An unfortunate byproduct of rapid technological growth and cheaper tech is a culture aloof to rapid product consumption and replacement. You can buy a laptop, knowing that in a few years you will replace it. I admire pursuits to include elements of longevity and sustainability in design, like modular submarines. They are constructed with the idea that certain technologies will remain necessary and functional in 100 years, so you begin by including those in the design. With the remaining space, you allow for different modules to be placed in- allowing for flexibility.
design
Cities and Corporations
Thursday, January 27th, 2011Both cities and corporations are apt targets for complex systems research, as they are both composed of entities interacting over various scales. Its undeniable that both are significant- in the best cases cities for providing a wealth of opportunities, and corporations for improving the quality of living.
Understanding their behavior is essential- everyday decisions are made for the future of cities, and future of companies. To have the tools to understand their growth and behavior leads to better models for prediction. City planning and organizational design can be well informed by findings within complexity research.
Complexity and Meaning
Monday, January 17th, 2011As an artist and designer, I find meaning an essential concept to understand- you must understand the implications of what you make and how they measure up to your actual intentions.
I had the pleasure of giving the Patterns and Meaning lecture at the 2011 NECSI winter school. It was my favorite lecture when I took the course, so preparing a talk on the subject was an exciting opportunity. I’ll begin with the contents of the lecture, in particular how they unify many important ideas regarding meaning, and then describe how these ideas can be applied to designing experiences for groups and individuals. I will follow that with a summary of my own explorations on meaning. The lecture was originally developed as an exploration of complex systems as applied to art.
Good Idea! Complexity and Innovation at the Boston Bookfest
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010Read the rest of this entry »
Boston Bookfest felt fantastic- a pretty good turnout resulting long lines to the talks. I was lucky enough to find a pass to skip the line and check out the ‘Good Idea!’ panel.
Design for Empowerment: Extended
Monday, October 11th, 2010
Technology is increasingly shaped and developed by everyday people who design, build, and hack their own devices, and the goal of this class is to understand, contribute to, and support these creative communities. We will focus on tools that enable non-experts to design and build computational and electronic artifacts. Along the way we will investigate software toolkits, hardware toolkits, open-source technologies, fabrication processes, and new manufacturing and distribution models.
from Design for Empowerment
With crowd-sourcing, social media, and open source tools we are all becoming a part of collaborative and community based social technology projects. We will explore these communities and tools with the question: How can we create tools which foster healthy communities? How can you identify and describe a healthy community?
DFE:X is an extension of the Design for Empowerment class offered at the MIT Media Lab that is open to anyone. We will share course materials, discussion points, documents, guest lectures, etc with the MIT course, but will meet and discuss on our own.
Over the duration of the course, participants will work to develop a design idea of their own with a critical eye toward the material explored in the course and will employ resources around the Boston area to realize the physical or digital prototypes (e.g. Boston FabLab, sprout, MIT Media Lab, etc.).
Here is the website for the course.
ALL BUSINESS ALL THE TIME
Monday, September 13th, 2010
Emergence: Fireflies
Saturday, July 17th, 2010One of the most intriguing phenomena within complexity science is that of emergence. It is a salient feature of complex systems, so much so that definitions of complex systems include the quality of exhibiting emergence. Many exciting solutions to the world’s bigger problems can be understood through collective dynamics and emergence.
Google’s search algorithm, to a heavy extent, depends on the nature of linking between websites. On the scale of the website and what links to it, Google is able to provide an answer the global problem of findability on the internet.
Muhammad Yunus developed a micro loan system that re-frames loans to take into account collective dynamics of a group. Through challenging the assumption of who one can give a successful loan to, and by tapping into group trust, he has created an effective method of alleviating poverty.
bio econ
Sunday, April 4th, 2010BioEcon: Design an economic system inspired by the sensitivity and resilience of biological systems, ex. metabolic networks, self-repairing skin
A Generative Method for Infrastructure Emergence
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Social systems are becoming more complex from technological advancements and increased connectivity. Individuals are further empowered with the capability to augment their memory and communication through computers, the internet, and cell phones. Every society has structures which influence collective behavior, and with all of the possible configurations of people in a population, the question emerges for designers of how to implement a method to use the collective information and create a successful design solution [1].
Cities have been shown to have fractal geometry. In this paper we show how the fractal shape can emerge from a generative process that takes information on the scale of individuals or groups, and uses it to design a permanent infrastructure on the scale of a city. In this sense, we grow cities consisting of individuals and roads, starting from just individuals. [from introduction of paper, see PDF for rest]
A Generative Method for Infrastructure Emergence from Kawandeep Virdee on Vimeo.
A Generative Method for Infrastructure Emergence
View more presentations from whichlight.
Complexity and Creativity
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
A talk I gave at the December 2009 Research Club brunch at Tribute Gallery on applying ideas of complexity to creative projects. Applications of complex systems ideas in the projects HEXAGON and PDX I Love You are described in the presentation. The talks were limited to five minutes each, and a transcript is included below.
Brunch #1 / Lecture #3 / Kawandeep Virdee Talks About Complexity from Research Club on Vimeo.
