eGGZ Innovatiecentrum

Imagine a world where everyday objects are imbued with the power of generative AI. What possibilities and challenges would emerge? ThingsCon aims to explore this frontier by inviting designers to create provotypes of the near future “generative things”.
To ignite imagination and foster meaningful discussions, we like to use the concept of “provotypes” – provocative prototypes of generative things. These tangible glimpses into tomorrow are catalysts, opening up critical dialogues about our impending relationships with AI-infused objects.

The exhibition “Generative Things” premiered at TH/NGS 2024 on 13 December 2024 in Volkshotel Amsterdam and will travel to other places in 2025, sparking conversations and imagination. ThingsCon organizes this initiative in collaboration with Master Digital Design of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Waag Futurelab, and is part of the Amsterdam 750 futures program.

14 April: exhibition and workshop
Next up, we’re taking Generative Things to Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Our next public event, scheduled for late 14 April, will feature:

• An updated exhibition with new and refined provotype designs
• An in-depth reflection workshop relating the provotypes to city life

We’re revisiting the provotypes to create “situated designs” that respond to Amsterdam’s unique context. By partnering with local societal organizations, we’ll develop specific scenarios to test our provotypes in real-world settings, bringing the future of Generative Things to life in our city’s streets and spaces.

The outcomes will be an inspiration and a point of departure for a speculative design workshop on 15 April to create a future zine. We have a separate RSVP for this workshop day.

The program of the Salon:
14:00-15:00 Visit the exhibition with provotypes
15:00-17:00 Workshop to sketch out interactions in the city with each provotype

• introduction on the backgrounds
• short 3 min pitches by designers of the provotypes
• discussing the provotypes in relation to the categories
• formulate takeaways

17:00-19:00 Share results, drinks
If you can not make it to the workshop but like to see the results, feel free to drop by at 17h.

Location
The Salon and the Makeathon will take place Monday 14 April at the location of Master Digital Design, Theo Thijssenhuis building, 4th floor, Wibautstraat Amsterdam.

Read more about the background of the project on the website.

Across six interactive online sessions, this course offers the tools, knowledge, and inspiration needed to support just and sustainable transformations – grounded in action research, critical reflection, and peer learning.

We are offering the course for the third time, this year in collaboration with Dina Lupin from University of Southampton.

We have made the programme a bit more compact to make it more affordable, and as always offer it at a variable rate (€1,775.00 for well-paid professionals and €1,245.00 for those with more limited financial means) to make it as accessible as possible.

Namla and Univerzita Pardubice Anthropology Department are hosting a one time mini conference next week on the results of our project in Erasmus Plus called AnthroAction: increasing employability and societal impact of action researchers. (https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2023-2-NL01-KA210-ADU-000180400)

We have been running the project since March 2024 and just wrapped up our pilot course for graduates of anthropology in Czech Republic and Netherlands; where the graduates learned to combine rapid ethnography and design thinking to tackle a real-world problem, suggested by real NGOs.

The NGOs that contributed to the project were:
-Czech Blind United (https://www.sons.cz/) with the question: how can we attract more younger members to our organisation?
-Junak - Czech Scouts (https://www.skaut.cz/) with the question: what do today’s teenagers want in leadership training?
-De Meevaart Community Centre (https://meevaart.nl/) with the question: how can we start a blue zone in Indische Buurt in Amsterdam?
-The Really Healthy School (https://www.skutecnezdravaskola.cz/) with the question: how can we reach more primary schools with our programme?

The participants in the course were coming from all over Czech Republic, and Amsterdam.

In the conference, we will discuss what happened in the course, how it went, what we can learn from the pilot. Also a number of professors in Anthropology from different parts of Europe (such as Laurens Bakker, Ana-Isabel Afonso), applied anthropologists from Czech Republic (such as Karolina Kania, PhD, Socionaut, z.s.), as well as organisations in our network will share reflections on how what we did here fits into a wider context.

Please register here before January 22nd: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGfI-vtCTk3XdaGpZvlK37y2VKqZqIV1LUfUiJhsD0OqFlxg/viewform

and join the conference at this Zoom link:
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89954251812?pwd=78KpFxVY3rXY682mEbErjDl7woYVnR.1#success
Meeting ID: 899 5425 1812
Password: 514987