdom and popular media typically focus on the more negative facets of the online world: isolation, poor infrastructure, challenges with student learning, and too many Zoom meetings. However, the reality is that online technology has provided an alternate outcome to an even more potentially disastrous reality. This was no accident. Programmers and designers have tinkered for years to create robust online spaces that support health, the workplace, and especially education. The calamitous times of the pandemic only emphasize the utility and necessity of these spaces. In this talk, I will highlight some of the important work supporting the design and implementation of online spaces, including in areas of health, work, and education. I will also briefly talk about what designers envision for the future.

For health, data indicate that distance technology likely saved lives and lowered exposure. I will review some of the important advances in telemedicine and remote learning that allowed for managing risk during the pandemic. In the workforce, beyond just managing exposure, telework has transformed how we work and many companies continue to provide permanent options. Most significantly, in education, exposure to remote teaching has led to purposeful, design-based learning that has transformed learning experiences in all areas: primary, secondary, post-secondary, training, and even informal.

However, each of these areas still faces significant challenges, including patient experiences, working abroad, tax implications, infrastructure, and even global collaboration. But rather than allow such challenges to inhibit progress, we can rely on purposeful design and both fiscal and human investment for success. I will outline some of the major challenges in each of the areas discussed and conclude with a focus on how purposeful design and futurist thinking can help build back better in a post-pandemic future. In short, I will show how we can embrace online spaces and not lament how we have been forced to rely on them.

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