In this Interdisciplinary Design Lab, under the supervision of Dr. Mark Titmarsh, the discipline of design is cast as an agent for change, a way of creating and critically exploring possible futures for various contemporary urban environments. Centering on the island of Kefalonia, Greece, the lab will consider the future of the island with regard to the use and re-use of everyday plastic materials. This will involve investigating the island, its towns and locales, to recognise how it functions in terms of urban planning, public space, sustainability, architecture, tourism, sea sports and related design disciplines.

This studio project will begin as an exploration of plastic, the story of its creation and how it is has come to be ubiquitous in the design of daily practices. We will be looking at the use of plastic on the island for business and recreational purposes and noting in particular any dependence on the use of disposable plastics, from plastic bags through to coffee cups.

You are being asked to consider the cultural history of the island, its institutions and businesses, its domestic and recreational resources and any issues that might be generally applicable to other island states like Australia or Indonesia.

Your final goal on Kefalonia is to design a presentation for display in the gallery of the Ionian Centre. These works can take the form of creative installations that reflect consciousness of plastic usage, behavior steering towards ideal sustainability, and up-cycling for aesthetic practicalities, potentially creating a model for other islands and island states to emulate.

Working in a teams you will devise a component of the final exhibition that will take place on Friday 3 July 2015 at the Ionian Center for Arts and Culture. This work will be designed so as to integrate with the other interdisciplinary teams from American and Greek institutions to form a unique public event that indicates alternatives for existing plastic forms on Kefalonia.

All communication in Sydney will be initiated through UTS Online

Bio

Dr. Mark Titmarsh (born 1955, Ingham, Australia) is a visual artist working in painting, video and writing. His paintings and filmwork are currently held in public collections across Australia, and in private collections in Europe and the United States.

His current work executed under the rubric of ‘expanded painting’ is painting about painting or painting that dissimulates into objects, videos and texts. Recent work has included paintings on industrial materials, environments of fluorescent string and video works for mobile phones. In 2006 he was a cofounder of the artist run space, Loose Projects and is currently co-editing a book on the gallery.

In the 1990s he co-founded the Sydney based artists group Art Hotline that exhibited ephemeral works in non-gallery everyday sites. He also edited a book documenting their activities between 1992 and 1995. Much of this work could be described as post-painting objects in that they take the form of 3 dimensional constructions that refer specifically to the conceptual aspects of painting. His screen based work included video and experimental websites that were exhibited in Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific in 2000.

Mark is active in issues surrounding the arts, having been a co-founding member of WAAR (Working Artists Against Ralph) and PEAASS (Promoting Electoral Awareness of the Artist’s Status in Society), two groups that were formed to defend artists’ rights and raise awareness of their contribution to the national cultural environment. He was a co-founding member of Group 3 three, an artists’ collaboration exploring the boundaries of painterly practice through installation and photographic documentation.

In the 1980s he established an international reputation as an experimental filmmaker exhibiting in Europe, North America and South America winning awards at Ann Arbor and Montreal International Festivals. In Australia he was a significant contributor to the development of the postmodern debate in the visual arts in his role as co-editor of the visual arts magazine, On the Beach and as a new image painter.

Mark was a co-founding member of the Super 8 Film Group, a Sydney-based organization for the promotion, distribution, and exhibition of Australian experimental filmmaking. He was the founding member of Metaphysical TV — a group of 5 experimental filmmakers whose work relied on reconstructing fragments appropriated from television imagery.

Among other qualifications, Mark has just completed a PhD in Painting at University of Technology Sydney, he holds a Masters degree in Visual Arts and has studied at St. Martin’s College of Art, London; the University of London; the Pietro Vannucci School of Fine Arts, Italy and the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy.