James Goggin is a designer, educator, and writer. He runs his own design studio with his partner, Shan James, under the name Practise and recently joined the faculty of RISD’s graphic design department. He previously worked as Director of Design, Publishing and New Media at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and has taught at Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and at ECAL in Switzerland. His writing on design has appeared in numerous publications and he currently serves as art director and is on the editorial board of the architecture publication, Flat Out. In this episode, James and I talk about closing the gap between theory and practice, the value of writing in his design process, and subverting the traditional lecture/slideshow format.
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Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg are the founders of Space Popular, an architecture studio that explores relationships between media and the built environment through research, design, and artworks. They are also professors at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where they run the Architectural Design Studio 2. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Lara and Fredrik talk about the relationship between virtual and physical spaces, how media shapes architecture, and the role of the architect in shaping digital environments.
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Julian Bleecker is a researcher, designer, engineer, and entrepreneur. He runs Near Future Laboratory, a platform and consultancy focused on design fiction. He is the author of Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact, and Fiction and co-author of The Manual of Design Fiction, among other titles. In this conversation, Jarrett and Julian talk about the origins of design fiction, how he applies it with corporate clients, and how we can get design students to rediscover imagination.
Mike Pepi is a critic and technologist who writes about art, culture, and technology. He is the author of the new book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, which is both a work of technology criticism and an analysis of how we talk about Silicon Valley. His other writing has appeared in Frieze, e-flux, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail. In this conversation, Jarrett and Mike talk about the role of criticism, the differences between platforms and institutions, and why Silicon Valley needs the art world more than the other way around.