Seminars

Batteries, chargers and plugs: charting the energy demands of mobile communication. Alan Wiig

The use of smartphones to access the Internet while on the move is a common aspect of everyday, personal mobility in the twenty-first century. Transit, weather, and social media applications (apps) engage individuals’ attention during commutes, but the energy demands needed to power computing devices leads many users to employ creative, informal actions around charging batteries in…

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Sociology of architecture and cultural heritage: A praxeological approach. Hilmar Schäfer

Hilmar, who is visiting DEMAND for three months, introduced a series of ideas about the relation between materials, practices, architecture and cultural heritage. At first sight, these issues are only tangentially relevant to DEMAND, but the more he talked the more connections we saw. Some of these have to do with concepts of nature, culture and built forms. For example, methods of defining…

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Scripts of heat: Existing houses, new residents and the alignment of heating practices. Mikko Jalas

Do houses make us act in certain ways? What practical momentum do they exert on those who own or occupy them? To what extent do houses – as complex material configurations – prefigure practices? Mikko and Jenny have been thinking about these questions with the help of some interviews with people who have moved into existing houses and had to learn how to live in and with them.   The…

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Beyond The Fire Age. Walt Patterson

Walt Patterson talked about his forthcoming book, some ideas from which are available here: http://www.waltpatterson.org/beyondfire.pdf   He began by distinguishing between forms of energy production that do, or do not involve fire – and which do or do not involve the consumption/burning of resources like wood, coal, oil etc, and all the problems and emissions that ensue.  This…

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Is my vacuum cleaner actually broken or just my attitude to maintenance? Giuseppe Salvia

Giuseppe who works for the UK INDEMAND Centre at Nottingham gave a really excellent talk about vacuum cleaners. More accurately, he gave a talk about how intersecting commercial pressures act together to reduce product life, generate obsolescence, and configure human-material interactions that are prone to breaking down. (more…)

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