Networks of Texts
The thematic strand ‘texts’ will investigate networks of mediation: the heterogeneous ways in which networks of texts operate and the meanings they communicate. ‘Texts’ (involving text and image) incorporates the academic, professional, official, unofficial, fictional and non-fictional narratives, which inhabit networks of print and electronic media; networks that communicate knowledge, information and meaning. Networks of text and image, according to Latour, participate in ‘reassembling the social’. Texts materialise the semiotic within a network of design, providing opportunities to explore semiotic networks and the meanings they connote.

Contributions to this theme might include work on the textual networks operating within, for instance, academic journals, popular magazines or films, newspapers, web sites, blogs, books (fiction/non-fiction), graphic novels or comics. Papers may expand on the relationships between, among others, the human and the non-human, the organic and the inorganic, exclusion/inclusion, life style and identity formation, representation and consumption, time, place and cultural production. The network, furthermore, can itself be considered and explored as ‘the message’.

Ideas
The theme ‘ideas’ will consider ideas that flow through networks of design. It is within and through heterogeneous networks that ideas circulate, and it is through their open ended form that ideas influence design and design practice. Ideas not only inform design, but they also inform theories of design. Both theory and practice can evolve and be innovative, but innovation and evolution are predicated on ideas. Ideas can flow from existing design, or they can develop out of a conjunction of disparate ideas, but they occur within networks. Design speaks of, and for, cultures and societies and has translated, transmitted and made material their values and ideas. Networks of ideas connect the social, cultural and technological with the biological, environmental, economic, and a universe of things.

Papers in this thematic strand will consider the networks of ideas that have influenced design, ‘design cultures,’ design theory, design history and the histories of design - the networks they have travelled through, and the concepts that cluster around them. Debates about the relationship between history, theory and practice will be a particular focus: the diverse ways in which practice has contributed to theory, and how design theory and history have responded to, interpreted and shaped the practices of design.

Technology
Technology is designed, but for what purposes, for whom and to which ends? The networks of purpose, use or identity, among others, which are built into technology are founded on a conviction that designers share certain codes of belief and practice with each other, and with users, not least that the user is prepared to adopt particular lifestyles, patterns of behaviour or values predicated upon innovations in technological design. These built-in codes can determine how, where, and by whom a technology can be used, its symbolic value and connotations. Conversely, users (including designers) may, of course, subvert the designer’s intentions, and redeploy technology to very different ends.

Networks of technology involve the systems that surround, comprise and shape technologies as well as the technologies themselves (mechanical and virtual). These include organisations, individuals, economies, scientific processes, practices of design and use, learning and training (the willingness to embrace the demands technology makes through, for instance, opaque instruction manuals), and the beliefs, values and assumptions attached to, and communicated through, them. The desire to possess technology, meanwhile, is also part of the heterogeneous nature of technology. Papers are invited that explore the various and varied ways in which technology operates as a heterogeneous, open ended, network of design.

Things
“Like humble servants, they live on the margins of the social doing most of the work”. Bruno Latour, in his influential book Reassembling the Social, criticises the absence of objects from social thought. He argues, in contrast, that material and social entities should be considered together, underscoring the significance of the connections between people and things.

The idea that things matter, of course, is not new to design historians and those studying material culture, disciplines that are founded on the study of artefacts and the practices associated with them. Latour’s emphasis on connectivity and, above all, on the agency of objects as “participants” in a course of action, nevertheless, opens up new ground. It encourages us to look again at the ways in which objects allow, afford, encourage, render possible, suggest, influence or forbid. The complex relationships between people and things, for instance, can work to express power relations, establishing or subverting social hierarchies, and transforming relations of gender, sexuality or ‘race’.

The theme of ‘things’ will consider how the actions of objects and people are woven into the same stories. It encourages papers that explore the interactions between people and things to discover the stories objects tell and the cluster of memories, feelings, emotions, ideas and power relations that surround them.

People
This theme focuses on ‘people’ as individuals, collectives, organisations or communities who are connected by specific relationships, ideas, beliefs or goals. Networks of people, for instance, might share common values, knowledge and practices, or inhabit the same psychological, geographical, theoretical or social space. They enable the development of associations and encourage processes of connectivity (or dislocation) that can operate in a variety of ways, intimately or at a distance, within local contexts, and across national and international boundaries.

From a design perspective, there is evidence to suggest that the more open the network, the more possibilities exist for creative growth, further encouraged by cross-pollination between disciplines and wider access to information and the exchange of ideas. ‘Networks of people’ invites proposals that consider the workings, attributes and relations of individual (or collective) 'agency' that help define networks of design. Papers may consider, for example, professional design networks (groups or societies); informal or formal creative communities or collaborations; consumer groups and the networks involved in adaptation and use; global networks; or the networks that emerge from shared experiences, or understandings of, gender, sexuality or ‘race’.

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