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INTERDISCIPLINARY CRITIQUES

ENTANGLEMENTS

1/13/2021

 
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Entanglements is a magical realism portrayal of anthropomorphic creatures built of mycelium and the fruiting bodies of fungi. It’s inspired by the role of the mycorrhizal network in forests which acts as a connector between trees to provide nutrients and even information, therefore supporting multiple species. This idea that different organisms would make such an architecture for a successful ecosystem supports Donna Haraway’s idea of sym-poiesis, that organisms build worlds through making together, an idea that goes against capitalism’s Darwinian justifications. American issues, such as systematic racism that is willfully ignored partially for the benefit it provides to the economy, are now being magnified by the pandemic. This magnification has exposed many to the differences of how one body suffers compared to another, or what one group of people view as peaceful use of the body for protests, or through the difficulties it has cost for those that lack human contact. I see that perhaps mentally our connection has become stronger and more resilient through an acknowledgement of the unseen ways in which we remain connected. I see a similarity in the microbiology of the forest, strength coming through multiple worlds interconnecting, a web of entangled growth and decay. A way of maintaining resilience when a world values economic growth over bodies.

“Skill in living, awareness of belonging to the world, delight in being part of the world, always tends to involve knowing our kinship as animals with animals. Darwin first gave that knowledge a scientific basis. And now, both poets and scientists are extending the rational aspect of our sense of relationship to creatures without nervous systems and to nonliving beings-our fellowship as creature with other creatures, things with other things.”
Ursula K Le, Guin, Deep in Admiration

“How can we repurpose the tools of modernity against the terrors of Progress to make visible the other worlds it has ignored and damaged? Living in a time planetary catastrophe thus begins with a practice at once humble and difficult: noticing the worlds around us.” Heather Swanson, Anna Tsing, Nils Bubandt, and Elaine Gan, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Empathizing with Ecology: Continued

3/20/2019

 
Design can be a powerful tool that can be used to stir political action and social awareness, but it can also be destructive. Industrial design, through its consumeristic encouragements, has created an enormous amount of waste. In not recognizing the greater context of how an object interacts with the world, designers can cause emergence that can result in what is referred to as “wicked problems”, the state of the planet’s ecology being one example.

Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment and this includes both non-living and living components making its health highly complex. In my pursuit to better understand these complexities, I have investigated readings by authors such as Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, and Arne Naess, who work to contextualize ecology and the role humanity plays within it. Alongside this, I have been investigating philosophy on the morality of technology and the responsibility of design to provide autonomous relationships with technological advancements. Through these multidisciplinary critiques, I have become curious on how visual manifestations of the fluid nature of things such as the combination of art, science, technology, nature and especially time, can provide alternative interactions between people and the ecology of things.

Through these critiques, I am working to find out how design can be useful in creating more positive engagements.

The issue is that current conditions, guilt, and fear over climate change, cause apocalypse fatigue which can also result in temporal exhaustion, the idea that we can’t address the future due to focusing on the present.

Along with that is the clash between economy and ecology, examples being the timber industry, overfishing, and ranching versus conservation. Deep ecology recognizes that for ecology, and there for humanity, to progress, commercialization cannot value one resource over another.

Because of the desire for constant economic growth, specifically by western capitalism, there is an uneven value to organisms which does not align itself with philosophies on ecology, which understands the equal value of all organisms. Yet conservation has its own issues in these struggles between economy and ecology, like those of deforestation in the Pacific Northwest and cod fishing on the East Coast. Although I believe in the necessity of conservation I also recognize the instability that capitalism has created when small communities, like those in these two examples, depend greatly on these resources only to have their livelihoods destroyed by outsider intervention. As a designer, I see this as another case of emergence created by unsustainable planning, and I am curious how we can become more aware of the long term consequences of our actions and by understanding that growth is not necessarily ideal. I’ve become especially interested in when small individual choices become multiplied by time and population thus resulting in devastating predicaments like the loss of a species.

Alongside this, I have focused in on what designs help me to slow down, like a record player versus a media player, and partake in some aspect of ritual and analyze why they have this impact. Beginning with the aesthetics of a record player, an analog design that no longer is necessary with digital music streaming. And yet, they remain popular and current musicians continue to produce their music on records. Although some of this may indeed be due to current fashions, but this aesthetic expands past this. It provides a sense of ritual in listening to the full album encouraging a focus on the music that could inspire a ritual experience similar to this with nature.

To explore these possibilities further I investigated what items I find are able to “slow” me down or cause me to reflect. These range from things as simple as tea or more complex philosophies like wabi-sabi. Some a short term like a mirror or a clock, others shift time perspectives like dreaming and reading (fig 3).

​Through my own practice, I have investigated how slowing down and drawing my surroundings differs from other forms faster forms of documentation. For instance sketching a scenic view rather than just photographing it (fig 4, fig 5). This helped me to sit and analyze the surroundings, helping me to notice changes. A finding that was also supported by expert interviews with scientists who remarked on how they use sketching as a research tool.

To do this I aim to leverage slow design’s ritual principle, to create positive rewards as well as helping these habits become long-lasting.

Together these ideas can help us to engage with our environment which encourages us to become better caretakers and be aware of changes in our surroundings, an important aspect of philosophy around ecology, and supported by the positive effects it has on us as explored by National Geographic (fig 1).

Through this, I explored possible solutions.

Focusing in on visualization, ones that utilize aspects of human and nature I explored what these might look like in motion. Now I want to find out how individuals might react to this and how it aligns with their own formations of rituals.

Can visual representations that they take part in, help them to manifest moments of reflections? And what prevents these reflections from becoming frustration and invading the tempo of their daily lives? What helps them to be moments that instead sought out? Through exploring with individuals I hope to answer these  questions. Thank you.
In my graduate program I am studying the discourse around ecology and how design might be able to help achieve a greater understanding and awareness for the complexities of our current ecology. I hope to diminish the boundaries we put between human and nature through my design work.

But I believe art and design can help to mitigate these problems. They can create alternative futures that provide qualitative interpretations of abstract data like those threatened by climate change. They can provide hope and action through opportunities for empathetic connections with our environments. Just as our ecology requires diversity, so should our imaginations of the future. However, this depends greatly on the recognition of ecological connections, and my research aims to promote these through illustrations of these relationships.


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Fig 15: The Commons Sketch
To explore how the installation of such a design might take place, and what kind of visualizations help individuals to reconsider their relationship with natural world, a small prototype of a disappearing image could be install. The natural image would disappear or possibly reappear with human interference. It will be interesting to see weather people will choose to take pieces of the image, or leave it in order for the image to remain for others. This will therefore explore the Tragedy of the Commons which seems to be one of the greatest weaknesses between humanity and the preservation of the environment.
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Fig 1: Human-Nature Visualization
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Fig 2: National Geographic, Nature Nurtures Us
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Fig 3: Time "Shifters" Exploration
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Fig 4: Ink Sketch of Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park
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Fig 5: Ink Sketch of Polebridge, Glacier National Park
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Fig 6: Kenya Hara's Ex-formations
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Fig 7: Kenya Hara's Ex-formations
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Fig 8: Prototype Sketching
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Fig 9: Prototype Sketching
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Fig 10: Growing Apart: Media Distractor Design
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Fig 11: Nature Ritual Solutions
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Fig 12: Speculative Design for Nature Interaction
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Fig 13: Proposals for Installation
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Fig 14: Proposal for Installation

Savoring the Sublime

2/12/2019

 
We favor the moments that are fleeting. The sunset, the sunrise, even simple things like knowing we have only one onion to cook with, each slice becoming precious. We waste nothing when we can see how little is left. And it's sad and frustrating that we need that visual reminder to appreciate what we have. Otherwise we discard it, knowing there is another at hand. This is natural but disastrous when multiplied. 

Knowing that it is the last versus something last longing, changes our perspectives and our appreciation. The sublime, as Kant describes it, is the fearful quality in the incomprehensible. It's a moment, the way it captures us in unknowingness, out of time. A moment when we cannot look away, or comprehend what is and what was.

I want to prescribe this to design, to art. It is not a collectible. I don't want to create an immortal thing to be locked away for value, I'm far more interested in the moment when someone feels the sublime, even if it happens only once and then decays.

But I struggle with knowing if this should be designed? Do we need a tool to appreciate temporality? Or is it design affecting culture in such a way that encourages us appreciate the infinite? Would this drive us insane? To constantly obsess over every passing second?

Where is the line between helpful and frustrating? Is it still sublime if it's forced?

Empathizing with Ecology

12/17/2018

 
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How do we tell time with a tree? Is it the subtle changes of green to gold? Or the manifestation of buds that become flowers? It is these differences, some as small as the first cardinal of spring, or is it those that hit us all at once when we notice the world shift from one season to next? These are perceptions of time in a subtle way, unhinged from the quantitative seconds we time our daily lives on. These, of course, were perhaps once the only way we told time, or at least long spans. Today though, it is both easy and terribly difficult to see the future. A future, which causes a generation that does “not dream, it hopes; it hopes that we will survive, that there will be water for all, that we will be able to feed everyone, that we will not destroy ourselves”(Dunne & Raby, pg. 9)

As designers, we feel a certain amount of responsibility to be proponents of change. Through our practices that have now focused themselves on longevity, responsibility, and trust, we act as the surface level of information and technology in people’s lives be it through an app design or an IOT (Internet of Things) device or an infovisualization in a magazine. Through critical design by those such as Victor Papanek in his book “Design For the Real World” we as designers have acknowledged the harm designers can do to the environment through their consumeristic goals. Yet, it is still difficult to be deciders of these changes when our surroundings still place designers in the role of convincing users of purchasing. Our seasons don’t change with the leaves, they change with the new release of an iPhone.
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We, as purchasers, can allow ourselves these infatuations with novelty because our society has worked to hide the consequences of our purchasing actions. Yes, there have been shifts towards visualizations of our energy usage and devices like the Nest that aim at a reduction in energy waste. We also are shown pictures of the garbage patch in the Pacific ocean that represent the collective build-up of our unconscious wasteful disposal of plastics. Yet these display two extremes, one, the representation of an individuals energy usage that is corrected for them (in some manner hiding their actions). The other, a representation of millions of tiny actions that in a way is overwhelming and difficult for anyone to fully conceive of due to the vastness of its scale. Together these present the dilemma we have with understanding our actions when we consume, how does action become magnified by a population? This concept, also known as the Tragedy of the Commons, is a social science term that an individual has the tendency to act in the desire of self-interest even when it is contrary to the common good of all users, which leads to strained resources.

There is also a misunderstanding in the way these resources function. When societies value one resource over another it undermines ideas of ecology. In response to this Arne Naess developed his philosophy of Deep Ecology which promotes the equal value of all resources regardless of their contribution to human society, as well as the push towards the radical reconstructing of society in light of these ideas. What ecology helps us to understand is that individuals are not quite really individuals at all, and it is important to remain humble and acceptive of our place in the ecology. Our dependence on it must be recognized when we have the ability to wipe out so many species and alter the geography of the world so greatly that some scientists are referring to the current geological age as the Anthropocene, as human activity is now the greatest influence of change on the planet.

Granted this is not a solution that can be fixed through design alone, but design is a form of communication. One that is often the manner in which we interact with technology. Therefore, it has the ability to facilitate agency for a user. Ethically then, we have to understand not just what is best for the user immediately, such as a sense of pleasure that can form into addictive habits with technology, but longevity. These theories of time and design come in to play in Carolyn F. Strauss and Alastair Fuad-Luke’s Slow Design Principles. One designer that fits this principle is Dutch Designer Simon Heijdens, who “believes that design should, like Nature, unleash a continuum of expressions over time”. In his work “Broken White” Heijdens creates ceramics that reveal patterns over time as they are used, developing more intricate patterns for cups that are favored. In this way, also revealing human activity and energy use rather than hiding it.

It is also important for designers to leverage social connections. It has been shown that social norms have a great weight on how we interact with our surroundings. We are more likely to recycle because of a sign that tells us everyone else is recycling, than one that aims at the “bad” person who didn’t recycle. Designers can leverage this social desire to help us become aware of the power of collective action. Especially when we become passive from the dismay of the damage to the planet. This disheartening can be alleviated through harnessing the emergence of social action.

This dismay and responsibility can also result in cognitive dissonance, the tension created when our beliefs are contradicted by new information. This issue is especially true for people who are skeptical about scientific research that challenges their way of life. Design can reframe this information, making tangible experiences of abstract information. It is, however, extremely important that design remains transparent, as it has the ability to disinform, especially when beauty is used as a signifier of truth. But if design does intend to move us towards positive behavior, it needs to be able to speculate a future that motivates the individual.

With all this in mind, I see three opportunity areas for design. First to create representations that make complex and invisible ecological systems less abstract and more comprehensible. Secondly, use both personal data as well as collective data in order to prompt reflection on one’s actions in the context of broader group impact. And lastly, design tools that leverage ritual, nostalgia, and other social connections to drive positive behavior change.



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Bibliography

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT, 2014.

Griskevicius, Vladas, Robert B. Cialdini, and Noah J. Goldstein. "Social norms: An underestimated and underemployed lever for managing climate change." In. 2008.

Næss, A., & Rothenberg, D. (2003). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Selterman, Dylan. “Greed Vs. The Common Good.” National Geographic.

Stoknes, Per Espen. "Rethinking climate communications and the “psychological climate paradox”." Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014): 161-170.



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Trusting a Paradox

11/24/2018

 
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In design trust is the active discussion. The user should be able to trust us, and they need to be aware they trust us since there has been a sense of lost trust in technology what with sneaky dealings with data. But all this desire to create trust, through transparency and empathy and all the other magical solutions that research through design will show us, it still appears to me as manipulative. What is more treacherous than building a trust that is formulated in the an aim of what is will give us (the producer) a better standing.

Take for instance, safety in construction. Over and over safety is listed as the number one priority for workers. There are training videos, seminars, lectures. But safety to one individual can be vastly difference from another. Safety can mean sacrificing one risk for another, say standing under a precarious object to escape heat stroke on a hot day. These specific situations seem to be the moments of empathetic research design strives for. But when a company requires economic growth, and is tied up in liabilities to maintain a system, those individualistic reasonings become meaningless. Safety for the company over safety for the individual. 

Design for trust, but who are we trusting? Trust is meaningless without partnership, equal risk, and control. Because trust is representative of a gifted release of control. I trust you, and therefore I give myself up to you with a perceived notion you'll respond equally.

Trust is a tool and therefore it can be corrupted and it can be designed for, but to design for a lack of abuse for trust you need to design equity, balance and most importantly the opportunity to regain control regardless of the stakes. 

Human Impression

9/14/2018

 
"Their archaeological association provides an indication that these fossils have been collected by people for hundreds of thousands of years and, at times, attained a high degree of spiritual significance."
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Shepherds' crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England
Kenneth J. McNamara

Cave paintings, collecting rocks, etc. Human's have been shaping the world through their presence since prehistoric time. And through that creating history, leaving their mark through possessions and alteration of the environment. Perhaps that is an important part of consciousness, alteration. We change, therefore we are. And objects become representations of this. Despite the many arguments for letting go of material objects, it seems to be innately tied into our personalities. Perhaps physical objects are too specific, it could be collecting mementos,  or creating impressions (carved names in nature). But in someway it seems to denote ownership.


These things exist because they a frozen moments, embodiments of memories that manifest in the alluring feeling of nostalgia. Art has always been this, and I doubt it will ever not be, because it is successful in its attachment to individuals memories. Art that tries to be devoid of this is a paradox because it instead allows the audience to devote all of their memories on to it. The opposite, like popularized objects, become meaningless only to be nostalgic down the road once people can remember them as a frozen moment they shared with only those who existed in it (the 90s kid experience). 


Has data become nostalgic? Can it? Would this give it more meaning or the wrong meanings? And would this allow us to bond in community of research?

Space for Perspective

8/27/2018

 
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Totems of perspective are in a manner tangible info-graphics there to allow us to understand the abstract, the past, or the future. 

Smartspeak

8/7/2018

 
 Alexa Be My Friend by UW

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There has recently been a lot of talk about how smart devices interact with people instantaneously, will Alexa respond to this child? Why or why not? Is there a women's voice? Do people like that, why or why not?

But are we taking the time to consider a more long term effect. It is not just important that Alexa respond to a child, and in reality it is questionable if that is important at all, but rather will Alexa teach a child how to interact better with a machine (designed for this child's understanding) than the humans around it. If having another sibling helps children interact better with other children (needs a reference) than does a possibly wealthier child with Alexa etc. or a lonelier child using Google Assistant (arguably more accessible) find themselves better suited for smart devices over other children? I suppose the real question is what happens when all nurturing comes from robotic devices, designed with the best intentions (accessibility to all), alienate our ability to interact with others. Does it do this? Or does it give us something to interact with rather than nothing? And perhaps this an argument for smartdevices to be as human as possible so that the skills developed with interacting with them can be passed on to other situations involving other humans. 

A personal example is how I speak differently with my mother, her grammar is different because she is bilingual. I take on some of these grammar differences because I am nurtured by that environment. I hear her way of speaking and I impersonate it, which is a typical way that `children learn. And although I don't believe this is unchangeable (for instance growing up with slurs used around you constantly and choosing to alter your language) it does work on a level which is subconscious. ​

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And I see similar things happen with Alexa, but to a greater (or quicker) extent because instead of pretending to understand me, Alexa reacts negatively (silent, or I'm sorry (which is not a neutral response)) to my phrasing. And so I have to try, and try again to participate with Alexa. What kind of implications does that have for children? Or adults? 

When we look at language, we can see how malleable it is, but often ruled by the majority (references towards Saussure). The language of robotics is based on quantifiable standards and lacks subjectivity (reference), which means there is one way of phrasing which works best despite an AI learning, because their learning is still decisive on what works best for them, not for us. Therefore this miscommunication will cause us to adjust our intelligence more than them, because we for now still adjust faster than a machine (reference). Maybe this is symbiotic in nature, requiring an AI to learn and us to learn, but it errs towards our need for them outweighing their need for us. A symbiosis that leaves us at a disadvantage. 

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” Orwell, 1984

Designing Pauses (or If You Really Want to Read it You'll Struggle)

8/5/2018

 
In John Cage's 4'33" the musical piece asked of the audience an appreciation for silence in music, and gave them time to acknowledge and analyze: "what's in a pause?" by elongating time.
In that silence what do you notice about context in listening to music, especially in a setting such as an auditorium that requires the active participation of listening. 
“Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around,” John Cage

It seems to me that it isn't a change of mind, but rather silence is a change in time. In silence, the only way to understanding it is through time.

Robert Rauschenberg, who worked intimately with Cage, paralleled these ideas in his series of White Paintings. The audience in a museum are active viewers and in the context of a museum they are "forced" to view this whiteness, not as the space between paintings, but the painting itself. I feel it important to acknowledge that I do not believe whiteness is synonymous with silence, and that there is an argument to be made about why whiteness is the start of painting/drawing in the western world. But in a return to the White Painting, Rauschenberg is calling towards the acknowledgement of the context of viewing art, the light that affects the surface, and the dust, the shadows of other viewers. In that manner he is saying white isn't silence, or absence but rather a space to acknowledge subtleties. 
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"Silence, similarly, is relational rather than absolute" Susan Sontag
“The art of our time is noisy with appeals for silence. A coquettish, even cheerful nihilism. One recognizes the imperative of silence, but goes on speaking anyway. Discovering that one has nothing to say, one seeks a way to say that.” Aesthetic of Silence

And I have to point out that although these ideas are often met with mockery, they, these artists, acknowledge their own banality. But it is that acknowledgment they are intending to highlight in their own work. The audience must acknowledge themselves in the way they actively participate with art. And in this way they have built on Duchamp's Toilet's pointed critque of the museum as a decider of "what is art". One might argue that art is active viewership, the motivation of an audience, and that context can manifest this, but is not necessary. And pausing is in its own way an active experience. So mirrored in the inability to be completely silent for 5'44". It is not in our nature to be quiet. 



Turning to design,
a place that often works to destroy pauses, or to erase the dust, shadows, and light that appear in pauses, how might these ideas ripple into addictive design? Or design that intrudes into our daily pauses? When we discuss the needs of the user, are we prescribing activeness or "productivity" (an action I've come to greatly dislike). And if we are truly considering the needs rather than simply the wants, how are we considering the need to pause? Or is that too forceful.

Current studies are showing how truly detrimental a lack of eight hours of sleep can be. But places like the United States admire the lack of sleep (return to commentary on productivity). And phones, apps, conversations are designed(1) to prove our business. Our dedication to work. Is this serving the wants of the needs of the user? Trends often show themselves as unethical...
(Philosophy of Technology) 

Details, and subtlety, can be an encouragement for silence. They create active focus on nothingness.
The call for a paradigm  "Art, itself a form of mystification, endures a succession of crises of demystification; older artistic goals are assailed and, ostensibly, replaced; outworn maps of consciousness are redrawn." Susan Sontag (S.S.)
Instagram: "by silence, she(he) frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work." S.S.

In my desire for a lack of servile bondage I have taken a break from instagram, however short lived it might be, so I can create without a distortion which in reality could be quite beneficial (productivity). 
"the gesture of silence in abdication from society is still “a highly social gesture." S.S.

"Modern art’s chronic habit of displeasing, provoking, or frustrating its audience can be regarded as a limited, vicarious participation in the ideal of silence which has been elevated as a major standard of “seriousness” in contemporary aesthetics." S.S.
"There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is neutral only with respect to something else — like an intention or an expectation." S.S
These two quotes begin to resonate with ideas of design research as a critical expression (speculative design). 

"If only because the artwork exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence." - Sontag

How might that work in interaction design? Is it turning off the phone. Is it destroying it with a baseball bat? Should the designer be handing you a the bat?

The theory of context...and how designers use silence for hierarchy and trickery.
Good and bad design? Moral and immoral? In a world altered by definitions by technology, how can morality of a thing be judged when that thing is creating new definitions of morality? Special Relativity, we are moving at faster speeds and therefore we must reevaluate the speed of things from our faster speed (convoluted). Designers, the ultimate hypocrites. 

"Art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention… Once the artist’s task seemed to be simply that of opening up new areas and objects of attention. That task is still acknowledged, but it has become problematic. The very faculty of attention has come into question, and been subjected to more rigorous standards…"  S.S.

Today's art (and deisgn) must be aggressive in order to elicit response thus solidifying is being as art. In a world full of art, "true" art must be louder, losing its chance to be silent. And loudness is best expressed through multiples. 

“The impulse to create begins… in a tunnel of silence,” 
How can people be creative, if we tell them silence isn't creative.

I remember being a young child, I think my creativity came in a battle towards boredom. My boredom, which in many ways was self-created from my displeasure with others and impatience, was filled with creation. I'm not sure if I have evidence that creativity needs boredom, but I think we would be wrong to assume it is only a negative.

Another fucking paradigm shift, this time of pain points. (Paradigms are a pain point for me)

"perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive."
Neruda


References:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/30/pablo-neruda-childhood-and-poetry/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/27/lynne-tillman-john-cage/

1. the action of meaning


SAM

7/5/2018

 
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SAM (Seattle Art Museum)
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