The Parsons' Masters in Design Studies Programme

"Design studies (like design) is a multifarious enterprise. A branch of the humanities, it comprises a wide range of critical perspectives on the meanings and values embodied in objects and places. It examines the forces that design exerts in, and on, the world - forces design sets in motion but does not control. Parsons' Masters in Design Studies program places particular emphasis on four points: the role of the designer and the design studio in redefining the scope of practice in the 21st century; design as an iteration of aesthetic and intellectual histories that continue to inform the present; the social, political and environmental behaviors and consequences of designing objects, places, situations, and systems today; design as the projection of different futures.

Above all, the MA Design Studies program focuses on the development of articulate, critical voices that can speak to these issues. Students will be prepared to write for the academic context, the design community, and the larger public realm. Working in close proximity to MFA studio programs at Parsons, they also have the opportunity to integrate film, video, and other media into their work."

(Susan Yelavich)

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Sketchbook blog of illustrator and cartoonist Jillian Tamaki

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Parsons The New School for Design: The Center for Transformative Media

"CTM is a new research center dedicated to the invention, critique, and understanding of transformative media practices, including gaming, social networking, creative mobility, data mining, and participatory learning.

Our work combines expertise in the design of social media, games, learning environments and communities with a deep understanding of the way dynamic media networks are used - and increasingly transformed - by audiences in their quest to learn, work, play, and participate. Projects draw from expertise in both design and the social sciences with a particular focus on ecologies of change. An emphasis on networked publics as spaces of learning forms a core perspective of The Center for Transformative Media.

Faced with an increasingly complex, participatory, and information-rich network culture individuals must learn how to engage in meaningful ways, with others, in order to gain access to information, services and entertainment. The space of the network, which spans local and global, real and virtual space, has become a primary site for engaging with the world, people, events, and ideas.

The power of the collective has become a primary strategy for managing information, solving complex problems, and building expertise. Recasting media spaces as networked learning environments will be the key to innovation within the next decade."

(Center for Transformative Media)

Urban Symphony: a film from underneath

"The concept of Urban Symphony is the visual and audio composition of the city, which is generated by the contact between physical objects, humans or animals with the surface of the ground. In other words, from the underground perspective, the objects that drop, roll or touch the ground create sounds and visuals."

(Varathit Uthaisri)

Directed by: TU+// Varathit Uthaisri; Sound: Plum// Napat Snidvongs; DP: Jun Oshima; Production: Tong// Thitawan Chaiwong

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The Peoples Portrait: a global networked public art project

"On 27 October [2004], media artist Zhang Ga and students from Parsons will debut The Peoples' Portrait: A Global Networked Public Art Project' on the world's largest digital display at the Reuters North American Headquarters in Times Square, and simultaneously in cities around the world. The Peoples' Portrait harnesses the Internet to create global portraits of a diverse range of people in their unique environments, rendered in real time and displayed instantaneously in New York, Brisbane (Australia), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Linz (Austria), and Singapore."

(Parsons Public Relations, 25/10/2004)

Originally posted on the Whitney Museum Portal at: http://www.whitney.org/artport/gatepages/november04.shtml (this link is now dead).

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