The first international symposium of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Design, and Architecture of the Art Academy of Latvia (LMDA), (Building) New Perspectives through Practice-based Research in Art, Design, and Architecture, took place in November 2022, demonstrating the diversity of contemporary research approaches in the humanities and creative disciplines. The new publication brings together articles and visual essays by fifteen international researchers and practitioners in architecture, design, art, and education.
The publication of LMDA focuses on interdisciplinary practice-based research topics and methods that aim to expand and merge the boundaries of artistic and scientific disciplines, as well as to overcome the traditional distinctions and prevailing binary divides — be it the ones established between subject and object, urban and rural, living and non-living, architecture and users, or others. The fifteen selected contributions focus on the merging of real and virtual environments, the search for new intersubjective narrative forms, post-humanist perspectives, propositions of speculative design, tools for redefining architecture, the role of sensory knowledge and bodily experience, environmental memory, the Anthropocene and living materials, as well as empowering strategies of community solidarity, and empathy for surviving contemporary crises.
The collection of articles reflects the four sessions of the symposium, which focused on topics such as (post)digital and (post)human architecture; speculative and critical design; social and political activism in times of crisis; algorithmic forms of governance and their ethical dimensions; and the interplay between art, identity, and landscape. With this publication, LMDA highlights the importance of differentiated, interdisciplinary, practice-led research in the development of critical thinking and the search for new, practice-based solutions. These approaches are particularly relevant in the face of current uncertainties brought about by global technological and ecological challenges and shifts in political power. The publication highlights the ability and strengths of creative research in responding to today’s urgent needs.
The proceedings are the first publication in a planned series of LMDA publications. It is published in English and is available online.
Viedokļi