---
title: Living with Your Own Ideas
page_type: course
track: Reflection
course_type: Workshop
feature_img: /assets/images/2024-25/year-1/t-1/living-with-your-own-ideas.jpg
img_caption: New Faces, New Identities, 2020. DOES
faculty:
    - saul-baeza
ects: 2
---

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## Syllabus

Students will be introduced to practical first-person design methodologies by living with their own ideas. Following a series of introductory texts by a diverse group of researchers, thinkers, artists and makers such as Marshal McLuhan, Haila Koskela, Sandy Stone, Donna Haraway, Sophie Cale and Jill Magid, students will be encouraged to develop and embody a series of prostheses iterations under their own agency and rationale. The final delivery comprises a short documentary or article, besides all the developed prototypes and prostheses. The course includes lectures and Q&A’s by **Saúl Baeza** and **Thomas Twaites**.

**Keywords: Self, Agency, Surveillance, Identity, Prototyping, Discipline, Desire**

### Learning Objectives

- 1st Person Perspective design and research methodologies
- Self agency 
- Critical prototyping
- The work of being watched
- Staying with the trouble

## Schedule

=== "28/10"

    **12:00 to 14:00**

    **Activities**:
    Course Introduction + dynamics + objectives
    
    Living with your own ideas, designing Identity Prostheses
    
    1st Prosthesis briefing – After Marshal McLuhan and Haila Koskela

=== "29/10"

    **9:30 to 13:30** 

    **Activities**:
    
    (9:30 – 11:00) 1st Prosthesis short presentations (individual) 

    (11:00 – 13:00) Thomas Twaittes (Author of GoatMan) Online Lecture + Q&A 

    (13:00 – 14:30) 2nd Prosthesis briefing – After Sandy Stone and Donna Haraway 

=== "30/10"

    **9:30 to 13:30** 

    **Activities**:
    
    (9:30 – 11:00) 2nd   Prosthesis short presentations (individual)
    
    (11:00 – 12:00) 3rd Prosthesis briefing – After Sophie Cale and Jill Magid 
    
    (12:00 – 13:30) 3rd Prosthesis development

    **14:30 to 16:30** 

    **Activities**:
    
    (14:30 to 16:30) The Detective – Surveillance documentation exercise 

=== "31/10"

    **11:30 to 13:30**

    **Activities**:
    
    (11:30 – 13:00) 3rd Prosthesis + Documentary/Article short presentations
    
    (13:00 – 13:30) Closing

## Methodological Strategies

- Case studies
- Workshops  
- Lectures  
- Group discussions  
- Prototyping 
- Project-based learning  
- Team-based learning  
- Gamification  
- Role-playing 


## Deliverables

- Prototipes
- Short film
- Publication


## Grading Method

Class discussion and questions (formative), personal feedback (formative), attendance and participation (summative), deliverables including presentation and video (summative), personal reflections (summative).


| Percentage  | Description                                     |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------            |
| 20%         | Participation                                   |
| 30%         | Prototype development                                   |
| 30%         |  Short film/publication                           |
| 20%         |  Personal reflections                         |

!!! ects "European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)"

    {{ ects }} ECTS

## Additional Resources

Documentaries: 
Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi. 2011. 5 broken cameras. 

Books:
Thomas Thwaites. 2016. GoatMan. How U took a holiday from being human. Princeton Architectural Press.
Mark Andrejevic 2004. Reality TV. The Work Of Being Watched. Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics and Culture. Series Editor Andrew Calabrese. University of Colorado.
Elise Morrison. 2016. Discipline and Desire. Surveillance Technologies in Performance. University of Michigan Press.
Allucquére Rosanne "Sandy" Stone. 1996. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. MIT Press.
Donna J. Haraway. 2016. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Erving Goffman. 1956. The Presentation Of Self Everyday Life. Random House.
Sasha Costanza-Chock. 2020. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. MIT Press.
McKenzie Wark. 1994. A hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press 
Alfonso Matos (ed). 2023.Who Can Afford To Be Critical?  An inquiry into what we can’t do alone, as designers, and into what we might be able to do together, as people. Set Margins.
Andreas Malm. 2021. How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire. Verso Books.
Benjamin H Bratton. 2015.The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. MIT Press
Paul B. Preciado. Testo Yonqui. 2020. Anagrama.

Articles:
Saúl Baeza, Ron Wakkary, Kristina Andersen, and Oscar Tomico. 2021. Exploring the Potential of Apple Face ID as a Drag, Queer and Trans Technology Design Tool. Design- ing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1654–1667. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3461999  
Saúl Baeza, Ron Wakkary, Kristina Andersen, and Oscar Tomico. 2023. About being an “influencer” or how to exploit the tool of the oppressor for our own expression. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 934–945. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596091  
Saúl Baeza, Kristina Andersen and Oscar Tomico. 2022. Designing hair. DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/ drs.2022.649  

## Additional Resources

- Notebook / Pen / Pencil  
- Phone with Camera (or photography/video camera)  
- Computer (if you have one)  
- Extra materials will be needed during the development of the course (TBD by each student)


## Faculty

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