Unspecified Project Scenes of digital media practice in Spatial Design

Abstract

Working from a comparison between two teaching spaces used by the Spatial Design program at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), this article discusses the idea of ‘technical teaching.’ It describes how the authors have consciously sought to build a pedagogy around the teaching of digital media. Central to this pedagogy is the idea that learning to design is about producing a space of practice. This space is not merely the room in which practice occurs, but the space of possibility available to the designer. This space is not infinite or universal but relates specifically to a repertoire of actions (which links it in turn to the possibilities of the sites where it manifests). We offer an overview of four technical courses and describe the rationale for their structure and relationship to studio teaching. By counteracting predispositions toward completeness, finality, and linearity, these courses teach students how to prolong the design process, to stretch it out and keep it in motion. The computer lab and teaching studio are ‘practised places’ in de Certeau’s terms, construction sites for an improvisational space of practice.