11/02 – kl 10-12 – Medea
Luca Simeone, PhD Candidate in Interaction Design
Translator, traitor? Translational processes and academic entrepreneurship in design labs – 75% Seminar
Discussant: Scott Brown, Parsons DESIS Lab – The New School

This study builds upon the concept of translation in order to investigate three academic labs and their entrepreneurial dimension: Medea at Malmö University, MIT SENSEable City Lab and metaLAB (at) Harvard. The three labs are headquartered within academia, but use design to foster coordinated actions with different stakeholders (industry, government, NGOs, citizens).
This dissertation argues that in these situations design can (1) favor translational processes, where ideas, concepts, requirements, needs, interests of multiple stakeholders are translated into different languages or articulations, for example through the production of sketches, visual representations, prototypes, and (2) consequently connect and align the stakeholders to a point where coordinated actions can be carried out.
Findings – Findings emerge as perspectival constructs and illustrate that design-based translational processes favor entrepreneurship in the specific form of coordinated action. As the Italian adage ‘traduttore, traditore’ (‘translator, traitor’) suggests, these translation processes unfold through relations of power and resistance, cultural slippages, appropriations and remixes of meaning.

If you are interested to read the entire text or a 30-page extract please send an email to luca.simeone@mah.se