TRANSDISCIPLINARY 3D DIGITAL PRAXIS AS A CRITICAL DRIVER FOR DESIGN DISCOURSE

The conjunction of technology and culture has shaped new creative opportunities which break with previous domain-specific models of practice.  As computer technologies become increasingly affordable and prevalent, and computing enters its pervasive, networked phase, the expectations we have of the objects we surround ourselves with might be transformed.  Specifically, the outputs of the current dominant economic and corporate drivers might to some extent, be replaced by artefacts and designed objects whose function is to provide alternate or parallel values to established design discourses.

It has been recognised that an increasing number of practitioners are able and willing to negotiate working across the disciplinary domains of architecture (i.e. architectural research that concerns building design), product design and sculpture.  It is proposed that computer aided design and manufacturing technologies can enable new models of practice.  This paper positions the notion of transdisciplinary design discourse as a critical driver for design vocabularies and methods towards an indicated new object grammar.  Exemplary projects from the exhibition ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’ (co-curated by the author - September 29th-October 21st, 2006 in Lancaster, UK) are reviewed to critically map how an increased level of sophistication in the implementation of these technologies contributes to design discourse in a cross-disciplinary manner.

The aim of this exhibition is to present examples of work that blur the conventional boundaries of art and design practice through the use of technology.  The exhibition is international in scope with artists, architects and designers participating from: Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.  4 new commissions and 16 existing projects from practitioners across the disciplines of architecture, product design and sculpture; working with wearable technologies, Open Source software, CAD/CAM and rapid prototyping/manufacture have been selected to exhibit.

This paper asserts that new sets of creative, cultural and economic conditions have stimulated intriguing levels of inquiry by creative practitioners to work across two or more of these domains and to seek out and use technologies that facilitate a particular blurring between these disciplines.  It is argued that this convergence (enabled and accelerated by computer visualisation and manufacturing processes) signifies a multidirectional morphing at the edges of disciplines and the opportunity to create fundamentally new types of designed object and practice that eclipse conventional tropes.  The researcher references an existing technology adoption model to make meaningful evaluations between such systems, projects and objects across domain-specific boundaries.