Interdisciplinary Design and Transcultural Collaboration as Transformative Remix Tools

This chapter considers possible implications and impact of COVID-19 on the future of mad.lab and transcultural, interdisciplinary design collaboration. It reviews remix tactics that generate transformative interdisciplinary and transcultural spaces for “worlding” collaborative design education in ways that deconstruct the assumed dominance of Western design praxis. Integrating these tactics with a transcultural and interdisciplinary framework where recombinant methods and tools are deployed, mad.lab models an immersive decolonizing and de-othering design-led heutagogy. A key element has been situating mad.lab—an urban design laboratory—within the digital humanities and remix studies. The spatial turn in digital humanities has relevance for how designers might think critically and collaboratively about the complex interconnected Sino-Australian urban context mad.lab is enacted in. Since 2016, mad.lab has attracted much more participation from media students working in digital interaction and sound-based practice. This has expanded the available tactics for mapping the city.