Devices : on hospitality, hostility and design

This book combines different literary, philosophical and theoretical discourses and traditions with experimental design in order to develop and articulate the concept of device. In this way and through design, it studies and speculates upon the interrelations of artefacts with human and nonhuman agents.


In Devices. On Hospitality, Hostility and Design, Martín Ávila studies and speculates upon the interrelations of artefacts with human and nonhuman agents.

The work combines different literary, philosophical and theoretical discourses and traditions with experimental design in order to develop and articulate the concept of device. A device organizes, arranges, frames our environment and thereby defines and limits possibilities of relation.

Through a series of design projects, the thesis examines the potential range of an artefact\'s relations. It does so by exploring grammatical associations that affect design conceptualizations, creating tools (prepositiontools) as well as studying and articulating forms of symbiosis that an artefact might develop in and with its environment (¡Pestes!).


Keywords: Device, hospitality, hostility, design, languaging, accident, ecology, symbiosis, autopoiesis, umwelt.