MASR520

The concept of dwelling carries with it a productive quality, and active engagement with one’s environment. Simply taking shelter, as Heidegger reminds us, is not dwelling. One could argue that the habitual forms of our everyday experience from consumption to tourism to surfing the Internet are forms of habitation that lack the productive quality of dwelling. This course explores what it could mean to “dwell” in age where finding place is challenged by mobility and virtuality and yet potentially enabled by technological agency.

The Dialogues and Interactions Seminar is designed to support the student’s investigations and focus their thesis topic. As a platform for the discussion and writing up of student research, the course seeks to contextualize art, media and design practice through a consideration of historical and contemporary influences. Discussion, presentations and writing inform the student’s capacity to understand and locate how their projects are in dialogue with contemporary issues and specific debates within their fields of inquiry.

This course is designed to support the MAA students’ Thesis Projects by covering a wide range of topics from theories of the everyday, network theory and interaction design. Students will learn to re-articulate their thesis projects by investigating models of engagement and interactivity within a physical context in the city provided by the course.