Dear Eduardo,
I am double blessed with a comment to me at the beginning and at the end of
your post. Yes, "the field" is aware of the consequences of design and so
are the members of this particular list--we are all building the field,
gradually. I was commenting on how quick some people were initially to
brush Victor's question aside rather than take it up and examine it. Quick
responses are fine in some cases, but deliberate and thoughtful replies are
also helpful. I hope you weren't bruised by my comment.
The response to Victor's question has begun to change now, and I am glad.
And it is good to see some new voices on the list. But it took a while, and
the turn was not inevitable. Clive says we need a bit more pushing and
shoving to prompt a dialogue. Maybe he is right. Civil pushing and
pulling.
However, we are still looking for a way to turn toward productive
conversation on this list rather than a simple exchange of information in
long posts. The information may be interesting, but one sometimes has the
feeling of one digital recorder talking to another digital recorder. Maybe
good for students in a lecture hall--actually, I don't believe it is good in
the lecture hall or the classroom either--but certainly not good for
professors talking in the faculty lounge.
But I have to say that you are good in conversation, and I like that. I
will call you the Hermes of Lisbon, if you don't mind.
Thanks for your smiling post--I can see your face light up with that smile
even now,
Dick
Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University
On 8/7/07 7:25 AM, "Eduardo Corte Real" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Victor and apparently Richard, (since I was one of the guys that "seem
> rather quick and content to turn to other disciplines for information").
>
> Let's try a somewhat J.L. Borgean taxonomy of objects: Inconsequential
> objects, consequential objects, design objects, objects that please the
> emperor, objects that are made for the hand, objects at the hand, handy
> objects, objects that move incessantly, uncanny objects, blue an green
> objects, small and beautiful objects, imaginary objects, strange objects of
> desire. the list is endless. (Borge's China emperor, in another tale, also
> ordered a map so detailed of its empire that unfolded it covered perfectly
> the whole territory).
>
> Let's try also the total absence of objects. I would turn to Hans Castorp,
> Thomas Mann character, lost in the snow and fog. Lost to an unimaginable
> dimension of lostness, with no objects as references with any linearity to
> guide him.
>
> From Borges we learn that any scientific approach needs representation and
> classification of representations. But the most accurate representation is
> the one that matches exactly the represented thing, useless as
> representation, consequently.
>
> From Mann we learn that our humanity lays in our presence, and that without
> the visual objectuality related with, at least the linearity of directions,
> we are lost in its ultimate sense.
>
> Both Borges and Mann are not design researchers but tell us a lot about the
> 'dasein' of objects.
>
> This reminds me of the sentence that is the foundation of Design as we
> discuss it today:
>
> "Signum hoc loco apello quicquid in superficie ita insit ut possit oculo
> conspici" ( Sign, I call here, any thing in a surface that our eye may
> perceive) in the first page of Leon Batista Alberti's treatise "De Pictura".
> Later translated by the same Alberti to the Florentine language, he
> translates signum by "segno" thus making sense of the word "disegno". Di is
> a prefix that indicates action. Disegno means literally signs in action.
>
> The English word design came from a different branch of sign related words
> "Designare", to name or point, or to mark. I found no evidence that this
> word Design was used in English before the 1500's to indicate any kind of
> object production. Even to the beginning of the 1800's the common use of the
> word was as 'whish' or 'will' although it was really commonly used to
> designate projectual drawings (thus after "disegno").
>
> There is no doubt that we may think objects as design objects or simply as
> objects. When we think them as design objects we are forced to understand
> them as a result of an intention. I agree that designers or design theorists
> or design researchers are better equipped to deal with that relation because
> they, as Victor wrote, have better insights. But if you think about it, this
> is reflexive to the design process, where the intentions lay.
>
> In order to know more about objects we need the observation, classification,
> mapping of objects of other sciences if we want to be scientific about it.
> Another thing is the urgent need of a Critic about design objects that I
> find irrevocably needed for Doctoral studies or, for that matter research in
> Design.
>
> An sorry Ken, but I think that Simon's definition of Design "[devise]
> courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones"
> is wrong. It should be like this "[devise] courses of action aimed at
> changing existing situations into preferred ones DIFFERENTLY". Meaning
> differently according to a methodoxy or against a methodoxy. To design
> Design is different from designing anything, it demands a disciplinary
> consciousness. Meaning differently a disciplinary awareness, of a discipline
> indefinable but existing. And existing because, still, there are Design
> Schools, Design Departments in Universities, Higher Education In Design,
> that, willing or not, are shaping, copying, following or fighting
> methodoxies. Please don't confuse me with a Design Methods Movement
> advocate. Even the Design Methods Movement was nothing but a Methodoxy.
>
> Ranjan MP and Paul Rodgers just come out with posts about the outside limits
> of what Design objects are. Objects so, so design that become trans design
> and migrate to art that become interesting for design research and objects
> so undersigned that become interesting to Design researchers and designers.
> Any critical argument about them is welcome but most likely, inevitably will
> come back to the intentions and the process of prefiguration and
> configuration of such objects.
>
> A last word for Richard:
>
> before anything else, Design researchers and Designers must be Intellectuals
> (Bonsiepe said it much better than I do). Any doctoral student must, first
> of all, be prepared to be an intellectual. Any person working Victor's
> question and being an intellectual should go further that the field.
>
> I think we agree on that. Your dismay with the lack of interest of this
> community for the issue of consequences is first: erroneous. Second: If this
> community has really no interest in design consequences (I think it has a
> lot) you have failed in shaping the field.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Eduardo
>
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