WIA and PDUG Present: The future of Design is not Design

The WIA Committee and Philadelphia Dynamo User Group [PDUG] proudly present Nicole Koltick as our annual event speaker. Nicole is the founding Director of the Design Futures Lab, a trans-disciplinary design research group housed in the Department of Architecture, Design and Urbanism in the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University. Please join us for drinks, food, and networking provided by the generous sponsorship of Microsol Resources as we hear Nicole present a number of recent projects engaging a wide array of complex entanglements negotiating between the biological, the technological, the philosophical and the computational. This includes a critical engagement with the sociopolitical implications of emerging technologies and the potential of the designer to intervene in more disruptive, imaginative and nuanced capacities. Her lab pursues speculative design research through software, hardware and material experimentation with extensive exploration of digital fabrication methods and material innovations. This includes an exploration of enhanced interaction scenarios that deploy embedded technology including a variety of electronics, sensors, robotics, and micro-controllers. Her recent multi-year project Phenomenal Machines examines speculative robotics and synthetic ecologies for the near future.