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Summary Reading III: The New Materiality of Design Amelie Scharffetter 16.10.2019
Who wants tea?
Who wants Pepparkakor?
Standardisation was thought of as sustainable during modern era
What is seen as waste?
Biodiversity
Cucumber issue
Is standardisation good for us as designers?
Does it serve anything else that consumerism?
Ty to think of standardisation as helpful, know the rules and then break them
How would non-standardisation affect our consumer behaviour?
Could objects have more than one purpose?
Unlearning about objects
Barbapapa
Do we go ourselves as designers and humans through standardisation?
Standardisation is controlled by capitalism
Everything is standardised - This is such a paradox in an hyper-individual society
News - internet - more info but we take in less
Efficiency has taken its negative toll on our mental health
We cannot keep up with the speed we have set up
How can we cope with this world when our brain is still physiological the same as stone-age
Lizzard brain - survival instincts
Neurology
Can something be original?
Genius is a matter of charisma and confidence and environment
Genius is a group effort
Cooperative intelligence
Scenious —> Brian Eno
Collaboration is the future - complex issues needs collaborative efforts
Collaborative effort can also mean individual work
My work is myself
A person doesn’t equal their job
Can we separate a product from their maker (morally: Gills, Allen, Kubrick)
Give authorship to the user of objects
People need the chance to be bad
Anthropomorphism: New Lion king wasn’t easy to connect with because they weren’t given human traits
Hello Kitty doesn’t have mouth, it is silent
Giving human traits to things is a way to make them more important - hierarchy
OOO - hierarchy doesn’t exits
You are not more valuable than the pot even if you created the pot
This is the final death of god - even though they created the world they are not more important than us
Are thoughts and spirituality involved in OOO e.g Harry potter
Just because thoughts are not visible they still exist
Dreams are informed by subconscious
Commercialism and products - pricing. Value creation
In design we always have to re-invent
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Summary, Reading iii : The New Materiality of Design, Lari, 8.10.2019
“straight cucumbers” 🥒
Some of the topics we had in our discussion when we met at Amelie's place
• “Death of God” meaning God created the world but anything is as valuable as god
• Design hacks : a sofa that is also / turns into a bicycle
• Barbapapa as “The New Materiality of Design”
• Stanrdazation vs. biodioversity
• Standardization can lead to monopoly (e.g. Apple)—link to dictatorship
• Decreasing attention span
• “Scenius”
• “It’s easier if we give the authority to the user of the object—maybe in this case the author is dead” about Gill Sans
• “Even the dreams can’t be original because it’s something you have seen”
• “What you make is the product of the environment so the environment is the author”
Wrap up : Oxbridge Philosophy - John Cleese & Jonathan Miller
youtube
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SUMMARY
Reading
Jolanda Jokinen 08 10 2019
Who is the ultimate author? FOUNDER READER VIEWER USER TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT TIME - ALL THE ABOVE
Things, nature, animals, ideas – we are all equal products of existence
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Summary: The final author?
Summary
Reading III: The New Materiality of Design
Tintin Rosvik 8.10.2019
I want to summarize this reading with the final question of our last discussion. Who is the ultimate author? Even though we left the topic of authorship a few weeks ago, we somehow ended up spiralling back to this question – but with a lot more alternatives than the writer and the reader, and also a lot more insight.
So we asked: Is the ultimate author the founder, what we can name as writer, designer and creator? Is it the scene (Brian Eno: “scenius”), the group of people behind the creator? Is it the audience; the readers, viewers and users? Is it the technology at hand? The surrounding environment? The time?
In a way we came to an agreement; it is a collaboration effort by all above. Or in other words; everything that exist is a product of time and space – and of course, so also design. Taking OOO into account at this point, we discussed how everything that exist is equal. If you for example imagine yourself to be a potter, you would be of no more value than the pot you have moulded. Yes, you gave it form, and it wouldn’t exist without your hands. But someone gave you form as well, you wouldn’t exist without the occurrences of time and space shaping you into the potter that you now are. Things, nature, animals, ideas – we are all equal products of existence.
This philosophy wouldn’t do in a modern world. If everything is equal, everything falls into the same category. How to divide all of this? We discussed how value, meaning and waste is created, both in a modern world and in a world not ruled by the human perspective. Maybe the answer isn’t to divide it all, but to find the connections and interaction in between everything equal.
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Summary
Reading III (The New Materiality of Design)
Kaisa Koisti, 7 Oct 2019
- machinery - stripping down human effect- language-> cultural diversity -> english language effect, more languages dying out
- sustainability <> waste, standardization could be a solution for sustainability crisisthe concept of waste can be different for them -vegetables & fruit (the form) (cucumber) -how would non-standardized world work like? -> can lead to monopolies
- Barbapapa:) Objects changing- genius : a product of society (charismatic figure) (Brian Eno video) “intelligence is generated by a community” - valuing people, person = work ;-; not working, why would there be a need to value people by their work, it is useless, don’t like to work from that mindset ;-; -> is that the mindset what the society wants us to use?
- problematic things about Eric Gill, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick -Human characteristics, where they are found, where they are missing : Lion King new version (Tintin’s experience), Hello Kitty missing a mouth
- OOO:Creator is not more important / valuable than the object / subject created (Tintin)
God is Dead
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Introduction, Reading iii : The New Materiality of Design, Lari, 6.10.2019
• • •
Ian Bogost : What is Object-Oriented Ontology? A definition for ordinary folk. (2009)
[Wikipedia : Ian Bogost is an American academic and video game designer.]
• I have been wanting to look into this “OOO”
• Material realism
• Non-human (living, non-living, artificial or conceptual) entities are all considered ‘objects’. All these entities experience their own existence by perceiving each other (p. 13, Real-Time-Realist, J-LTF PRESS, 2017)
Bruno Latour : “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts” (2008)
[Wikipedia : Bruno Latour is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.]
• The text is set in long lines ~90 characters
• Loving this text:D:D the way its written :0)
• - - Bruno Latour, explores how artifacts can be deliberately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of other humans. His study demonstrates how people can “act at a distance” through the technologies they create and implement and how, from a user’s perspective, a technology can appear to determine or compel certain actions. - - Technologies play such an important role in mediating human relationships, Latour argues, that we cannot understand how societies work without an understanding of how technologies shape our everyday lives. Latour’s study of the relationship between producers, machines, and users demonstrates how certain values and political goals can be achieved through the construction and employment of technologies. (p. 151)
- - Of course, I could have put on my seat belt before the light flashed and the car, the law, the police—expected of me. Or else, some devious engineer could have the car, the law, the police—expected of me. (p. 152)
- - In spite of the constant weeping of moralists, no human is as relentlessly moral as a machine, especially if it is (she is, he is, they are) as “user friendly” as my Macintosh computer. We have been able to delegate to nonhumans not only force as we have known it for centuries but also values, duties, and ethics. It is because of this morality that we, humans, behave so ethically, no matter how weak and wicked we feel we are. The sum of morality does not only remain stable but increases enormously feel we are. The sum of morality does not only remain stable but increases enormously who focus on isolated socialized humans despair of us—us meaning of course humans and their retinue of nonhumans. (p. 157)
Nader Vossoughian : Workers of the World, Conform! (2017)
[Wikipedia : Nader Vossoughian is an architectural historian, theorist, and curator whose work focuses on architecture, information, and visual communication in twentieth-century German and European culture.]
• - - the advertiser and bibliographer K.W. Bührer gave him a copy of Die Organisierung der geistigen Arbeit durch “Die Brücke” (The Organization of Intellectual Work through “The Bridge”) (1911), - - The book argues that the creation of universal systems for recording and circulating information hinges on the worldwide adoption of standards for the formatting of paper. By eliminating the need to consider paper sizes, fonts, layouts, margin sizes, and so on, standards would free postal workers, scholars, and bank clerks from the burdens of information management. (ch. 1)
• - - As Lazzarato and many others have noted, separating intellectual and manual work, both of which are subject to rationalization and automation, is not so simple. (ch. 2)
Video : Brian Eno about creative intelligence of a community
youtube
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Introduction
Reading III (The New Materiality of Design)
Kaisa Koisti, 6 Oct 2019
*one sticky-note*
The life is a journey to get to know yourself, one could say. I don’t claim to know much about myself, but what I have learned about my personal traits so far, is that I am really bad at memorising any series of numbers. I could bore you by telling numerous examples about this particular flaw of mine. But like every time with a rule, there just has to be an exception. The exception, in this case, is that there is a numeric series that has fought its way to gain a place to stick in my memory, to have a close-knit connection with my so-called designer brain. It is 210(x)297. In other words, could say, that it is the systematisation, that has fought its way to stick in my memory. In my words, I don’t really find the forever-dear A4′s numeric values adding that much meaningful content in my memory stream, not at least on the personal level. I’d rather stick with the (yet-vague) memory fragments bringing me back to the careless state of being a child... finding much amusement of the simplest things... like having the time of my life organising plastic toys representing dinosaurs (ironic, right) in lines, according to the periods they lived in... Ok hold on. Hold on for Gaia’s sake. Is it just me or has my child-self been executing repetitive actions of the systematisation all along? And more remarkably, found some joy for doing so?
Anyway, let’s bring back the *width=210 length=297* we started with. Here’s a new A4 artboard, presenting itself as blank as my emotional connection is to it. Despite the such no-feels-generated connection I’ve been having with A4′s numeric values, I cannot deny a fact of some sort, that the 6 numbers in a correct order are bringing some meaning for me (and the printer machines worldwide). In this case, the meaning of the sticking memory hasn’t got anything to do with generating more value for one’s life purpose (I’m only speaking on my behalf, consult the printers for their opinion). In this case the meaning of the sticking memory is something what we are not even looking for, someplace we are not stopping by to dwell in nostalgia with when rushing down the memory lane. In this case the meaning of the sticking memory is something what is primarily generated to serve the purpose of functioning. To close, and about, the entire case (filled with A4s of course), could say that DI Norm 476 has done a pretty good job, to be able to plant something what sticks even in the individual’s mind, who’s role happens to be a bit dysfunctional in this numeric memory game.
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O Man, O Machine, O Lord
INTRODUCTION
Reading III: The New Materiality of Design
Amelie Scharffetter 6.10.2019
I wonder how the order in which I read the given literature has influenced this reaction. Knowing that thus far I had enjoyed the texts with a more provocative nature more than others, I instantly grabbed on to “Workers of the world conform”.
What struck me was that what Oswald and his consorts understood as utopian - the homogenisation of knowledge (the world brain), language (Ido), money etc. - read to me as the opposite. To me, they closely resembled ideas that George Orwell wrote about in his book 1984, he for example referred to Newspeak rather than Ido. Reflecting on Oswalds claims I couldn’t help but conclude that homogenisation and standardisation give way to absolutism (there is only one truth) and therefore to power. And those in power, no matter if economic in the form of a monopoly or political in the form of a dictatorship, will inevitably use this power without regards to disadvantages that their actions might cause to some (often the majority). In an economic framework this would mean if one cannot adhere to the standards set by an industry, one won’t be able to compete in the market (as can be seen in the unequal global wealth distribution). The same applies to the use of English language. While it allows us to communicate in most places across the globe it also creates economic hierarchies within and between countries and has a questionable impact on other languages.
The most twisted idea to me was that of a believe system in which “all moral judgements are inextricably linked to the questions of efficiency”. Reading this in 2019, I had to think about the Nürnberger Prozesse in which people were questioned wether they pled guilty for the crimes they had committed. Most of them denied. Not everyone involved in the mass-homicide was especially “evil” but themselves product of a homogenised propagated believe-system (or ideology) with a wide reaching bureaucracy and cogwheels in the perfectly tuned, most efficient killing machine that was the Holocaust where those involved denied individual responsibility.
This is of course an extreme example but issues with humans obsession with efficiency is also visible in other forms today. Flights are efficient but they come at high environmental costs, smartphones are efficient but people suffer mentally from being available and online at all times, Amazon is efficient in delivering in the shortest time possible but it comes result in the exploitation of warehouse workers that operate under constant pressure. Or as the author puts is: “Like Ostwald and his fellow World Brain enthusiasts, their utopian impulses ended up enabling states and corporations to control and extract values from workers, while extolling the morality of productivity, conformity and efficiency”. This text really made me question wether efficiency is something designers should be striving for. Is our overdeveloped society in truth underdeveloped when we make ourselves so dependent on efficiency systems? Which also brought me to the question if the things we design always need to have practical purpose. Would it be ok to design non-practical, non efficient objects?
Arriving with this question at the text about Object oriented Ontology was challenging because OOO claims that there is no such thing as good and bad objects (or efficient and non-efficient). We as humans create this hierarchy to make sense of our reality while OOO arrives at the conclusion that all objects exist without our human consent and evaluation. As a designer this was challenging to accept. First, there is no author so we cannot claim genius or originality and then OOO takes away our ability to judge and categorise?
While this was another crucial moment in my unlearning process I did not dwell too long on the thought of what that does to my own understanding of my role but instead first continued to think about this idea that as humans we take constant ownership over the world around us, understanding ourselves somewhat removed from everything else, neatly dividing and organising into boxes, charts, studies, hierarchies and lists. I thought it was fascinating to see how our obsession with efficiency tries to turn the human into a “non-human” (working efficiently like a machine”) and with the rise of new technical inventions we try to give them what we understand as human traits (anthropomorphism). As Bruno Latour puts it “the debate around anthropomorphism arises because we believed that there exist “humans” and “nonhumans” without realising that this attribution of roles and actions is also a choice”. We as humans create this artificial distinction between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, anthropomorphism and technomorphism are testimony to this distinction.
It will still take me a while to internalise Latours’ statement the “it is the complete chain that makes up the missing masses, not either of it extremities” but I think it is a valid closing point to a course that caused me to dismantle my current believe system. The last weeks were overwhelming and confusing, I had to give away more and more of my idea of being an original individual and arriving at the conclusion that I am a particle in a wider system of chains and believe systems. I don’t want to claim that I entirely freed myself of previous beliefs in hierarchies and truths but I now understand that I can bend them. I hope to do so with the same humour and light-footed elegance that I found in Latours’ text, arriving back at what I understood my creative practice to be from the beginning - playtime!
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SUMMARY
Reading II: Design and Knowledge
Amelie Scharffetter 1.10.2019
Another reading group meeting and another discussion that brought many different insights. We discussed the element of repetition which Kaisa found central to all three of the texts - we talked about how this applies to the individual but also in a wider perpective: trends, the author text from last week, craftsmanship, memes.
The concept of meme and the wide scope of it was new to quite a few of us. We talked about it and how in in todays word the speed is exhilarated through the internet and social media and that memes are being constantly created, that terms that express certain values such as craftsmanship are becoming overused and devalued and eventually morph into a meme. We discussed ways to escape the role we play in this system and that it seemed tricky because marketing has become heavily engrained in our everyday life. The visual codes of what an advertisement looks like is constantly changing - from product placement in films to influencer marketing. Kaisa showed us a clip called “branded dream” by coca cola - which we came to an uncomfortable realisation that sleep might be the one of the few remaining places where we escape advertisements.
We realised that a radical break from capitalism isn’t realistic but that we can change the current status by making personal, ethical choices for example when it comes to choosing a client. Craftsmanship remained a tricky subject, partly because the word seemed so skewed and partly because we felt it implied that the craftsman is heavily reliant on a patron in order to survive, which would put him/her in the same position as the romantic notion of the writer or artist.
Laris offered the idea of approaching craftsmanship would be more by learning the rules and then breaking away from them.
This linked nicely to a discussion about rules and universal truths that were so prevalent in Modernity. We agreed that we now live in post truth times and that we might hold a power as visual communicators as our way of communicating never claims to hold just one truth but is open to interpretation. Instead of being the”man (person”) in the middle we should create a. “culture in the middle”. Our conversation closed with the idea that our education should be focused on collaboration and understood as residence rather that “time out” from the “real world”.
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INTRODUCTION
Reading 3
Jolanda Jokinen 06 10 2019
This last reading 3 materials were quite long because there were three texts this time but I noticed that reading previous texts helped me to read these last ones. I was in that ”reading zone” already.
Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Sew Mundane Artifacts
The texts was talking about non-human stuff and people who creates machines and technology based in human ideas and inventions. This text was quite confusing also because the writer Bruno Latour talked constantly about doors and the walls. There were also some good points and interesting thoughts behind these ”doors” and ”walls”. I liked the theory of seat belt which was there in the beginning of the text. It was a good example how artifacts and machines are designed to replace human actions and how they are controlling our behaviour one by one. I think that the danger in this idea is that we don’t even think about this and we let the technology and machines to rule us unconsciously. We are creating technology and artefacts for replacing humans and our actions and that way we are allowing them to have this power over us. Are we leading the machines or other away round? We humans wanted to control the world but I think that there is gonna be the time when we can’t control our inventions anymore.
I started immediately think about my everyday life and also my dearest working devices: my laptop and my phone. The technology is present everyday and its quite scary how ”smart” it is and the fact that it was us who started the whole thing in the first place. Laptop is like this door and it opens more doors like websites and profiles etc where you need these keys to get in to for example like passwords. And those doors will be closed if your laptop gets broken or the wifi doesn’t work.
Workers of the world, confirm!
Nader Vossoughian talks about standardising the world and organising it in these different boxes. This texts was a quite interesting because I haven’t thought about our society in that perspective and how standardised it is in so many levels. For example I found my mothers old linograph work and the linoleum this weekend when I was cleaning my grandmothers attic and I took them with me to frame them. We were wondering the size of the linoleum and it turns out that it was A5. The size being the standard paper size it will be so much easier to find a nice frame for it. Its funny example how much easier everything is because there is these standard sizes and rules.
Papersizes are one of the most essential thing in graphic design. If the work is going to be printed, you can’t avoid the standard paper sizes. Even if we use, buy and consume digital products in social media, the style can be traced back to printed design. For example we don’t have to cope with standardising paper sizes not that much anymore in print (because print is dying?) but we have these new standard sizes. Digital design is creating new standards for design that didn’t exist before.
I usually design printing material by using standard sizes because of a client needs and wishes but I think that its not only a bad thing. Of course the print material usually 90% looks the same because of these paper sizes we use but it also saves the paper and narrows down the possibilities so its saves time also. It’s can also be too narrowing factor in our jobs and limits us and our design work. Its also making our job more easier and more simple when we know these limitations and we now how to deal with them and work with them also. I have noticed that I usually prefer using standard paper sizes because then we use the whole paper and nothing gets cutted of and its environmentally friendly also. But then again I love the projects where I can use what ever size I want and let my imagination and creativity run wild.
What is Object-Oriented Ontology? A definition for ordinary folk
This ”text” was quite different than the other texts. It was nice and easy to read this texts because it was divides in these comments. It was a conversation. But I could not get that much from it. It was kind of interesting to think about the world in this OOO perspective but the main idea and the conversation was too philosophical to me. According to OOO we can understand our world and ourselves better by examining the objects without placing them in the context of the people who made them. ”Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology (“OOO” for short) puts things at the center of this study. Its proponents contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally–plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for example” was Ian Bogost description of OOO. I started to think about Harry Potter and the imaginary world behind it. What about the fictional objects and stories which are not ”things” in their physical way but they are existing in our minds and they are written in books which are physical things. In graphic design, what is the point with the stories behind the surface, the stories which are told by visuals elements?
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The round form of OOO and everything else
Introduction
Reading III: The New Materiality of Design
Tintin Rosvik 6.10.2019
With Nader Vossoughian’s description of modern standardization as background, inspired by Bruno Latour’s brilliant way of writing, and informed by Ian Bogost’s summary of Object Oriented Ontology, I will in this text explore my philosophical thoughts on visual form. This final introduction will on one hand summarize my recent thoughts on discourse in design, on the other hand it is a personal writing entirely separated from the framework of this course.
Round, round, round
In my early childhood, before I was influenced by curriculums and learning goals, I had all kinds of theories about the world. I remember that my favorite thing to do was to sit under the kitchen table and think ”deep thoughts”, as I called them. There’s even an article about my peculiar behavior in my hometown’s local newspaper. Anyhow, one of my most thought out theories was that everything that exists is round; the smallest circular form was the atom and the biggest was the universe. In my mind, these two opposites were actually the same. It was all a loop – and therefore the universe was infinite.
To this day, the round form has stuck with me as my personal visualization of imagination and intellect. I even named – maybe to make a full circle – my bachelor’s thesis ”The Dynamic Dot”. So just imagine my excitement reading about a philosophical theory named OOO.
I couldn't help but to picture myself back under the kitchen table when reading Bogost's description of OOO. Besides the visual coherence, the theory of Object Oriented Ontology also ties back to my early idea of form being correlated to existence. In other words, simply because something is formed – not even taking tangible shape but just formed – it exists. ”Plumbers, DVD players, cotton, bonobos, sandstone, and Harry Potter”, it all exists equally. This way of understanding the world – in contrast to the dominant epistemological discourse battling between senses (empiricism) and logic (rationalism) – claims that the reality we experience is not dependent on human cognition. An idea that seems to be more and more present in today's society.
OOO
This idea would however not match the ideology of the last century and a modern society would probably reject OOO in an instance. In a time when human individuality and standardization was assumed to redeem the world, it would have been unimaginable to place all existing matters in the same category – and as if that wasn’t enough – also eliminating the superiority of human perspective. Quoting Markus Krajewski “No world format can function without a world that accepts it” and today, when the drawbacks of claiming human authority starts to emerge and humans even feel threatened by other non-human factors, OOO might have a chance to challenge the dominant discourse.
As all ontological theories, Object Oriented Ontology is nothing else than yet another human interpretation on how humans interpret their being. So why would it make any difference? Well, the way we view ourselves in the world will affect our behavior – and right now the way we humans behave drastically needs to change. I was recommended to read Karen Barad's theory ethico-onto-epistemology which describes something similar, and I wanted to highlight her description of the problem with conventional ontologies: "This ontology [ethico-onto-epistemological] rejects the foundational separation between ‘object of observation’ and ‘observer’ because this division assumes the object as passive and the observer as active".
Even tough we as humans will continue to interpret our reality as observers, it is necessary to address the theory of OOO and other speculative theories in order to recognise that our interpretations of the world does not make us the ”creators” of existence. At least to me, OOO succeeds in placing the human in relation to their surroundings in a more appropriate way than before. I also find the abstract view on existence – everything is equal – interesting in a time that faces problems beyond humanity.
The round O
While the theory as a whole resonates with me, I don't think that the word object is doing the complexity of OOO justice. Because of this thought, I once again pick up the red thread from my previous writings; exploring how to use visual epistemology in complex knowledge creation. I put this idea to practice by connecting my childhood idea of the round form with the theory on a visual level:
Imagine OOO explained with the help of the circular form as a metaphor, or alternative theory, for ”everything equal” instead of the word object. Object might be a versatile word, but it is still a description of an artifact, while the "everything" that OOO refers to goes beyond atoms and physics. It includes abstract matters and even notions of the world that the humans not even know yet, and might never know. While a word is restricted to its meaning, the round form is infinite. A circle is equally full as it is empty. Equally enormous as it is tiny. Equally abstract as it is tanglible. It can be nothing and everything. It doesn’t matter what these circles contain, because they are all equal.Explaining ”everything” with this abstract visualization would better represent the ”equal existence of things” that OOO describes.
It might be just because I am a visual person, but somehow I strongly believe that theoreticians would benefit from using visual form as a way of exploring, evaluating and explaining. Visualizations travels through space and time differently than words; not as fixed ideas to be understood, but as dynamic building blocks to re-used over and over again. For example, If someone would have written down my childish "deep thoughts", the words would have been of no use for me today. But because I visualized my idea with a circle, I have been able to put more and more knowledge into that same form. The round form I imagined as a child do not contain the same knowledge as the round form I have described today, but it is still the same exact form. I think it is remarkable that a visual idea I created as a four year old, have helped me understand – and challenge – a speculative realistic theory called Object Oriented Ontology today.
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Summary, Reading ii : Design and Knowledge, Lari, 30.9.2019
“post-truth”
Some of the topics we had in our discussion when we met at Tintin's place on monday
• Our conclusion? In post-truth times truth does not exist anymore? In the age of internet there are many truths? We don't know anymore what to believe?
• “Before man thought he can understand the whole world” Amelie about truth
• We felt that Mills text feels funny in retrospective—becomes a meme in itself “His art is a business, but his business is art”
• We talked about craftsmanship as a funny commercialized practice dating few years back. Also consumerism as part of the millenial hipster subculture.
• I argued that craftsmanship is not related to tools, it’s also related to thinking.
• “I didn’t think this was in me” said Amelie about her criticism of capitalism “I am such a product of the internet age”
• Jolanda noted that as a graphic design student she has also become a marketing student.
• Kaisa talked about the power of repetition.
• “Influencers have in the way taken our job—selling beautiful products is not our job anymore” Tintin (?) about graphic design work in advertising
• Designer is the in-between person?
• We talked about learning the rules, learning the basics as a “level zero” before beginning a practice
• We talked about the changing of the name of our department from Graphic Design to Visual Communication Design—does it give a better image about our practice or is it just a new design a disguise to sell the same old product?
• “How we put this into practice?” We talked about our masters studies. We felt this could be something to continue with in our studies. We talked about taking control. We talked about education as a residency. We talked about libraries. Graphic design Visual communication design department could/should have a library (Werkplaats Typografie, Princeton University, Dexter Sinister)? We talked about Amelies and Tintins library project. We talked about publishing. Graphic design Visual communication design department should/could do publishing (Werkplaats Typografie)? We talked about Amelies and Tintins magazine project.
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Summary
Reading II (Design and Knowledge)
Kaisa Koisti, 30 Sept 2019
After this reading round we found ourselves at Tintin’s lovely home, and the shared presence of ours raised many interesting trails sparking up the 2hr long verbal marathon. Here is my contribution, my attempt of presenting the pitstops of thinking I managed to document myself during our meeting;
• Notion that all of us in the group have personal preferences regarding the different reading samples.
• The reading material raised more critical thinking (and critical writing of course) towards the issues the reading material provoked.
• At times, the reading material also raised strong emotions towards the more problematic issues (relevant for a designer-being nowadays). For example the ‘Man in the Middle’ -text sample was something Jolanda found depressing, and Amelie found amusing. There was a comment about us designers being ‘a puppet’ for the salesman, regarding the capitalistic scene.
• The reading material managed to provide something fresh to digest; such as the definition / concept of ‘meme’, which both Amelie and Jolanda commented to be a new one for them.
• There was also discussion about how the term/title of a ‘craftsmanship’ has recently been a trendy trick, that companies have seen it a valuable asset to use for the marketing. And the intention for that might not have anything to do with the so-called-truth behind a company’s real protocol. Instead, it might just be a wise move, feints targeted to consumers, just to serve the purpose of increasing the sales. We made a notion that similar terms have gasped the attention of salesmen, like the ones used for ‘greenwashing’ practice in the near past.
•personal choices, of choosing the work place with more sustainable values-a really known artist, can do this
• influencer effect: piilomarkkinointia : -> showed the coca cola ad
• carrying a nike jacket with swoosh logo, my LV logo tattoo example -personal take: generating knowledge? what do we express with visual communication design
• Mill’s text: storytellers, telling stories as they would be true, what is truth? -Internet, uncontrollable, need to find new ways to perceive content on internet, because it’s so fast changing -epistomology of the future; graphical production knowledge, could fit better because it is more fluid and flexible, no absolute truths -design: 3rd culture -> middle culture -matter of senses as well : the interpretation of colors in different cultures, But also
could consider african tribe seeing more greens, or color blind people
• who’s truth are we telling (as designers) when we are creating visual communication design for marketing purposes -field is expanding, graphic design -> visual communication design; our craftmanship is becoming also to the thing of the knowledge of communication, changing the image of our practise -visual communication design doesnt have exact truths, does a role as a visual communication designer have any either? -role changing depending on the project you are working with or for the client -intellectual skills <> technological skills
• craftmanship is not related to tools, it’s also related to thinking
• you learn the rules, and can break them
-> you still need to maintain some following of the rules in most of the cases, in order to be able to recognise the letterform, the essence of the letterform
• education as a residency :)
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Summary: Escaping capitalism
Summary
Reading II: Design and Knowledge
Tintin Rosvik 1.10.2019
The discussion began with us agreeing on the fact that it was hard to synthesize one’s thoughts on the reading into a coherent entity. These text evoked such a great extent of possible routes to take, that it was impossible to present all ideas in one short introduction. We also noted that we all had, in one way or another, continued on our own string of thoughts from last week.
At first, it seemed like we all had very different entry points to the discussion about design and knowledge, but quite quickly we found common ground in what could be summarized into “the capitalistic trap”. Kaisa called it the power of repetition. Jolanda explained it as not getting paid more for the design job even though the sales of the product increase. Lari saw the individual choices of craftsmanship as a possible solution. Amelie, on the other hand, criticized craftsmanship as something romanticized and ultimately commercialized. And I thought about it as designing other’s truths, saying nothing else but “buy this”.
But how can we escape capitalism? It is difficult to get beyond the cynical belief that it is impossible to escape. Advertisement will always find new ways of making itself visible in the most invisible way possible, and there will always be those willing to do shit job for money.However, we really tried to look beyond this cynical assumption and speculated how visual communication design would function if it was placed outside capitalism.
We moved on to talk about education. How should we reframe what we are doing now to make sure that we are building the future we want? At the moment the field has an opening to reinvent itself – we have freedom, but where do we belong? What stuck with me the most, was visualizing design as a morphing, interactive and flexible mass in between cultures and in between stakeholders – in between anything, actually.
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SUMMARY
Reading 2
Jolanda Jokinen 30 09 2019
Mary go round- trying to make a good design but in the end its gonna be just something that sells
How we can fight against capitalism - making more ethical choices
We graphic designers are saying ”truths” in advertising world - for example ”THIS IS THE BEST OATMILK”BUT what is true and what is not? Who’s truths we are telling?
Defining our profession is impossible
Not only one role - we are changing and we are defining our own profession every day
Technology - enemy?
Learn the rules- learn how to break them
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Introduction
Reading II (Design and Knowledge)
Kaisa Koisti, 29 Sept 2019
*EAT, SLEEP, organise-prioritise-understand-respond, REPEAT*
There is a constant flow of information around us to be noted somehow. The senses are the MVPs of that job, each of them having their own expertise field, and tackling with the ever-present various information, and that, of course requires a lot of team effort. There is a real power squad, a rich set of receptors, willing to pick up the information visitors, and after the brief welcome, the visitors are led the way to where the party at, where all the magic happens: the human brain. The human brain is the one in charge, the big boss of a kind, the executive ready to take action. The human brain is the one organising, prioritising, making all the trying-to-understand business, and creating a response with an accurate way to the visiting information that has just checked in. And yes, I want to highlight, even in those really simple cases, if the sensed information is rather self-explanatory. Such as my following attempt to transcribe the currently occurring sensory activity of mine: *holding a coffee cup in my hand & sensing the liquid it contains is too hot* -> ‘I better not caffeinate myself with it yet, so I am putting the cup down, so it won’t touch my hand anymore with such an unpleasant way’.
And with my understanding, the continuum of such sensory stimuli happens, so that we can try to make the most use of the information facing us on daily basis. The essence of receiving such sensory stimuli, is to keep oneself functioning, to maintain staying alive, and in the broad picture also fostering the matter of being alive onwards, to maintain the survive of the species. And one might wonder why am I bringing such things on the table as starters, trying to be a replicant called Darwin2.0 with all the survival of species talk? And how does this chatter relate to the reading material at all?I can provide the very information for you, (be ready to shake hands with it, or give a good ol’ high five if you are feeling more bumped). As earlier stated, I want to bring attention to the notion of the chain of events which occur in the human brain after receiving any sort of information; organising -> prioritising -> understanding -> responding.
And I want to ask, isn’t that the exact trait of ours, when we attempt to pass the information / knowledge of a subject matter to other human beings? Be it an informative text of a scientific breakthrough, or be it any kind of graphical knowledge production, or maybe an information package containing both. This notion of mine makes me think, that with such a voluntary yet repetitive function, we might be practising something what is vital, necessary to continued existence. And personally it gives me a purpose-to-consider, why do we find documenting information and producing knowledge such an important matter. Could be said, that without information there is no continuum of life, and without life there is no continuum of information. Could it be said that information gives life its purpose?
*FAKE IT, IT WILL MAKE IT*
I managed to gather a few themes I think could connect all the different reading material samples. Along with the themes of ‘repetition’, ‘production’ and ‘systematising’, I made a notion of the nature of knowledge...*TBC*
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