cmyk-discourse-blog

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Summary, Reading III, by Heini 2 Nov 2018

As I was not able to make it to the third meeting of our reading group, I took the liberty to write my last summary as a commentary to the third blog posts of my fellow group members. Oona and Utkarsh wrote about technological dystopia and how often when considering where the evolving technology will lead us, the imagined reality is a gloomy one. I also notice the phenomenon and it is indeed a strange one: at the same time material and technological innovations have paved way for the global population to do much better than ever before in history, yet somehow the predictions of humankind’s future next are rarely optimistic. Either the machines will take over, overpopulation will lead us all to despair or global warming will shrink the inhabitable parts of the world to a minimum. A more contemporary concern is the feared loss of human connection due to overly technological society in the West. The big question is who has the responsibility when technological innovations go wrong or create more problems (as they always do, according to Latour?) – the designers, the enablers, the users? In my mind the responsibility is collective. The designers and engineers should have morality when designing anything for the general public, yet at the same time each and every user should take responsibility for their own actions. Of course, it doesn’t always go right (morally, or in any other way). Aina put it nicely when saying that as designers “we must be brave enough to do mistakes and after that we can create a better world by learning from these mistakes.”. This idea resonates with me strongly. And also, the mistakes need to be put into perspective. For instance, in the big picture the negative effects of social media are a minor wrinkle when compared to the overall empowering effects it has had on society. Terhi talked about the benefits of standardization in terms of saving time, which is the most valuable asset one has. I agree and disagree. The modern human being living in an affluent Nordic country has so much more free time than many others living around the globe, yet do we enjoy the idleness? Absolutely not! Free time means more time for scheduled-by-the-minute activities. There is an ideal of staying busy in the society – otherwise, what would be your worth? Truth be told I’m not 100% sure that without standardization and everything moving less efficiently in the society we would be less likely to burn out by the time we reach out 30s, but still, I remain with my stand against the ideal of over-efficiency and time saving. Where is the rush? I will link to one of my favorite Instagram accounts to underline my point here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm4ABtSA-l4/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet To conclude, I wish I had made it to the meeting but I am glad this kind of possibility to read and comment on the conversation afterwards exists (hooray technology, I guess…).

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Introduction, Reading III, by Heini 28 Oct 2018

For me, the third reading felt like a step back from practical to a more theoretical territory – or perhaps rather, to somewhere in the middle. If the second week’s readings were easily applicable to my own work as a designer (C. Wright Mills’ text The Man in the Middle about craftmanship and practices in design, to point one example), the third texts cast their look to more wide-ranging topics. Still, they were not purely abstract, but very much connected to the physical world, focusing on artifacts and other non-human objects, their standardization and role in society. In the first article, “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’, author Bruno Latour discusses the role of technology, machines and other non-humans from a sociological perspective. Latour’s main argument seems to be that non-humans cannot and should not be left out of sociological discussions, as a certain level of anthropomorphism is always at play in technological artifacts, making them part of the socio-cultural realm. Anthropomorphism means giving human characters to non-humans. Everyday examples include swearing at your computer or, when a technology doesn’t work, saying that it is “on strike”. According to Latour, many technologies are anthropomorphic in nature simply by having been made by humans and imitating or replacing the need for human behavior. Latour claims that sociologists often have a tendency to draw a clear divide between humans and non-humans and to apply anthropomorphism to non-human objects only up to a certain degree. Latour sees no point to discriminate between humans and non-humans, but rather distinguish actors from non-actors, whether human or non-human. Latour calls the disregarded role of technology in society “the missing masses”, drawing a comparison to astronomy, regarding which Latour makes the comment that “according to some physicists, there is not enough mass in the universe to balance the accounts that cosmologists make of it”. In sociological terms this means that society as a whole cannot be understood if the technological realm is left out of the discussion. The missing masses could be considered hidden information embedded in everyday non-human objects – objects that while being non-human on the surface, have been designed by humans and thus carry human-centered information about the design process, the desirable function of the object, information that Latour calls pre-inscriptions. Latour uses doors, hinges and seatbelts as examples of every non-human objects that embody so much more intelligence and humane characteristics that one might first think of and spends a considerable number of pages by deconstructing these seemingly mundane artifacts. According to Latour, technology has the potential to shape our everyday lives. Even the simplest technologies can guide us towards certain directions sometimes without us even realizing. This brings in mind invisible design in general, and how for example typographic choices often work best when they go unnoticed. Latour uses a car seatbelt analogy to pose the question of where morality lies in everyday events and communications. Say you get into a relatively new car, start the engine and forget to buckle up your seatbelt, the car will most likely not only refuse to move and but also tell you to buckle up. But what if you didn’t forget, what if you simply don’t want to wear a seatbelt? Who would stop you – the non-human car that you’re supposed to be in control of? Most likely, or after a while, your nerves, having grown annoyed at the car beeping at you with high-pitched noises. Does that mean that in the end, it is the car that’s in control? In a way yes, and at the same time no. I would argue that the ones in control are the people who manufactured the car and paved way for its entry to the market: the engineers, the CEOs of the companies involved, the road safety authorities – thus making the car a multilayered anthropomorphic object. It’s not machine that is controlling you, but rather, the control or governance by other humans is extended upon you via this technological entity. And chances are, you will obey. Latour’s views on technology are hardly that bleak, however. The doors and hinges -example is basically a love letter to the simple technologies that make the life of humans much easier that it would be without it. Latour asks the reader to compare the amount of work needed to enter or exit a building if doors or hinges didn’t exist. To enter a building without doors or hinges might mean that you would have to dig your way in and out or make a hole in the wall. This would create all sorts of new problems: anyone or anything would get in and controlling the temperature inside the building would be difficult. Of course, these problems could always be solved by some effort, but at the same time, these problems never have to dealt with if the groundbreaking innovations of doors and hinges are put into service. With hinges, the only human effort needed to enter or exit the building are the simple actions of pushing and pulling. In the world of tech, the smaller effort to gain the same outcome always outweighs the bigger effort. Latour continues further on with the door example. Even if it was possible to simply open and close the door, this would still require action from the people who go through with it to make sure the door really closes. You would think that closing the door behind you is a simple task, but anyone who has sat at the table closest to the door in a café on a windy day knows that that is rarely the case. People just won’t typically bother. Latour suggests a second comparison, this time comparing different outcomes of human intervention: instead of collective responsibility, trusting everyone who goes through the door to also close it, one person could be hired to have the designated job of being in charge of opening and closing the door – a porter. These two comparisons, first one focusing on technology and the second in social responsibility, differ in their timeframes: the solution of the first one is a relatively simple action that can be carried out at one go (when the hinges are installed) whereas the other one is continuous: every day the porter would have to be trusted to perform the same, mundane task. In another sense, first one deals with non-human behavior and the second with human behavior. Whereas human behavior is erratic and unpredictable, nonhuman behavior is less so. From this point of view, the ultimate solution to the door problem would be the combination of a non-human groom mechanism and hinges offering a far more effective and reliable solution to entering and exiting a building than the manual labor of digging through the ground or the use of a bellboy. But still, the problem is not completely solved. A non-human groom (springs that slams the door shut, for example) cannot make up for the interaction nor the politeness that the bellboy could offer, thus leading to a wholly different experience of entering or exiting the building. The trade-off is clear: if the groom is unskilled (non-human) the user has to be highly skilled, or vice versa. A new solution, despite being an improvement, always comes with a new set of problems to solve. Latour makes a lot of references to physics and technology and while googling alongside reading I found myself absorbed in Wikipedia articles on symmetry, inertia, hydraulics and Archimedes to name a few. Latour seems to tightly hold on to the believe that anyone who is interested in social sciences should take a good hard look at engineers and technology. He got me convinced in that one! I started to wonder why technological solutions are hardly ever considered cultural artifacts, when they clearly are end results of human innovation and are as such, part of culture. This links to the debate on anthropomorphism. Texts, for instance, are often considered anthropomorphic, as they carry the voice of the author. Why not treat technology the same way? Considering the increasingly tech-crazed world we live in, sociologists – and everyone else – ought to be willing to understand the anthropomorphic nature of non-human artifacts as well as the minds and motives of an engineer. Latour’s text got me to view their profession in a completely new light, one that is more transdisciplinary and interesting than I might have presumed. Latour makes the remark that “Students of technology are never faced with people on the one hand and things on the other, they are faced with programs of action, sections of which are endowed to parts of humans, while other sections are entrusted to parts of nonhumans”. I am slightly perplexed by the turn this thought has taken, so I’ll back up a bit and resume my engineer-suspicious worldview. This takes us to the second text of the week, Workers of the World, Conform! by Nader Vossoughian. I had already read this text on last year’s Design as Critical Practice -course, and written about it too (here https://criticalcakes.tumblr.com/, under New Materialism: Summary). Now I had the chance to do something I hardly ever do, to go back and revise my earlier thoughts on the text. The text links to Bruno Latour’s paper through the concept of efficiency. Whereas Latour’s paper dealt with efficiency by comparing nonhuman actors to human actors, Vossoughian uses standardization as an example. Vossoughian tells the story of Die Brücke, a German organization that lobbied the standardization of paper sizes in early 1910s. Paper size standardization was seen as a gateway to information standardization, freeing workers from information management problems. These paper size standardizations the members of Die Brücke called World Formats. These World Formats were proposed to the German Institute for Standardization, came out with the title DIN 476 in 1922 and are still in use around the world today in the form of A4s and A3s. The standardization of two-dimensional paper formats was followed by spatial formats in the 1950s, when bricks, dimensions of sidewalk, shipping containers and other spatial objects that are needed in the society became standardized as well. Efficiency seems to be the modern ideal on all walks of life. In my mind, this ideal comes from technology, and furthermore, from engineers. I love efficiency as much as the next person, but once again I have to ask: where to draw the line between how much automation and efficiency-seeking is good? Where to draw the line between how much of too easy is good? I guess the underlying fearful question is: at what point does the human being become obsolete? As pointed out by Latour, humans are erratic; they are complex and, in most tasks, way less efficient than their non-human counterparts. I am fearful of the world where humans are no longer needed. Who wouldn’t be? The most important question in my mind is: who gets to decide where to draw the line? Keller Easterling has argued that standardization should be regarded as indirect form of governance, according to Voughossian. Two examples are proposed: The ISO organization, a supposedly apolitical entity, that issues protocols on all manner of things, which are nonbinding and voluntary, but for some reason, applied almost everywhere. The Internet is used as another example of hidden governance: a supposedly free platform, yet it is based on an architecture that somebody built. An architecture, that comes with preinscriptions, as Latour surely would put it. The idea of technology-lead efficiency must have looked rather nice back in the days where the reality for most people was long days full of harsh human-labor. A technological innovation that would allow you to be lazy, to be free from fatigue – what could be better? But that is not how working life looks for most people anymore, yet the fascination with efficiency has all but lessened. I believe that for most humans a meaningful life is a life where they get to be of use to others: most typically, through employment. What will the purpose of the human life be, after maximum efficiency has been reached: after machinery and non-humans have completely freed the society from the need of human labor? Peace, freedom and total immersion to arts, culture and all things nice? Unrest, boredom, increased feelings of insignicance? This just adds to the number of reasons why I stand with Latour and agree that the world of technology needs to be scrutinized more critically. After all, it is not an objective world, far from it. Judging by these two texts, it is a world that governs the society in ever-increasing ways.

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Summary, Reading II, by Heini 22 Oct 2018

After three weeks of sick leave I am back trying to pick up the pieces and mentally return to where I left off: the second meeting and the second reading of the course. Luckily I took notes! What I remember most vividly from the meeting was that the first week’s collective confusion had changed into collective inspiration: we had all enjoyed the second reading’s texts. C. Wright Mills’ text The Man in the Middle gained most votes as the week’s favorite. It was agreed that it offered quite an idealistic vision of what the designer’s work looks and should look like, but nonetheless a vision that resonated. We all embraced the idea of craftmanship as the core essence of a designer – and at the same agreed that there is hardly ever enough room for that in the modern working environment. I guess the goal is to find a balance between selling your soul and creating for the sake of self-motivation; between designing for others’ needs but getting something out of it yourself. In essence all extremes have risks: if you are working on a highly important personal project that you are completely invested in, chances are that getting enough rest, food and exercise will start to lose their importance and sooner or later you end up in a burnout. At the same time, getting up every morning only to play the part of another piece in the capitalist machine sounds like a pretty dull life to lead. In my mind, the ideal life, one worth pursuing, could be found somewhere in the middle – but where there exactly, that is the question. Utkarsh shared a story of DTP shops in India, print and graphic design shops that offer related services quickly on demand. In these installments the design work is reduced to a mere technical skill, pressing a button, applying an effect or two in Photoshop and voilà – another “graphic design” product is ready. This kind of work is hardly what any of us dream of doing, yet it might be how the rest of the world (or parts of it) views the profession. This lead us to discussing how little is understood of graphic design in general even in this day and age. To tell your parent that you want to pursue a career in this field has in the case of many of us led to worry and sighs of disbelief. Why would we do this to ourselves, wouldn't there be other more proper jobs ou there? We discussed that the profession of a (graphic) designer is still perhaps so “new” that it is not always taken seriously. Most likely this is due to ignorance of what the work is all about – and I can’t blame anyone who would hold such a view, as I still have a hard time myself explaining what it is that I’m studying or doing. Especially to my family, 90% of whom are engineers who by default don't understand what I am trying to do here or why it might be worthwile. It is a language gap like any other, one that can be bridged with time, patience and the right choice of words or other media, or so I hope! As mentioned in the introduction post, Johanna Drucker’s text was excellent regarding getting the most essential points across, offering a throrough review of how we got to where we are in graphic design. In the meeting we admired the work of Walter Crane, whose 1902 book The Bases of Design I ended up scrolling through for quite a long while (can be found online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47967/47967-h/47967-h.htm). I will never cease to wonder how people have managed to conclude such thorough research in the pre-Internet era. Like Terhi put it, some people in the past really seem like time-travelers.

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Summary, Reading III by Oona, 10 Oct 2018

When I’m thinking about classical dystopian schemes two options come to mind: One is our world completely ruined by series of natural catastrophes, and the other one is technology taking over humankind. The latter was quite present in our last reading group meeting, as the texts revolved around this subject. 

Utkarsh noted how the conversation usually has a negative undertone when talking about the future from the technology point of view. It is a desolate situation that we’re in since the unreliable human is, well, unreliable. How does one maintain a humble and selfless attitude when given great power? In my point of view it’s the selfishness that poisons good intentions and turns them into tools for controlling. So as long as there is selfishness, there will be people who drive our society and eventually the world we know to its end.

As designers we should take initiative in staying true to what we believe in, and use our skills to deliver whatever message we feel important to share. A crucial part of it, for me at least, is spreading it outside the design field. Many things we have discussed in this course are relevant to life in general, and the will to understand more widely and deeply is surely beneficial in other fields too. I find it more and more difficult as a thought to separate work from the life outside of it, because for me the only meaningful kind of work is the kind that I believe in and if possible, helps others in a way or another. So while the expansion of my thinking (and the idea itself for that matter) has been and is truly worthwhile, it also complicates things workwise. What is meaningful enough? What if this utopistic image I have never really comes to life? There are many questions now that I have no answers to.

...

To be honest, at first I was confident about my views but now I’m not sure anymore. These lectures, conversations and readings have come in such a time of my life that a real mental storm is starting to build up. At the same time it is very exciting but also very unnerving. I guess we’ll just see what happens.

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Summary #3 Terhi 9.10.18

3 summary

We met at Fat Lizard and talked while having some beers. I ordered a pizza which got a bit cold towards the end since I was talking so much.

man vs machine, how we live together

couldn’t think of an example where a machine would tell US what to do.. like the seatbelt. but there must be many, we are just so accustomed to them… But then again, we adapt to the machines: we use them the way they are designed to use: I have to use the ui in the way it was intended for the machine to do what I want with it. And the UI usually “tells” you what to do, even though there is no instructions. There’s a button… maybe try pushing it?

Standards – so are we designers needed anymore if everything gets standardised? Is it a good or a bad thing? Why does every company need a unique font or a paper size? If you as a designer don’t use the A-formats, you still need to think in terms of them. You adjust.

BUT the standards are there to save TIME which, I think, is the MOST IMPORTANT and PRECIOUS RESOURCE we have. We develop more and more mechanical, technical, automated stuff that does the work for us, to have more time to do other things. And have the capacity to also THINK about other things, further.

Of course I’m hoping that the humans have now time to think about the COST of all the new things we have created and are creating. I listened to a podcast (sorry, only in Finnish again :C http://ylioppilaslehti.fi/2018/08/kaikki-loppuu-pian/ ), where they said that nowadays everything that is economically viable is ecologically devastating. ::((((

”Asia menee nykyään melkein niin karusti, että kaikki mikä on taloudellisesti kannattavaa, on ekologisesti tuhoisaa.” -Pekka Torvinen / Ylioppilaslehti

Further watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA A Vice documentary : The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy

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Summary :: Reading III :: utkarsh : 08.10

It dawned upon me that this would be the last summary for the course, which to all of us, meeting up at the Fat Lizard, was a synonymous feeling for there to be more such widening texts, and that this process that the course got us into, shall continue.  While this time the texts weren’t opinionated or driving us to any particular conclusion, they surely made us aware of the fact that we, as designers, shall be mindful in retrospect of all that we do/interact with and keep our senses wide open.  Our discussion opened up with Oona bringing in the new Netflix series ‘Maniac’ to light and that yet again, designating computers empathy makes it a worse problem. While tried hard to steer the dialogue to look for the good in it, we could only fall to the conclusion that our ideas of pessimism stem through the belief in human tendency, as to how everything tends to chaos anyway. But as Aina rightly pointed out, we are to learn from our mistakes and this constant evolution has only gotten us this far.

While I’ve elaborated much over Latour’s text in the introduction, it was an interesting note by Terhi that how Latour tries to go the Foucault way of explaining his concerns, yet to his French origin, keeps his romanticism intact. 

The meeting was then concerned over brainstorming more seatbelt anecdotes (while we could only get through to the computer’s password behaviour; how it makes you do stuff its own way due to our own concerns of safety) and reverse engineering (referring to the toaster example from the lecture) in design. We jotted ideas of making a DIY pinhole camera, a woodcut print, Terhi’s traumatizing experiences with the Letraset and likewise; and how these ‘analog’ ways of work make us only appreciate more the work we do on desktops digitally.

With all the pessimism towards technology that brewed in us in the course of this discussion, Oona brought in a notable point that I missed. She cited her experience from her exchange at Japan and the fact how the sensational game Pokemon Go brought people together in an otherwise closeted community. The fact that it is live makes it more lively. There are other such versions like Agar.io that is although crude in its form, succeeds in making it a delightful and sometimes addictive experience. It is, hence, upto us, being the creator, where we take the evolution to.  On a conclusive note, I’d like to ask for more such readings to keep this flow intact. 

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Summary III by Aina, 8 Oct 2018

This time we decided to meet at Fat Lizard, because we all were already at Otaniemi on Thursday. We enjoyed Fat Lizard’s beers and had a wonderful time once again. We actually thought that this kind of reading group is so fun that it would be fun to continue the habit later, as well. We also started to design our “House of Discourse in Design” and it’s going to be so great!

Unfortunately, I had a flu on Thursday and I am still suffering from it, so my contribution might be a little bit weak this time. However, I might continue and edit this summary when I will get better. (Edit: I continued writing on 9th of October.)

All in all, we talked a lot about responsibility and morality while creating new innovations, and how some innovations might cause some harm, even those weren’t meant to create any problems. Someone even mentioned that: “if someone can use some data or technology for wrong reasons, someone always will.” This is so sad, but probably also so true. Because the world we are living in isn’t fair and honest for everyone, it causes the problem that people want to take advantage from each other. Having that said, we need to design everything very carefully and learn from our mistakes.

In my opinion, it is still not possible to avoid mistakes, while designing something new. Risk-taking belongs to design thinking and mistakes are always done in order to create something new. However, while creating something new, we must notice our mistakes and learn from them. We must be brave enough to do mistakes and after that we can create a better world by learning from these mistakes. In conclusion, mistakes aren’t sins, but not learning from those are.

We also talked about what would our design be, if we would think it like the toaster Arja showed us, which was rebuilt with handmaid materials. Could we create our own layouts with our own materials? Could we live without laptops? What if we would need to prepare our own papers and refine our own ink or paint? Would the outcome be different? Yes, it would, but depending on what we would be achieving the result might be even better. We should understand our materials and our equipment in order to create the best possible outcome we would like to have. Then trying and learning from our mistakes could lead us to understand our choices and our own styles.

Besides understanding what materials we use, we should also be able to think, if these solutions are ideal for our design. For example, why should we use the given A4 document size, if we could also use a square or die-cut format. This drives us to think how standards shape our thinking; we take lots of influences from the mediums that are already in use. Also, the new mediums are born by the way we are seeing the mediums. So eventually, who we are as persons or as designers, is also influencing our ways of working, and later on how the mediums will be used. By making these choices we might influence our audience, and eventually the norms are born by our choices. And while thinking about new mediums and technologies like AR or VR based innovations, it is important to focus on what we as designers might be able to think differently. Are we just following the rules or inventing those?

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Intro #3 Terhi 4.10.18

intro #3

Us fickle humans… Where are the morals?! We need technologies and non-humans to guide us, or actually physically prevent us from doing harm / being reckless or careless. If something isn’t easy enough we won’t do it.

The text by Latour made my really appreciate these every day mechanisms. Again, it’s about the stuff we are so used to we take it for granted. Take the example of a door. Without doors our lives would be miserable. Doors, and most of all, hinges, should be more recognised and cherished in our everyday lives. I will try to keep my eyes open and show my respect for our fellow-non-humans more from now on. I was very inspired and amused of this “love letter” for hinges and doors. Latour is French, I guess, so in my mind I started to compare his way of writing to other French philosophers: how he takes his time to really explain without saving words or his effort, with many long sentences and getting to the bottom of his thoughts, but in a nice way!

Arja explained in the class things about how human and machine have evolved hand-in-hand. Both have aided the other in this development into/of the technoscience era (Haraway). So they are not separable. We shape the tools but then the tools shape us. This was also pointed out in talking about graphic design (for example in the 90’s with desktop computers & MacIntosh’s visual operating system), that even if we don’t think about it, we of course always design inside the rules that are technologically restricting us. New technological advances -> BOOM: new ways of seeing, thinking, making.

Widening the perspective. Post-human, instead of just non-human.

going back to the texts… I’d say what Latour was explaining i.e. about semiotics was actually coding. That’s a code that you could feed to a machine and it would understand (or “understand”. Sorry about all the antropomorphisisms). These AND/OR-commands, basics of mathematical logics I guess. Only now we were talking about the syntagmatic and pragmatic ways the language works. I liked this notion that if in texts we can move by shifting to another world, another space and time -> then in the technical shifting we translate/substitute stuff to ANOTHER MATTER. How cool is that? It’s like magic. So you translate your need to a “command” in your brain (like in the text: hold down the kid in the car) and that (with some exchange of energy and money) turns into a metal bar that does the work for you. Maybe if it didn’t do the trick, you’d need to translate the bar into something else. Anyway, fascinating. (I feel like so many things in these texts are fascinating, even if they feel so basic after reading about them and I myself so stupid.)

Engineering work. You gotta appreciate it. I mean, seat belts. You have to design a thing with a feature and it’s opposite at the same time. You need the seat belt to be loose but also tight when needed. You have to keep in mind all these restrictions, if you only think of the other side, you won’t understand all the complexities. “Like watching only one side of a tennis match.”

In class Arja talked about how people in modern times have tried to differentiate and categorise the world. Nature/Culture, everything should fall into one or the other box. (Of course things don’t. There’s a name for those: hybrid.) We want to organise our world in order to make more sense of it.

Standardisation. It was interesting to actually read the history of that. It also cleared up some things, sort of. I can’t help it but I really like the DIN narrow font, but my friend told me never to use it because it’s a font that the nazis used. But I’m wondering, should we just “give it to them”? I mean, it was designed before the wars and a lot of street signs etc are written with that font. Now that I saw the larger scale of things, maybe it helps me to deal with this. I wouldn’t stop using A4 paper for example (of course I shouldn’t even try stopping because it would make my life SOOOO hard now that we are deep in these standardised size systems).

Okay, again… people knew what was going to happen. “The world brain” is a pretty good name for the internet (or is it the next stage of all our communication networks maybe, who knows…). Reading the text by Vossoughian made me feel like the world was in chaos before, and maybe from today’s perspective (and as a person who has lived in Finland most of their life) it actually was. I find it interesting that all this way we nowadays are organised came from a simple idea, but behind the idea was actually some moral agenda/issue: “Don’t waste energy, make use of it!”. Entropy increases in a closed system, so we have to try to prevent that from happening. Ordnung muss sein! Some times it starts to even sound a bit… too much. “With the right technical adjustments, society can not only be salvaged but liberated.” Little did they know, or wanted to think about, how the advances would at some point turn against the freedom of the people, when nowadays we are facing serious risks of losing our freedom because of survaillance, face recognition systems and so on. In China the government is launching a Social Credit System that ranks the citizens… a rather dystopian scenario. (You can read about it for example here: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion)

Have we gone too far with our technologies if they are starting to take over us? How about AI? We need to start thinking of the ethics of AI before we develop them to learn by themselves. And, while talking about non-humans & humans… how about androids and robots, what rights do they have compared to us non-humans, and where do we draw the line? (Watch for example movies like Bladerunner or Ghost in the Shell or Her ). This used to be science fiction, but fiction is a good way to start dealing with many issues, which sooner or later will be actual stuff we have to solve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnT1xgZgkpk What happens when our computers get smarter than we are? | Nick Bostrom

This is about 16 minutes long, but if you don’t have that much time, try to watch it from 10:03 onwards. Some interesting thoughts about (computer) super intelligence and (human) ethics.

further watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIoDYVfKA0 The ethical dilemma of self-driving cars - Patrick Lin (4:15)

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Introduction :: Reading III :: utkarsh : 03.10

Time that I shall acknowledge the fact how all the texts so far have built up to this ‘woke’ understanding of design as a movement; and now the title of the course, being Discourse, makes a whole lot of sense to me. The texts this time felt somewhat conclusive to the fact that design can bring in some gentle revolutions in its own way, and we, as the students of it, shall undertake this opportunity to take it forward. In “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts” Bruno Latour lightens us up that objects are essential actors in everyday life. They are so omnipresent and effective that we often neglect to think of them. As a result, we silently ignore their ethical effects and the huge amount of labour that we allocate to them. This got me observing some real simple, but important interactions I had with objects during a typical day. It also helped me summarise some experiences I had moving from India to Finland in these first few weeks. I can probably write a diary entry to it later but getting back to what Latour points, the simple door. Latour describes the genesis of the automatic door to illustrate what kind of labour each element does, eliminating human work in the process. He begins by discussing a wall, which keeps out the cold and damp. That’s its job, and it does it well. The wall, however, doesn’t allow for entry or exit. To eliminate the need for humans to have to claw their way through brick on a regular basis – an onerous amount of human work – a door is put in place. It’s an admirable exchange of labour – hard struggle on the part of humans replaced by the swing of hinges on a nonhuman agent. However, the hinges need a human to work, and visitors cannot always be trusted to close the door (some paranoia of being a sad host there). After trying to keep even one human to guard the door, the doorman, and coming up with less than perfect results, an automatic, mechanized door is put in place. The Frenglish word for the automatic door, a “groom”, also cutely illustrates how easily nonhumans can take on human roles and actions by eliminating human labour. That interactions of humans with the material world are so thick, intricate and fluid. When nonhumans dictate human action, this is called prescription. When he cites the example of a seatbelt that can’t be unbuckled while the car is in motion, it right away takes me to the events of the Tesla car testings. Functional, efficient yet creepy. Latour writes: “Prescription is the moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms. In spite of the constant weeping of moralists, no human is as relentlessly moral as a machine…the sum of morality does not remain stable but increases enormously with the population of nonhumans.”. (Pointing to the illustration of entropy in the other text by Vossoughian, but we’ll get there soon) Prescription also helps illustrate how objects can be discriminatory. An automatic door that closes too quickly discriminates against slow walkers. When engineers create prescriptive nonhumans, what we have is a “distribution of competencies”. Finally, Latour discusses machines in relationship to texts. He sees machines as having “silent” authors. We love silence in nonhumans – we don’t need our walls to loudly proclaim their existence. However, forgetting the work they do can cause a lapse in our understanding. With a Text, a “program of action” allows words to become effects. His metaphor is that of a programming language, where words create things. Nonhumans are best at programs of action: “No matter how clever and crafted are our novelists, they are no match for engineers”. This essay by Latour will be useful to me going forward as I think more about user-friendly interfaces and user interactions, user needs, and the way that physical, designed spaces shape information seeking behaviours.  With this sympathizing context set by Latour towards objects, we move to a design intervention as to how something so trivial can shape minds, understandings and thus, lives. With “Workers of the World, Conform!”, Vossoughian takes us back to the spark that got into the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald’s head, a need for a uniform language to bring in efficiency, to subdue entropy, as to him, a unity in diversity would come out as a stronger force. Little did he know about the flip side of the coin (or maybe he did).    

As a move to eliminate the need to consider paper sizes, fonts, layouts, margin sizes, and so on, so that standards would free postal workers, scholars, and bank clerks from the burdens of information management, Ostwald encouraged every effort in this direction, be it through funding or simple propagation of ideas through peers. It was quite noteworthy a fact that how design was the one to give birth to standardization (and vice versa), strengthening my belief that everything is, and has been, design.  

Another observation was how they targeted a very simple thing, that wouldn’t really gather much opposition. Indeed, revolutions start meekly. (this was of course catalysed by wars that served as world ‘refresh’ phenomena) Lesson learnt is how small things bring in big changes.  There’s a point in the text, rather words of appreciation, quoting “as an outsider, were able to figure out with such clarity the very thoughts that we have been trying to bring together.” Points me to one of the roles of a designer, how one has to just be an onlooker, with a certain objectivity. 

An important outcome of standardizing rules was democratization, an availability of opportunities to everyone. The article then ends on a note over capitalism (something that I’ve tried to ignore so far only so that I can focus on some better things in life), how the introduction of rules and standards, although being a need in a certain age, has dried up the pools of something we feel humane about. “utopian impulses ended up enabling states and corporations to control and extract value from workers, while extolling the morality of productivity, conformity, and efficiency” The standards, while bringing in some liberation at their early adoption, have only served as a veil to the bureaucratic motives. But as goes with every era, the saturation shall be followed by a breakthrough.

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Intro, Reading III by Aina, 3 Oct 2018

Once again, I find myself thinking of norms, standards and someone making decisions for us. Who actually decides and designs these standards? And what kinds of consequences these decisions might cause?

In my opinion guides and standards are related to norms, since these might influence peoples’ decision-making opportunities. On the other hand, we need some rules in order to “break those.” Like we discussed the same idea in our discussion before. Yet, we are not robots even we might do some decisions influenced by standardization and ready-made rules. Furthermore, we might sometimes forget other possibilities than using standardized paper sizes or sitting without a seat belt. These standards are made for us, and since those are easy to use, we do use those.

Standardized thinking

Vossoughian’s text (2017) refers to Ostwald’s idea, which asserts that:

“in order to harmonize all knowledge and eliminate unnecessary expenditures of energy, the world’s information would have to be completely standardized”

Ostwald’s idea seemed useful in 1920s’ because it was meant to mold peoples’ life easier. However, it didn’t consider the opportunity of thinking “outside the box,” since the time-effective way of living was the most important issue during that time. For example units of weights and all the other measurable things, needs to have some kind of standards in order to make our life easier. However, by using standardized formats, there are less opportunities for creating unconventional design solutions, because the standardized format is already seen the applicable one.

In my opinion, it is really important to understand whether to use these standardized decisions or not, because disagreeing the rules and standards is one way to influence the world. Moreover, I am not sure if we think these formats in our real life as it’s written here. We just use those, because it is cost-effective, and we don’t need to think so much. Therefor, while the standardized formats, technology and design comes near to human, the human moves closer to standardized thinking. In conclusion, while artefacts start to understand us better, we also start to act like the artefacts. This draws a question: if this kind of way of working was time-effective in the 1920s’, is it still effective in these days, if it makes us thinking in one way, and new inventions are born much rarely?

Standardization Modifies Our Behaviour

Latour (2008) writes in his article, that technology is capable to modify human actions, because the rule-based artefacts might constrain or guide people to choose certain options. On the other hand, Vossoughian’s text (2017) refers to Russell’s (2014) opinion, which asserts that social change doesn’t occur by the existence of new technologies, yet those might express cultural or political values.

In my opinion, social changes and political values are born by the people, who have taken part in our life. The more people take part also while designing, the more they are also taking part to the society.  Furthermore, designed artifacts start to take part in the society, since those are making decisions for us, and because these decisions are made, those standards and norms start to occur in everyone’s life.

While Latour describes the seat belt example, I started to think my reaction in the same situation. Would I obey the rules or would I battle against those? To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought the situation in the same way like he had. However, it’s time to start thinking and finding those rules, which are modifying our acts. In my opinion, it is not always necessary to avoid these kinds of situations and rules, but it is rather necessary to notice them. By understanding these standardized artifacts and behaviour, a designer might understand the norms better, and by understanding those, it’s easier to break the rules. In my opinion, breaking the norms is not always necessary, yet it is still considered as an act, which underlines the purpose of a designer. Above all, it’s expected from designers to create unconventional inventions and discoveries, and these discoveries are the ones, which could make a world a better place in the future. Nonetheless, a lot of people are still obeying the standards, because those are the safety options. It is rather safe and cost-effective to invest in technical and standardized options than in unconventional and rule-breaking designs. For me, it seems the world is still making the cost-effective decisions in the same way, as it has been done in 1920s’, and there is a lot to change.

Vossoughian,  Nader  (2017). Workers of the World, Conform!

Latour, Bruno (2008). ‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’In Fiona Hackne, Jonathn Glynne and Viv Minto (editors) Proceedings of the 2008 Annual International Conference of the Design History Society – Falmouth, 3-6 September 2009. Universal Publishers. (30 pages)

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Intro, Reading III by Oona, 2 Oct 2018

So here we are, talking about morality again as we (or I, rather) did in the first introduction. Bruno Latour gave a very interesting example about morality right in the beginning of his text about missing masses: he told an anecdote about his car forcing him to put his seatbelt on. First things first, the future is now. We are taking commands from machinery, and it’s getting more and more accustomed, too. The morality perspective is a tricky one in this particular seatbelt case. Sure, you probably don’t want to die in a car accident and a seatbelt is a small effort in order to prevent that, but when it comes to a machine determing human behaviour it’s kind of a daunting thought. After all a seatbelt is for no one but you, and you should be able to decide your own fate, at least regarding these kind of small-ish decisions. It truly is hard for me to wrap my head around this subject, since morality isn’t an univocal thing. The usual pattern is to think that whatever the law says you can or cannot do, it’s morality and should be followed. This however is often problematic because just like the seatbelt, law is no closer to sensing the nuances between different kind of humans and their reasons. I dare to say that there are as many moralities as there are people. This is why we can never live in total peace and harmony, we can only try and understand different kind of approaches.

Latour talked about his door metaphor for a good while. I’m not sure if I found a consensus, or if there even was one. Basically none of the options you have for opening a door is good: not unreliable humans, not machines which don’t consider human errors and needs. Combine these and you have quite an effort for a simple task. Maybe these kind of ”problems” will be eliminated in the future when technology is able to adopt human traits such as feelings, but then again does everything need to be as easy as possible? I’m not scared of technology, just questioning whether everything has to be problematized. Humans have come a long way without any of the things we consider necessities nowadays - although in this day and age the list of necessities is surely longer.

For me Nader Vossoughian’s text was very relevant to Latour’s. Although Ostwald had (I think?) good intentions, in the endgame anything you can control people with will be abused. But it’s not easy to draw the line when it comes to useful standards and those which cause harm. While efficiency is a swear word to many, it’s a lot less hassle when we have some guidelines. Neither of the extremities are good, since no rules means chaos and too much rules means basically no space for humanity. Like trends, these standards that were introduced in the text comes from a narrow source. Personally I don’t have much problems with ISO standards, but it still, as a thought, is a peculiar one: one association deciding on behalf of the world. I wonder what the world would look like without these standards. Would the pace of our life be slower? Would it lead to less mental illnesses? Would it make the world a better place eventually? Who really knows when we’re talking about humans. I wouldn’t call myself a pessimist but rather a realist. As wonderful as diversity is it will never allow us to, yet again, live in an utopia. And to be frank I don’t know if it’s really an ideal situation either.

As a final comment on all of the texts, I found the readings very useful. While connected to each other there were a lot of different views and approaches. I of course don’t know whether the intention was to make us think for ourselves but it definitely seems to me that way - and for that I’m very happy and thankful. In such a small amount of time I feel that my ability to read improved a lot. And while the readings caused some serious turbulence in my head, I now feel that the path I was already on got even clearer. And it’s definitely also because of studying and through that understanding different viewpoints too. You learn nothing with a closed mind.

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Summary :: Reading II :: utkarsh : 01.10

This week’s group meeting was heartily complemented with lots of ‘space’ for thought at Aina’s place, with hints of cardamom in the blueberry pie and warm tea.  In consistency with the introductory thoughts of the group, we were in agreement how these texts moved from the general idea of knowledge to the more ‘situated knowledge’ of design (here, visual), both in terms of its history/existence and practice.  Touching upon various instances of mutation of memes (a notable mention of the existence of the infosphere), the journey of visual representation of knowledge, and an interesting anecdote of David Lynch shared by Oona on translating images to words, what really drove the discussion was the suggested notion of craftsmanship in the text ‘The Man in the Middle’ by C.W. Mills.  The nature of this text being an addressal in an era of peak capitalism is still quite prevalent in our times, which is also quoted as Late Capitalism. While the suggested practices were quite moving, they seemed more or less impractical in the present day competitive scenario. Nevertheless when one finds ways to apply the same as part of a balanced life, it turns out that practicing with passion shall be the ultimate goal, with craft getting honed being a byproduct. This reminded me of the ways of a Shokunin.

Quoting the woodworking artist Tasio Odate:  The Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only having technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness. … The shokunin has a social obligation to work his/her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material, in that no matter what it is, the shokunin’s responsibility is to fulfill the requirement. The 2011 documentary based on the life of 85-year old revered sushi chef Jiro Ono “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” quite nicely elucidates this concept. In this age of comparative and competitive lives, what truly holds important is how one keeps those blinkers on their head and strives mastery in what s/he truly believes in. We see Jiro as a person who, in a routinely fashion, has been working on creating the same dishes for over 50 years, but everyday innovating himself as a chef. The texts, hence, while making us aware of the powers and possibilities of visuals, made us feel responsible as designers that it is these transformative powers with which we shall bring in change, given the visceral nature of interaction of us all with the world around; something that many are not blessed with. 

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Summary #2 Terhi 1.10.18

Summary #2 Terhi 1.10.18

We met at Aina’s place and had a nice time chatting while Aina served us lovely blueberry pie and tea! It was nice and we had a cozy atmosphere for our chat.

You could say that this time the texts “spoke our language”, we felt more connected to them.

We pondered how some people seem to be “time travelers” -– how can someone come up with something that others discover decades later? Maybe no one listened, or then others are just better in marketing their ideas. Talking about Crane (in the 1900’s) and then Klee and other Bauhaus-people (in the 1920–30’s) and the design principles.

It’s interesting that the rules have always been there, but it took so long for anyone to write them down. Maybe because the language of design/graphics/visuals is so different from text and written language? Again, this division. But, I feel that the design principles have a lot to do how we people are “wired”, how we see beauty in symmetry and colour harmony for example, or feel more excited  about ‘dynamic’ shapes and diagonal lines, all that. So behind it all is a universal language with rules, I guess. On top of that there are the values shared in a specific culture and the individual preferences.

We talked about the design rules for a while. Are the rules really needed? We came to the conclusion that you don’t always have to play by the rules, but… (the old cliché/meme) you have to know the rules to break the rules. If you are a trained professional, you can usually spot the works made by unprofessionals. Something’s not quite “right”. Maybe they broke the “wrong rules”? Maybe you can see that they are trying to mimic something cool they saw but didn’t really understand the essence of.

Again, this leads us to the gatekeepers. Do we have to really be so strict? Is only the art/design/craft made by the likes of us good art/design/craft? Does everyone have to have the same background for us to approve it?

But I hope that my education could be seen in the things that I do! Everyone can of course get the Adobe programs and start designing away, I’m not stopping them. People can educate them selves, do online courses, read books, train, sure. It’s just that few of the people who use Photoshop and call themselves graphic designers and make their uncle’s company’s visual identity for free or for a low pay (thus making it hard for the people who actually only work in this industry and don’t do it “as a hobby” to make a living and keep the prices (and the quality of work) reasonable……)

Utkarsh told us that back where he’s from people call graphic design “dtp”–data, typesetting, printing. So it’s considered as something quite practical, people see the designer’s as “photoshop monkeys” who just press the buttons, who execute the stuff without much thinking/effort. Very practical… and stuff just needs to be done, it doesn’t matter what the shop window looks like at long as there’s some information. I mean, I guess it’s the same in here also but maybe people in Finland have been more accustomed to the idea of branding/design as a tool to make their business bloom. If your website looks messy, people won’t trust you. (Of course you shouldn't automatically trust “good-looking”/designed websites either! But this is how we people roll…)

We talked some about infographics. How people in some cases trust more a picture than the text, and in some cases it’s the other way. For example people trust maps. Even though they are as well a human-made artefact as any illustration or (constructed?) photograph. So I was thinking that it would be fun to make a project where in the maps there were all sorts of things that weren’t “true”. “Here be monsters.”

Oona showed us a part of an interview with the movie director David Lynch. Lynch describes the problem with language quite well: At first he struggles how to take his ideas and make them into cinema, to moving images, sound, atmosphere, cuts, all that. Into the language of cinema. Then people ask him: “What does it mean?”, and then he is forced to again translate the movie into words, from the language of cinema to the language of spoken language. He refuses to do so, what it the point? He claims that everyone, somewhere inside of themselves, understood what was meant. They understand it without words. If they have to put it into words, it’s difficult. Then they might say that they didn’t know what it was about. But when someone else describes what they thought it meant – then you disagree, “No, it’s not like that! It’s something like this:…”. So, you did know how you felt about it!

Nice. “The more abstract things are––the more they are open to interpretation.”

Talking about how pictures were seen as inferior to text – not everyone could read, so the educated priests knew all the secrets and the “dum peasants” could only understand the pictures. Picture books are for children, somehow it devalues the words written if there is a picture next to them. In some cases. Like comics. But then again, newspapers? These days you basically have to have a picture related to your text if you want people to stop scrolling their feed and take notice. People also understand pictures with a quick glance quite well. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Maybe you need to study it for a while to get to know all the nuances, but anyway. So which one wins?

Do we have to fight?

Btw everyone of us (in the group) wanted to be a “good craftsman”. (I wanted to write “craftswoman”, but then the quotation marks would have been wrongly used maybe.) It would be interesting to hear the arguments against this. Of course real life hits you in the face, and also for this to be an utopia the craftswoman also needs free time, not to be working all the time. But anyway, yes!, we hate the way people are being used as parts of this money-making machine. There should be something more noble to achieve.

Memes! We all love memes. Some talk about internet-memes. Meme history was interesting. Also the idea of people as vessels for ideas that travel through time and space and mutate.

What’s the connector of these texts that we read this time? Maybe that we get used to stuff, we assume that if things have been some way, then that’s the natural order of things, the way it should be. Even if it’s not, it’s just how we’re USED TO it being. I think this is good and bad. It’s good to build on old knowledge, you don’t have to invent the wheel again. But you have to question things: is this the way things need to be? Is there a better way to do things? STAY ALERT!!!

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Summary, Reading II by Oona, 1 Oct 2018

The second reading group meeting seemed to have a strong feeling of mutual understanding. The reluctance to the thought of designers being mere ”photoshop monkeys”, as it was phrased, was strong. Not only does a continuous routine of following brand manuals lack creativity, but it also makes one so worn out that using free time to do own projects feels impossible. This, of course, is not always the case, but I can’t count the times I’ve heard similar stories. While it is saddening there’s not much one can do, since both the job and money needs to be made. And luckily there are people who enjoy these kind of tasks and jobs you don’t need to take home. Who knows, maybe some day it will be an ideal situation even for me, but in the meantime I feel that it’s important not to give in to the industry. After all we are the ones who build it.

There was an interesting point about pictures and how they cannot lie. While I understand the thought behind this, I also think that pictures are especially the ones that lie. Not necessarily because they mean to, but because there’s no script to follow. Text to me is perhaps the most straightforward medium for sending a message since it’s hardest to misinterpret, making it also the crudest medium of all. I think that in our conversation we discussed about pictures especially in news articles, where it always adds to the text itself.

Another interesting point was when we talked about information design and how it’s often viewed as ”dumbing down” data. For me the ability of saying a lot as simply as possible is true intelligence.

Here’s the David Lynch interview I showed. (Real talk @ 24:40 ->)

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Summary, Reading II by Aina, 1 Oct 2018

Our reading group meeting was held in my apartment. We ate some blueberry pie, drank tea and had a relaxed discussion. There weren’t any major discoveries, which would have modified our thinking a lot. We were assuming that our investigation probably included some situated knowledge, which made disagreeing difficult. All the new conversations seemed to have a certain direction, so we decided to add some examples of real life and our own interests.

The Knowledge of ‘Graphesis’

We got stuck with the discussion about the ‘Graphesis,’ because it made us think the overall knowledge of graphic design. Who invented all the rules and principles, and with what kind of knowledge? Thus, the conversation led us thinking our own knowledge about the graphic design, and the rules we have used in the design process. We also thought, do we actually need some rules to create professional graphic design. By thinking of legibility and other major rules of design, we made a conclusion that: ‘we must know the rules, before we can break those.’  This discussion made me think myself as a designer, and how I have gained a certain kind of knowledge in the advertising field. However, now it’s time to gain other kind of knowledge at the Aalto University.

We continued discussing about the ‘Graphesis’, since there was also a difficult  chapter. The major issue, which we tried to figure out, was that we didn’t understand who actually created the new orientation of graphic design in 1920s. Later, we made an undefined observation of Crane’s being the mastermind. Though, Klee and Kandisky probably gathered all the findings together in more organized format. Therefor, together with a vocal presence of Bauhaus, this information started the new era of graphic design. So, we were thinking the text didn’t clarify, who invented and what exactly.

Thinking of the Memes

The research about the memes didn’t provoke us much, since we didn’t have a long discussion about it. Thus, we agreed, the text increased our knowledge a lot about memes and viral and non-viral trends. We also thought how chain letters might spread because some people are superstitious.

The future of the Craftsmen

The last text by Mill, was the most inspiring one for us, and it somehow touched our feelings quite deeply. We didn’t only talk about the text itself, but we widen the conversation to consider about the expectations of working as a graphic designer in general. We thought about people assuming us to have a career without any proper income. Almost everyone of us seemed to have similar experiences. I have to say, that when I got my first job while I was still studying, I thought a steady way of working and regular salary will guarantee my future. Moreover, I wanted to prove that the expectations about the poor life were wrong. Yet, gaining the income was never the reason, why I choose this career. Therefor, I am here to gain some new knowledge and value, which I can use in my design.

Our whole group agreed that being a craftsman is our ideal goal, because designing in big agencies is not easy to get satisfied with. In my opinion, this doesn’t mean, that working in an advertising agency is a sin, but it just doesn’t offer a platform to be as creative as a designer can. In conclusion, the feeling of being a ‘marketeer’, doesn’t satisfy the mind of a craftsman.

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Intro #2 Terhi 27.9.18

This time the readings were more interesting to me – maybe because the text was easier or it had more to do with our industry per se, or that it presented some new ideas which I found intriguing, stuff that I hadn’t thought about before. It’s about looking at things from the right angle.

For example, Drucker’s text about visual knowledge production and the study of it (graphesis). I mean, now that I think about it, many of the things in the text were obvious but had I really thought about them? The text had a nice way of connecting our user experiences from stone tablets to digital ones. Like graphic design in general, it’s sometimes hard to see the things that we see every day: we don’t pay attention. We are just accustomed that things work the way they do and they just magically happen to look like they do. In here lies the correlation to the other texts: just using the same systems without knowing what the system actually is or how it works–it’s just there, and “always has been”.

We designers of course see past all this and know how things work, right? We know how to please the masses and how to make them buy stupid shit. Or do we? Or are we just worker ants in this bigger system too, and who is the Queen? Who’s in charge here? You know how to use this apparatus?

We may know some things, things that concern our profession. We study how to present information in the best way, we try out different things and rely on the old knowledge and people’s habits. “Interface structures our relation to knowledge and behaviour.” For sure! This brings to mind Arja’s work and how odd or even tricked/frauded people felt when the obituary was dressed as a grocery store receipt and vice versa.

We are trapped in this concrete world, we can’t get to the “idea level” or the “ideosphere” as it was called, so everything has a physical form. So all text / presentations of knowledge also have a visual look, and somebody has to make the decisions about the layout. How to organize knowledge. And also, what to choose. Nothing can be directly translated into something else, for example a picture of something is not the same as the thing itself. Just presentations. “All information visualizations are metrics expressed as graphics. Visualizations are always interpretations” – ”data does not have an inherent visual form that merely gives rise to a graphic expression.”

What I also was intrigued to read was the notion that “Visual expressions of knowledge are integral to many disciplines in the natural sciences, but language-oriented humanities traditions have only barely engaged with visual forms of knowledge.” Sooo in here lies the reason that our field seems not to have so much “research” of it. Because humanities “own” “research”, and it’s a language-oriented system.... “Creating new forms of argument in graphical forms will be a challenge.” But a challenge we are willing to take, right guys? Again I see a connection to what we talked last time, about doing research in our own ways, WHEN we are making the design/art, not after it.

The meme pool text!! That was so good. Very thought-provoking. I totally get it and agree to this way of thinking. It’s fascinating. So the ideas and memes and stories are just using as as hosts to spread and carry on like a virus. It’s a parasite that needs us to survive. But we are also enjoying it as we carry it on and mutate it. So again... human population = hive mind??? Hahaa. So who is in charge, indeed... + “cultural apparatus” as on organism?

The text the Man in the Middle talked about a topic painfully familiar to us all... or at least to me. This is why I try to escape the merchandising apparatus........ although I am a part of it and without it it is hard for me to provide for my self. So I try to make use of the apparatus for my own good, but I hope I’m not hurting others as I go on using it. Designers have to struggle between culture, merchandise, being a consumer and tricking consumers, making money, having a consciousness, being a good person, caring about the environment while making goods, trying to perfect their craft etc etc.

I would like to “become a good craftsman”, for sure. I try to seek my own path and do what I see is right and interesting etc. I try to be better in what I do, I want to enjoy what I do, I don’t want to be trapped doing the same things, I don’t want other people telling me what to do or how to do it.... But let’s see. I guess that is what every one wants but do we all end up there? And one other thing. The text sort of glorified the “fact” that a good craftsman “loves what he does and does what he loves” (if you’d excuse my meme here), so work and life are entwined, inseparable. ! Watch out! That’s a first class ticket to burnout. It’s a good thing, if you can separate work and leisure and have time to relax. Of course you also gain energy when you do “your own thing” but at the end of the day it is still work.

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Introduction :: Reading II :: utkarsh : 27.09

If I were to draw the themes from the previous reading and this one, I guess the first readings established a context as to how we, as designers, are to approach our subject in discussion and form meaning through it; while this one brought us closer to what we intend to study, visual narratives.  While the excerpt from Johanna Drucker’s Grapheses laid down some enlightening insights to Graphic Design, studying visuals as language. It also in a way brought in few principles that serve as gatekeepers as to what would make someone’s work outcome survive the clutter of visuals and make it timeless. (One of my concerns where Mills encourages one to practice their design independently, but we’ll get back to it.) This excerpt also grasped me for the longest time, not by its length, but by its content, and I plan to delve more into it, if time permits that is. I assume that it would be a shared notion by the class that the text James Gleick’s Into The Meme Pool would arguably be an absorbing insight, ours being the age of the internet, as it also impends noteworthy research to be made around it. While the first text gives us basis, I liked how this text metaphorised knowledge as a living entity. This text, along with the final one by C. Wright Mills’, also got me depressed about the capitalistic societies we’re living in. The article had several instances humanizing memes but one such engaging instance, as to how knowledge suffers transfer and reinterpretation, as pointed out in our first reading highlighting author function, was when philosopher Daniel Dennett gets ‘trolled’ quoting Mozart unknowingly quotes Freud.  A generic conclusion that I could draw about ‘viral’ memes have been their average mediocrity, that hasn’t changed much through time. While memes could be awakening in nature, spreading ideas in an easily consumable forms; it was amusing to note that they’ve, for most of the times, been detrimental in nature. Such insights made these texts not only lucid to read, but also at times funny and hence engaging. Speaking of that I refer to what I thought was only an invention of the present times, a subverted use of communication: the chain letters (and in a way, the Ponzi scheme). It’s weird that something I assumed was prevalent only amongst the Tier III Indian town populace over WhatsApp forwards, actually has an “analog” history to it. The point here to draw home was how virality comes with a price of poor information.  The final text was what gave a complete picture to it all. Starting from graphics as a form of language, to its macroscopic view as a living “infosphere” as Gleick puts it; we were then brought to our responsibilities as designers, being the originators of the visuals, to bring about a change in the scenario. Having worked with corporates and services for past few years, this text summed it all for me. It being an address made total sense in a way that it stirred the audience to appreciate the creators, the manifesters, the designers. The text  also articulated some glaring notions, including the one about ‘the merchandising apparatus’ wherein I couldn’t help myself recollecting how the Apple Inc.’s logo is a bitten apple from the Gardens of Eden. What I mean to say, quoting the exact text, is how some corporations are into “creating wants than satisfying the active ones.” No doubt the evolution, but these always come with a price. Here I can’t help but admire how IKEA identifies some peculiar needs of day to day life and inserts a product at it. Well it’s a corporation as well, oh the irony, but atleast there’s an honest attempt. And this can be a forever going debate, so I would pause at it here as it seems out of the scope of this introduction. Coming back to the text, while it made some valid points about the world having moved to a more capitalistic way and how shall the designer break through it via “the ways of a craftsman”, these suited well for an inciting speech but seemed less practical, especially the part where he suggests making one’s practice a full time affair. We’re in the times wherein individuality is not just a way of life but also a responsibility. The suggested ways of craftsmanship, however fulfilling for one’s existence, might only make a designer starve given the plethora of them around. No doubt the professed ways would serve for me as mottos, but I guess that’s where the way of The Buddha comes in wherein he suggests to lead ‘a middle path’ (thus leading to ‘objectivity’ as Haraway stated; neither too involed, nor too aloof). In a way, to keep one’s job separate from their practice, as the practice is the one where an individual can spring in their creative best. However, what Mills really wanted to encourage was to bring back times where curated artists where sponsored by the King’s Court. Referring to the present, I somehow notice the same happening through crowdsourcing and Patreon pages these days.  I also admired the way this particular text got away with the distinction between designers and artist that has been so long professed and corrected in communities around the world, and addressed them solely as Craftsmen. All in all, it was a reassuring read that hope is not lost.