Design History reloaded using the Example of "Women Designers of Modernism" A joint Project of the Departments of Design and Information Science
This project honours the outstanding achievements of women in design during the Weimar Republic and presents the student results of several InterFlex seminars on women designers of modernism.
A contemporary digital format was trialled for this purpose. The free open-world game Minetest is suitable for providing students with low-threshold access to knowledge presentation and acquisition. For this reason, a digital learning and mediation offer was created by visualising 7 selected biographies of previously "invisible modern designers" – Gertrud Kleinhempel, Elizabeth Friedländer, Margarete Heymann, Hannah Höch, Germaine Krull, Dore Mönkemeyer-Corty and Lotte Reiniger – which enables a "virtual journey through time".
The journey through time is modelled on a luxury steamer with three levels. The first level houses the walk-through exhibition with portraits and works by the aforementioned artists. Users can navigate through the exhibition using the mouse, zoom in on the works on display and find out more about their biographies.
Design and political, social and gender history are combined in this "virtual reality space" in order to gain a new perspective on the role of women, explicitly female designers, on the one hand, and to promote media literacy, i.e. the critical, reflective use of digital offerings, on the other. The project thus follows the guiding principle: New teaching formats, new teaching methods, new narration' and is orientated towards competent university teaching in the digital age.
