FUTUREGROUND: Mark Burry Keynote

200 papers
8 daily parallel sessions
100 Universities
32 Countries represented
Keynotes:
Professor Mark Burry, Director, Spatial Information Architecture
Laboratory, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Dr John Armstrong
Department of Philosophy, Melbourne University

Clive Dilnot
Parsons School of Design, New York

FUTUREGROUND is the one design research conference you canUt afford to
miss this year.

STOP PRESS
Conference places are filling fast and we are reaching capacity.  We
strongly urge you to register soon in order to avoid disappointment.  See
www.futureground.monash.edu.au

KEYNOTE PAPER ABSTRACTS
Over the past weeks we have issued the paper titles and abstracts for two
of our three Keynote Speakers.  If you missed either Dr John Armstrong or
Clive Dilnot they can be found on the FUTUREGROUND website at
www.futureground.monash.edu.au

This week, please find following a pr
cis of Professor Mark BurryUs keynote paper.
TConvergent DesignU
Is the 21st century multi-skilled designer as an unlikely jack of all
digital trades, and therefore master of none?
In our post digital age we might assume that digital techniques have fully
supplanted the traditional, and that each design discipline will have
consolidated its territory having developed its own range of technology
and software to match, in most cases, centuries old practice. While
opportunities abound for borrowing from other disciplines P medical
digital measurement devices - industrial design and aeronautical design
software - architecture for example, just how we pick-up the necessary
transfer of skills, and adapt our research and learning to suit the
opportunities for transdisciplinary practice remain unclear.  Territorial
boundaries are defended, intransgressible doctrinaire positions remain
intact, and the generational divide between elder and experienced
non-adopters and younger but relatively inexperienced digital blades
inadequately bridged.
The clue for moving forward as design researchers and practitioners might
be through Tconvergent designU, where designers meld their respective
crafts towards a common goal which may not have the descriptors with which
we are most familiar, nor preserve the traditional rights of the designer
to be recognised as Tsole authorU.  Architects who become adept at
designing video game spatial environments along with their new colleagues,
the collaborating experts in sound design and computer science might all
become Tcollaborative virtual environment designersU.  In making an
interactive wall surface, engineers, interior designers, industrial
designers, and systems designers might become Thaptic environment
designersU.  This paper will identify such projects as real case studies,
and in so doing will discuss the issues of, and differences between,
multidisciplinary, cross disciplinary, interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary design.  The paper will make a case for simply dropping
the need for the identification and lionising of the sole author in favour
of identifying the Tteam leaderU.
Professor Mark Burry
Director, Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

The full list of speakers is now on the conference website
(www.futureground.monash.edu.au).  Regular updates will be issued from now
including the schedule; speaker profiles; and special features of the
conference.

Conference details:
17-21 November 2004
Monash University, Victoria, Australia
Conference dinner: the stunningly refurbished Mario Bellini/Metier 3
National Gallery of Victoria
To Register, visit the conference web site at
www.futureground.monash.edu.au