Design and the sciences rely on each other to produce and communicate knowledge. Even as this relationship is increasingly called into question as the perceived legitimacy of both fields fractures under misinformation campaigns, we view the interreliance of the two as an earnest priority. Much of our work relies explicitly on our ability to operate across the spheres of science and design. This is particularly true in our overhaul of the website of EuroMOMO, or the European Mortality Monitoring Project. EuroMOMO is an online analytical tool that tracks mortality data across 29 European countries. The website began in the 1990s as a minor public health project funded by the Statens Serum Institut, the arm of the Danish Ministry of Health responsible for preparedness against infectious disease. While some European countries make their mortality data public through national websites, EuroMOMO is the only place to view and compare data of all its participating countries simultaneously. These wide-reaching sets of data allow users to observe morbidity around specific events, such as earthquakes or H1N1 outbreaks, against more average rates.
In a dark room, a visitor strikes a stone with a rock mallet. The resulting waves sound off in a series of metallic clinks, the echoes of earth against earth. In response, the room begins to pulse with an amber glow, illuminating a set of seven flat stones raised alongside one another on metal stands. Together, they constitute a lithophone, a percussive instrument that uses the resonant qualities of rock to produce sound.
The Chilean Pavilion invites visitors to engage with Indigenous ways of knowing that challenge anthropocentrism. Lithophonic technology has been harnessed by Indigenous peoples around the world, but this piece works with wisdom of the Mapuche, one of the original peoples of Chile. Through the fossil record, the Chilean stone itself holds pieces of the Mapuche’s 18,500 years of history in the settler colonial state. Ancestral Mapuche lands now also house the seven quarries from which the pavilion’s lithophonic stones originate, nationally recognized as sites of lithic artistry.
The Coding Train is an active community built around a YouTube channel in which Daniel Shiffman, an infectious delight of a human, teaches programming for all. Any potential drudgery of coding is diffused through Dan’s signature energy-bomb style, emboldening even fledgling coders to keep at it. Many of the channel’s subscribers, who number well over a million, interact with Dan in the comments as one would a goofy old friend. The Coding Train’s approachable, no-one-left-behind teaching philosophy made YouTube an attractive tool for carving out its uplifting home on the internet. The platform has afforded the serious level of accessibility required to pull off the community’s ambition to welcome any learner to experiment with code as a form of self-expression.
The Processing Foundation acts as a bridge between the fields of visual arts and technology, working to make the use of software accessible in the arts, and the arts present in technology, especially among underrepresented practitioners. It’s been building this bridge since 2001, with the release of its program and coding language Processing. In the 20 years since, Processing has been a deliberately unfenced introduction to tools that can otherwise be intimidating for students, artists, designers, and other beginners.
Superbright is an experience design studio whose work in emerging technologies is made rich with a reverence for traditional storytelling media. The studio recognizes that while virtual and mixed realities often receive frenzied predictions of total industry disruption, disciplines like architecture, design, and the arts have always been immersive. Superbright bends these more classic elements into nascent dimensions using tools such as virtual reality, physical computing, motion capture, and the internet of things. Their work deepens narratives into experiential stories at the crux of the real and virtual. In designing a new visual language and website for the studio, we knew that this project needed to be more than a symbolic representation of the studio’s work. Instead, it’s a means of demonstrating Superbright’s capabilities through any interaction potential clients have with the studio across the website, merchandise, physical installation setups, and elsewhere.