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An international interdisciplinary conference exploring the interpretive potential of architecture, exhibitions and design.

20-22 April 2010
Keynote Speaker: Peter Greenaway CBE

Call for papers
Narrative Space is a 3-day international interdisciplinary conference exploring the creation of narrative environments in museums, galleries, historic sites, buildings and landscapes. From the level of the site and the building down to the level of the exhibition and the object, how can we create environments which tell stories of people, of places and of collections? How can spaces, objects and a range of media be utilised to create spatial experiences which are engaging, meaningful and memorable?

Narrative Space draws together museum professionals, exhibition designers, architects and academics to explore practice at the cutting-edge of exhibition and experience making. In order to explore this vast area of research and practice it covers a range of themes including the ability of sites and buildings to hold or be overlaid with narratives; the history and theory of display; museums and exhibitions as spatial media; harnessing the spatial character, history and potential of buildings and sites; the nature and role of narrative and storytelling in the making of interpretive environments; the role of visitor-centred design in the production of museum space; and the emergence of a new range of interpretive approaches to museum and exhibition making which cut across architecture, film, design, digital media, interior and graphic design, literature and art.

Proposals are sought from museum practitioners, architects, designers, artists, filmmakers and others actively involved in the imaginative reshaping of museums, galleries and visitor experiences as well as academics researching in the areas of museum and gallery architecture, exhibition and display, both historical and contemporary.

Please send a short proposal of no more than 300 words to Suzanne MacLeod at sm100@le.ac.uk and Laura Hanks at laura.hanks@nottingham.ac.uk

Deadline: 29th July 2009
For additional information see the website

Segnalo questa conferenza, io sarò presente:
http://www.iasummit.it/2009

L’architettura dell’informazione si estende ben oltre le tassonomie e il web. Questo è il motivo per ampliare la nostra disciplina verso l’intera varietà di spazi informativi condivisi. Spazi digitali (ad es. software, siti web); fisici (ad es. musei, biblioteche, ospedali); procedurali (ad es. flussi di informazione nei processi lavorativi).
Peter Morville

Scienze dell’informazione, teorie della classificazione, logica, biblioteconomia, user experience, web design, psicologia ed ergonomia, industrial design: questi sono gli ingredienti dell’Architettura dell’informazione (Information Architecture o IA) il cui scopo è la progettazione e la realizzazione di ambienti informativi condivisi come possono esserlo le pagine di un sito Web.

Segnalo, su suggerimento di Raimonda che
«il 31 Ottobre e il 1 Novembre 2008, nell’ambito delle iniziative di TWDC 2008, prenderà il via la prima edizione di Brillo |Pensiero d’artista. Festival Internazionale di Filosofia dell’Arte contemporanea, organizzato dal Laboratorio di Ontologia del Dipartimento di filosofia dell’Università di Torino e dalla Fondazione Merz, con la collaborazione di Olga Gambari.
Brillo intende rispondere al bisogno naturale di spiegazione che si prova di fronte alla maggior parte delle opere d’arte contemporanea. Il compito di offrire spiegazioni sull’essenza sfuggente dell’arte contemporanea è affidato a filosofi, curatori, storici dell’arte, designer e scienziati cognitivi di fama internazionale (tra gli altri, Arthur C. Danto, Semir Zeki, Roberto Casati, Flaviano Celaschi, Maurizio Ferraris, Matteo Pericoli, Adriano Design).
Nella sua prima edizione, Brillo vedrà inoltre la partecipazione straordinaria del noto artista americano Matthew Barney, presente alla Fondazione Merz con un’installazione site specific e protagonista - per la prima volta in Italia - di un dialogo pubblico con Arthur C. Danto, filosofo e critico d’arte di The Nation, e Richard Flood, Chief Curator del New Museum of Contemporary Art di New York.»

Per inormazioni: http://brillofestival.com/festival.html
Scarica il programma

Desidero segnalare che questa settimana si tengono a Bologna due giornate di incontri dedicati a:
- Museo tra tradizione e innovazione: allestire, gestire, comunicare
- Museo/musei: il museo nella città contemporanea

L’iniziativa fa parte del progetto europeo Cultura, nato per facilitare lo scambio di buone pratiche per la valorizzazione dei beni culturali di un territorio. Le città di Bologna e Tuzla (Boznia-Erzegovina) hanno dato vita a CulTuRe II, un programma articolato in più fasi per la promozione del turismo culturale della città di Tuzla.
In questo ambito il Comune di Bologna ha organizzato le due giornate di formazione e di scambio tra gli operatori museali delle due città.
Gli interventi toccheranno diverse tematiche, dalle tecnologie digitali al servizio del Museo ai Sistemi Museali Territoriali, dagli allestimenti per comunicare il patrimonio industriale ai musei virtuali e al Museo diffuso.

Io interverrò nel corso della seconda giornata.
Potete scaricare il Programma: formazione_musei_bologna.pdf

Segnalo il seguente call for papers, che mi pare offra un consistente elenco di temi, di interesse per molti di noi, e forse in particolare per quanti fanno parte del gruppo di museologia.

Writing Design; Object, Process, Discourse, Translation
The Design History Society Annual Conference

call for papers

de Havilland Campus, University of Hertfordshire, 3-5 September, 2009.
Co-convenors: Dr Grace Lees-Maffei and Jessica Kelly

How do we find out about design, as both practice and object, including the processes of designing, crafting and manufacture, marketing and consumption? A variety of methods and sources ranging from observation, participation, interview and oral history, to object analysis and documentary and visual interpretation is used in order to understand the processes and products of design and material culture. In both researching design and preparing resultant outcomes, designers, design historians, practitioners of design studies, material culture studies, popular culture studies and literary studies use words, whether written or spoken, to describe visual and material processes and objects. Understanding design involves the use and translation of sources, both pictorial/material and written/verbal. As is fitting in the wake of the Design History Society’s 30th Anniversary and the 20th Anniversary of the Journal of Design History, this conference encourages participants to reflect on their sources, historiography and methodology, research, dissemination and teaching processes to examine the issues mobilised by articulating design and material culture with language and the ways in which writing about objects has conditioned our understanding of design. This conference is inclusive in its interests. Indicative themes and questions are as follows (the list is in no particular order and is not intended to be prescriptive, exclusive or exhaustive):
- Translating Design: What is at stake in the translation of objects into words, whether written or spoken, for the purposes of research, communication and understanding?
- Writing as Object: How does the design of words and writing impact upon their interpretation, both within studies of typography and book design and more broadly?
- Writing the Haptic? How can the haptic and tacit knowledge be discussed and written about?
- Design Writing: What has been the value of designers’ writings? What conclusions can we draw about writing on design, from popular and specialist design journalism and trade journals to academic studies of design? How have design and designers been represented or used as motifs in literature and other narratives?
- Writing Personae: How have designers attempted to shape their personae/biographies?
- Design and the Public: How has design been represented in the mass media, including magazine and television?
- Design Advice: How have discourses of lifestyle expertise shaped taste and consumption?
- Design Historiography: How do we, as students and scholars of design, write ourselves and our work into an evolving history of design history?
- Designing the Archive: How have archival holdings, documentary sources and curatorial practices shaped our understanding of design?
- Designing the Visitor Experience: How have curators in design exhibitions, museums and galleries used selection and synthesis, labels and catalogues, objects, words and images to tell stories and histories about design?
- Design before Design? How do we understand design practice in a period when documentary and object analysis are the sole sources through which we know design, using probate records, diaries, broadsheets, designer’s archives etc.
- Writing Nation: What impact has an existing design historical bias towards Western industrialised nations had on the understanding of design?
- Talking Design: How have interview and oral history practices functioned to enlarge understanding of design?
- Teaching Design: What pedagogical issues are raised by learning about designed objects through lectures, seminars and written assignments?
- Degrees of Design: What is the role and value of the written assignment in design education?

12 January 2009
Deadline for receipt of proposals

Per informazioni:
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/tvad/event030909.html

Per quanti si interessano di museologia, museografia, cultura materiale e design medicale segnalo il blog Biomedicine on Display progetto di Medicinsk Museion, University of Copenhagen: «This is the blog of Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen. We focus our inquiring minds on the display of visual and material culture in museums, laboratories and clinics. Our aim is to promote a wide public engagement with contemporary biomedicine.»

Nato recentemente all’interno di Icom, International Council of Museums, Icdad è l’International Committee of Decorative Arts and Design che, come si apprende dal sito web – che del comitato intende diventare strumento di comunicazione e diffusione –, «is devoted to decorative arts and design collections preserved within encyclopedic museums, decorative arts & design museums and related collections conserved in historic houses and monuments, castles and other related sites».

Il Comitato e il relativo sito sono ancora giovani per valutare, ma sarà interessante capire se e come procederanno i lavori e come sarà elaborata la coesistenza sotto uno stesso cappello di design e arti decorative.