SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2009 COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES F BLOCK GREENS RD PADDINGTON http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/newsevents/events/event_0298.htmlMonday, September 7, 2009
Work exhibited at COFA Spring Fair
derbuchnook 09
SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2009 COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES F BLOCK GREENS RD PADDINGTON http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/newsevents/events/event_0298.html
SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2009 COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES F BLOCK GREENS RD PADDINGTON http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/newsevents/events/event_0298.html
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Change Me
Matthew Kiem
1. Today ‘sustainability’ is a buzz word par excellence, bandied around in all manner of contexts and agendas.
However as a title Sustain me: contemporary design has an alternative reading: the desperate cry of a practice searching for relevance amidst a crisis of its own making.
2. Design is understood and practiced as ‘thing’ production, a major problem considering the rapacious rate of material throughput. Design and designers have been historically and culturally shaped to practice this way, and it is a key aspect of the identity of the field and its practitioners.
Sustainability must therefore mean more than eco-design. Unfortunately this point and its implications are beyond the current thinking of designers.
3. The most obvious and predictable is unmaking materials as waste, that is, reuse and/or recycling.
But with the (not unsubstantial) limitations of recycling aside, in seeing unsustainability as only a problem of waste, the solutions on offer fail to point out that the practices assisted by such objects are also problematic.
4. This is not simply an issue of how an object looks, but the fact that the current design of an object’s presentation blinkers thought about the real context of use. The sustainable object is a myth; things sustain or deplete according to how they are used. To design without this in mind leaves a gaping hole in the quest for sustainment.
5. This attitude permeates the entire practice, and every opportunity is taken to reduce the amount of waste, water, chemical and carbon impact of designing. This is another commendable idea, and the enthusiasm of these practitioners is hopefully an inspiration to others to take on the difficult task of changing engrained habits of work.
6. But what of the work itself? Again the presentation ignores use. More so, one is encouraged to accept these objects as too precious to be used
An object’s journey to us is not represented in its appearance, so we cannot know the history or future of its impact. Further, the works rely on wholesome but simplistic narratives of localisation, traditional skills, and depressingly, the lessons of the back to nature “noble savage” made modern, again. There is no real alternative, tangible vision of a sustainable ways of living offered; it is more a lesson for the discerning collector.
7. Sustain me proposes that the sustaining potential of design resides not only in the functional, but also the poetic. To this end, the works of Lisa Gasparotto, Elliat Rich, and again David Trubridge convey messages of awareness, appeal, and questioning that relate to issues of the environment, sustainability and design. Dependency on these messages feels heavy, especially considering otherwise tenuous claim these works have on sustainment.
9. In this light Sustain me is at heart a conservative show that cannot generate the kind of challenge and inspiration needed for design to be truly redirective.
The dead-end dichotomies of form/function, art/science appears to underlie the presentation, misrecognising the full nature of design as a driver of unsustainability.
What should be of concern is the rationality of our design know-how, the non-conscious habits of thought and action that we are disposed which constitute our culture of designing. ‘Rational rationality’ cannot help but fail when it operates in practices that lack the embodied ability to sustain. This applies as to all practices as much as it does design. A diabolical failure of current design education is the rendering of cultural constituted practical know-how as technical process. This leaves the onus of change with a designer who can’t understand what they are really struggling against.
10. Despite the talk that goes on surrounding design, the modus operandi of the practice is to essentially produce things to be wasted and people to be wasters. The anxiety that designers feel about the issue of unsustainability is a dissonance between genuine moral concern and a body of knowledge, talk and skill disposed to thwart effective action. Contemporary design is the problem. It is a practice that plunders the future for the purposes of the present. To sustain this without change is to sustain precisely what is unsustainable. The glimmer of hope of course is that design can be otherwise understood and practiced, and it can do so by design.
11. Sustain me is an indication of a practice, an industry, a society and culture no less, that is trying to find its way within a crisis it is aware of, but does not yet fully understand. This muddling is unavoidable considering that all we currently have at hand to deal with the crisis is part of the crisis itself. But the time by which we need to start saving (future) time is already upon us. The challenge for designers is therefore this. Stop thinking that simply meeting needs (i.e. expectations) and (‘anti-rational’) creativity per se is acceptable. Maintaining current conceptions of designing as ‘thing’ making only exacerbates the problem. The kind of creativity actually required involves changing what we believe it is possible to change by design, what it is appropriate for a designer to see as their objective when they engage in designing, what designers do to achieve this objective, and changing non-designers expectations of design and designers. As far as contemporary design is concerned ‘sustain me’ has no future. ‘Change me so that I can sustain’ is the only alternative.
Src:
http://designphilosophypolitics.informatics.indiana.edu/?p=113
1. Today ‘sustainability’ is a buzz word par excellence, bandied around in all manner of contexts and agendas.
However as a title Sustain me: contemporary design has an alternative reading: the desperate cry of a practice searching for relevance amidst a crisis of its own making.
2. Design is understood and practiced as ‘thing’ production, a major problem considering the rapacious rate of material throughput. Design and designers have been historically and culturally shaped to practice this way, and it is a key aspect of the identity of the field and its practitioners.
Sustainability must therefore mean more than eco-design. Unfortunately this point and its implications are beyond the current thinking of designers.
3. The most obvious and predictable is unmaking materials as waste, that is, reuse and/or recycling.
But with the (not unsubstantial) limitations of recycling aside, in seeing unsustainability as only a problem of waste, the solutions on offer fail to point out that the practices assisted by such objects are also problematic.
4. This is not simply an issue of how an object looks, but the fact that the current design of an object’s presentation blinkers thought about the real context of use. The sustainable object is a myth; things sustain or deplete according to how they are used. To design without this in mind leaves a gaping hole in the quest for sustainment.
5. This attitude permeates the entire practice, and every opportunity is taken to reduce the amount of waste, water, chemical and carbon impact of designing. This is another commendable idea, and the enthusiasm of these practitioners is hopefully an inspiration to others to take on the difficult task of changing engrained habits of work.
6. But what of the work itself? Again the presentation ignores use. More so, one is encouraged to accept these objects as too precious to be used
An object’s journey to us is not represented in its appearance, so we cannot know the history or future of its impact. Further, the works rely on wholesome but simplistic narratives of localisation, traditional skills, and depressingly, the lessons of the back to nature “noble savage” made modern, again. There is no real alternative, tangible vision of a sustainable ways of living offered; it is more a lesson for the discerning collector.
7. Sustain me proposes that the sustaining potential of design resides not only in the functional, but also the poetic. To this end, the works of Lisa Gasparotto, Elliat Rich, and again David Trubridge convey messages of awareness, appeal, and questioning that relate to issues of the environment, sustainability and design. Dependency on these messages feels heavy, especially considering otherwise tenuous claim these works have on sustainment.
9. In this light Sustain me is at heart a conservative show that cannot generate the kind of challenge and inspiration needed for design to be truly redirective.
The dead-end dichotomies of form/function, art/science appears to underlie the presentation, misrecognising the full nature of design as a driver of unsustainability.
What should be of concern is the rationality of our design know-how, the non-conscious habits of thought and action that we are disposed which constitute our culture of designing. ‘Rational rationality’ cannot help but fail when it operates in practices that lack the embodied ability to sustain. This applies as to all practices as much as it does design. A diabolical failure of current design education is the rendering of cultural constituted practical know-how as technical process. This leaves the onus of change with a designer who can’t understand what they are really struggling against.
10. Despite the talk that goes on surrounding design, the modus operandi of the practice is to essentially produce things to be wasted and people to be wasters. The anxiety that designers feel about the issue of unsustainability is a dissonance between genuine moral concern and a body of knowledge, talk and skill disposed to thwart effective action. Contemporary design is the problem. It is a practice that plunders the future for the purposes of the present. To sustain this without change is to sustain precisely what is unsustainable. The glimmer of hope of course is that design can be otherwise understood and practiced, and it can do so by design.
11. Sustain me is an indication of a practice, an industry, a society and culture no less, that is trying to find its way within a crisis it is aware of, but does not yet fully understand. This muddling is unavoidable considering that all we currently have at hand to deal with the crisis is part of the crisis itself. But the time by which we need to start saving (future) time is already upon us. The challenge for designers is therefore this. Stop thinking that simply meeting needs (i.e. expectations) and (‘anti-rational’) creativity per se is acceptable. Maintaining current conceptions of designing as ‘thing’ making only exacerbates the problem. The kind of creativity actually required involves changing what we believe it is possible to change by design, what it is appropriate for a designer to see as their objective when they engage in designing, what designers do to achieve this objective, and changing non-designers expectations of design and designers. As far as contemporary design is concerned ‘sustain me’ has no future. ‘Change me so that I can sustain’ is the only alternative.
Src:
http://designphilosophypolitics.informatics.indiana.edu/?p=113
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