Dear Colleagues,
Terry Love’s recent response to Klaus Krippendorff in the thread titled “Automated design generation and optimisation research breakthrough” calls out for a human reply.
Philippe Starck’s chair designs are disappointing in two ways. The first way is that this is an ugly chair. There is nothing to recommend it. This is admittedly an opinion — others may disagree. Starck used a computer to design the chair. It can be manufactured. People can sit on it. But there is little to recommend it as contrasted with all the many manufactured chairs already being made.
https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/philippe-starck-designs
The second disappointing aspect of this chair is the fact that Starck is still designing ugly, useless … things. In 2008, Starck gave in interview in Die Zeit. He stated that he would retire within two years, and he claimed he would no longer contribute to the overproduction of useless artefacts. Here is an English translation of the interview on CNET:
https://www.cnet.com/news/philippe-starck-and-design-is-dead/ <https://www.cnet.com/news/philippe-starck-and-design-is-dead/>
Here are some press comments at the time:
https://www.yankodesign.com/2008/03/28/philippe-starck-design-is-dead/ <https://www.yankodesign.com/2008/03/28/philippe-starck-design-is-dead/>
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/starck-raving/ <https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/starck-raving/>
The Redshift article demonstrates that Starck can now use computing power to design useless artefacts. I don’t think that these chairs occupy what Klaus Krippendorff described as “a space of previously unimaginable possibilities.” I’ve seen a lot of chairs that look roughly like these, including many in undergraduate furniture design exhibitions. These are student exercises. Now for a company is trying to teach its software to design, these are interesting first-grade projects that deserve to be put up on the refrigerator. If a working designer created chairs like this, there would be less to praise. When computers learn how to design furniture that transcends student work, we won’t need Philippe Starck.
As I wrote these words, I’m sitting at my kitchen table on a comfortable Norrgavel dining chair:
https://norrgavel.se/mobler/pinnstol-2
At the end of the table, we have a Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair:
https://www.carlhansen.com/en/collection/chairs/ch24/wishbone-chair-oak-soap-nature/variant/695
When I saw the Starck plastic chair, the upside-down wishbone formed by the back legs reminded me of an impoverished Wegner. I’m not saying that everyone needs to have chairs by Wegner or Norrgavel. These are expensive, though durable. They appeal to designers. Ditte and I wanted Norrgavel and Wegner for the last home we are likely to buy. We aren’t likely to move again, and these will last for the rest of our lives. Until now, we’ve generally been happy with IKEA furniture — and IKEA designers consider a many issues that Starck seems to neglect.
Employing AI to make bad furniture from petrochemicals is not an advance.
The news that Springer has just published a machine-generated book is equally puzzling.
https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/englisch/first-machine-generated-book-published/ <https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/englisch/first-machine-generated-book-published/>
The book titled _Lithium-Ion Batteries. A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research_ is a summary of published research linked together by a rough linking text. While the text makes a certain kind of sense, many sentences and paragraphs involve problematic grammar. Much of the book is written in jargon comprehensible only to a specialist. Given the fact that the book is a technical summary, that’s probably reasonable. Whether the book makes an original contribution to knowledge is a different question. There is a difference between a good literature review article and a mere summary. A good literature review makes a contribution to the literature of a field by framing past literature in a new conceptual framework and pointing to possible advances in empirical, conceptual, or theoretical research.
This book does not make such a contribution. Instead, it exemplifies and demonstrates the research of the scientists who wrote the program.
This book demonstrates that a machine can gather and summarise useful research information, aggregating it in technical book format. It suggests that a machine can write prose that rises to the level of poor technical writing. It also suggests that machine-written prose can drop to the level of the worst legal writing or administrative writing.
Don’t take my word for it. You can download the book free, and read it for yourself:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-16800-1
The machine writes as well as some engineers, though not as well as Larry Leifer or Don Norman.
Let me conclude with an apposite comment:
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them,
‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!’
This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones:
‘I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.
I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin;
I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.’”
— Ezekiel 37:4-6
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/ <http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/>
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman <http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman> | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn <http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn/>
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