hi,

i agree, passion, as a very personal emotion, is not very interesting to
designers.  this is one reason why i focused on intrinsic motivation for
using artifacts instead.  it can no doubt be a goal of design to design
something that supports passionate use = is intrinsically motivation,
exciting to use.  there are properties that need to be satisfied for this to
be possible.  http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/47 

klaus 

-----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 Jean
Schneider
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 4:12 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Passion

Hello all,

Chris wrote :
"Our debate is prompted by a colleague, Bernd Ploderer visiting us from
Melbourne University,  whose research explores body builders as an
interesting online community. He has concluded that "passion" is the best
way to describe the motivation that brings somebody to engage in
all-consuming training and undertake activities that risk their health in
order to achieve a particular kind of competitive perfection. We also felt
that a similar (maybe less extreme) passion distinguishes learners who will
keep experimenting and perfecting their work as a way of refining their
skills and knowledge. Ironically young children have a natural talent for
great concentration, repeating tasks endlessly to master them but we seem to
lose that focus as we get into our later childhood.

I'm not sure that passion has figured so much in concepts of designing,
which we often discuss in quite functional ways, but I'd be glad to be
proved wrong."

The responses so far tend to focus on passion as a psychological state of
being, which often leads us to find heroes. Because, of course, a "passion"
that does not produce socially acceptable results (even if they come after
your death) can be quite close to stupidity and being stubborn.

I am more interested in the way passion operates in the field of any
practice. It is interesting to look at the way "art historians" (at least
those who write art history as a set of biographies, starting with Alberti)
write biographies, and confront this to the original material they might
have used (e.g. interviews, notes, second hand information etc...). One
thing that strikes me is the fact that "passion" is the conjunction of (1) a
social operator and (2) a paradigmatic shift.
(1) : passion creates a strong social network (e.g. those who support this
new art, those who hate it, those that practice this sport, those that
collect tin toys etc.) with a set of signs that bond and exclude (here we
are close to practice) and an internal value system that, interestingly
enough, is very close to aesthetics (e.g. with a strong focus on appearance,
perfection, pleasure etc.) rather than anything that would be imported from
any other (even similar) practice;
(2) : the paradigmatic shift is expressed in the "form" in which the object
of passion is constituted as an object. The object of passion can be a very
common object (your body, a body, an object, an activity —architecture,
teaching…—, a presentation —music, painting…). But it is the object-subject
relationship that is questioned, remaped. So that the dialectics between the
author and the object (and the status of authorship), the receiver and the
object (and the status of receiving) are defined by new boundaries, which
will result in a new constituency for the object itself. The function of the
object, its intrinsic elements (their function — value, role, aspect), the
relation to the context are organised along new lines, creating a "new
object" that might appear similar to all others, but has been designed in a
different way [a seminal case — because it is very well documented— in that
matter —for me— is Cézanne's painting. If the act of painting is a "act of
thinking and knowing", Cézanne is the proof of it].

Regarding the fact that passion does not figure in the concept of designing
: you could be right in an analytical way, and even though, I would not bet
much. But I believe that it is an essential representation in the ethos of
design, and therefore in the qualification of its practice. If passion
(embedded in an individual,
preferably) was not a key figure of design practice, there would not be any
interest in star designers (cf. point 2), the discipline would be ten times
more integrated in society and the economy (cf. point 1). And the whole
history of design could be written in a different way (which would be really
a necessity) : less (fake) heroes,
(artificial) movements and (linear) bio-hagiography, more facts, politics
and sociology... but I am now getting too passionate ;-)

Best,
Jean