[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #8

Do you agree or disagree with the position that design is a result of “function x economy”? Do you think design today an ‘art’ or a ‘science’? Should it be one or the other, or can it be both?


Swiss born architect and Director of the Bauhaus in 1928, Hannes Meyer, argued that design is dependent on the idea of 'function x economy'. Meyer, viewing design greater as a science than an art, also believed the concept of design should be a universal notion: servicing the working-class needs solely based upon the objectives of economy. [1] 

The literal word 'design' presents a broad range of definitions; I believe that design is combination of several views and can change depending on which context and era it is used although I do believe that designers should take into great consideration the functionality and the social economic position it would surround. Meyer's goal on creating a more stable economic world portrays his consideration for society and his good intentions. 

fig. 1 - Wellington Te Papa Museum's Base Isolators

In promoting a sure future, it is expected that we must look into the past to see where we have been to look into the future to see where we may go. New Zealand, known for various natural disasters (earthquakes), has taken a toll on New Zealand design. Understanding the country's people, location and its varying economic state, aligns with Meyers 'function x economy' approach to design; The common engineers phrase ‘earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do’ bring New Zealand designers to an understanding that these lessons learnt the hard way through past events, reveal the essential need in creating 'earthquake-proof' designed buildings. In early Wellington, buildings made of brick and stone collapsed in the 1848 earthquake. Consequently, the town was focused on rebuilding in wood, which suffered less damage during the magnitude 8.2 earthquake of 1855 [2]. In 2010 and in present, Christchurch experiences a number of deadly earthquakes with the loss of lives and crumbled historic buildings. Designers throughout the country are in a state of further proposing designs that prevent itself from quake damage: Wellington's Te Papa Museum, sits on top of 135 base isolators [fig. 1] invented by New Zealand scientist Dr. William Robinson; these isolators are essentially springs for the building [3]. With this understanding, we are able to see science playing an enormous role in this particular design. Realizing that we must be conscious of the world we live in, it is understood that we align our way of living with the awareness economy.

As social conditions change, so too does the purpose and value in a specific design. As with particular designs, science may weigh more than art; in saying so, it can also be vice versa. The developing technologies that have influenced the evolution of design-culture and production give way to designing something with aesthetic value as well as great function and that which is economically pleasing. I believe that the 'art' or 'science' in design is not more important than the other but I take the stance wherein it depends on the context it is placed in. I also take the stance that design's must ideally put all aspects into one to be completed per se, but even so, seeing as world is continuously developing in knowledge and new need, design may never be 'completed' to the fullest extent.  

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Reference List:


Image Sourced From: 
http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/livelylibrarian/1/1298192475/tpod.html#_


[1] Informed From:
Raizman, D. (2004). The First Machine Age in Europe, in History of Modern Design (pp. 166-191) New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.

[2] Informed From: 
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/earthquakes/4


[3] Informed From: 
http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/whatson/exhibitions/pages/quakebraker.aspx

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #7

Can you identify the creation of any “symbolic universe” today (or in recent years)? How might media and design be implicated in the construction of these social universes today?


Visionary “symbolic universes” and such concepts have played main roles throughout history, and still do. The goal of reaching our 'Utopian world' with it being in tact with our political and social lifestyle may bring individual's together in a familiar comfort-zone. Up until the 21st century is our world still in hope of reaching its Utopia.

  

Known as a huge turning point in regards to our Utopian image, occured in the 1930's: New York World's Fair "The World of Tomorrow (1933-34)" & Chigago World's Fair "The Century of Progress Exposition (1939-40)". These two fairs highly brought about science, industry and progress as main focus points in terms of building our futuristic universe. These fairs were specifically known as a response to historic, or rather, past events - the Civil War (1861–1865) and the Great Depression (≈ 1930's). These world fairs created hope of a newly-transformed vision of the near future ideally looking towards capitalism, consumerism and leisure-based activities - highly focused on the masses. America in the 1930's were in desire of an evolution from war and economic depression to a state of positive change.

In our world today, especially with our constant focus on the digital age, we are hammered to strive to perfection which is deemed to be persistent through the media - television, internet and film. Media and design as main major tools, convince the world to be digitalized. We as individuals vision an 'instant' world - as things being handed to us in an immediate second, we see this through the eyes of media and design. Today, I believe our world is stuck on idea that 'the more we have the more we're happy'. With that simple phrase, there immediately becomes a problem because of the reality that we can never have enough as there are constant creations and re-creations. While we are currently at a known peak of technology, we struggle to coincide with our likes of sustainability. I believe there's always a balance - a give and take, a win and lose - over coming that 'balance' is still yet to be seen. 


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Reference list:

Informed From:

Kihlstedt, F. (1986). Utopia Realized: The World’s Fairs of the 1930s in Imagining Tomorrow: History Technology, and the American Future (pp.97-118). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #6

“To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.” - Walter Benjamin 

Do you agree or disagree? Do you think there is a role for the ‘authentic’ in an age of digital design and manufacture?

When consumers purchase a product, they want to be able to tell their friends that it’s the real thing. To be able to say it’s the original, instantly gives value to the product. In my perspective, authenticity itself is the aura. I, as a firm believer of authentic value, stand by the importance of originality and uniqueness; authenticity is known as ‘real’ or ‘original’ where as a replica is generally known as a ‘copy’ or even more, a ‘fake’. Before industrialization, the time to create produce something, consumed a lot of time in comparison to now and our technologies.

Essayist Benjamin Walter (1892 - 1940), stated “That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art”. In agreement to Benjamin's statement, a manufactured or copied product is losing its ‘presence’ in comparison to an original especially speaking from a historic perspective where mechanical reproduction had not yet been introduced. Understanding the idea of mechanical re-production and being able to reproduce on an enormous scale in such short time is the reason why I agree with Benjamin's loss of aura in mechanically reproduced products. The process that manufactured products are put though and the fact they are of little manual effort compared to 'hand-made' creations also enforce my alliance with Benjamin's statement.

fig. 1. Mona Lisa (c. 1503 -1519)

However, I am hesitant to have a distinct opinion on Benjamin's second argument: “To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense”. I believe authenticity has evolved as much as techonology has. If a friend were to tell you that the Mona Lisa painting (fig. 1) right before you was a print (a copy) you would assume that your reaction would be the opposite of surprise or shock. Although, if you were told it was the original, immediately there is an aura in your presence – it’s the idea of knowing the real Leonardo Da Vinci created this exact painting, knowing that he, touched it. You wouldn't want a print, you would want the original. However, another example from another perspective, if we take a modern digital photograph, the idea that it can be spread around the world in an instant via internet, that itself becomes the ‘aura’. Our 21st century society has become a case of whether or not you essentially have seen it or not.


In our day and age, industrialization can be called the ‘life’ to our technologic world. I believe that it depends on what has been reproduced and also which day in history the 'original' or 'first' had been created: the comparison between the historic Mona Lisa to a modern image.

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Reference list:


Benjamin, W. (1992) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pp. 211-244 ) in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fontana.


Image Sourced From:
http://smarthistory.org/leonardo-mona-lisa.html

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #5

How has the experience and experimentation of artists influenced our understanding of colour and the development of a theory of ‘colour vision’?

Issac Newton, mathematically & scientifically driven, was credited in the 1600’s for his discovery that white light could be broken down through a prism into a spectrum of ranging colours (essentially, ROYGBIV). This great discovery highly impacted artists in regards to their work as well our own understanding of colour.

Artists that came about after Newton’s realization of colour, came in attempt to further understand the essential idea of colour. Artist Phillip Otto Runge (1777 - 1810), further investigated the understanding of colour and came to develop a colour sphere (3-dimensional) in comparison to Newton's 2-dimensional colour wheel. Runge's colour sphere concentrated on the effect of light and shadow on colour. Scientist and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1949 – 1832), believed that the eye was a “sufficient tool for the study of colour” Goethe was interested in Newton’s discovery but opposed his stance wherein "Newton's error... was trusting maths over the sensations of the eye". The 19^th century is where the impressionist movement was identified; impressionist painters highly regarded time and movement into their paintings as well as the representation of light. Post-impressionist (20th century) painters such as Vincent Van Gogh had a similar style but used his own perception of light and colour and departed from the supposed reality and focused on the psychological/emotional perception of it. Artist JWM Turner (1775 – 1851) perceived colour as revealing the emotion and feeling when in a specific environment, he painted the feeling of being in a place, not its literal surroundings; that colour gave recognition into how it felt being there, not it's essential view. We have come to understand the psychological events that can happen in ones mind instead of purely the 'literal' view of colour. In the 1800's, French psychologist Charles Fere, tested and treated mental patients with various coloured lights in a programme called Chromotherapy. It was found that red light had a sort of excitment, whereas blue light had a calming effect (Gage, p. 206).

Ones perspective on colour may be in great contrast to anothers. One cannot directly say that colour is purely science or human perception/emotion. The development in regards to understanding colour has greatly developed, although, through these artists and scientists, we can see that there is not one definite or particular way to approach colour as it is always evolving in many forms of understanding in regards to our knowledge to this day and age.  

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Reference list:

Gage, J. (1993). Colours of the Mind in Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (pp.191-212). New York: Thames and Hudson.

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #4

“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use.” - Adolf Loos, 1908.

Do you agree or disagree? 

Why?

Adolf Loos (1870 - 1933) was an Austrian architect who firmly believed that ornamentation was simply a crime. Throughout his essay, Ornament and Crime, he stated that ornamentation held back the cultural development of civilization, that it was a waste of manpower, which lead to a waste of health.

As with Loos I do believe that nowadays, everyday objects have simplistic aesthetics to them in comparison to previous eras i.e the 18th century [Rococo movement]. However, human beings always have and will always have, a want of what we call our own 'individuality' as our form of self-expression; I do not believe removal of ornamentation is what our culture has become of, if that was the case, it would have caused us to lose our individuality and identity, and nor do i see society as ever being 'plain and simple'. Designer Owen Jones stated that ornamentation is instinctive and I myself agree with this particular statement. I believe that ornamentation reveals individuality, culture and society. I do not believe that ornamentation is a 'waste' of health; people like to express. How can our culture reveal itself if our daily lives were shown bare and without personality? 

Apple i-phone 4

The world-renown i-phone has vastly become one of the worlds top technologic devices. Here we see that the physical design is simplistic and clean; I believe that Loos would have agreed with this phones physical design. To a point, we can say that it looks as though it has almost no highly time-consumed aesthetic value because of its cleanliness, but in accordance to Loos' statement with evolution of culture being synonymous with the removal of ornament, I disagree. To strip away ornamentation would mean stripping away us a people; analyzing the i-phones design, ornamentation comes from the individual: what he or she chooses to decorate his/her phone with; the Apple company has designed a smart phone such as this where they have allowed you as a consumer, to personalize it and make it your own.

Loos was strict concerning the waste of materials; Loos’ architecture was very much stripped down to its bare minimum in regards to ornamentation.  Thus saying, Loos' designs would be appropriately in line with one of our very main goals today: Sustainability. In our present day, I believe our 'Zeitgeist' is focused on technology, humanity & sustainability: the development on keeping our designs environmentally-friendly in order to allow our world to survive.

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Reference list:

Loos, Adolf, Ornament and Crime, The Industrial Reader (1910). Sourced from: http://dev.schoolofdesign.ac.nz/mod/folder/view.php?id=135

Lupton, E. (2008) The Modern Curve: Form, Structure, and Image in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, in Rococo: the continuing curve, 1730-2008 (pp. 218-245). New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Sourced from:

http://dev.schoolofdesign.ac.nz/mod/folder/view.php?id=135

Jones, Owen The Grammar of Ornament, 1856

Image sourced from:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/apple-iphone-4-694980/review

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #3

“Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed.”- The Grammar of Ornament, 1856, Owen Jones. 

Owen Jones was an 18th century designer who felt people must abide by his theory stated above. In 1856, Jones published The Grammar of Ornament, a book of his beliefs and concepts  in great hope of encouraging others to follow his lead. Jones and other designers such as A.W.N. Pugin believed believed that the aesthetic beauty of an object is of secondary priority whereas the functional properties of it is of top priority. Objects that were overpowered by its decoration to the point where you could not clearly see its construction or purpose were disapproved by Jones, they were seen as immoral and dishonest. 

21st Century Fashion Glasses

To the right is an example of design where its aesthetic beauty interrupts its known functionality. In regards to its known functionality, I believe it is unnecessary to aesthetically create such a design where you can no longer see through the 'lens'. However, in the 21st century, celebrities for example, will almost definitely wear this sort of design because it 'looks good', not because they need to see better or protect their eyes from sun rays. Even though I agree with Jones wherein decoration should never be purposely constructed, in this case, the known function for glasses isn't the intended function for these 21st century designed glasses - it is obviously not to improve ones eye sight, but is to raise ones fashion sense, because that is its [new] function, we can say it does serve its purpose. 

I accept Jones' and Pugins statement, but only to a point where design should meet its functional purpose. It can be difficult to justify design in the way where the intention of someone else may not be the intention of yours. I do not agree that all designers should essentially be in unity. I believe that you must have your right to your own creative mind. Restricting thoughts and processes to a standard level very much would lessen our creative world. Individuality would no longer exist if we were all to 'creatively think' as one.

[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #2

The Rococo style is worldly recognized for its formality & elegance. It is also known as a time consumer - the time taken to achieve this manner of great aesthetics in regards to design.


If ever you were seen travelling in a carriage, you were instantly perceived as someone of success, wealth and authority; understandably enough, a lot of this perception is derived from the design of these 18th century carriages itself. To know that the intricate details in and around the carriage are for no function but to please our sensuous impulses alone, illustrates the fact that you had to be a person of wealth; you could not afford to or were even allowed to ride in this means of transport unless you were a person of importance. The crafted details in many carriages very elegantly expose the Rococo style especially through the curvature (’S’) features around the frames of the carriage. Rococo is a lot about giving an emotional response; the highly aesthetic and time-consuming detailed carriages present the individual inside to be of great status, to literally make outsiders say “wow” and to be in awe of that persons presence. These Rococo designed carriages send out the message that whoever is riding in it must instantly be seen as someone of worth and even so to be looked upon as of higher class - although these are Rococo designed, it further portrays masculinity towards the individual inside - a person to be respected and honored: It gives status to the individual.


In the 21st century, they may be seen at weddings and museums (places of importance); a person/people you will see in a carriage is someone who is of royalty i.e. The British Royal Family - people of wealth, honour and position. In this means of transport with its aesthetically pleasing details, people work their way up in hope of reaching this status.