dear keith,

i am pleased that we concur on the basics. 

yes, texts are temporally and geographically located between writing and reading it. but if readers differ regarding their reading of the same text what then is mediated?   perhaps the exposure to the same arrangement of characters?

there is a considerable difference between what poets create and what a design process ultimately makes real. 
text can be read in innumerable ways without many constraints.
but when we handle or interface with material artifacts, what we read an enact is constrained by what the artifact physically affords users to do with them. 

this is why i insist that meanings cannot be designed into an artifact. designers can encourage particular readings within what the artifact affords the user to do. the task of human-centered designers is to create affordances for user conceptions to be enacted

cheers
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 Keith Russell
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 12:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Specifying something to be made or done

Dear Klaus,

I agree with what you say except that what you account for is a rather innocent reading of what takes place in poetry and design, in terms of the reception of artifacts/ objects etc.

The emotions being mediated are neither those of the author nor are they not the emotions of the author. Just as the design of an object is not in any simple sense the designer's object nor is it the user's or the client's object.

We don't need access to something other than the artifact, whether that artifact be a poem or an iPhone. Meaning is determined within a reading of the artifact/ text etc. That reading is instructed by many things but it can be evaluated according to criteria determined within the range of significations available within the reading/ use of the artifact.

The fact that such readings are not only instructed but also cultured is interesting but not damaging in any way that requires an Author/Designer with intentions to emerge and claim prior rights to meaning.

Poets may express something like their own emotions but only adolescent poets show such rubbish to any one else. Of course, many artists claim their artifacts are expressive of a thing they call the self as artist. That is, many artists are adolescent.

Cheers

Keith





> On 10 Jan 2014, at 3:41 pm, "Klaus Krippendorff" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> dear keith,
> you shift the meaning from what mediators do to what communication is commonly believed to accomplish. i wonder what a poet mediates. we all read texts differently unless we operate in a well-defined discourse such as mathematics, science, or a practical discourse such as plumbing. 
> whatever provokes a poet to write, whatever emotions drive that process for him or her, connoisseurs, cultural critics, or ordinary readers, especially after some time elapsed are not likely to have the same even similar feelings as what motivated the poet. the idea that the written poem mediates between the emotions of the author and those of the reader calls for an observer who has access to both, which is his or her own take on the poem.   
> klaus


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