PhD Project "Design practice as an aesthetic practice in digital spaces" (Working Title)

In her research project Kerstin Rode explores how understanding design practice as an aesthetic practice contributes to accurately depicting the specificity to designer’s actual practice in theory and to making it more relevant in the context of cultural theory. The starting point for this is a potentially transformative design practice in increasingly digital contexts, in which the design of the digital can be understood as both a space of performance as well as transfer of aesthetic practice. In this Context, design practice is viewed as a practice between people, technology, and data.

An internal perspective on design should contribute to understanding design practice as an aesthetic practice from the perspective of designers and to reducing differences between actual practice and design theory developed solely from practice. At the same time, an external perspective on design as aesthetic practice should develop an understanding of design that expands beyond the focus on design objects as consumable products in cultural theory and philosophical theory about design in the direction of aesthetic practice.

About

Kerstin Rode studied Design (B.A.) with the field of competence Graphic Design and Design (M.A.) at HAWK in Hildesheim as well as in the Master "Staging of Arts and Media" with the focus on Visual Arts at the University of Hildesheim. She works in the overlapping areas between design, cultural studies and media theory. Kerstin Rode has been working as a freelance communication designer mainly in the arts and culture sector since 2016. Since April 2022, Kerstin Rode has been a research associate in the DFG Research Training Group "Aesthetic Practice"