Feb. 1 Reading Responses

WHY WE NEED THINGS

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I hold, therefore I am.

I have two anecdotes in response to this reading. I have a more than one friend who sways very deeply toward the purist function spectrum of interactivity, to such a degree that objects made for purely poetic or aesthetic qualities simply do not compute for them. They design for ultility, creating objects, interfaces, and experiences that make life easier in terms of physical efficiency; any emotional or mental ease is more of a byproduct. And then, I have another friend, from whom I first realized how much importance people place on attaching themselves to objects. I have never met another person who hoarded so many tokens with the conscious knowledge and goal of the aggregate forming her identity (fyi: we lived together in the same house for a while and shared the same moving truck – four times – she had a ton of “crap”). It was overwhelming how much of herself she put into these objects: they were her equilibrium, her barometer and much of the meaning of her life was wrapped up in the smallest plastic army figure. Csikszentmihalyi discretely deconstructs the historical reasons for our various attachments, and she held them all: for emotional and self-defining purposes, but also for a display of character power for people in some ways, of female dominance in others. I speak to her especially because she represents for me one of the ideas that really resonated with me in this article, that our identity, “our sense of self depends on others observing us” and us observing ourselves, and that objects lend a tangible quality to these. I speak to my first friend because this article highlight the utility of the emotional function of objects. As our objects become more and more disposable and perhaps are more focused on form that function, how will our attachments to them change? What are the different ways that digital space and objects ground our identity that physical objects cannot? Especially concerning ideas of permanence in these days or non-Facebook deletion? And with the ubiquity of objects in our personal repositories dedicated mainly to communication devices?

HERTZIAN TALES, ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS, AESTHETIC EXPERIENCES, AND CRITICAL THINKING

Anthony Dunne (2005)

As an initial comment, I really like Dunne (and Raby’s) work. Before I encountered Hertzian Tales in last semester’s studio, I had never imagined the idea of combining poetics and objects, technologically or non-tech oriented, thought the former is much more interesting since it tacitly has the potential to raise basic electronics or their remixed selves to a critical status. This was fantastic food for thought with our next project approaching in how it discusses different approaches for designing critical objects. They are not just intentional, but communicate a very specific voice, one that invites interaction on a whole level independent and yet somehow tied even more closely to ideas of usability.

For example, the day after the Scrapyard Challenge still found many remnants of junk parts and disassembled devices, much to the delight of a few sleep-deprived DTers (myself and a few others that is). In particular, there was a screen to a mac and an old radio, both missing backs, both with all innards exposed to the world. Side by side, it almost felt like a violation to have such immediate access to this background information, to these parts you are not supposed to see. This is not even to mentioned the brazen comparison between an at least 30 year old radio with a huge mac LCD screen. In any event, there also happened to be three cans of latex paint pristinely positioned right beside these two interfaces: red, purple, and an off-white. The temptation was absolutely too much: the paint found its way into the back innards and the circuits were swimming. It was incredibly gratifying for the group and me personally on so many levels: ) it’s always fun to play with paint and put it where you are not supposed to; B) the emerging piece was actually quite beautiful and profound, as if the physicality of the color and paint gave life to these objects in an almost Pinocchio-esque kind of way. An act of destruction giving a new aesthetic life. They are now laid to rest behind the big monitor in the lab. RIP. Until the next Scrapyard Challenge

COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGIES: WHY WE USE OUR HANDS WHEN WE THINK

Kirsch (1995)

This reading just screams touch technology and its impact for me. Based on the findings of the article, along with the bodies of other research that exist on kinetic learning, these cognitive strategies have the capacity to shape our perceptual models and interactions with representations of our world more than we are aware of. The logical jump is then the ways in which touch technology has and will continue to evolve of design of and interaction with object, but more interestingly, the evolution of haptic strategies and their impact on memory and learning. As they become more ubiquitous in every environment, from whiteboards in classrooms to interactive installations using projectors and the like, learning will acquire more physical traits as well. Strictly speaking in terms of education, hopefully this means more momentum for experiential learning and application, rather that a focus on textbook memorization.

TANGIBLE BITS: TOWARDS SEAMLESS INTERFACES BETWEEN PEOPLE, BITS AND ATOMS

Ishii Hiroshi and Brygg Ullmer (1997)

This was really cool. A little dry until I looked at the date and realized that this was on a cusp of the transition to ubicomp and AR becoming mainstream concepts, and that these prototypes were probably among the first of their kind. I especially like their focus on combining old/physical and new/virtual worlds through a new set of metaphors. When metaphor changes to reflect a new stage, i.e. moving away from the desktop to a second generation analogy, it indicates degrees of comfort with the actual technology and the need to not rely so much on a physical counterpart – in less worlds, it can stand alone as its own autonomous entity. The old and initial will always remain, but it is an interesting idea and barometer nevertheless. On one more note, this phrase struck me the most in the context of the reading: “…change the world itself into an interface.” I’m gonna let this one simmer.

THE WHALE AND THE REACTOR
CHAPTER 2: “DO ARTIFACTS HAVE POLITICS?”

Langdon Winner (1988)

I have read a lot of Marx. And I was more often than not quite critical of him, especially through the determinist lens of Russian Studies in which I immaturely (in all senses of the word), assumed all of his theories, and Engels’ for that matter, failed states. Recently though, Marx has been popping his head up again and again in such a light that it has been a really amazing reverse-rose colored lens to approach the history of technology and its intersection with design. Nerding out in my own way, this has been the most intriguing article I have read since entering into this program. First of all, it illuminates the role of technology in society and how it trickles down into our personal lives in a manner that it more terrifying in shock value than than the potential of any Terminator movie to jump off the big screen. His idea of context is radically different that what we have approached so far: not that society determining technology, but that artifacts, specifically and especially technological artifacts, have an intrinsic power to shape society, independent of context. If he had written this today, he would have had a field day with Facebook. His examples are mainly of tangible technologies: the appalling, socio-racial motivated bridge system in NYC; the the atom bomb; the mechanization of factories from the Industrial Revolution; etc. To what degree are we really at the mercy of the systems we create and the power structures that emerge from them, independent of our design? Comparing this history to the digitization of democracy and the democratization of information, the arguments are still extremely relevant. Even though we can all be the captains of our own blogs, there is still a greater infrastructure beyond us. And, since we are in this program, I can only imagine it is to become more than a normal consumer/producer of this technology and media. As designers, it is up to us to see the system beyond the technology, and the emergent system within the technology.