The event/exhibition had the purpose of asking ourselves a question: can collaboration change our lives? After 6 days and 1,000 experiences, our answer is loud and clear: YES!

For keeping that in mind, we have designed a PDF poster and a desktop wallpaper (3 different sizes) with an infographics recap of all Making Together’s facts and figures, even the most curious: download them now clicking the icons below!

.

We’re gathering so many pictures of our installations: there’s true amazement among the participants to Making Together’s collaborative design!

See how people are reacting to Andrea Valle’s Machina Logotelica, how they’re collaborating to Natascia Fenoglio’s Mandala Chicle, how they’re exploring Numen / For Use’s Tuft, who’s taking part in CriticalCity Upload‘s missions, who’s bringing pieces to add to Dominic Wilcox‘ installation-in-progress and who’s making Demian Conrad‘s Collaborative Fanzine …and BarCamp by LoveDifference!

Here are the pics, we’ll keep on updating them in these hectic days:

>> http://pinterest.com/makingtogether/.

Take a look to the backstage of Making Together!

Gallery work in progress on PINTEREST: http://pinterest.com/makingtogether/

.

Hammers, drills and hoovers, harmonic phones, cans, radio alarms, different languages: these are design sounds shaping our WeSpace!

In progress projects full of adrenaline and passion are made with a “making together” footprint.

There is someone who’s connecting old phones and harmonicas (Andrea Valle), who’s exploring a huge red belly (Numen/ For Use), who’s filling boxes with coloured gums, who’s going around with digital helmet and cameras (Domic Wilcox), who’s still setting his work (Demian Conrad) and who will let the public speak in BarCamp (Love Difference).

Then, here we are: being intrigued, enchanted by a collaborative exhibition characterised by the personal research which each performer will share with public.

Looking outside the windows of Logotel building, it takes a glance to see how busy is design people, going around Ventura Lambrate district which is the pulse of the Milan Design Week, natural scenario of experiments, collaboration, design and open ending installations.

We face all this inspiring creativity in the streets around us: we go past Ikea exhibition in the floor below our.

We explore changing face garages, holes opening to designers coming from far away, buildings and hangars hosting strange wood, metal and ever seen material creatures.

We hang around and loose ourselves just to find a new direction to go. And we are ready.

Ventura Lambrate is here. Here we are.

Now, the question is: are you with us?

We are waiting for you!

In your opinion, which is the role of the design in contemporary society?

Augusto Pirovano – CriticalCity Upload

Create a “software” for human relationships.

Matteo Uguzzoni – CriticalCity Upload

Bring people back to know each other and socialize and to abolish the idea of object-fetish.

Andrea Valle – Macchina Logotelica

I would just repeat myself saying something general compared to culture: create problems where it seems there are not and thus getting to solutions which let the boundaries move on.

Demian Conrad – Fanatic Collaborative Magazine

It should be a way of solving problems of different kind, not only producing objects or images, but also processes and meanings.

As Roberto Verganti said “innovation happens also through meaning”

Natascia Fenoglio – Mandala Chicle

My grandmother Anna bought in the seventies a tv Brionvega angol 11’’ designed by Zanuso and Sapper…I found it last year in her cellar covered by small stickers.

I would like that people used designers as my grandmother used that small television, with normality.

Maarten Bass, in his project Smoke, overturns the concept of beauty unchangeable in time…I would like that this could be the role of design in contemporary society: informal and without mental schemes.

Dominic Wilcox – Between your thoughts and mine

Design is such a broad subject that it is difficult to talk about it all. To make life more enjoyable is a good start..

Could you describe us your work space?

Augusto Pirovano – CriticalCity Upload
My desk, possibily empty, a nice large screen, connected to my laptop. Lots of plants and a ping-pong table.

Matteo Uguzzoni – CriticalCity Upload
A funny open space with a ping-pong table, good brightness, lots of people and a nest idea for conferences.

Andrea Valle – Macchina Logotelica
Well, it’s my desk and my cellar. Anyway, the common style is heap. For example, you can find on my desk: an amplifier which I collected in a garbage dump (perfectly working), vinavil, a plastic Italian flag, some pictures, drawings by my daughter Emma, antioxidant spray, two laptop, pipes and accessories, books, an alarm-clock that should stay in bedroom, a postcard from the great Edoardo Sanguineti which I keep like a relic, a trilobite Elrathiakingii of medium Cambrian era (513-510 million of years ago), etc.
I don’t mention the cellar, where I usually make dirty and noisy jobs.

Demian Conrad – Fanatic Collaborative Magazine
Warm as a mother and practical as a father.

Natascia Fenoglio – Mandala Chicle
My work space changes depending on what I have to produce, on the idea i have to realize. Usually, I don’t work in my own spaces but in places someone rent me.

Dominic Wilcox – Between your thoughts and mine
A place with photographers and fashion designers and me.

.

Could you describe us your daily routine?

Augusto Pirovano – CriticalCity Upload
Answering tons of emails, some bureaucracy, flash meetings with my colleagues, planning and ping-pong

Matteo Uguzzoni – CriticalCity Upload
Answering to emails, work work, having a cup of tea, win a ping-pong game. (this is the ideal day, usually we don’t play ping-pong).

Andrea Valle – Macchina Logotelica
I can’t cause I’ve different days depending on projects and activities. Sometimes I write all day long (I would like to read all day, but it’s hard), other days I’m in university, other still I use the soldering iron.

Demian Conrad – Fanatic Collaborative Magazine
A nice walking to the atelier, checking incoming communication, discussing plans with my collaborators, developing ideas and graphics, everything done with some breaks and lots of coffees.

Natascia Fenoglio – Mandala Chicle
I don’t have a daily routine, usually I divide my time between the bakery lab and home. I like to work on the floor when I have to build and in bed when I have to think or drawing.

Dominic Wilcox – Between your thoughts and mine
I don’t have a regular work routine, I work late nights always thinking about projects..

Our conversation with Augusto, Matteo, Andrea, Demian, Natascia and Dominic goes on. This time we’ve asked them:

Can you tell us an example (also a non design one) of “collaboration” which you find particularly nice or significant?

Augusto Pirovano – CriticalCity Upload
One of the many projects realized by kickstarter.com: from the idea of one person and the desire of many we can realize (almost) everything, without waiting a top-down contract.

Matteo Uguzzoni – CriticalCity Upload
The OccupyNewspaper, it was nice the way they produced it and a very good product.

Andrea Valle – Macchina Logotelica
I would like to cite two which i really like.
The first is the concpet of “authorial proxy” in Alighiero and Boetti.In many of his works Boetti mount complex mechanisms which require a many subjects collaboration. Without these people, the work doesn’t exist.
For example, the 50 kilim drawings which from the widest cido of the series “Altemando da uno a cento e viceversa”, are realized following Boetti rules system by groups of students or friends and collaborators of Boetti.
Boetti is thus keeping a precise authorial identity but at the same time he needs other subjects. Their histories, competences, idiosyncrasies – and often also their mistakes and inaccuracies – are included in the art work.

The secondi is the concept of “feedback system” – usually used in electronic music – where the output of a system comes back in as input of the system itself.
In particular, when the output of a system comes back in as input of another component. From this we get technical non-linear and chaotic dynamics, which activate real form of emerging communication between system components (being physical objects, software modules, human performers) which become a freely hierarchical society (the famous Neolithic band without head).

Demian Conrad – Fanatic Collaborative Magazine
A brilliant example of collaborative design is the family tradition of making cookies for Christmas. All family is there to plan and produce. Daddy thinks the kirsch version, grandma makes the soft one which she can bite, the grandson wants a big one and mum is taking care of the cooking in the oven. It’s a micro fordist line full of joy and powdered sugar.

Natascia Fenoglio – Mandala Chicle
Collaboration is fundamental and is part of my work. To me is absolutely necessary to enstablish relations with whom can, through my knowledge, give me important tools to develop, at least in some parts, my project.

Dominic Wilcox – Between your thoughts and mine
The singing duet is a good example of how two voices can come together to create a third thing. The most interesting collaborations are between people with completely different ways of working/singing/making..

We asked the designers who are participating to Making Together to answer some questions about collaboration and design. Here’s what they told us.

What does collaborative and participative design mean for you?

Augusto Pirovano
Emerging design: half planning, so that the rest of the experience is spontaneous and at the same time directed to somewhere.

Matteo Uguzzoni
It means trusting one another, don’t pretend anything and understand that we designed experience, what we produce in the end is a nice monstrosity, but full of meanings and memories compared to any bought object, which carried meanings constructed by ads.

Andrea Valle
I’m not a designer, nor in my job life nor in my education, thus i don’t have a theoretical opinion about this. Dully, I can say that to me it means producing problems from interaction and learning from the solution interactive process.
It also means to keep together at a design and realization level histories, techniques and heterogeneous technologies. It is necessarily a non pure modality.

Demian Conrad
To collaborate is the principle of our nature, our dichotomy let us think we are alone and separated, and capitalism pushes us to individualism but actually the whole is connected. Collaborative design bring back the attention on collective mind, on a many hands project, which is the antithesis of the renaissance model.

Natascia Fenoglio
Sharing an idea with someone transforming it in something completely different from what I’ve imagined.

Dominic Wilcox
People combining their thoughts together to create something larger than the individual thoughts.

Stay tuned! Next days we’ll get to know better Augusto, Matteo, Andrea, Demian, Natascia and Dominic..

Meanwhile, you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Make Together!

.