February 14: Devices - On Hospitality, Hostility and Design

The seminar focuses on presentation and discussion on Martín Ávila's thesis Devices – On Hospitality, Hostility and Design. The thesis studies and speculates upon the interrelations of artifacts with human and nonhuman agents. These interrelations form assemblages, some of which have emergent properties, becoming manifestations of processes that we cannot fully control or understand. The work started by exploring the theme of hospitality and hostility with the ambition to better understand the ecological complexity of the design process and its results. This work combines different literary, philosophical and theoretical discourses and traditions with experimental design in order to develop and articulate the concept of device.

A device organizes, arranges, frames our environment and thereby defines and limits possibilities of relation. Through a series of design projects, the thesis examines the potential range of an artifact's relations. It does so by exploring grammatical associations that affect design conceptualizations, creating tools (preposition tools) as well as studying and articulating forms of symbiosis that an artifact might develop in and with its environment (¡Pestes!).

Watch the seminar via Vimeo here!