Emergence in Design
A workshop to be held in conjunction with
Artificial
Intelligence in Design'98
19 July 1998, Lisbon, Portugal
Call for Papers
Submission date: 31 May 1998
Overview
"We don't know what we're looking for until we find it, so we have to find
a way to look for it!"
An identifiable design property which has not been explicitly represented
can be said to be emergent. Discovering and using the emergent properties
in design is regarded as emergence in design. Recognizing emergent phenomena
is an important part of innovative or creative design and like innovation
or creativity, it resists definition. Much has been written about emergence
in the context of cognitive science and visual representation, but little
exploration has been done with regard to design in general, with the bulk
of the research in shape grammars. This workshop aims to bring together
design researchers to discuss topics relating to emergence in design, including
-
identifying examples of emergence;
-
describing systems which support emergence and the representations necessary
to achieve emergence;
-
methods to identify emergent phenomena; and
-
the advantages and disadvantages of emergence.
Workshop Topics
Discussion will address a number of questions; among those are:
-
What do we mean by emergence?
-
How does design emergence differ from design evolution?
-
What different types of emergence can one identify? For example, is it
possible to describe functional emergence?
-
Is a system that supports emergence necessarily preferable to one that
doesn't? What about the ambiguity that emergence can introduce?
-
Are emergent-savy systems a realistic goal for design researchers?
The workshop will be structured around succinct keynote presentations (selected
from the submissions) followed by open discussion. Our discussion will
be directed to articulate an answer to one or more of the key questions
posed above.
Position Papers
We seek position papers or extended abstracts addressing any of the above
questions, or describing design systems which are capable of supporting
emergence. Papers which offer examples of emergence in design are strongly
encouraged. Papers should be no more than seven pages in length. Submissions
will be reviewed by the international advisory committee, and will be selected
on the basis of their contribution to the topics under discussion.
Papers should be submitted by email to either of the two coordinators
in either html, plain text, RTF or LaTeX formats. If email submission is
not possible, then four hard copies must be submitted to each co-ordinator
by the due date. The closing date for submissions is May 31, 1998.
Please note that workshop attendance is restricted to those registering for
the full conference.
Link to workshop papers
Number of Participants
Participation will be limited to 20 people, in order to ensure active discussion
among all participants.
Coordinators
International Advisory Committee
Adam Borkowski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Mark Gross, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Jeff Heisserman, Boeing, USA
Terry Knight, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Kumiyo Nakakoji, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Further information
Please send any question regarding the workshop to one of the organizers.