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Missä kulkevat elävää materiaalia hyödyntävän biotaiteen rajat? Millaista tietoa jää tieteellisen tutkimustyön ulkopuolelle? Miten biotaide voidaan muuttaa taidelähtöisten menetelmien kautta tiedoksi ja taiteelliseksi ajatteluksi? Esimerkiksi näihin kysymyksiin etsii vastausta Lapin yliopiston taiteiden tiedekuntaan vuonna 2021 perustettu BioARTech-laboratorio, joka tutkii biotaidetta ja sen yhtymäkohtia taiteeseen ja tutkimukseen. Laboratorio tukee biotaiteen, muodin, tekstiilitaiteen, luovan tutkimuksen (art-based method, art-based research), biotekniikan ja tieteen välistä tutkimustyötä. Keskeistä BioARTech-laboratorion toteuttamissa kenttätutkimuksissa ja laboratorion taiteilija-tutkijoiden käyttämissä taidelähtöisissä menetelmissä on poikkitieteellisyys ja pyrkimys kohti kestäviä prosesseja. Biotaiteen avulla voidaan kehittää innovatiivista suunnittelua luonnon ja ei-inhimillisen kanssa sekä saada aikaan uusia suunnitteluratkaisuja, prosesseja ja muutoksia yhteistyössä lappilaisten yritysten kanssa. BioARTech-laboratorion päätutkijat ovat tekstiilialan professori Heidi Pietarinen, palvelumuotoilun professori, dekaani Satu Miettinen ja dosentti Melanie Sarantou, jotka tarkastelevat biotaidetta eri näkökulmista taidelähtöisissä tutkimuksissaan.

This paper explores the role of improvisation in design thinking for product design processes and design research methods. Improvisation is often at the core of practice-based and participatory design, permitting flexibility. The role of improvisation in the performing arts has received considerable academic attention, however its role in design processes has been neglected, because improvisation is often viewed as the second-best solution to design problems. This paper presents a framework for improvisation by surveying existing scholarship. Additionally, field study data collected between 2011 and 2016, primarily in Namibia and Australia, will be used to illustrate how improvisation is applied by practitioners during their art and design activities. The connective function of improvisation allows designers to negotiate, take risks, unmake and remake formations. This function enables the fluidity of design, to move from one moment in a process to the next, allowing designers to negotiate ways of work during uncertainty.

This article proposes a design perspective on strategizing by presenting a Model of Positive Strategic Sensemaking for Meaningfulness. Theory elaboration is used drawing from three related disciplinary fields; strategizing, sensemaking and design. It is proposed that positive and human-centred design facilitation enhances strategizing as an ongoing embodied and material activity where meaning changes in strategy and vision may emerge. By viewing strategizing as a socially constructed evolving phenomenon the model adopts sensemaking and critical theory perspectives where the consequences of decisions for human beings and environment guide further activities. Designers as co-strategist may support or challenge an existing strategic direction resulting in incremental or more radical meaning changes among those affected by, and affecting, the emergence of strategies.

The research investigates the role of service design and improvisation as decolonising practice. It is based on case study research with a focus group consisting of Namibian artists, designers, artisans and arts organisations who participated in artistic and cultural exchange activities of the Art South-South Trust (ASST), a start-up Namibian not for profit (NFP) organisation. The goal of ASST was to increase visibility of the focus group members, enable global exposure and create an arena for multi-vocality. The paper creates a practical framework for decolonising practices in Namibian arts and design by drawing on reflective practice to analyse the activities of ASST alongside interview data collected from Namibian and Australian partner organisations and participants in the program. Critical thinking is used to evaluate the impact of realised activities and processes both in situ in Namibia and in exchange in Australia. This paper explores practices that can enable decolonising processes in Namibian arts and design spheres

Complexity is a key characteristic of many participatory and community-oriented design activities. Designers’ varied roles are being transformed as they have to manage the complexities and entanglements associated with global societal, technological and environmental change. As design turns towards a social mode of operation and application, this session ‘Transforming Complexities through Design in Collaborative Community-based Processes’ seeks to open a discourse on the role of design in managing the complexities that affect communities and individuals, alongside their attendant processes and practices. A range of approaches, skills and competencies currently demonstrated across instances and experiences of complexity, and across a range of contexts for collaborative and community-oriented design, are mapped through the contributions in this track.

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.