Special Topics

 

Special Topics - Spring 2010 

Please note: this page will be updated as information is confirmed. In case of a discrepancy between this page and InsideEC, the information on InsideEC will be deemed correct.

• Additional information on these courses is available at https://inside.eciad.ca
• Most credit courses have prerequisites that are clearly outlined on the website.

Special Topics - Spring 2010

AHIS 325 S001 & S002-Studies in Modern Art (3 Credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Thursday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Randy Lee Cutler

Topic: Metaphorical Bodies

Representations of body in twentieth century art demonstrate the shifting terrain of our corporeal and psychic realities. The body is no longer an expression of a unified and stable self but rather a mutating force moving toward narratives of interiority, fragmentation and metaphor. How is the body perceived, visualized and rendered in Modern art and contemporary art as well as related cultural theories of these periods? Designed around the Vancouver Art Gallery's exhibition Visceral Bodies and the instructor's own research on metaphors of digestion in visual culture, this course looks at a range of artistic practices that visualize the phantasmagoria of bodily incarnations.

 

AHIS 333 S001 - Interdisciplinary Forms (3 Credits)

Thursday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Randy Lee Cutler

Topic: Appetites
The mouth is the gate through which the outside comes in. Some materials on the outside seem able to open our mouths and appetites in general, almost against our will. How do certain cravings interact with willful and determined materials which posses a force greater than our own?  How do artists, chefs, scientists, among others reflect upon the experiences of yearning and excess? How does the constant consumption of stuff - food, drugs, oil, shoes, art materials, etc. have an integral effect on human, and animal, existence? Through an exciting public lecture series, this course seeks to explore the various ways in which the art and politics of appetites inform and form our daily lived experiences and practices.

 

AHIS 420 S001 - Topics in Fem, Gen, Cul Studies (3 Credits)

Friday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Dr. Joy James

Topic:  Feminism and Beyond: Making Difference and Becoming Otherwise

Autography-the mapping of the self-has a long history in feminist art practice. However, over the past few decades autography has been used in various art, design and media projects to complicate static notions of identity politics and the category of the subject, and to introduce instead ideas of multiplicity and difference, open-endedness and indeterminacy regarding how the self is defined. This shift in focus is radically reconfiguring contemporary definitions of gender and sexuality, and ultimately, definitions of what it means to be human. This course will explore recent art, design and media work from around the world that challenges how identity and difference are thought and practiced.

CCID 200 S001 - Community Projects (3 Credits)

CCID 300 S001 - Community Projects (3 Credits)

Tuesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Susan Stewart, Dean of Faculty of Culture and Community, and Sabine Silberberg, Doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School and counsellor at the Dr. Peter Centre West End

Topic:  Community Projects: Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation

Students will engage in a community project in collaboration with the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation at the Dr. Peter Centre in downtown Vancouver, and be provided with an ethical framework and appropriate methodologies for community practice, especially in projects that involve collaboration with marginal and at-risk communities such as the DTES (Downtown Eastside) in Vancouver. As part of this class, students will have the opportunity to apply field research and have structured sessions with staff and clients at the Dr. Peter Centre West End.

 

DESN 322 S001 - 2D Design Concentration (3 Credits)

Monday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Chris Hethrington

Topic:  Interface Design

Interface Design | This studio/lab course looks at the design and evaluation of user interfaces for computers and digital presentation technologies, from small to large screen. Human-centred design principles and practices, including human factors research, objectives and values, user experience, interface technology, communication strategies for effective audience interaction, and design methods from visualization to prototyping to testing and evaluation are covered from theoretical and practice perspectives. The course also examines key thought leaders in interactive design, successful and failed designs, and the merits and constraints of a variety of interaction metaphors, by drawing on examples from media arts and design practice. Assignments allow students to gain hands-on experience in all phases of designing and evaluation, including the production of cross-platform compatible interfaces through basic programming techniques for interface and animation in Adobe Flash.

 

DESN 323 S001 - 3D Design Concentration (3 Credits)

DESN 423 S001 - 3D Design Concentration (3 Credits)

Tuesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Anne-Kristina Arnold

Topic:  Human Fit: Testing and evaluating products and interfaces

Supporting courses are to help you build skills that are specific to your area of interest, and to help you give more time and attention to your Core Studio project.  This course supports core studio work in product design and interaction design by providing you with the opportunity to explore the ergonomic credibility and possibilities for your project.  A preliminary introduction to ergonomics methodology and testing protocols is followed by the creating testing and assessment of your core studio prototype. The course is very flexible with the ability to support a variety of different types of projects in various stages of development.  This course will offer small skill-building opportunities in the application of ergonomic principles and testing protocols in the first part of the semester, and then focus time and additional skills towards your Core Studio through the second part of the semester. Techniques will be taught to assist in all phases of product development with a particular emphasis on effective testing protocols.   Products are tested for physical ease of use as well as psychological and cognitive accessibility. 

 

DIVA 202 S001 - Interactivity: Media Essentials (3 credits)

Thursday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Leonard J. Paul

Topic:  Video Game Audio Workshop

This course is a hands-on introduction to how video game audio actually works from the inside out. Interactive audio allows the audio to shift and grow in response to outside stimulus. Students will learn using open source software how to make audio that responds directly to a game controller or other real-time input such as video from a webcam. The focus is on how to create fun reactive audio environments that create interesting audio results.

 

DIVA 302 S001 - Digital Projects I (3 credits)

Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Suzi Webster

Topic: Interactive Wearables

This course explores the notion of textiles as potential responsive interfaces.  It will introduce students to new material and conceptual possibilities for interactivity: creating embroidered circuits, screen-printing or painting with reactive inks, embedded mobile networks and the potentials of woven electronics. This material and conceptual exploration will be presented within a contextual framework of contemporary practice, including live video chats with practicing international artists and curators, and the creation of hybrid works that investigate intersections between art and design, sculpture and performance, fashion and computing, the body and its context, public and private, in a critical way.  Suzi Webster, the instructor, has been invited to participate in the international wearables exhibition, electromode that will be part of codelive 2010. Students enrolled in Interactive Wearables will have the opportunity to gain professional experience in assisting both with this exhibition and the accompanying series of conversations with leading wearables artists.

 

DIVA 303 S001 - Interactivity: Media Practice (3 Credits)

Tuesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Morgan Rauscher

Topic:  Creative Interactivity

This special offering is an exciting opportunity for students to learn about creative interactivity.  The course will focus on ideas of interactivity in creative practice and students will learn about current open source interactive technologies. The course includes technical skills development in interactive hardware and programming software. Combining easily used hardware and software, students will develop an interactive program using input sensors and a computer interface. Students will form creative teams allowing for an exciting collaborative opportunity and a wide range of learning experiences. Class time will focus on computer programming and electronics workshops to give students the tools they will need to move on and build their own interactive projects.

 

DIVA 305 S001 - Interactivity: Web Practice (3 Credits)

Monday, 12:30PM -  03:20PM  Jan 04 to April 17

Instructor: Carol Gigliotti                    

Topic: Online Graphic Novels

This course emphasizes visual storytelling in all its complexities, exploring the infinite possibilities of how to produce meaning by the sequence of images and words. Focusing on the creation of these stories for an online audience, students will investigate how comics uniquely manipulate the viewer's sense of time and space, smell and feeling, narrative and place, through the use of transitions and juxtapositions. Projects examine narrative structures, material and technical strategies, visual research, self-publishing, and the fusion of text and image. Over the decades, cartooning has matured even further, and now the exemplar of the form is the graphic novel, which tells highly complex, literate stories, often taking on politically sensitive topics. Discussion will include a concise history of the medium and the rise of manga and the graphic novel. Students will be encouraged, however, to construct stories in whatever genre, style and medium they like, and to critically engage in the process.

 

ENGL 201 S001 - Writing Across the Arts (3 credits)

Monday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Rita Wong

Topic:  Ecology and Response Abilities

This particular course starts by approaching ecology, or what Tim Lilburn has called "living in the world as if it were home." As this home heats up with global warming and people increasingly realize how the planet's interdependent systems affect one another in a complex ecology, how are artists, designers, writers, and public intellectuals finding ways to creatively respond to the situation at hand? Through regular writing assignments that respond to art, critical prose, media, and films, we will examine the ways in which people frame the phenomenon of climate change through language, applying rhetorical strategies that may range from acknowledging apocalyptic dread to offering pragmatic suggestions to encouraging a radical shift in values and priorities. As we read and think, we will consider how expectations regarding audience and context affect the form, tone, voice, and style of one's writing. We will discuss writerly and readerly strategies for navigating between contexts, disciplines, and social spaces. Through participating in a larger ongoing dialogue, how might we foster our abilities to respond to ecological questions?

 

GEVA 310 S001 - Visual Arts: Special Topics (3 credits)

Tuesday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Maria Anna Parolin

Topic:  Print Media, Special Topic: Surface & Pattern

Designed surfaces are everywhere. From our printed bed sheets, patterned cereal bowl, clothing and footwear, to the seats, floor and interiors of your preferred method of transportation or workplace. Surface design has gone far beyond traditional wallpaper and textiles and well into innovative industrial, commercial, residential, and medical applications. This course will introduce students to hands-on methods of surface design and textile printing focusing on repeated pattern. Projects will encompass various design processes such as drawing, photography, stencil and block printing, silkscreen printing, shibori (Japanese tie-dye using indigo) and digital applications on fabric and other surfaces. Students will also learn practical aspects of production and marketing their individual designs.

 

GEVA 310 S002 - Visual Arts: Special Topics (3 credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Note - The 18 students enrolled in GEVA 310 S002 must also enroll in the HUMN 305 S001 class.

HUMN 305 S001 Studies in the Humanities (3 credits)

Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Carol Gigliotti

Topic: Critical Animal Studies

Once one begins to notice, it becomes clear that animals play a central role in how meaning is made in the arts and humanities. This course deals with how and why visual, narrative and metaphorical depictions of animals affect our ways of being with animals in aesthetic, activist, environmental and biological contexts. You will be looking closely at these roles through examples in the arts, literature, media, film, design and performance. You will also be reading materials from a range of areas - literary theory, philosophy, history, art and film history, sociology, anthropology and critical theory - and encouraged to think about how representing animals differs from "using" them; how do these representations affect animals themselves; how do literature, the arts, media and design respond to, and act upon ethical and political debates particularly the rights of animals. In what new ways can literature, the arts, film, design and media affect our ethical relationships with animals?

STUDIO SECTION: This iteration of this course also has a studio section for 18 students who are also signed up for HUMN 305 S001. This will allow students to concentrate on work in relation to these issues in any media taught here at ECU. Students will be able to focus in depth on projects concerning our relationship with animals from varied perspectives in a supportive and interdisciplinary environment. 

HUMN 305 S001 Studies in the Humanities (3 credits)

Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

GEVA 310 S002 - Visual Arts: Special Topics (3 credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Note: Any of the students enrolled in the GEVA 310 S002 class will need to enroll in the HUMN 305 S001 but you can also just enroll in the HUMN 305 S001 only

Instructor: Carol Gigliotti

Topic: Critical Animal Studies

Once one begins to notice, it becomes clear that animals play a central role in how meaning is made in the arts and humanities. This course deals with how and why visual, narrative and metaphorical depictions of animals affect our ways of being with animals in aesthetic, activist, environmental and biological contexts. You will be looking closely at these roles through examples in the arts, literature, media, film, design and performance. You will also be reading materials from a range of areas - literary theory, philosophy, history, art and film history, sociology, anthropology and critical theory - and encouraged to think about how representing animals differs from "using" them; how do these representations affect animals themselves; how do literature, the arts, media and design respond to, and act upon ethical and political debates particularly the rights of animals. In what new ways can literature, the arts, film, design and media affect our ethical relationships with animals?

STUDIO SECTION: This iteration of this course also has a studio section for 18 students who are also signed up for HUMN 305 S001. This will allow students to concentrate on work in relation to these issues in any media taught here at ECU. Students will be able to focus in depth on projects concerning our relationship with animals from varied perspectives in a supportive and interdisciplinary environment. 

 

HUMN 306 S001 - Studies in Humanities for Design (3 credits)

Tuesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Rory Wallace

Topic: Design like you give a damn 1

Design is the interface between people and the world around them. A designed object may be made of plastic, metal, cement, pixels or paper; always it is made of ideas, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs. To understand design we need to understand its context. Camouflage can be a popular clothing colour on Vancouver streets, but it is the difference between life and death in Afghanistan. Context and meaning depend on how something is perceived and in this course we will trace some of the most prevalent ways we "read" culture. If we can't control how our design is received we can't control what we make.

Does the world need square eggs? Why do cars look very slightly different each year? Do we really need obsolescence? Is the solar-powered car an answer to our concerns? Mass production has shaped contemporary society and modern design practice so we will focus our study on the relation of the unique to the multiple, the prototype to the product, and especially the individual human to society. We are as much products of design as producers of it. Because this is a humanities course we will focus on what it feels like to live in a world that has such designs upon us.

1 Rem Koohaas

HUMN 311 S001 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)

Tuesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Henry Tsang

Topic:  Spatial Practices

Space is all around us and within us. It is the network that connects us socially, politically, economically, ethnically, etc. It is constantly being produced, shifting and changing, expanding, contracting, including, rejecting. Even supposedly fixed structures such as buildings and architecture are dynamic, sometimes overtly, other times requiring disruption or intervention to bring anomalies or contradictions to the surface.  This course will explore what a spatial practice might be. We will look at different ways in which artists and cultural activists have engaged with the world, from the gallery to the worlds outside, through the internet and within the media. We will read about the social production of space, site specificity, installation, public sphere, democracy.x

HUMN 311 S002 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)

Tuesday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Landon Mackenzie

Topic:  Post-Post-modern? Inside the Academy and Outside in the World; Strategies for studio practice and creative survival

This seminar is aimed at advanced visual art students who are curious about emerging conditions of production and distribution in the new globalized phenomena of "The Art World". Is art a site of resistance or a way to help collectors double their money? There are now over 200 Biennales and dozens of Art Fairs all over the globe. Do these events with their special curators, combined with key art magazines and specialized internet sites, dictate more than ever what is circulating and valued? Berlin, London, New York and Beijing are clearly centers so where does that put Vancouver, Warsaw or San Paulo? What will this global/digital era be called? Are we out of "Post- Modernism" and in whose interest would that be so? If we are in a post-studio period how does that effect our creative survival? In this seminar there will be lectures, presentations, readings, group and individual reports, discussions and peer to peer evaluation.

HUMN 311 S003 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)

Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Elizabeth McIntosh

Topic:  Reading Group: Painting

This course will explore contemporary approaches and ways of thinking and writing about painting via a number of readings and presentations on particular artists. The primary text for the course will be ‘Save the Last Dance for Me', a close read of a Mary Heilmann painting of the same name written by Terry Meyers.  Other artists in focus will be Karen Kilimnik, Jutta Koether, Lucy Mackenzie and Silke Otto Knapp.  Each student will be responsible for leading a discussion, a piece of writing, a group presentation and one studio project that responds to the course.

HUMN 311 S004 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Diyan Achjadi

Topic:  Multiples and Contemporary Practice

Contemporary culture is rife with multiples, copies, and duplicates. We download electronic music, image, and text files, copy them on to our hard drives, and share them by redistributing them through social networks. We buy mass produced objects, of which hundreds or millions of identical versions exist. As an artist or designer, making work in the multiple allows for the potential of disseminating that work to a broad audience, and having the work exist simultaneously in different contexts. In this class we will examine the ways that multiples function in contemporary contexts -- including ideas around as originality, appropriation and remix culture, hand-production and machine production, access and distribution -- and look at artists, designers, and cultural producers who work with multiples and multiplicity from a diversity of approaches.

HUMN 311 S005 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Paul Mathieu

Topic:  Issues in Contemporary Ceramics

This course will look at recent developments in contemporary ceramics practices as they relate to contemporary culture and contemporary art.  Fired clay as a material is very resistant to time and objects made with this material today will be around for a long time. The ceramics objects we make now will thus become "the Art of the Future". Why make ceramics now? What is its relevancy? How is ceramics related to other art forms? We will look at contemporary examples from all over the world and attempt to answer these important questions.

HUMN 311 S090 Visual Art Seminar  ONLINE (3 credits)

Online, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Chris Jones

Topic:  Media Matters

The importance of media technologies as instruments of communication and repositories of knowledge continues to grow. Media have allowed new forms of networked social cohesion, but they also have the potential to rupture our connections with each other and the world. This course explores the issues of mediated experience by linking key historical readings with important contemporary theories and referencing a range of creative art practices that have developed in relation to media art history. Students will integrate practical and theoretical approaches to address the role of media technologies in global cultural production, engaging in weekly online discussions and the production of a creative work for online exhibition and critique.

 

MHIS 429 S001 Topics in Film/Video Theory

Thursday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Screening night - Tuesday, 5:00pm - 7:00pm, starting January 12th

Instructor: Harry Killas

Topic:  Linear and Non-Linear Storytelling

This course explores the properties of linear, non-linear, and interactive forms of narratives as they have evolved from print to digital media.  Works covered in this course range from Ancient Greek tragedy, classics of non-linear novels, and experimental literature, to linear and non-linear feature-length films.  The study of the structural properties of narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time, space and storyline and interactivity is complemented by theoretical texts about plot, story, properties of digital media and classical dramatic structure and dramaturgy.  A particular focus of the course is to develop basic skills in dramaturgical analysis that will aid the students as they develop long form dramatic media works and/or write about such works critically.   Another emphasis of the course will be case studies of first features, with topics that will include screenplay construction, as well as production case studies from the point of view of fundraising and distribution.

Students will attend screenings and seminars every week, will make presentations on assigned topics and readings, and write a term paper. 

 

PHOT 306 S001 - Special Topics in Photography (3 credits)

Friday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Sandra Semchuk

Topic:  Considering the Heart

This studio course is a collaborative course taught by Carol-Ann Courneya of the UBC Medical School and Sandra Semchuk of ECUAD. Within this course students will have the opportunity to create a new body of work or build on a previous body of work that investigates the heart: physically, socially and/or personally. This course is an opportunity for ECUAD students to bring together what is known about the heart from the world of medicine with contemporary ideas of love, sexuality and romance. Talks and discussions will be provided:  on the heart, on peer culture and romance and on sexuality and identity. There will be options for students at both universities, in medicine and in art, to choose to exchange, share modes of inquiry and to exhibit work created. This photo-based course is open to all disciplines.
Carol-Ann Courneya teaches medical and dental students about the heart at U.B.C.  She has been using art making as a pedagogical tool to extend learning to the body on the body.

 

PRNT 305 S001 - Print Media (3 credits)

Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Beth Howe

Topic:  Letterpress Multiples

Letterpress printing lies somewhere between the handmade and the industrially produced and offers artists and designers a way to produce projects in multiple that convey the sense materiality typically linked to the handcrafted object.  In recent years, the letterpress shop has become a natural mixing ground for typographers, graphic designers, printmakers, and book artists and others interested in contemporizing a form with a long historical legacy.
As well as learning the history of the process, students will learn the language and tools of letterpress printing and use them to investigate the realm of the artist's multiple.  Issues surrounding production and distribution of mass and limited edition prints, books, broadsides, and objects will be examined and students will be expected to learn both the traditional craft of letterpress printing and to produce innovative projects in multiple.

SCLP 312 S001 - Sculpture: Special Topics (3 credits)

Thursday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Devon Knowles

Topic:  Re-skilling

Re-skilling is designed for advanced students who have a strong understanding of contemporary art and are interested in craft, skilled labour, historical techniques and specifically the issues of sculpture and skill. In this class the aim will be to string together art historical moments which mark the division between craft and art in a studio setting. Through discussions, critiques and readings during the period of this course issues addressed will include: craft/skill as content, machine versus the handmade,  socio-cultural judgment surrounding the art object and the crafted object in contemporary art. Students will make tools, research and practice techniques, prepare presentations, locate related contemporary art practices, which are relevant to their own projects and produce work which negotiates the complexities between art and craft.

 

SCLP 315 S001 - Sculpture and Social Spaces

Monday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Holly Ward

Topic: Public Art and the Olympic Spectacle

This course will explore the function of the art object and the relationship between creator and viewer. We will address themes of interactivity, relational aesthetics and the boundary between public and private spheres. Students' projects will focus on contemporary studio practices in relation to their own work and will involve research, reading, discussion, presentation and critique. This course offering will also respond to the plethora of public art projects that will be produced for the 2010 Olympics, with a critical focus on this specific social context.

 

SOCS 300 S002 - Studies in the Social Sciences (3 Credits)

Monday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Paloma Campbell

Topic: The Monument and Its Discontents

"Away with monuments" Friedrich Nietzsche declared in his 1873 essay "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life." This course will examine the role of the monument and its location at the intersections of political power, collective memory, and public art. Our study will begin in 1871 with the toppling of a column capped with a statue of Napoleon I during the Paris Commune and end with the plethora of public art commissions for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Questions that will be considered include:  How is political power being reinforced or challenged? In what ways is public space being implicated? Whose memories are being embodied?

 

SOCS 300 S003 - Studies in the Social Sciences (3 Credits)

Friday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Martha Rans

Topic:  Artists and the Law: Copyright in ReMix culture

This course affords students an opportunity to examine the effect of copyright on artistic practice with particular reference to remix ( digital ) culture and creation. Each week we will examine a different artist's work and discuss how the boundaries of law and copyright are challenged by the work. This will include documentary film and YouTube, bliptv, vimeo and Open Video, experimental film and video, appropriation art collage, multimedia installations, music and repurposed music, performing arts, and Creative Commons.

 

SOCS 308 S001 - Sociology for Design (3 Credits)

Tuesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17

Instructor: Rory Wallace

Topic:  "Stuff"

This course will focus on the role of "stuff" in our world-the things that fill our closets, lives, and culture-and our relation to it. Designers and those in the creative industries are primarily concerned with the making of "things" and understanding the social dynamic of "stuff" is vital to any practice.

Mere objects become "things" when they stand out against the rest of the world as special in some way. Sounds simple, but how it happens and what we do with them after that varies vastly between cultures and among individuals. We are one of the few animals to accumulate such "stuff" and our relationship to the things around us is more complex than it seems at first. We acquire things, we cherish things, we fetishize them, we buy and sell them, we hoard them, and we give them away. They become our public identity and we communicate through them. We also plan their obsolescence and throw them away even though they endanger the earth and our very existence. All current design occurs in a world of such "things", and good design may lie in our response to that world of stuff.