Politics/Political system is in a state of flux. As compared with design which is about making things static (i.e. ideas become matter/form/object).
That objects can be viewed as an expression of political power or will. Things modifying power structures or relationships.
Two schools of materialism: liberalism and marxism (Carl Marx). Political ideologies around the production and distribution of wealth. Material Things. Philosophers Plato and Higer.
[ This ties in with the Things that Matter reading talking about the Platoism of objects ].
Postulating that advancing technology and economic growth is beneficial.
An object could be anything but becomes something - moves from the generic to the particular. "works" - The Human condition - Hannah Arendt's. Vita Activa - the making of things that will endure. Works of art, poetry, architecture, monuments, industrial machinery.
Is this statement true?
Modern political society had ignored or suppressed roles and institutions where citizens could experience freedom by taking part in public life.
Q: Does that happen now? and how?
Design choosing form among possibilities.
Goal: political principles realised in design and construction.
Historical contexts/experience:
1/ statecraft - What is the structure of the best state?
2/ architecture and urban planning?
3/ engineering
Greek lawgivers:
- Solon
- Lycargus?
- Cleithenes?
A constitution - a design of a political system with checks and balances. The separation of powers.
edifice - to build and to instruct. Environmental determinism - the environment shapes you. Christopher Alexander.
[ I have had a read of Christopher Alexander and he is quite and interesting read regrading patterns of living. Would like to revisit him ].
behavioural - features change behaviour like stones in a river change the way water flows. Resonance between material form and civil structures.
Enginerring
democracy - systems, processes, and products available to all. Kodak camera. Bell telephone. Efficiency is relative to a desired goal/outcome i.e. contextual.
political/sociotechnical forms. Political ergonomics.
ergonomic - the shape of a useful instrument is tailored to the human form.
SUMMARY:
to combine all the three approaches: statecraft, architecture, and engineering.
Example given: Volvo
1/ participatory design
2/ disabled equal rights
3/ maxiumum output doesn't include or is considerate of ethical ideals.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Reading: Towards Use Design?
I liked how the title had a question mark in it as though the question was up for debate.
Experience design/ User experience - expanding the frontier of design beyond the object, and thinking about it's context and how it is used.
Intended Use vs Actual Use = A rejection of that idea as we don't know enough about the people buying our products to have any idea how they are going to use it.
USER-CENTRED DESIGN
Social determinism / transformation through design of objects - efficiency, ease-of-use.
Design moving from function (functionalism) to communication.
Objects as signs communicating a method. Detecting, creating, and controlling cultural, and emotional meanings.
Objects being a transmitter - that you have a receiver/cognition going on.
That designers are trying to create dynamic, multi-sensory experiences, but we don't really know enough about who we are designing for to do that. Designing for a particular user narrows the design scope or uses and creates over determinism.
We can only predict a way and object will be used,but we can never actually know until it is our own or possessed. We can't predict. We can only speculate.
e.g. mac mini hacks
I think it's useful to think of design choices being exclusive (who are you favouring or not favouring?). It makes you think about what your prejudices are.
Experience design/ User experience - expanding the frontier of design beyond the object, and thinking about it's context and how it is used.
Intended Use vs Actual Use = A rejection of that idea as we don't know enough about the people buying our products to have any idea how they are going to use it.
USER-CENTRED DESIGN
Social determinism / transformation through design of objects - efficiency, ease-of-use.
Design moving from function (functionalism) to communication.
Objects as signs communicating a method. Detecting, creating, and controlling cultural, and emotional meanings.
Objects being a transmitter - that you have a receiver/cognition going on.
That designers are trying to create dynamic, multi-sensory experiences, but we don't really know enough about who we are designing for to do that. Designing for a particular user narrows the design scope or uses and creates over determinism.
We can only predict a way and object will be used,but we can never actually know until it is our own or possessed. We can't predict. We can only speculate.
e.g. mac mini hacks
I think it's useful to think of design choices being exclusive (who are you favouring or not favouring?). It makes you think about what your prejudices are.
Reading: Men, Machines, and the World About
Norbert Weiner talking about cybernetic science? About a scientist with social responsibility/ethics, engage with consequences.
etymology (plural etymologies)
1. The study of the historical development of languages, particularly as manifested in individual words.
2. An account of the origin and historical development of a word.
cybernetics - communication and control in the animal and machine.
(source wikipedia)
A move from physical/mechanics to the immaterial and intangible. Abstract signals - input/output. Ma becoming part of the machine. Bomber (part of aeroplane), anti-aircraft gunner.
A shift of paradigm. Individuals part of systems. Dissappearing boundaries between the self and the collective.
post-structuralist positions(?) Zen Buddhism. Examples of Norbert Weiners personal ethics.
"It is a question perhaps of a small conception of self as opposed to a larger one - not that our hand is not part of us, but that much more is".
I though that this was an interesting idea about expanding our idea of who we are to be more encompassing and altruistic.
VS
nihilistic =>
nihilism (uncountable)
1. (philosophy) Extreme scepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence.
2. The rejection of all moral principles.
3. A doctrine holding that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility.
4. The belief that all endeavors are ultimately futile and devoid of meaning.
5. Contradiction (not always deliberate) between behavior and espoused principle, to such a degree that all possible espoused principle is voided.
"...the bandmembers sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism" (rock critic Dave Marsh, reviewing the band XTC's album Go)
6. The deliberate refusal of belief to the point that belief itself is rejected as untenable.
(source wikipedia)
Machine evolution and power. Nowadays machines deal with control and communication.
"Thinking beyond the construction of the gadget to its integration into society. How will it affect humans? How will humans interact with it What consequences will it have?"
THOUGHTS:
It's quite interesting to compare this text with William Morris's Revival of Handicraft as they have similar themes: The delegation of work to machines and the social implications. He also speaks of having caution, and machines being false gods, and of somehow usurping our place in the world. A Pandora's box. Things being released that can't be undone. A machine plague. Whilst I agree our dependence on machines has grown, I don't think they have gained a religious status. Computers are ubiquitous and everyday common things now. Their intimidating and monumental mainframe size and speed has been tamed and brought down to the human, and even child scale.
I still think his ideas of questioning what we are making and why we are making it is valuable, as maybe things don't get scrutinised as much as they could. It would be interesting to see what real life designers thing about this.
etymology (plural etymologies)
1. The study of the historical development of languages, particularly as manifested in individual words.
2. An account of the origin and historical development of a word.
cybernetics - communication and control in the animal and machine.
(source wikipedia)
A move from physical/mechanics to the immaterial and intangible. Abstract signals - input/output. Ma becoming part of the machine. Bomber (part of aeroplane), anti-aircraft gunner.
A shift of paradigm. Individuals part of systems. Dissappearing boundaries between the self and the collective.
post-structuralist positions(?) Zen Buddhism. Examples of Norbert Weiners personal ethics.
"It is a question perhaps of a small conception of self as opposed to a larger one - not that our hand is not part of us, but that much more is".
I though that this was an interesting idea about expanding our idea of who we are to be more encompassing and altruistic.
VS
nihilistic =>
nihilism (uncountable)
1. (philosophy) Extreme scepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence.
2. The rejection of all moral principles.
3. A doctrine holding that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility.
4. The belief that all endeavors are ultimately futile and devoid of meaning.
5. Contradiction (not always deliberate) between behavior and espoused principle, to such a degree that all possible espoused principle is voided.
"...the bandmembers sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism" (rock critic Dave Marsh, reviewing the band XTC's album Go)
6. The deliberate refusal of belief to the point that belief itself is rejected as untenable.
(source wikipedia)
Machine evolution and power. Nowadays machines deal with control and communication.
"Thinking beyond the construction of the gadget to its integration into society. How will it affect humans? How will humans interact with it What consequences will it have?"
THOUGHTS:
It's quite interesting to compare this text with William Morris's Revival of Handicraft as they have similar themes: The delegation of work to machines and the social implications. He also speaks of having caution, and machines being false gods, and of somehow usurping our place in the world. A Pandora's box. Things being released that can't be undone. A machine plague. Whilst I agree our dependence on machines has grown, I don't think they have gained a religious status. Computers are ubiquitous and everyday common things now. Their intimidating and monumental mainframe size and speed has been tamed and brought down to the human, and even child scale.
I still think his ideas of questioning what we are making and why we are making it is valuable, as maybe things don't get scrutinised as much as they could. It would be interesting to see what real life designers thing about this.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Assignment 3: Research Composition
Here are the links to my stuff:
Processing
Molecule/Bounce Ball
Spark
Stars
The processing scripts are Zipped up:
Molecule/Bounce Ball ZIP
Spark ZIP
Stars ZIP
This is the final presentation zipped up with the final movie (so the movie link should work):
Proj3 Final ZIP
It's approx 16MB. I'll try to put up a web version of the movie.
Processing
Molecule/Bounce Ball
Spark
Stars
The processing scripts are Zipped up:
Molecule/Bounce Ball ZIP
Spark ZIP
Stars ZIP
This is the final presentation zipped up with the final movie (so the movie link should work):
Proj3 Final ZIP
It's approx 16MB. I'll try to put up a web version of the movie.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Reading: Cold War Hothouses
Artefacts - Design as a reflection of Culture (archeology). General topic being the cold war era - how the cold war changed things for the architect and architecture. The collapse of the architect as a heroic figure transforming spatial order. A paradigm shift in the way that architects look at their field. Popular culture becomes art.
Everything in the post-war culture was domestic. Domestic space had expanded. Giving examples of this:
drive-ins - the car transformed to domestic space.
suburbia - same houses, same tv programs
public parks - converted to domestic interiors
Road Trip - the car as a mobile domestic interior. The whole highway system as one small domestic world.
The beat generation. The 50’s. Famous writer William Burroughs - The Naked Lunch
The housewife as a soldier on the home front. American superiority resting on the ideal of the suburban home. The all plastic Monsanto House - the house of the future, displayed at Disneyland (1957-1968). American house deployed as a weapon of the cold war.
Communism fought with washing machines and food mixers.
Playboy - extreme post-war house fantasy. Domestic and designed for suburbia. Fantasy of the girl next door.
Cockpit to cubicle: the design on military space filtering down to the design of office space and domestic space.
Converting materials (e.g. Aluminium) for post-war use.
Toys were military.
1949 Eames House - reconfigurable. You are able to change it on the fly.
Kit-sets. Reconfigurability providing adaptability. Play as post-war therapy. Architecture as a re-orientor and “shock-absorber”.
“Every post-war artefact as a kind of toy”. “[ Defensive] Play, not as the escape from cold war tension, but as its very modus operandi”.
Finding out about architecture through design.
THOUGHTS:
It is interesting to thing of the whole suburban landscape being a product of or response to the cold war. The domestic environment providing the illusion of control and safety - normalcy - when in fact you had the arms race and the potential for mutually assured destruction.
Also that we are or could be still in this environment now.
And if this environment is a "shock-absorber" was things are we being cocooned from now?
Everything in the post-war culture was domestic. Domestic space had expanded. Giving examples of this:
drive-ins - the car transformed to domestic space.
suburbia - same houses, same tv programs
public parks - converted to domestic interiors
Road Trip - the car as a mobile domestic interior. The whole highway system as one small domestic world.
The beat generation. The 50’s. Famous writer William Burroughs - The Naked Lunch
The housewife as a soldier on the home front. American superiority resting on the ideal of the suburban home. The all plastic Monsanto House - the house of the future, displayed at Disneyland (1957-1968). American house deployed as a weapon of the cold war.
Communism fought with washing machines and food mixers.
Playboy - extreme post-war house fantasy. Domestic and designed for suburbia. Fantasy of the girl next door.
Cockpit to cubicle: the design on military space filtering down to the design of office space and domestic space.
Converting materials (e.g. Aluminium) for post-war use.
Toys were military.
1949 Eames House - reconfigurable. You are able to change it on the fly.
Kit-sets. Reconfigurability providing adaptability. Play as post-war therapy. Architecture as a re-orientor and “shock-absorber”.
“Every post-war artefact as a kind of toy”. “[ Defensive] Play, not as the escape from cold war tension, but as its very modus operandi”.
Finding out about architecture through design.
THOUGHTS:
It is interesting to thing of the whole suburban landscape being a product of or response to the cold war. The domestic environment providing the illusion of control and safety - normalcy - when in fact you had the arms race and the potential for mutually assured destruction.
Also that we are or could be still in this environment now.
And if this environment is a "shock-absorber" was things are we being cocooned from now?
Monday, May 19, 2008
Assignment 3: Keywords
The thing that interested me most in my essay was about our desire for novelty. To be stimulated by new things. That this tends to create object churn and how do we respond to that?
Here are some that seemed centred around this issue:
Novelty
1/ The state of being new or novel, newness.
2/ A new product, and innovation.
3/ A small mass produced trinket.
4/ in novelty theory, newness, density of complexification, and dynamic change as opposed to static habituation
Appetite
1/ Desire for, or relish of, food or drink; hunger
2/ A strong desire, an eagerness or longing.
3/ The desire for some personal gratification, either of the body or of the mind.
synonyms: craving, longing, desire, appetency, passion
(To) Stimulate
1/ To encourage into action
2/ To arouse an organism to functional activity
synonyms: encourage, induce, provoke, animate, arouse, energise, excite, perk up
Excite
1/ (transitive) to stir the emotions of
2/ to arouse or bring out feelings; to stimulate
Leaning towards excite or stimulate as they are verbs.
Here are some that seemed centred around this issue:
Novelty
1/ The state of being new or novel, newness.
2/ A new product, and innovation.
3/ A small mass produced trinket.
4/ in novelty theory, newness, density of complexification, and dynamic change as opposed to static habituation
Appetite
1/ Desire for, or relish of, food or drink; hunger
2/ A strong desire, an eagerness or longing.
3/ The desire for some personal gratification, either of the body or of the mind.
synonyms: craving, longing, desire, appetency, passion
(To) Stimulate
1/ To encourage into action
2/ To arouse an organism to functional activity
synonyms: encourage, induce, provoke, animate, arouse, energise, excite, perk up
Excite
1/ (transitive) to stir the emotions of
2/ to arouse or bring out feelings; to stimulate
Leaning towards excite or stimulate as they are verbs.
Reading: The Revival Of Handicraft
Art Workmanship
- reaction against mechanisation
- revert to handicraft
The effect of machinery vs handicraft on the arts
Made to Measure (something made specifically for you) vs mass-production (something made for the general market - the mythical average man).
Middle Ages - Production individualistic in method. Little DIVISION OF LABOUR
First medieval period - Slef employed workman using own tools.
Latter 16th cetury to 18th century - captialist, and the workman, and a division of labour
A change from man using tools (superior), to tending machines (subordinate)
Machines produce ugly thing (utilitarian).
Beauty not as an end in and of itself, but as an environment, a context for other life purposes or activities. Therefore important to have in your surroundings. Society cannot be happy without happy people. Squalid surroundings and wretched drudgery do not make for happiness.
Art in the service of some purpose makes it beautiful.
GREAT EPOCHS OF PRODUCTION
Civilisation being guided by or having a spiritual purpose determined/debated by the intellectual aristocracy.
Mass-production creating capitalists/rich manufacturers - material purpose - who supplant the aristocracy. Status aristocrats (born and bred) being challenged/replaced by wealth aristocrats (new money, rich people).
Basically mass-production changing the power structure of society.
Division of labour being fragmentary or anti-holistic (to the worker). Also the machine displacing workers, creating unemployment and leading to poverty.
But also mass-production making affordable to the poor what was once only affordable to the rich. Mass-production being an equalising or liberating force.
Karl Marx - Socialism "Capital".
THOUGHTS:
William Morris seems to be on the money pretty much and it is surprising how much of what he has to say is still relevant today, considering it was written over 100 years ago.
I think technology has come a long way, and not all mass-produced things are ugly any more. Or at least ugliness isn't an inherent quality of mass-production. There are some very beautiful mass produced things out there. Indeed some mass-production processes are more exacting and precise than any human could be. Microchips being a case in point.
His talk about the surroundings (i.e. environment) is still just as important now. Keeping beauty alive within the human footprint.
- reaction against mechanisation
- revert to handicraft
The effect of machinery vs handicraft on the arts
Made to Measure (something made specifically for you) vs mass-production (something made for the general market - the mythical average man).
Middle Ages - Production individualistic in method. Little DIVISION OF LABOUR
First medieval period - Slef employed workman using own tools.
Latter 16th cetury to 18th century - captialist, and the workman, and a division of labour
A change from man using tools (superior), to tending machines (subordinate)
Machines produce ugly thing (utilitarian).
Beauty not as an end in and of itself, but as an environment, a context for other life purposes or activities. Therefore important to have in your surroundings. Society cannot be happy without happy people. Squalid surroundings and wretched drudgery do not make for happiness.
Art in the service of some purpose makes it beautiful.
GREAT EPOCHS OF PRODUCTION
Civilisation being guided by or having a spiritual purpose determined/debated by the intellectual aristocracy.
Mass-production creating capitalists/rich manufacturers - material purpose - who supplant the aristocracy. Status aristocrats (born and bred) being challenged/replaced by wealth aristocrats (new money, rich people).
Basically mass-production changing the power structure of society.
Division of labour being fragmentary or anti-holistic (to the worker). Also the machine displacing workers, creating unemployment and leading to poverty.
But also mass-production making affordable to the poor what was once only affordable to the rich. Mass-production being an equalising or liberating force.
Karl Marx - Socialism "Capital".
THOUGHTS:
William Morris seems to be on the money pretty much and it is surprising how much of what he has to say is still relevant today, considering it was written over 100 years ago.
I think technology has come a long way, and not all mass-produced things are ugly any more. Or at least ugliness isn't an inherent quality of mass-production. There are some very beautiful mass produced things out there. Indeed some mass-production processes are more exacting and precise than any human could be. Microchips being a case in point.
His talk about the surroundings (i.e. environment) is still just as important now. Keeping beauty alive within the human footprint.
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