Terry,
I am very interested in the worlds of engineering design (having been
an "aerospace maintenance technician" in a former life, and a
committed 'gear head' still today!), but I haven't applied this
analysis there. My goal has been to understand how the 'idea of
design' moves those outside of design professions - of any kind. And
this necessarily leads one to explore how design is portrayed in the
media (without judging how 'accurate' it is, from any perspective),
and consumerism (on any front, not just material culture). Thus,
there are certain realms or fields or contexts that offer up the bulk
of public or mass exposure to the idea of design, and these tend to be
of the aesthetic variety (architecture, product design, fashion - the
look, if you will) - your observations about what people do and don't
know about engineering design illustrates a part of this. When we're
talking about culture or society, design in the political economy of
consumer-capitalist dominated societies is largely an aesthetic
mechanism of order (mediated by aesthetic experts and their pundits),
and embedded in a symbolic economy of cool or new or tech, with some
measurements of functionality mixed in (and an increasing interest in
sustainability too, I suppose). The questions I've had lately have to
do with how this organizes society, who benefits (in terms of power),
how new subjectivities (identities-labels) are created (as Amanda
says) so as to align populations with the needs and desires of
political economic order a la 'design', as it is known popularly? In
this sense, perhaps engineers are a kind of anti-design avant garde!
In other words, they're problem solving but without all the hype and
circumstance!
OK, I'm off to offer some dispute resolution and diaper changing..!
Juris
On Jun 5, 2008, at 12:54 AM, Bill, Amanda wrote:
> Terry
>
> Terry,
>
> Terry
>
> I see this as relating to an emergent field, not the just the
> epistemological biases of 'art and design' design and 'engineering'
> design.
>
> The other day I marked an essay that said "New Zealand manufacturing
> is declining due to the lack of young people choosing manufacturing
> as a profession". The salient point is that students have not
> always been imagined to be choosers of a profession. In fact it
> wasn't too long ago that a whole educational apparatus existed so
> that individuals did NOT need to decide which profession they were
> suited for.
>
> A very truncated argument would be that governmental technologies
> that people today have to engage with, in order to become self-
> responsible citizens, help to make them into 'creative' subjects.
>
> These days, students have no option but to choose for themselves and
> in terms of prior assemblages they often make choices that seem
> wrong. This is partly because of media and the star system, as Juris
> says. Also, I think, due to the co-creation strategies of consumer
> brands (such as Apple).
>
> Evidence of this is that creative education is growing, while
> science and technology education is shrinking (relatively speaking
> of course). It's almost funny to see governments jumping up and down
> saying we must have more SET education, because the more mechanisms
> that are put in place to facilitate this choice, the more some
> people want to realise a desire to do something creative.
>
> Governmentality helps to explain how this works, and how people come
> to desire the kind of casualised, hyper-flexible yet highly-skilled
> work that creative industries depend upon.
>
> I would be interested in the subjectivities of professionally
> practicing engineering designers. Do they need to express and
> realise their creative 'inner qualities' in the same way as the 'art
> and design' designers do? If not, does this have anything to do
> with an ability to gain employment within a manufacturing industry,
> and have the satisfaction of regular wages to be able to realise
> themselves in leisure? Does this have anything to do with gender?
>
> I don't know if this answers your question!
>
> Amanda
>
> Amanda Bill
> Lecturer, Fashion & Textile Design
> College of Creative Arts
> Massey University, Wellington
> Telephone 644 801 2794 xt 6886
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Terence Love
> Sent: Thursday, 5 June 2008 12:58 p.m.
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design-Art
>
> Dear Amanda and Juris,
>
> I'm interested in how you see that your analyses fit with the
> disciplines of
> engineering design (mechanical, mechatronic, software, computing
> etc)? All
> involve creativity, culturally-based organisations, economic
> development etc
> and are closely linked with art and aesthetic except for a short
> period in
> the late 20th century. All regard design as a collaborative
> endeavour vital
> to new forms of capitalist enterprise.
>
> One aspect of the difference between professional practices in
> engineering
> design fields and 'art and design' design (and this may be
> fundamentally
> important in terms of epistemological biases in research in this
> area) is
> that engineering design outcomes are rarely associated with the
> individual
> designers, and, the huge amount of engineering design that is the
> primary
> basis of most products is relatively hidden or (if designed
> sucessfully) so
> unobtrusive as to be overlooked. For example, there are very few
> poepl who
> would know the name of the engineering designers that designed the
> engine
> control system in their car or are aware of the sophistication and
> importance of that computerised engine management system in
> environmental
> terms? Another example is that it is usually not at the front of
> consumers
> (or many designers ) minds that most of the design of popular
> devices such
> as the iPod was undertaken by engineering designers. Hence on one
> hand in
> the engeering design realms, there are typically 'no stars' and on
> the
> other hand 'the bulk of the design work is not seen by consumers/
> users' .
>
> Does this imply a parallel and different process to the
> governmentality
> explanations you have developed for 'art and design' design, or is it
> included in your explanations?
>
> Terry
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Juris
> Milestone
> Sent: Thursday, 5 June 2008 3:03 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design-Art
>
> Amanda,
>
> Yes, in a recent article I briefly explored a related contradiction
> (between
> 'creative genius' and design-for-all) within the US popular media's
> handling
> of the idea of design: "Design as Power: Paul Virilio and the
> Governmentality of Design Expertise"
> http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1473-5784&volume=48&i
> ssue=2&spage=175
>
> Basically, I say that in the media, at least, there is no perceived
> contradiction or conflict between the two and I believe this is
> accomplished
> largely through the pairing of the star system (famous designers or
> architects) with the glorification of the consumer in contemporary
> capitalist society (the 'democratization of design' is often invoked
> here as
> well). These two areas work together to form a kind of symbiosis
> between
> market rules and the populace, thereby resolving the contradiction
> through a
> neat interdependence, and ultimately contributing to the 'governing'
> (organization) of modern liberal democratic societies/populations.
>
> Juris
>
>
> On Jun 3, 2008, at 4:16 PM, Bill, Amanda wrote:
>
>> Hi Dan and Juris,
>> I've investigated 'creativity' as governmentality. Am just about to
>> submit my PhD thesis on it. I've taken it as a category of subjective
>> identification and an object of educational governance in fashion
>> design. From a discourse theory perspective (Laclau - Essex
>> school), I
>> take 'creativity' is a nodal point that unifies previously
>> antagonistic views. Within various cultural organisations including
>> economic development agencies and universities, moves to strengthen a
>> liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of 'arts knowledge'
>> with high cultural capital have been rubbing up against strategies to
>> enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a
>> collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise.
>> An outcome of the resulting creativity discourse is that the 'idea of
>> design' and the 'idea of art' tend to shift about, somewhat.
>> You're right, this needs further examination.
>>
>> Amanda
>> College of Creative Arts
>> Massey University
>> Wellington, NZ
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
>> related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Juris Milestone [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, 3 June 2008 8:28 a.m.
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Design-Art
>>
>> Dan,
>>
>> This facet of design is, I think, under examined - that is, what the
>> 'idea of design' is outside of professional or academic claims, and
>> how this is important. I think we ought to allow for an analysis of
>> this idea (design) as a "total social fact", along the lines of
>> Mauss'
>> gift, or a technology of governmentality along the lines of Foucault,
>> or class and taste along the lines of Bourdieu's field of position
>> takings.
>>
>> Design in mass media and consumer culture is a powerful force that is
>> shaped outside the purviews of professional designers, design
>> researchers, and other design academics, and yet has a huge influence
>> on those very areas.
>>
>> Juris Milestone
>>
>>
>> On Jun 2, 2008, at 9:00 AM, Daniel Huppatz wrote:
>>
>>> Dear list
>>>
>>> There are always interesting discussions about the definitions of
>>> design on this list, and I thought list members might be interested
>>> in my recent mapping of contemporary design & consumerism. Outside
>>> of
>>> design education institutes and design studios, the meaning of the
>>> term design seems to me to be narrowing rather than expanding. Most
>>> recently, design seems to have become associated ever more closely
>>> with art - or Design-Art
>>> - as discussed by Alice Rawthorn in the IHT here. I think this
>>> pheonomenon has serious implications for designers and the way
>>> design
>>> is perceived. I've blogged it here as part of an ongoing series of
>>> essays about contemporary design and consumerism, Signs of Design.
>>> Any comments or ideas from listees most welcome.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Dan Huppatz
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