The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. by online texas holdem
"Truly radical alternatives could really only exist outside the marketplace, as a form of 'conceptual design'-- meaning not the conceptual stage of a design project, but a product intended to challenge preconceptions about how electronics shape our lives. Designers would need to explore how such design thinking might re-enter everyday life in ways that maintain the design proposal's critical integrity and effectiveness while facing criticism of escapism, utopianism or fantasy. The challenge is to blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional, so that the conceptual becomes more real and the real is seen as just one limited possibility." Anthony Dunne, Design Noir, 1998
Panelist Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics thought many of the provocations were remarkably prescient based on his experience. Evelyn Fox Keller, a MacArthur winner and visiting U of M Winton Chair in Liberal Arts, argued that ideas such as the DNA tree tended to reinforce cultural assumptions about the equation between genetics and identity rather than questioning them. Artist and professor Lynn Lukkas suggested that the idea-projects were in themselves brilliant provocations, but that it would be interesting to be clearer about the audience as potential citizens and not just consumers.
Dunne + Raby were explicit that their presentation was the first part of a longer term project--a kind of "literature review" of applicable works and research, for which their goal was to create a conceptual platform document on which to base further research--and projects. Their proposal generated much lively participatory discussion, which should point to both the success of their provocation and suggestions for ways to, perhaps, make it more than a provocation.
BioLand is a sort of existential shopping centre focusing on deeply human needs and how biotechnology will impact the ways these needs are met and understood. In particular, it focuses on meeting birth, death, and marriage needs in a genetically modified world. It allows us to locate design proposals within a complex mix of social, cultural, commercial, and ethical contexts, and helps us move away from a purely abstract and philosophical space into one of everyday consumerism and industrialization.
Q: What are you notorious for? A: Being a category error. ["These are the sounds of happy machines, so I guess they should be under the pleasure section."]
Our environment today has become a dense field of telecommunicative possibility, a mediational ether made possible through microwaves, optic fibres, cables and networks. Access is gained through phones, faxes, video and desk top computers. Although these technologies offer varying degrees of complexity and subtlety in software, the possibilities offered through their physicality are minimal. A whole range of subtle communicational qualities are lost, qualities that could significantly enrich the experience of technological communication and lift it above mere functionality.
The Placebo project is an experiment in taking conceptual design beyond the gallery into everyday life. We devised and made eight prototype objects to investigate people's attitudes to and experiences of electromagnetic fields in the home, and placed them with volunteers. . . . The objects are purposely diagrammatic and vaguely familiar. . . . We are interested in the narratives people develop to explain and relate to electronic technologies, especially the invisible electromagnetic waves their electronic objects emit. The Placebo objects are designed to elicit stories about the secret life of electronic objects - both factual and imagined.
FLIRT investigates the potential of location specific information, not only as an information resource, but also as a medium for social interaction and play
"In the project at left (for Japan Airlines), dunne+raby introduced furniture and experiences for transit lounges within airport systems, focusing on encounters made by people currently inhabiting the space with the physical traces that had been left by passengers from flights that had recently departed."
Projected Realites enables a kind of legal graffitti, allowing inhabitants to express their attitudes and opinions within the area for everyone to read.
Whereas 'cyberspace' is a metaphor that spatialises what happens in computers distributed around the world, hertzian space is actual and physical even though our senses detect only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images of footprint's of satellite TV transmissions in relation to the surface of the earth, and computer models showing cellular phone propagation in relation to urban environments, reveal that hertzian space is not isotropic but has an 'electroclimate' defined by wavelength, frequency and field strength. Interaction with the natural and artificial landscape creates a hybrid landscape of shadows, reflections, and hot points.
If there is an analogy to this type of designing, it might be that of gravity. That, like planets, while we may find electronic products attractive, they too are attracting us without our knowing of this force or of its impact upon our daily lives. . . . Hertzian Tales is about designing ways of knowing the electromagnetic environment we exist within, and establishing a poetic interaction with it through purposeful and critical designs which help establish a cultural awareness of electromagnetism.
