Caradt

Filter

  • Cultural and Creative Industries
  • Situated Art and Design
  • Biobased Art and Design
  • All
Staff Alumni
Research Projects Archive

Search

Situated Art, Design and Technology

Research Group

Humans are situated beings: they are the product of their relationships with their surroundings. Therefore, to understand ourselves and our behaviour is to understand how these are intertwined with environmental, social, and cultural factors.

Operating under this premise, the research group Situated Art, Design and Technology sees an unprecedented need for artists and designers to consider aesthetics ‘in the wild’. Living in cities developed around data and acting within the inscrutable structure of our techno-society demands art and design that can help understand how we relate to these rapidly changing surroundings and to reflect on that relationship. To effectively do so, the production and presentation of art and design must itself be situated within these environments and structures, rather than confined to secluded studios and the sterile environs of galleries and museums.

The research group Situated Art, Design and Technology responds to this exigency by fostering a ‘situated turn in art and design’ through a diverse portfolio of interdisciplinary research projects, ranging from design research on innovative technologies that enable embodied experiences to artistic research on urban planning from embedded positions.

People

The research group Situated Art, Design and Technology is part of Avans University of Applied Sciences and was founded in 2015 – originally operating under the name ‘Human-Centred Creation’. Chair of the research group is Professor Dr. Michel van Dartel. The research group includes tutor- and student-researchers from various academies affiliated to CARADT, as well as several independent researchers and associated members.

Impact

Under the leadership of Professor van Dartel, the research group frequently publishes its findings in peer-reviewed academic periodicals and other professional literature. It also achieves significant academic, cultural and social impact through strategic partnerships with academic and cultural partners, as well as with government and industry, and aims to foster the situated turn through its impact on art and design education.

Over the past five years, our research has led to an extensive list of publications and (international) presentations. Besides this academic impact through the publication of knowledge outcomes, our research also has cultural impact through the presentation, exhibition and trying-out of artworks and designs in partnerships with acknowledged art and design venues, such as Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam), TENT (Rotterdam), STRP (Eindhoven), Tetem (Enschede), V2_ (Rotterdam), Baltan Lab (Eindhoven), and Shanghai Theatre Academy (China). Finally, to increase the social impact of our research, much of our research is embedded within strategic long-term partnerships with government and industry, as well as other universities, cultural platforms, and funding bodies, such as our long-standing collaborations with the municipalities of Den Bosch and Breda or the international event for the deaf, hard of hearing and hearing, Sencity (Utrecht), our multiyear collaborative (PhD) research projects with Tilburg University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, our recurring collaborations with KITT Engineering, Dans Ateliers, The Patching Zone, and V2_, and our advisory roles to the Taskforce for Applied Research, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and the Dutch National Science Agenda.

Finally, to foster a situated turn in art and design, our group aims to make art and design education more aware of the challenges and benefits this turn implies. Besides regular presentations on our research progress within the educational field, we have impact on education by involving Avans teachers and students in our research as (co-)researchers and by actively informing curriculum development with our research outcomes: our research outcomes have for instance been fundamental to the development of new research minors, became mandatory reading for art and design students, and led to the development of a new master’s programme in Situated Design. Besides our impact on education at Avans, we aim for national impact on education through our group’s involvement in the platform Onderwijs op het snijvlak van Kunst, Wetenschap en Technologiearrow, which adopted a selection of insights from our research as its manifesto.

‘People are the product of their relationships with their environment. It’s important to understand how technological developments influence these relationships.’

Michel van Dartel arrow

‘My practice is situated in between different actors, in this shape-shifting middle many things can happen.’

Tara Karpinski arrow

‘Imagination is the key to a strong inclusive society. Artistic work and situated design can contribute to a better understanding of the other.’

Jenny van den Broeke arrow

‘Investigating the potential of sensory augmentation to bridge the sensory gap between deaf and hearing.’

Michel Witter arrow

‘‘Understanding how creativity and imagination emerge from interactions with our environment will lead to improved innovation processes, tools and technologies.’’

Alwin de Rooij arrow

‘Through an interplay of design and research, the apt questions and necessary tools can be discovered and applied to each research project.’

Antal Ruhl arrow

‘Humans are atmospheric beings, particles, dust, in intimate cycles of exchange, actors with an incredible force.’

Annemarie Piscaer arrow

‘Could experimental sensory translation of art works improve their accessibility for sensory diverse exhibition audiences?’

Eva Fotiadi arrow

‘I’m interested in how we can implement situated learning within design education.’

Sarah Lugthart arrow

‘How can the notion of the ‘script’ be used in a situated design practice? ’

Ollie Palmer arrow

‘The ultimate goal is to provide people with the information, skills and tools that enable them to improve the quality of their daily lives.’

Simone van den Broek arrow

‘For me, the iterative design-research process is an exciting journey towards designs that can transform human consciousness.’

Danielle Roberts arrow

‘The essence of the situated, cinematic experience of dance lies in the mental interaction where the public becomes co-author.’

Noud Heerkens arrow

‘Getting comfortable with ambiguity enables designers to absorb feedback and use it to make better design choices.’

Gabri Heinrichs arrow

‘I look at the ways in which citizens can play an active role in shaping their cities, and how new media and technology can contribute to this.’

Barbara Asselbergs arrow

‘Power, control and chance play an important role in every creative process. I explore this complicated correlation.’

Michiel van Opstal arrow

‘Attention during interaction is personal, not a given fact.’

Misha Croes arrow

All people arrow
All projects arrow

Publications

Fotiadi, S.E. (2024) Multisensory Technologies for Inclusive Exhibition Spaces: Disability Access Meets Artistic and Curatorial Researcharrow Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 8, no. 8: 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti8080074

van den Broek, S., Sankaran, S., de Wit, J., & de Rooij, A. (2024). Exploring the Supportive Role of Artificial Intelligence in Participatory Design: A Systematic Review.arrow In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops-Volume 2 (pp. 37-44). https://doi.org/10.1145/3661455.3669868

van den Broek, S., Rovers, I., and Calcan, F. (2024) Material experience and user acceptance of mycelium bio-composite insulation in the construction industry through interdisciplinary co-designarrow, in Gray, C., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.525

de Rooij, A., & Mose Biskjaer, M. (2024). Expecting the unexpected: A review of surprise in design processes.arrow In Proceedings of the 2024 Design Research Society Conference (DRS2024), article 62. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.333

Faber, M., & de Rooij, A. (2024). Is a wandering mind a novelty-seeking mind? The curious case of incubation.arrow Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47, e97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X23003448

Croes M. & van Dartel, M. (2020) The Interaction Attention Continuum: An Education Application Studyarrow. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’20.

Van Dartel, M., & de Rooij, A. (2019). The Innovation Potential of Sensory Augmentation for Public Space. In: Park, J., Nam, J. & Park, J.W. Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Electronic Art.arrow Gwangju, Korea, Republic of. Pp.79-84.

Gloerich, I., de Waal, M., Ferri, G. Cila, N., Karpinski, T. (2020) The City as a Licence. Implications of Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers for Urban Governance (Frontiers2020).

Nazli, C., Gloerich, I., Ferri, G., de Waal, M. and Karpinski, T., The Blockchain and the Commons: Dilemmas in the Design of Local Platforms. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’20

Lugthart, S. & van Dartel, M. (2019). Teaching Situated Actions: A case study. In: M. Carmo (ed.) International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2019)arrow Volume I. InScience Press: Portugal, pp. 202-206.

All news & events arrow

Our partners:

Thank you for your subscription! Please check your email inbox to confirm.

Okay