Assignment 3: Research Composition.

Brainstorming ideas for a keyword.

Looking at 'know what' rather than 'know how'. Also the difference between the two.

*Going along with all the aspects from 'know what'

-Letting the material/software help guide the end result

-Not having a set process for how to get to the end result, not being able to visualise it at the beginning.

-knowledge - handicraft -manipulation -deformation -within
-talking about the different kinds of knowledge in design. 'know how' knowledge, working with your hands, over 'know what' knowledge which is more conceptual.

- going with 'know how' knowledge, looking at hands on, manipulation of an object through hands, strength and contact of hands on a material, substance of a matter in an object or form, through manuel hands, leaving fingerprints on the object, transforming the object with the human body, the relationship between the human body and the object, experience of hand to the world, looking at the bodies negative, positive, neutral impact on the object.
-have the material struggle, twist, turn, stretch, pull, uncomfortable, because of the hands on the form
-What is deformation or manipulation? first you need a starting point that isnt deformed or manipulated. You cant have an object that starts deformed at least relative to the end point.

Looking at:

-Cubism
-De Stijl

Finding a criteria to help decide which of the 5 media to choose from.

The final design needs to relate closely to the keyword. So it needs to relate closely back to my thesis. It needs to involve an aspect of intuition, the way craftsmen worked to create their objects. Also the process I use to create the end product needs to take the software into account, there needs to be a shared effort where both software and designer are equals. There Must be no routine to the creation.

-Photography

-Physical form

-Light

-Sound

-Water. Ice. steam

For this photo manipulation, the end form wasn't in my head at the beginning. I worked with the Photoshop software to cut out bits of a photo and paste them onto the original, I could not have perceived at the beginning what the end result would have come out like. I simply used my intuition, cutting and pasting and moving the bits around until I felt the image looked good

Pictures from presentation.

Lecture May 20th- Sci-Fi and Future Technologies

Science advances that challenge us to think about things differently. The way of the future?
Alan Kay-" the best way to predict the future is to make it."
Learning about history helps us make good decissions for the future.
Its crazy to think about how long robotics have been around. All the way back to Da Vinci's designs. Its also crazy to think about how advanced robotics have got. An example is bios [bible]'2007. Which is a mechanical arm that writes out the bible constantly. It acts just like a human hand would. Only stronger. When i picture this it does make me think about what I've seen in movies. I think in some instances the movie has come up with these concpets before scientists.
Its very exciting living in this time, where technology is advancing so much. But if real life does keep following along the lines of movies, sooner or later the robots will take over the humans!

Stelarc- '1/4 scale ear' -The tissue culture and art project: "disembodied cuisine" http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/ -meat that doesn’t involve killing animals -Eduardo Kac. "Alba" florescent bunny


Victimless Leather- A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket grown in a Techno scientific "Body"










Science fiction: some of the best writers

-Mary Shelley (Frankenstein 1818)
-Jules Verne (journey to the centre of the earth 1864)
-H.G. Wells (The war of the worlds 1898)
-Isaac Asimov (Foundation Series and I, Robot 1950)
-Philip K. Dick (Minority Report 1956) -Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
-Arthur C. Clark (The Sentinel 1948 Later adapted to the Book and Movie 2001: A Space Odyssey)
-William Gibson (1984)
-Neal Stephenson (1992) Battle star Galactic, Star Trek, Minority Report.


What comes first? The increase in science technology in society or the ideas in media such as books and movies? Arthur C. Clark wrote out all the details for geostationary satellites and how they could be used for communication well before the first rocket had gone into space. Isaac Asimov wrote about the laws of Robotics and the way they could function to help the world before the first computer had been built. The technology in Minority Report did actually function and many of the amazing looking gizmos are in labs as prototypes.

Seminar 7 May 16th-

Reading on Political Ergonomics- By Langdon Winner.
In this reading he deals with two different topics. Polictics and Design. He describes politics as human afairs, and power. And describes design as lasting things or patterns.
-Talks about poltics within design, and about it not being so important anymore due to political power now being seen all through the department, from arch to design to production etc....
communications system includes and excludes. So hes saying that we have to think about things through politics eyes. Everything has politics entwined in it.

Political Artifect- Designers design works, ie of art. and works are described as things that endure. When creating a product we have to think about whether it helps or frustrates.

Winner talks about two ways of doing this- We can understand our politcal goals

-Or we can look to history. Learn from the past. In three specific ways
-State craft
-Architecture
-Engineering

State Craft
-What politicians/philosophers do, try to craft/effect the state.
-Interested in how society is organised
-Designing society
-The quality of life relates back to the design of the political structure. William Morris is a good example

Architecture /and urban planning
-Built buildings to encourage/inspire increase quality of life in a certain society.

Engineering
-Began as a part of architecture
-Just a form of problem solving
-Only concerned with making something aconomically/cheaply possible.
-Designers need to recognise the political role of what they do.
-Political ergonomics.
-Ergonomics needs to be expanded, needs to expand how bodies and tools fiot togetherwith society and politics aswel.-With design theres a big gap here.


ANSWERS??
-Could combine the three traditions with rational problem solving- State Craft, Architecture and Engineering
-Participatory design. Where you have users involved in the design process
-Need to be more aware or universal design and make sure your designs include everyone. ie disabilities.


Presentations-
The Ecstasy of Communication by Jean Baudrillard
-Lisa's seminar

1. The simulacrum-hyperrealism
2. Networked society
3. Relations between public and private

Simulacrum- ie the matrix. which is about a simulation that seems real.
- ie a marz bar. which we now by because of its label rather than what it actually is
a) it is the reflection of a basic reality
b) it makes and perverts a basic reality
c) it makes the absence of a basic reality
d) it bears no relation to any reality whatever, it is its own pure simulacrum

Interacting through images with no depth.
Era of production vs Era of connections- connecting through image with no depth/different meaning.
We are used to things based on how they look. And now we buy things that will help include us in a network, opt into a network, help it to have a smooth running. This relates back to the 'cold war, hot houses' reading by Beatriz Colomina- If public space was privitzed, domestic space was publised. We all want out private lives to be part of a public netowrk.
All this netowrking. We are the pure body being influenced by different networks.

'The simulacrum is never what hides the truth- it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.'
-Ecclesiastes
We buy things not because we think they are the best, but because we think others think they are the best, to fit into the network.
We are lost between the space between real and hyperreal

Second Seminar
The great sideshow of the situationist. international.- By Edward Ball 1987
(si) Group of international, political and artistic agitators 'acts of cultural abotage... that might strengthen the growing bohemian sub-culture.'

Guy Debord- De facto leader- Society of the spectacles.
May 1968 the rise against De Gaulle
'Consevative morality' -religion, -patriotism, -respect for authority.
'Liberal morality' -equality, - sexual liberation, -human rights.

How we follow the image of a product rather than what it actually is. A feature from both presentations

Lecture May 13th- Politics of the Artificial

The architecture of power- The case of Imperial Delhi

Imperial and Architectural contect-
-Ancient seat of empires
-'jewel in the crown' or 'keystone of empire'
-Indian taditions
-British traditions

Imperial and Architectural Theory-
-Occidentalism vs Orientalism
-The politics of Design
-Design by Diktat or Democracy
-Symbolism

Imperial and Architectural Practice
-Something old, something new, soemthing borrowed, something askew?
-Sir Edwin Lutyens -The viceroys palace
-Sir Herbert Baker - Govt Secretariat
-Monuemtn or Mausoleum?
-Legacies

Seminar 6 May 9th-

The things that matter. By Verbeck
Seminar by Andrew
-Looks at Ezio
Slowlab

www.slowlab.net
-Eco design
-Recycling
-Development
-Psychological

How can the psychological life span be prolonger?
-Making things look better the longer they exist i.e. leather vs. chrome.

History of industrial design
-in 1900s standardisation/computerisation was thought of as dangerous
-in 20th century machines came back into popularity but everything that was created had to have a use.
-in about 1950 was pop culture and ‘throw away’ aesthetics

Script- designers anticipate the use of the design therefore limiting the use.

Objects are made too regularly; durable objects need to become a reality.

“Matter matters”

Discussion thoughts
-People want to shop for new things, how do we stop this?
-Do we have to change the whole culture?


Using computers
-Emma’s seminar

Byte magazines
Ontological- is a formal way of setting up ideas. A research tool, to figure out the relationships between different ideas.

As computers develop they will become easier to work with, and also more human like. Human computer or computeristic humans?

Computers are already starting to think for themselves. Like in word, how the computer is programmed to figure out what word you are trying to write out even if you are spelling it wrong. Computers have instincts. We are learning from computers and computers are learning from us. – The idea of feedback.

This reading was written in 1987, when not everyone had computers like they do these days. These were the good reason in the reading to purchase a computer.
-Save a lot of time
-Save labour
-Data basing, organising
-Feedback

Technology develops technology, technology develops us, and we develop technology.

Discussion thoughts
Computers can’t head towards being too much like human beings because all humans are inevitably different. What we like about computers is that they are predictable, and faultless, not individual.



Slots are fun, slots are trouble. By Erkki Huhtamo
Seminar by Hamish

-Looking at the history of electronic games as a manifestation of the human and machine relationship.
The popularity of slot machines is due (according to Erkki) to the ‘magic realm’ it creates. This is a realm designed to make the customer forget about the outside world. The slot machines also gave women a sense of being equal, which they didn’t have at the time, through the 20th century.

“We are probably witnessing only the first stages in a development that will attain much more massive dimensions and proceed into directions we cannot at presence perceive.”

Why are slot machines important to learn about in design? Because they talk about a social change.


The class reading...
‘Towards user design? On the shift from object to user as the subject of design.’ Written by Johan Redstrom

He’s asking can we design the use of something.
-really you can only decide the use of something once its in someone’s hand, not before then, while you’re trying to create it.
Participatory design
-To test whether people would use the object how it was designed to be used.
Good to have objects as simple as possible so they can be used for different things (handrail) the concept of the user becomes designer
Is the most successful thing a designer can do to make as many varieties he can from one form?

With modernism came less decoration, more objects that have purposes. ‘Form became subordinate to function.’
This is definitely something we work at here at Vic uni design school. With every design we create, there has to be a function. The tutors will never say well done this looks really nice.

Successfulness is shown by similar thought. If an object is truly successful then any one who picks it up to use it, will be thinking the same thoughts. ‘Define its effectiveness’. Unless the user understands the object the way the designer intended him to, the design is unsuccessful.

These days Designers can get big awards for designing something useless. Design should be judged by the design users. ‘It is now becoming clear, in view of the large number of award-winning designs that have failed the test of use,’

People accept that knowing about use and users play a part in design.

What a user is-
‘First of all, people, not users, inhabit the world. A ‘user’ is something that designers create.’

We aim not just to design an object but also control how that object is seen and experienced. Not in all cases though. Here are three objects where the ‘user’ has gone against what the designer has intended. Cell phone, which is not now just a ‘phone’, the cell phone that we carry around with us these days, is just as much a photo, text messager, or portable computer. Hand rails. Which we designer simply to assist people walking up stairs or along a path. Now used by skateboards as they development new moves. Turntable originally developed as a private device to listen to records, now it ‘replaces live music at dance venues.’

People interpret objects differently. ‘As it seems, the process of people becoming users, interpreting objects in terms of use, frequently generates alternative pictures of what the use of the object should be.’

It’s unlikely that the designers of a handrail would have ever been able to predict what the skateboards have done to their design. Skateboards wouldn’t have been on the designers list of people to consider as users.

These days we have specific objects that do specific things and are much closed. This means that users are unable to interpret the object how they want.

What is design about if not use? But there is a fundamental difference between designing things to be used and trying to design use or the user experience.



End question…

Is it better to design simple object (like the hand rail) with no predesigned use, so the ‘user’ or rather the people can make their own decision on what the object should be used for. Or is it better to be specific in your design so there is no guesswork left in trying to figure out how the object works.

Lecture May 6th-

Philosophy of the Artificial
-Raphael The school of Athens 1509-1510
-Moder Philosophy (western)
Philosophy is a mixture of theology adn science

1. Theory of knowledge - Epistomology
2. Study of 'being' - Ontology/Metaphysics
3. How we compose outselves, live in a good way - Ethics
4. Beauty and Art/Experience - Asthetics
5. Thinking- Physcology
6. Physics/Chemistry - Natural philosophy

Design relevance
-Background assumptions/founding of design
What counts as valid design knowledge?

1.What counts as valid research?

Rene Descrartes (1596-1650)
'I doubt, therefore i think, therefore i am'
-First step to existing is thinking.
-Mind comes before the world/body. mind first. body second
-It was thought 'the seeing' was the most omportant thing. two types of seeing- specualtion/mind and observation.
-Influenced by Alberti Perspective.

2. Cartesian Perspectivism is an inadequint.
Colin McCahon. Aletter to Hebrews 1979. Makes a connection between the light language and the land- Victory over death. Light words. 'being there' '. 'I am', the light coming through the daskness. 'Am i am'. Question of doubt and the being.
Text and language.
Cararaggio. Nacissus 1597.
- Blind reflection in Blindness
-Same idea as self portrait
-Medusa
-Phenomenolgy
-Equipment is invisable when we used it ie pen, hamer, we use it for its use only.
This is how design works- We have an object but dont see the design behind it even thought design is what defined the object.
Ralph Hotere works with dark painting and vision. 'Black window'

3. When considering what constitutes 'valid' and 'rigorous' design knowledge, it follows that we need aron-ocularcentric epistemology

Seminar 5 May 2nd

Seminar Slower consumption- Lou
By Tim Cooper
'Throwaway society'
'sustainable consumption'
The story of stuff. Extraction -> production -> Consumption -> Disposal
This shouldnt be a line, it should be a circle, where Disposal then goes back around to Extraction.
We need both efficiency and sufficiency for outcomes to work.
product life span

Media Ecologies Seminar- Merideth
By Matthew Fuller
Relationships between organisms and enviroments. Meshing systems together.
'Pirate radio' Culture for underground London. Towerblock and slums. Concrete wall with poisons in it. Extreme stuff.
Cant get input from legal rediostations like you can illegal, personal ones like pirate radio.
Grows from media being illegal, this is the reason it got so big.
Illegal but foundational- neccesary.
- In 1972 President Richard Nixon got caught, this was an example of the truth. Unlike Donald Rumsfields case. Where a lot of media was in one persons hands, who was high up. This resulted in the hiding of truth.
Defintion of local media- media that reflects an unbiased opinion.


The future in terms or Robots-
-Social interaction
-Visual form fo robot is very important

Wearable computers
- addidas shoes
- Adjustable padding in the shoe, depending on the groun you're walking on.
-Really big cause it looked good too.

Biggest problem in the reading is how to make the humasn understand how to work/interact with these compuerts. Need to make them safe and controllable. Narrow the divide between the designers, creators and users of materialks/computers like this.

Lecture April 29th-

Ecology of the Artificial

Quote from (Victor Papanek, 1985)

'... there are few professions more harmful than industrial, but only a very few.'

Victor Papanek felt it was the designers moral responsibility to decide which projects to do, and which projects to dismiss due to their effect on society.
-How society can effect nature...- Fran Lanting - Life- creating the earth

Ecologically sustainable design
- The ecosphere- A limited enviroment
- The atmosphere - Air
- The Biosphere- Living things
- The Lithosphere- Rocks
- The Hydrosphere- Water

+Easter Island...
Was a small isolated island. Big stone sculptures were found on it. called Moai. These stones are big, 25m high, 35 cars ish heavy. The island had big palm trees, the people used these trees for everything, to live off. No other way of building these big statues. They used all of these palm trees up, then had no more iron, so became canabalistic, they lost 90% of their population. Eventually all died out because these trees weere exstinct.
This is an example of a small civilisation with a small amount of technology that was able to destroy themselves. We as a big civilisation have huge advances in technology like nuclear power and rocketships. But earth is a limited environment and we need to look after it.
The material we use used to be mostly from the biosphere, like wood. But not its mostly coming from lithosphere, like oil. Since the 1900s.

Invisable materials that we don’t realise get used up.
-Production waste
-Stockpile
-Contents (whats inside an object)
-Escape, wear and tear, products are always losing material, like gases. New car smell is really just gases escaping.

Product life style.
-Design concept
-Materials and manufacture
-Packaging and transport
-Consumer purchases
-Consumer use
-End of life. Down cycling. Recycling. Upcycling

....to be continued

Seminar 4 April 11th

The future of interactive design- Neo's Seminar

1. Intelligent Agents
-Applications (myware/spyware)
-Semantic web
-Spimes (space + time = spime)

2. Transmedia Interactions
-ARGs: Alternate reality games
-The best - A.I
-Metacortechs - Matrix

3. Human - Robot
-Broad definition

4. Wearable
-Adidos
-The hug shirt
-Bodymedias (sense wear armband)

The three main problems with robot manufacturing
- form
-function
-manner of behaviour

5. Ubiquitous computering
-Ubicomp
-Interaction- designers have a roll to play.

6. Digital tools for making digital tools.
-Apllications- ebay
- myspace
- Ning

Summary.....
To predict the future is to invent it. Make it more humane by new technologies



The nature and art of workmanship - Gina and Mattew's seminar

-David Pye
1940s designer, industry

In this chapter David Pye accurately and concisely differentiates between craftsmanship and modern machine done work. He writes his philosophical yet practical, perosnla ideas on craftsmanship. It doesnt focus on any specific craft (though Professor Pye is a woodworker himself)

craftsmanship/workmanship risk.
Now humancraft is required only at the beginning of the design process. rather than followed the whole thing through.

workmanship of certainty
Computer/lazercuter
-Machine is made-takes a while-should get achnoledgement for making machine aswel.
-Man has created such tools that make perfection possible.

William Morris- Printing press

Ron Arad- 'The method is only part of it. its not everything'

Tinker chair 1988- hand crafted

Greatful for mechanical machines these days. Ron Arad works the same place as David Pye.

Front design- a design firm from sweden
www.frontdesign.se/sketchfurniture

- this is what pye would have wanted.

Now we need new designs rather than polluting the world with old ones. Shouldnt abuse this and manufacture lots of the same thing- this is polluting

WOR (handcraft) vs WOC (machine built)
-Writing
-Handwriting compared to printing- a lot of work. All of the machines we use these days were created in WOR to start with.
typewriter midway
-Always trying to illiminate risk. These days we hardly have risk. WE have built machines that create pretty much perfect.
We have automatic machines that make 100s of bolts. Without anyone watching at all. You could go one step further and create a machine that uses the bolt in its right place.
Which is better then, out of WOC and WOR? Something about WOR is appealing. Even though with WOR we often get less quality. ie Cutting acrylic by hand vs lazercutter.
We expect more of WOC products
Some people belive that handicraft should be exstinct.


Manuel De Landa

-Richard's Seminar

-Homogenous- consistant
-Heterogenous- inconsistant

-Science has reduced materials to basic properties- chemicals.
-Craftsmen deal with the material as a whole.

'know how'- giving starting points/constraints. let the material/computer figure out the end product.


Social Dimensions of wearable computers
-Ana Viseu

-Wearable computers
-Technology getting smart
ie hot water cylinder connected to electricity so can be turned off.

Ubiquitorous- means everywhere.
Minitureisation/hands free. - Laptop, ipod, cell phone, simulation goggles.
Design has become more proactive. A way of connecting your body to the world. Moving from a tool that you wear on your body to a part of your body. Almost like we're trying to perfect our bodies ir carbon fibre legs.

Will we lose sense of natural instict? Intuition? What is nature? What is artificial? The difference between the two isnt as clear as it used to be.
Is it a human becoming part of a computer or a computer becoming part of a human being? Is it certain that WOC will take over the whole world?