Breather: Design Conference:

Breather: This design conference examines the new studio. Multi- disciplinary interface brings into focus the design complexities of connection, contact and interaction. The interface explores how computation changes designs imagination of these complexities and their translation into the making of the material world. We propose for consideration an image of the world as an interface. In the new studio small can be big; really big.

Computation changes how design works, more importantly it changes how design thinks. Computation transforms one practice into another: cinema into architecture, product design into philosophy, urban planning into advertising. Design is an expertise in points of contact, in the interfaces between people, systems and effects. In our network culture, contact is condensed into buttons and icons, menus and dashboards, and into familiar pathways and fast surfaces, diagrams and directions.

At the Breather conference we have invited designers and artists who work with many kinds of Interfaces-- virtual and tangible, portable and environmental-- in ways that move us emotionally and physically. We have asked them to demonstrate their expertise in conceiving and critiquing the interface. What is the new studio? Can small be big?