“It was immediately obvious in the first years in which I worked on the ELEA that in the design of certain gigantic instruments, as machines were then, or in the design of groups of machines which have a logical and operational relationship between each other, one ends up immediately designing the working environment; that is, ones up up conditioning the man who is working, not only in his direct relationship with the instrument, but also his very much larger and more penetrating relationship with the whole act of work and the complext mechanisms of physical culture and psychic actions and reactions with the environment in which he works, the route he takes, the emotions, the efforts, the conditionings, the liberty, the destruction, exhaustion and death.”
E Sottsass Jnr, “How to Survive with a Company, Perhaps (unpublished lecture)
“The designer…is no longer the artists who helps us to make our homes beautiful, because they will never be beautiful, but the individual who moves on a dialectical as well as formal place and stimulates behavior patterns which will contribute to full awareness, which is the sole premise required for a new equilibrium of values and finally for the evolution, or, if you will, the recovery of man himself.”
A De Angelis, ‘Anti-Design’ quoted in F. Raggi, ‘Radical Story’ in Casabella, no 382, 1973, p39
some more draft thinking
But the practice of design is in transformation and prior disciplinary definitions and distinctions are no longer the most appropriate way to characterize the breadth or depth of design as it appears today. As previously noted, the emergence of interaction design as a new design field is one element of this transformation. One might assume that because of the technological developments that paralleled, and to a certain extent prompted, the development of interaction design that engineering perspectives would be taking a greater hold in design proper. However, I would argue that is not the case, nor should it be. Engineering perspectives are present, but no more so than they ever have been as design proper has always had a close relationship to technology. In fact, it is from within the fields of design proper that design is undoing the disciplinary assumptions that previously bound it, making advances into other domains of production and taking on a more critical and engaged role in the purposeful making of the human-made world. One reason for this is the increased presence and importance of the social sciences and the humanities in design due to the development of design studies and design research. Increasingly the theories and methods of disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and psychology, philosophy of culture, cultural studies, literary theory, and rhetoric inform and influence design proper (much more than engineering). This does not signal a dilution of design as a discipline, rather it exemplifies the trajectory of design as a productive humanistic endeavor grounded in the study of the full range of the human experience. It also suggests that while distinctions between the various fields of design are valuable for understanding biases and charting the progression of discipline, such historical categories will not suffice for fully capturing the present state of design or its future. While disciplines may be important for professional and academic identity and ordering, as structures they can get in the way, obstructing the greater view of the activities of inquiry and production occurring within, between and beyond them. Rather than considering design as just a discipline (or set of disciplines) it is worthwhile to examine design beyond disciplinary boundaries as a social practice.
I was feeling stuck with my dissertation, just not able to write. So I changed the typeface. From Times New Roman (who can write their heart and soul using a default) to Meridien and everything was, well, just better.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with John Dewey lately. Recently, on the John Dewey Society mailing list someone posted the inscription on John Dewey’s headstone. I find it to be worthy of serious reflection.
The inscription on Dewey’s head stone reads:
John Dewey
Philosopher
Educator
Class of 79
“The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist
by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in
which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving,
transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have
received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and
secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have
received it.” A Common Faith
In Memoriam
John Dewey
October 20, 1859
June 1, 1952
Yet another reason why I am so fond of the Walker Art Center.
Walker’s Talking Dolphin Is Art-Smart
If you’re wandering around the museum and are curious to discuss artist Matthew Barney and his silver, glittery upside-down saddle, for example, just ask Dolphin.
Dolphin may tell you, though its translated clicks and squeaks, that Barney is a “mythmaker.” Pretty thought-provoking words from a virtual-reality mammal.
The artists said they chose to create a dolphin because “dolphins are really cute, irresistible, and very intelligent,” Szyhalski said.
Disclaimer: Rich used to be my neighbor in the co-op (sorry no link - wonderfully luddite!).
In January I visited the Future Applications Lab in Goteborg Sweden to attend the workshop “Designing Robot Applications for Everyday Environments.” A summary of the event is now available online. It was a fantastic event at which we spent 2 days sharing our work, but more importantly, working together to wrestle with the subject of robots from an interdisciplinary design perspective. I wish there were more short workshops like that; focused less on publishing and more on working together through tough problems.
Related: Soc-Eusai 2005 (Smart Objects and Ambient Intelligence) in October will have an EveryDay robotics session, arranged by Frédéric Kaplan. These are many of the same folks who were at the “Designing Robot Applications for Everyday Environments” event in Sweden, so I assume it will be good. I wish I was able to attend!
Consumption and Value
…..Other more unconventional theories of exchange and value have been proposed which challenge the importance of consumption in relation to value. George Bataille’s economic theories invert common assumptions and locate value and meaning in surplus and sacrifice. More recently, David Graeber has pursued value as meaning-making established through human activities other than either consumption or production. At first this approach might seem to confound the place of products. But in fact many of his examples of value as meaning-making established through human activities, such as taking a photograph, cooking a meal, or dressing and undressing are enacted with and through products. Such unconventional theories of exchange and value significantly broaden common understandings of the product beyond rote acts of consumption and emphasize the lived experience in the making of meaning with and through products.