At first glance, it was difficult to understand the overall purpose of the MA Information Experience Design; the student’s work often feels unconcluded, it can be hard to identify the core concepts and I felt in absolute darkness. However, after a conversation with the Acting Head of Programme, Dylan Yamada-Rice, I came to understand the vision of the course, and began to think I had been short-sighted, confined by my own discipline of good design practice, which in retrospect may be an approach too practical to judge this work.

Instead, IED pushes students to seek their own fundamental topic and means of expression and purpose for life. This is evident in the way you are confronted by philosophical ideas, as well as science and technology. It made me question whether the current unravelling of global political structures might have come about because they were formed by practical thinkers and the evolution of technology. Maybe we have been ignoring fundamental concepts about how humans should/could live.

Traditionally, philosophy is an academic pursuit undertaken through reading and verbal discussion, but IED suggests the possibility of philosophical endeavours through making. Indeed, recent use of trendy communication platforms such as VR or AR could be better utilised if connected with a deeper understanding of philosophical study.

Furthermore, the students are true collaborators, crossing cultural boundaries, genders and ages to bring about a wider and broader perspective on the world. Thus, I have come to see these students as seven provocateurs who ignore the temptation to focus on business and money, which are the current trends of many neoliberal art and design disciplines, and instead have embraced a role to provoke and slap current society and contribute fragments to opening up a new way of thinking.

Yuri Suzuki