Francois
No.
The point to a "design" narrative / rhetoric, is that it should (while,
perhaps confusingly, be someone else's and at the same time part of your
own new narrative) strive to act on behalf of those you design for
(i.e., "speak for").
When you enter the Agora/Topos, and in a performative way (dramaturgical
= Goffman; RD Laing= what are we playing at?) you use rhetoric to
persuade the audience to a particular point of view, you have a decided
responsibility to not only represent the client, but also to represent
those to whom you speak so eloquently, and they might not be the same
... IF the client is a capitalistic entrepreneur, then on your own
conscious be it.
I am 100% against this approach of serving "the client" and not the real
receivers of the narrative ... it should not be that difficult to
determine whether the message you design is sustainable and humanly
responsible, or not.
Have we not learned from the example of e.g. the Prius, that the
artifact does not speak for itself but only serves as the fronting myth
for the manufacturers?
If design were to adopt the approach that any artifact can wholly speak
for itself, then we would usurp the comfortable position of the fine
arts, and they (seemingly, Dr. Jung) believe that their "artifacts" can
"speak for themselves" - a delusion that has never worked.
Artifacts are dead things - they do not speak except with the voices of
the originators / those who commission them (i.e., as mediators) , and
that has a whole new narrative behind the scenes that is normally
hidden, for good reason. When artifacts do "speak" directly to normal
people (i.e., users), it is because the designer has learned 1] either
how "things talk back" in a sociallly constructive way ("making things
visible" etc. - Don) to help the buyer to operate this damn thing, or 2]
the designer has learned to MAKE THINGS TALK BACK so that the Pavlov
user can respond accordingly ...
Given the scenario of "so, how did we do then? How many widgets did we
sell?" but also "we did well / we did badly" and, especially, boy, did
we sell ### amount of new-fangled phones this month" = the artifact will
not "speak" to you in any manner whatsoever ...
I was seated in a "cell phone" shop two days ago (we have to RICA every
SIM card, i.e., positively register the thing), and the
staff/sales-person talk was very illuminating ... "let them eat cake"
was the gist of it ... "we know that 'they' have a need to buy the new
stuff we put on the market, whether it makes sense or not ... good for
us".
No, too many artifacts are not worth the term ... and they speak loudly
with the voices of negative capitalism.
I enjoyed that bit of raving, I did.
Johann
Johann van der Merwe
HOD: Research, History & Theory of Design
Faculty of Informatics and Design
Cape Peninsula University of Technology
South Africa
>>> Francois Nsenga <[log in to unmask]> 06/23/11 1:55 AM >>>
Dear Johann
I guess you also mean that the Design-designer's argument is either
totally
or partially embedded in the artifact designed? And if so, then the
narrative of the designer's views, or those of his/her commissioners, is
either fully or partially contained in the artifact? This leading to the
standpoint held by some among us, that the artifact 'speaks for itself',
'self-explanatory' , with no further need for writing or talking about
it
(rhetorical arguments)?
Francois
Montreal
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 4:18 PM, Johann van der Merwe <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> (...)
>
> Can anyone see the similarity between the developing identity of a
> discipline (e.g., a contingently "opportunistic" one such as 'design')
> and the developing identity of a person?
> Both the individual and the discipline needs to keep a particular
> narrative going, and in design that narrative can, to a large extent,
be
> the same one for both.
> The use of argument both personal and professional should then
question
> exactly how and why this narrative is constructed and maintained (and
> "kept going" does not really mean maintained in original form ...)
>
> I agree with Mercier and Sperber (thanks Don), that "skilled arguers
...
> are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views"
...
> in design, though, whose views are we arguing for?
> A skilled design arguer: whose views will be represented in the
> constructed and persuasive (rhetorical, as in the sense of "saying
> well") argument; will the argument demonstrate a balance between
> research rigour and situational openness, and will the narrative be
> 'readable' and acceptable to the final target audience?
>
> Johann
>
>
>
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