thinking about things

Why social science?

At times I question the way design and the social sciences become bed fellows in the world of technology research. But when I read this (which i'll post on in more detail soon), it all makes absolute sense. To quote;

I have what I think is a pretty good test of whether a person is a social scientist or not: do they eavesdrop on a fairly regular basis on other people’s conversations on trains and planes, on buses, in the street, and so on? If they don’t, I suspect that they really want to be a philosopher or an architect – or both.

I think being an eavesdropper is a solid trait of any designer worth their salt.

Kettle Death Match

Kelly Moran, one of our final year students at Goldsmiths, has been doing some fantastic work. Here is a race that she has set up between two identical kettles - the winner is now being sold on ebay- the looser of the race gets destroyed by the winner. It's a survival of the fittest competition in a world of mass-produced, mass-consumed, homogeneous production.

Would you pay more?

Maps (and other fictional spaces)

Last Thursday I was kindly invited by Francesca Pont and Maurice Mitchell to give a lecture to Unit 6 of the diploma course in architecture at London Met.

Here (approximately 5 mb) are the slides from the lecture – apologies that there are no notes, these may follow in due course.

One of my favourite quotes from the talk is by Lewis Carroll, it wonderfully sums up the comforting nature of cartography:

He had brought a large map


Representing the sea


Without the least vestige of land


And the crew were much pleased


When they found it to be


A map they could all understand

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

Beauty products by Dunne + Raby (!?!?)

(via Strange Harvest)

This is amazing! I've always been fascinated by the language used to sell 'beauty products' - my personal favourite being 'micro-spheres' (or small balls!) - but this takes biscuit. Or is it a project by Dunne+Raby predicting an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Talking with things - Building a vocabulary

The following is an except from Jonathan Swift's, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, taken from Making Thing Public - Atmospheres of Democracy edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel.

The other project was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great Advantage in point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on... However, many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by things, which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater Bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him...

But for short Conversations a Man may carry Implements in his Pockets and under his Arms, enough to supply him, and his House he cannot be at a loss: Therefore the Room where Company meet who practice this Art, is full of all Things read at Hand, requisite to furnish Matter for this kind of Artificial Converse.

I love the idea of talking with things, I'd actually like to try it. This is because this is what i spend my time doing; trying to assist with the building of designer’s vocabularies. Designers build languages through the design of things - and like language, the meaning can be interpreted in multiple ways - misunderstandings and insults are rife.

Phoenix the Blog

Well, it been a long time. My new year resolution was to post (at least) once a week. Hmmm, 26th Jan isn't that bad to start. Here goes....

Nothing like the picture - Zee El Mikatti

Next up is Zee El Mikatti. Zee’s project ‘Nothing like the picture’ was an investigation into the use, mis-use and subversion of instructions. The main reason I’m writing about this project is the idea of interpretation within the design/making process – I’m currently working on a project that explores the leaps of faith, translations and interpretations within design drawing and modelling.

Zee started her project by cutting up instructions, in a Burroughs-esque manner, then following the new instructions she made new objects. The first example of this was origami, she used the frog as an example.

The pictures below show three different shapes remade using cut up instructions. What I like about this is that you can see a faint glimmer of the former animal – unfortunately they have become mutated – they’re freaks!

Zee became interested in how this method could be used as a generative tool for new forms of furniture. She started applying the method to traditionally simple objects (in terms of making processes). My favourite experiment was with the construction of a birdhouse. By reordering the instructions, a fantastic range of objects was produced.

In Zee’s viva she explained that in order to follow the cut-up instructions she had to interpret them within the context of making – some things didn’t make sense, or follow on from the previous step, so she had to make judgments and decisions in order to make the object work. For me, it’s the gap between instruction and object that is fascinating (and the interpretations that are made), mainly because I believe this gap exists in many forms within the design process, I’d even go as far to say that the way in which the gap is crossed is where the real poetry in design lives.

In the move between 2D and 3D (more specifically, between the sketch drawing and the maquette or prototype) a translation occurs, however experienced you are in drawing a 3 dimensional object, the physical reality always behaves differently. But in the move, the journey between dimensions, really exciting things happen.

Drawing leaps of faith - Nadine Jarvis

First up is Nadine Jarvis. Nadine started the year by examining the concept and word ‘zero’. Although zero is essentially an immaterial concept, Nadine wanted to study it from a material basis – I’m guessing that this was to avoid falling into the trap of merely illustrating mathematical and philosophic concepts, but instead letting her design process embody the area of interest.

Nadine went through many material investigations about how materials marched towards nothingness – how they degrade and sublimate. At the early stage she also looked at death and re-birth, which took her to a series of investigations into the semi-mythical 21grms (the mysterious amount of weight lost at the moment of death – i.e. your soul). She then dropped this as a direction.

Nadine continued to experiment with materials that degraded, one of the material focuses for this was sellotape – which degrades under UV light. This is the point were she was most lost in the project; she was experimenting with materials but had no idea what it was she was designing (where it was situated, who is was for, what the material would do).

This is where she started drawing. As many of you know I’m rather obsessed by drawing, I think it’s essential within the design process, not just as a means to represent something, but as a way to think, to create, to ideate. Drawing allows wonderful leaps of thinking that can move a project into new and unknown territories. This is the part of Nadine’s project I’d like to highlight (when she showed me her drawings I got tingles down my spin – yes, I really do get this excited about drawing).

The first drawing shows her trying to find a context that has high levels of UV – i.e. the windowsill in your home, the drawing presents a couple of objects commonly found on a windowsill - a lamp, a photo frame and a vase.

In the next drawing the vase becomes a highbred between vase and urn (due to its shape and position on the windowsill), it also has a split line that runs down the centre of the urn/vase made out of sellotape – with the passage of time the sellotape degrades and the vase/urn splits, becoming useless. It is here that drawing (in the hands of Nadine) does its magic, the ideas that had been influencing and intriguing Nadine came together in a tiny moment, but this was enough to accelerate her project.

Nadine ended up designing three sets of memorials/urns for her final show. The first is closest to the initial drawing, it is called ‘Rest in Pieces’ and is a slip cast porcelain urn that hangs in tree, a thread biodegrades over a 2-3 year period, until the urn falls, smashes and scatters the ashes – leaving a small toggle with the initials of the deceased hanging in the tree.

The second object is similar and is called ‘Bird Feeder’, a proportion of the deceased ashes are mixed with bees wax and cast into mould. Over time birds land on the perch (inscribed with the deceased name) and slowly eats the feeder, completing a rather disturbing (but beautiful) circle of life.

The final object(s) is probably my favourite, because of its connection with drawing (if I die, I want this to happen to me!). ‘Carbon Copies’ is an urn/memorial in the form of a pencil case, the ashes from the body are turned into graphite (in the same way that they are for lifegem) and then made into pencils. An average size body makes approximately 250 pencils. The pencils are housed in an unopenable box that has a window to show the number of pencils left. As the pencils are used and sharpened, the box fills with the sharpenings (retaining all ‘left over’ elements). Nadine resisted designing the place of writing (the notebook, the diary etc.), which on reflection is one of the real strengths of the project, this leaves the act of using the pencils open (what would write or draw with your loved one?), retaining the individuals need to keep mourning personal and individual.

One of the things that most impressed me most is the way that Nadine managed to negotiate a difficult and sensitive issue with grace, humour and poetry.

Goldsmiths Design 2006

Every year I go through the rather stressful phase of helping and supporting final year undergraduate students to put up their degree shows. Only this year have I realised that I don’t ever write about the work. So I’m going to. Primarily for three reasons, firstly, to reflect on their work to see how the course is developing – to examine how the educational programme that we put in place is reflected in the final designed outcomes. Secondly, to highlight interesting ideas, whether the student knows it or not, that comes from the work – larger themes that I believe are either interesting or important to design. And thirdly, to promote people who I believe are some of the countries best design graduates.

DISCLAIMER: Although I have been involved in the marking of these projects, my writing here is on a personal basis, and my interest in the projects doesn’t reflect the marks of these student’s degrees. For any student that reads this and thinks ‘why hasn’t he included my work?’ - my selection is based on some of my primary interests – to name a few: technology, drawing, the construction of urban space and design as research.

Describing the indescribable

Since trying to do Perec’s exercises, reading Latour’s conversation with a confused student and trying to get to grips with the concept of haecceity (thanks Matt). I’ve been more and more fascinated with the notion of description, attention, speed (this-ness), essence and totality (and the interplay between them).

Here are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself:
In the act of description what do you describe – and how do you know what it is?
Is it difference or similarity that we notice? (thanks Adam)
How do we capture and record haecceity?
If “every ‘thing’ is unique and new at every moment. Every ‘thing’ is, therefore, an event. Every ‘thing’ is becoming”. What language (either visual or written) is useful at representing this movement and change?
Is everything describable through image and language, if not is anything, what are the limits?

The last question brought me to the king of describing the indescribable: Jorge Luis Borges.

Then I saw the Aleph.

I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can.

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe.

(via Adam's bibliography for Everyware)

Now here’s a challenge – in 500 words describe your own (Borgesianesque) Aleph starting “I saw…”.