Category Archives: Uncategorized

The 8th Lodz Design Festival, starting tonight, features several projects providing a reinterpretation of the Brave New World motto. Generally asked: Does bold designing entail a promise to change your life for the better? How does it affect the process of building … Continue reading →

“Verschiedenheit zur Normalität werden lassen”. “Teilhabe zur Selbstverständlichkeit erheben”. So klar die Wünsche und Forderungen der jüngsten Debatten rund um Inklusionsthematik auch formuliert sind, so deutlich wird auch, dass es gerade in Unternehmen vielfach an erprobten Konzepten mangelt und Träger … Continue reading →

Accelerate! The accelerationist reader Armen Avanessian & Robin Mackay (Ed.) The term Accelerationism, describes a contemporary political heresy, which is the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate … Continue reading →

Inklusion, Teilhabe, Gleichstellung. Bei kaum einem anderen Thema herrscht vergleichbar große emotionale Lethargie wie im Umgang mit Behinderung. Was darf man sagen, wohin darf man schauen, wann darf man lachen? Immer neue Regeln erschöpfen einen eigentlich spannenden Diskurs. In medialen … Continue reading →

[Theometrica (by Oscar Palaou and Alexander Müller-Rakow); Foto: T. Bieling] A couple of days ago, we mentioned the Theometrica Installation, which will be exhibited until december 13. For those, who won’t be able to see it…here is a little video!

Die Berliner RingvorlesungAnderesWissen-WS13-14 fragt nach der Alterität künstlerischen Wissens. In der Spannung oder auch Balance zwischen einem konsistenten Wissensbegriff und dem Besonderen, gar Anderen eines künstlerischen Wissens, liegen Reiz und Herausforderung der Fragestellung. Warum werden die Künste überhaupt unter der Kategorie Wissen erfasst? … Continue reading →

Mobile Food and Foodhunting by Joseph Carlson [Winwood48 Edition] Jedermanns Sache wird die eigenwillige Buchgestaltung vermutlich nicht sein. Und auch  die einzelne Textzeile, die sich mittig über die komplette Buchlänge erstreckt, und dabei Assoziationen zu einem Straßen markierenden Mittelstreifen weckt, … Continue reading →

“Medien schaffen Wirklichkeit – Journalistinnen und Journalisten wissen das und bedienen sich leider dennoch häufig einseitiger Sprachbilder, Floskeln und Klischees. Formulierungen wie „an den Rollstuhl gefesselt“ oder „leidet an“ lassen negative Bilder im Kopf entstehen, die das öffentliche Bild behinderter … Continue reading →

The Verge’s Ben Popper explores the world of biohacking, where DIY cyborgs are pushing the bleeding edge of human enhancement. From basement labs to piercing shops. A documentary about the “grinder” culture that hopes to merge man and machine.

Lepht Anonym on biohacking, implants, sensory extension, silicon and on how to hack your own perception of electromagnetic radiation for approximately thirty Euros.

This project just caught our attention: A system, where the user wears a headset with sensors that pick up magnetic signals from a tongue ring. Moving the tongue to the mouth’s corners, moves the wheelchair forward or backward etc… The … Continue reading →

Susanna Hertrich recomended this one to us, since it seems to fit perfectly in our topic. She says: “Slightely disturbing novel of a circus family of “freaks” that questions our understanding of normality. Expect weird sexual festishes, strange cults, crazy tyrants, … Continue reading →

In Per-Olof Hedvall’s Book “The Activity Diamond – Modeling an Enhanced Accessibility”, which he elaborated at Lund University’s Department of Design Sciences, he assembles three quotes, to be shared here now. The first two of them are surely pretty popular. … Continue reading →

Recently our colleague and friend fabian gave a fantastic presentation at TED‘s satalite in Berlin. Who missed his thoughts on ‘humanizing technology’ should check it out her:

The Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL), created by Cyberdyne Corporation to “upgrade existing physical capabilities of the human body”, weigths 23 kg and is comprised of robotic limbs and a backpack containing the suit’s battery and computer system. The HAL suit … Continue reading →

“The Bell Telephone Laboratory’s Voder* was the first attempt to synthesise human speech by breaking it down into its component sounds and then reproducing the sound patterns electronically to create speech. That sounds simple in theory and, in fact it … Continue reading →

Mobility in the mudflat… [Picture (now anonymised) found at: buesum24]

[picture source: unknown] How might we bring assistive products/technologies and aspects/activities of entertainment to a fruitful and enriching fusion? Let’s take pictures like the one above as a though-provoking source of inspiration.

Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Leeds have been experimenting with a tracking system: simply by watching TV the computer learns to match subtitles and Sign Language… The following short clip is german:

Besides the questions about hoe environment changes the body and vice versa, we like to ask further questions related to embodiment: What belongs to a body and what not? When does a body stop be be human, and when does … Continue reading →

This sticker was send to us by a friend. He does not know, where it comes from, and neither do we. However we are consistent with the idea behind it…

With interest we recently received a hint on some kind of “trend”, called webbed toe piercing. Some people with who have toes that are fused by soft tissue, do it. Apparently, this area is a very safe spot to pierce … Continue reading →

[MITpress] Chris Gondek interviews Graham Pullin, the author of Design Meets Disability. (Besides an interview with Charlie Hailey, author of “Camps”). Listen to the interview!

As  a food for thoughts on the general discussion on accessibility, we like to share this poster with you. The poster is part of the latest campaign by AKTION MENSCH (dieGesellschafter.de)

Although this project does not totally match with the main focus of our research topic, we still like to take a closer look to the iBot (Individual Balancing Optimized Transporter). As a four wheeled chair, it bumps up kerbstones. On … Continue reading →