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"Homo Ludens" seminar and workshop with Patricia Hepp, at the New Design University in the "Food and Design" course, winter semester 2018 and 2019. The three-semester course, under the direction of "Honey and Bunny" Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter, is about food and design, not only what food looks like, how it is produced, how it is consumed, what sustainable nutrition of the future looks like, but also the rituals and places and objects of eating are examined.

The course of study, which is based on a wide range of professional experience, introduces students from a variety of educational backgrounds to design and design activities, as well as to design theory and design strategies. In an intensive seminar and workshop over 24 hours within three days I conveyed stations of design history and design theory. What surrounds and moves us, how we communicate, what design can do and how interaction can be designed. The teaching methods were implemented in lectures and discourse as well as in practical work. Short-term projects introduce the methods of design thinking and design processes.

The short projects in 2019 stood under the title of Interacting through Eating. The future of design is about social spaces, how we deal with each other, interact, share, and how these social spaces and structures can be staged. People can be connected through food. Through the rituals of eating together, the production of food, communicating about what we eat and how.

The whole seminar was entitled 'Homo ludens'the playful human being. Humans need play as an elementary form of finding meaning. Johan Huizinga (1938/39) emphasizes in his book of the same name playing as a culture-forming activity. Playing can be understood as freedom in action. It can be used to break down fixed conventions, rules, automatisms or even dogmas and to redesign them through a free approach. Friedrich Schiller's famous sentence: " Human beings only play where they are human in its full meaning, and they are only fully human where they play" from his letters 'Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen' (1793), describes the sovereignty associated with playing. Playing as a fundamental human activity that releases creativity and has the potential to break down solidified structures and produce innovation. The aim was also to introduce students from non-design backgrounds to the world of creativity and to develop design concepts around food and nutrition.

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3.2-Food-design-spiel

3-food-design-process

By looking at our immediate environment, I lead to the methods of Design Thinking. Questions are discussed such as: What surrounds us? How and what are our spaces for action? What do our living units look like? How do we act, act in the different spaces? What is the movement of information/energy? The flow of energy? And finally: How do I design, what are my methods?

4-Fooddesign-interaktion

»Homo Ludens» seminar and workshop with Patricia Hepp, at the New Design University in the »Food and Design» course, winter semester 2018 and 2019. The three-semester course, under the direction of "Honey and Bunny" Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter, is about food and design, not only what food looks like, how it is produced, how it is consumed, what sustainable nutrition of the future looks like, but also the rituals and places and objects of eating are examined.

5.2-Food-design-spiel

5-Food-design-spiel

6-Food-design-spiel

7-Food-design-spiel

8-Food-design-spiel

10-homo-ludens-programm

Workshop "homo ludens - interacting through food"
The aim of this workshop is to create a situation that reflects the aspects of interaction concerning eating and nutrition in general and to find unconventional ways in interacting. Thereby one can make experiences through playing, homo ludens. In this project the design process is recorded exemplarily.