ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to reflect upon when possibilities of proximity changed several practices that were beneficial in the interaction between students and teachers. To understand the transformation of proximity, we depart from the notion of fluid society, a Bauman's concept that declares that solidly established practices have liquified. As such, liquid proximity represents the dissolution of physical proximity, manifesting new ways of interacting, that we have grouped into four categories: simultaneous proximity, instant proximity, elastic proximity, and democratic proximity. We will present different cases for each category gathered from our teaching experiences during the years of 2020 and 2021 when the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, in Mexico, migrated 100% of its activities to the digital space due to the confinement regulations of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, liquid proximity represents the practices that not only challenged the idea that physical presence is necessary when teaching design, but that allowed new ways of proximity that could transform the way we teach design. In this chapter, we will discuss different ways in which proximity drifted from a physical face-to-face interaction and the engaging advantages that they produced.
