SIC! – Sense, Investigate, Communicate
GERMANY, Berlin and MEXICO, Xalapa
TU Berlin, K LAB; Universidad Veracruzana, Instituto de Artes Plásticas
We require expanded and multilayered methodologies to better understand and design novel approaches for tackling complex (urban) problems. Bridging international colorful expertise, disciplines, and languages, this MOOC focuses on ways of sensing, reading, and communicating about the diverse sociocultural and ecological environments that give urban spaces their flavors, and to elevate sensibility against human-made hazards, erasures, and dispossession. Basing on feminist principles of research and data visualization, and through 5 modules (with introduction, intermezzo and closing), the MOOC seeks to contribute to skilling participants through providing training on a diverse toolkit that triangulates sensorial experiences, participatory (critical) mapping, and visual methods, to help situate divergent perspectives and enhance concepts of living and coexistence in urban spaces.
The MOOC starts with personal ways of sensory exploration and expression, and gradually grows to community-based ways for refiguring urban space. It will visit various topics as entry points to explore ways of combining sensorial research (e.g. mapping routes, soundscapes, psychogeography) with participatory concepts (e.g. collaborative democracy), and with communication through visual tools (e.g. graphic storytelling, photography, film). This way, inscribers will train in sensing the variety of spatial dynamics, in investigating hidden and unmarked urban problems, and in opening dialogues that critically engage the wider public through situated knowledge.
SDG #11 Targets:
