Lisa Mandemaker is a researcher and designer based in London. She has a strategic, contextually aware and CRITICAL approach to research and practice. She uses products and product design across physical and DIGITAL PLATFORMS to challenge assumptions and explore connection, emotion and collaboration. Making IMPACTFUL, topical work and creating strong interventions are key elements to her practice. Her work centres on the effects of EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES and contemporary media, on people and their behavior. With her most recent work Meta Search she focuses on our currently limited personal and cognitive interpretations of online existence.
Projects
- Meta SearchMeta Search is a critical research project that challenges the limitations of the ‘filter bubble’ by creating a new interactive and mindful context to search the Internet. This work is part of a yearlong research into our perception of online existence. The installation is set up as a public experiment, designed as a confession booth. The visitor is invited to enter the space where they will be surrounded by hundreds of reflections of themselves. Inside they can perform a voice-enabled search using Google. The effect the designed surrounding has on the self and the mind will have an effect on the type of question you would like to ask inside. The aim is to intervene in the sometimes-mindless way we ask Google questions and how we take Google’s answer for granted. Standing in the space feels private and public at the same time. Some visitors felt it was too confronting to ask a question inside the installation, while others asked deep existential questions or what they should have for dinner. In addition, putting this booth in the public realm, we could test how the algorithm ‘personalizes’. Would it be possible to have access to a search engine that is public instead of personal?
- Zero HourInstallation A series of moving objects driven by clockwork mechanisms. In the western world we are addicted to the time of the clock. Digital technology makes this even more precise. It gives us ways to get closer to the exact moment, but it makes the actual moment of time in which life is passing less and less accessible. We are not moving through time like the second-hand anymore, but we are moving from minute to minute to minute. It’s sequential. I used the symptoms of dyscalculia to start thinking about time in a different way. I found it interesting to discover that people with dyscalculia are being forced to live in the model of the exact time, displayed in numbers, but are not capable of it because of their disability. If we could have a sense of time without numbers, these people wouldn’t be impaired at all. With my collection I want to enlarge the elapse of time and make the abstraction of our sense of time imaginative and allow it to be experienced by everyone. I enlarged the elapse of time in different ways: time as movement, time as shape, time as colour, time slowed down and the cyclical aspect of time. You can get hypnotised by watching the minutes passing, it can get on your nerves, or you will lose your sense of time completely.
- #iamyourbiggestfanMA Dissertation The research came about after working on a one-week project for the platform “Design as Catalyst” in the Design Products department at the Royal College of Art. The brief was to design a system or product that requires balance to work. My project centred on a concept I have always been fascinated with: the construction of the relationship between an idol and a fan, and the imbalance and one-sidedness within it. This interest derived from my own experience, as I used to be a fan. I therefore designed Ultimate Merchandise for Justin Bieber fans to explore whether a product could help redress the balance, or create a greater imbalance within this relationship. In my dissertation I researched the relationship between Justin Bieber and his Beliebers a little deeper. Justin Bieber is a product of the contemporary era: made by his fans and smartly marketed back to them by producers. As a product designer, I find this fascinating. Justin Bieber can be considered a very popular and desirable product that is able to achieve a strong connectedness and intimacy with consumers from a distance. On a macro level, throughout this research I aim to understand more about different systems of product design and how products represent society. The product is only the physical manifestation of its social systems. I explored how the construction of the celebrity functions on different levels. I tried to take the concept apart as a culturally fabricated product and to understand the systems behind it. Why do we need idols? What do they mean? Who or what is assigning it meaning?
- Meta Search: You May Also LikeYou May Also Like combines research on the lter bubble, physical explorations and a social search experiment in a short lm. This project is part of the yearlong research project Meta Search. Applying predictability to human behavior can be dangerous, for the simple reason that our best moments are often the most unpredictable ones. Almost everyone is carrying a search engine in their pockets, surrounding it with their own personal lter of knowledge and views on the world. How can we access that personal lter and use it to take a di erent path? I tried by asking someone on the street about his or her favorite spot in London and traveling to that place. Once there, I would ask another person what his or her favorite spot is and travel there. This way, I am seeing London in a new way, using strangers as my search engine.
- Derailed Research LabDerailed Research Lab is an interdisciplinary research project founded with the aim of using a series of very long distance journeys along with design and art methodologies and practices to explore and document the geopolitical forces, spaces and times which shape the contemporary world. I participated as designer and researcher in the first expedition: The Trans Siberian Railway. The train journey became the laboratory in which we recorded our thoughts through writing, drawing and filming. There were seminars, workshops, discussions and performances. The carriage was an ideal observation post from which to witness changes in landscapes, societies and selves. There were periods of intense working, compression and collectivization combined with expansive moments, long walks and new readings. Our research traversed eight different time zones of a simultaneously modern and archaic landscape. From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok we reinvented the political-economical and socio-environmental relations of a vast spatial formation. Vladivostok that strange Pacific Ocean port and city which is today finding a new life as it becomes the Las Vegas of the east, following from Russia’s desire to conquer the Far East, this post soviet city emerges as a clash between future and past ideology, as a free economic area where western nations can play out their own identity crisis. From Vladivostok we headed back to the Strelka Institute in Moscow to present and share our findings with a lecture, performance and publication. Derailed Research Lab is founded by Jon Goodbun and Raluca Cirstoc
Work history
Designer
London, United KingdomFreelance
Creating critical design and research projects
Visiting Lecturer Ravensbourne University London
London, United KingdomFreelance
Giving lectures on the research for my Distinction MA dissertation '#iamyourbiggestfan' on Contextual Studies (dissertation prepartion course for undergraduate Media / Design / Fashion students)
+ Show more
Skills
- Critical Thinking
- Analytical Thinking
- Project Management
- Philosophy
- Public Speaking
- Design Interaction
- Teamworking
- Design Research
- Conceptual Design
- Writing
Education
MA Design Products
- London, United Kingdom
BDes (Hons) Product Design
- Arnhem, Netherlands
Awards
Distinction
Awarded a distinction for my MA Dissertation '#iamyourbiggestfan', focused on the design of Justin Bieber and his ‘Beliebers’.
Exploring the construction of the relationship between an idol and a fan, and how the construction of celebrity functions on different levels, I took the concept of celebrity apart as a culturally fabricated product, to understand the systems behind it.
Scholarship
Awarded with scholarship in The Netherlands to fund study abroad+ Show more