Design - , ,
What is design? Where do we place ourselves? What do we like? What don't we like? What do we want to do? Are we product designers? Who do we design for? What is going to be our role in the future? LOOKTHERE! is a design collective run by Nina Mrsnik, So Hyun Kim and Bas Kools. We met in the Royal College of Art in London while studying at the Design Products. We are fascinated by people: how they interact, move, live and understand. Our main interest is in making services and systems tangible. Designing this feeling (tangibility) through objects and situations, we see this experience as an introduction into change and a path to the future. Therefore we use our skills to invent future scenarios in which we suggest new ways of living together. We design tools that help understand and communicate to make our society a bit more accessible, more human. Our biggest wish is to build a cure system. We don't see many problems in the products that already exist, but we do see them in an individual's psychological state and in the social system that our community has built. Lots of questions were raised from this point. We believe in the following thought: "Design cannot stay any longer in the self contained artefacts." We push ourselves in the direction of design activism, rather than making objects. We explore the contexts through stories, videos, and situation creations. We look for ways in which we can offer a service to the community through design. We want to create a system, which will lead people towards better everyday living. Practically, we visualize, build and make experiences with which we show other perspectives on the world we live in, the tools we use and the ways we behave. We use workshops, installations, interventions and objects to research, to communicate and to convince.