CONF: Futures Past: Design and the Machine, November 21-23, MIT, Boston



Dear all,

We are excited to share with you the schedule for the conference Futures
Past: Design and the Machine, which will take place on November 21st-23rd, 2013 at the MIT Media Lab. The conference brings together pioneering figures in media, design, and computation from the 1960s and 1970s with historians and scholars of technology and architecture. The Architecture Machine Group, Lionel March, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Chuck Eastman, George Stiny, John Gero, Paul Richens, and Edward Hoskins will discuss their contributions and early research in computation and interface design, and scholars will interrogate the historical context of research and technologies developed in the postwar period.

The event is open to the public. To reserve a seat please fill in the registration form found in futurespast.info. To secure your RVSP please arrive at the conference at least 15 minutes before the starting time.
Apart from a limited number of RSVPs, seating will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Below you will find a description, along with the schedule of the event and the attached poster. Please feel free to share this announcement with your department and any interested parties. For questions and more information contact fpdm@mit.edu.

We are looking forward to having you with us.

Best Regards,

Duks Koschitz, Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute, PhD Candidate, Design and Computation, MIT Olga Touloumi, PhD Candidate, History and Theory of Architecture, Harvard University Theodora Vardouli, PhD Student, Design and Computation, MIT


Futures Past: Design and the Machine is a three-day conference on the institutional and intellectual history of research and visions for human-machine systems beginning in the second half of the 20th century, and its relationship to emerging roles of technology in design. As computational media pervaded design pedagogy and practice in the post-World War II period, the model of interaction between humans and computers in relation to the creative process persists as a research question, even though consistently obscured by the exigencies of practice. The conference is structured around paper sessions with junior scholars, researchers, and historians. The event includes panel discussions with protagonists of early efforts to incorporate computers, information technologies, and communication engineering in the design process.

THURSDAY_NOV 21
16:30 Conference Opening by Terry Knight (MIT)
16:45 Welcome Remarks by Duks Koschitz (MIT/Pratt), Olga Touloumi (Harvard), Theodora Vardouli (MIT)

17:00 The Architecture Machine Group (moderator:  Daniel Cardoso, Penn
State)
A conversation among Nicholas Negroponte, Steven Gregory, Christopher Herot, Andrew Lippman, Masanori Nagashima, Paul Pangaro, and Guy Weinzapfel


FRIDAY_NOV 22
09:15 Paper Sessions Opening by Arindam Dutta (MIT)

09:30 Designing Futures (chair: Felicity Scott, Columbia) Carlotta Daro (ENSA Paris Malaquais), “On the Anti-Modern Use of Cybernetics in the Work of N. Schöffer”
Larry Busbea (University of Arizona), “Environment as Material”
Gabrielle Schaad (ETH), “Everting the Machine – Interaction of Human and Machine in Yamaguchi Katsuhiro’s Environmental Design for the Mitsui Pavilion (Osaka Expo ’70)”

11:30 Paul Richens, Edward Hoskins, Adam Gawne-Cain (moderator Axel Kilian, Princeton)

03:00 Systems Thinking (chair: Jennifer Light, Northwestern) Britt Eversole (Princeton), “Architettura Parametrica and the Problems of Intellectual Virginity, circa 1960”
Nikos Katsikis (Harvard), “Complete Urbanization is Unavoidable but Computable”
Ksenia Tatarchenko (Columbia), “’I’, ‘We’ and the EVM”

05:00 Lionel March & George Stiny (moderator: Altino Joao Magalhaes Rocha, Universidade de Évora)


SATURDAY_NOV 23
10:00 Modeling Information (chair: John Harwood, Oberlin)
Moa Carlsson (MIT), “Analogue and Digital GIS: Mapping a Shared
Territory for Design”
Jacob Gaboury (NYU), “Image Objects: Computer Graphics at the University
of Utah,1965-1979”
Alise Upitis (MIT), “Design as Effect circa 1962: Alexander and
Sutherland”
John R. Blakinger (Stanford), “Camouflage circa 1942: Gyorgy Kepes and
the Militarization of the Image”

01:30 Chuck Eastman & John Gero (moderator Dennis Shelden, MIT)

03:15 Mediating Interfaces (chair: Peter Galison, Harvard)
David Theodore (Harvard), “The First Failure of Man-Computer Symbiosis:
The Hospital Computer Project, 1960-1968”
David Mindell (MIT), “Systems and Subjectivity in 20th Century
Commercial Aviation”
Molly Steenson (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), “Supreme Usability: The
Architecture Machine Group and Information Spaces”

05:30 Alan Kay (moderator: Edith Ackermann, MIT/Harvard)

07:30 Conference Closing