Salon series #thedislocatedmediator

In this fourth salon on April 18, we discussed the shape-shifting role of the designer as a storyteller that manoeuvers across different territories of material and visual expressions weaving narratives between facts and fiction.

The two practitioners invited for this session will expound upon the diversity, seemingly contrasting, of their creative exercises to show us how the process of crafting an individual language is very much embedded in an organic albeit rhizome-like process of constant search, research and curiosity around the boundaries of the real and the imagined, the practical and the speculative. Both are currently based in Beijing but have lived and worked in different cultural and urban contexts - they show us how the design feat becomes here a worldview, a mode of thinking and fabricating the physical and intangible universe we inhabit as we go about it.

Our speakers were Ronald Tau, creative director and designer born in Hong Kong and raised in Toronto whose multidisciplinary studio Meat is engaged in cultural and artistic direction, spatial and visual branding, employing graphic and photographic media in ever changing ways.

Saurabh Datta is an Indian-born designer who has practiced across continents, and is currently working at the Volkswagen Future Center Asia, he is a founding member of automato.farm, an interaction design collective exploring new avenues of meaning blending computing, engineering and product design, whose works have been widely exhibited internationally.

Ronald Tau 窦誉笙 – art director and designer | Meat studio https://meatmeatmeatmeat.com/

Saurabh Datta – designer and creative technologist | www.dattasaurabh.com & http://automato.farm/

Stay tuned for the upcoming graduation show!