Event organised by ERA – Enriched Realities Assembly & Henrik Lübker, PhD, CEO Design denmark
This talk is an invitation to rethink how we design and engage with the world.
Join me as we explore how we can design meaningful encounters that foster a renewed bond between ourselves and the world we are a part of. Design is a way of communicating and shaping the relationship between the subject (or, in design terms, the user) and the world. It has done so predominantly by crafting a form of “realism,” where everything else is made into objects and products for the experiencing subject. Objecthood, in this sense, is not necessarily about tangible material artefacts. Instead, throughout history, design has been the process of making the world consumable for us. We experience it through mimicry and scripts, objects and products shaped into mere mirrors of our desires.
In this talk, I argue that we must go beyond mere mimicry and the familiar to truly connect with the world. We need to embrace friction—those moments of encountering the “other” that offer meaningful experiences.
Drawing from my background as a literature scholar, curator, and CEO of Design Denmark, I’ll share insights into artistic and creative strategies that foster performative encounters. These experiences blur the lines between subject and object, challenging traditional design and communication paradigms. I’ll highlight examples from my work and inspirations from art and philosophy, and together, we’ll explore the possibility of developing a taxonomy for designing meaningful experiences.
