#reading2

Introduction

Reading III: The New Materiality of Design

Tintin Rosvik 6.10.2019

With Nader Vossoughian’s description of modern standardization as background, inspired by Bruno Latour’s brilliant way of writing, and informed by Ian Bogost’s summary of Object Oriented Ontology, I will in this text explore my philosophical thoughts on visual form. This final introduction will on one hand summarize my recent thoughts on discourse in design, on the other hand it is a personal writing entirely separated from the framework of this course.

Round, round, round

In my early childhood, before I was influenced by curriculums and learning goals, I had all kinds of theories about the world. I remember that my favorite thing to do was to sit under the kitchen table and think ”deep thoughts”, as I called them. There’s even an article about my peculiar behavior in my hometown’s local newspaper. Anyhow, one of my most thought out theories was that everything that exists is round; the smallest circular form was the atom and the biggest was the universe. In my mind, these two opposites were actually the same. It was all a loop – and therefore the universe was infinite. To this day, the round form has stuck with me as my personal visualization of imagination and intellect. I even named – maybe to make a full circle – my bachelor’s thesis ”The Dynamic Dot”. So just imagine my excitement reading about a philosophical theory named OOO. I couldn't help but to picture myself back under the kitchen table when reading Bogost's description of OOO. Besides the visual coherence, the theory of Object Oriented Ontology also ties back to my early idea of form being correlated to existence. In other words, simply because something is formed – not even taking tangible shape but just formed – it exists. ”Plumbers, DVD players, cotton, bonobos, sandstone, and Harry Potter”, it all exists equally. This way of understanding the world – in contrast to the dominant epistemological discourse battling between senses (empiricism) and logic (rationalism) – claims that the reality we experience is not dependent on human cognition. An idea that seems to be more and more present in today's society.

OOO

This idea would however not match the ideology of the last century and a modern society would probably reject OOO in an instance. In a time when human individuality and standardization was assumed to redeem the world, it would have been unimaginable to place all existing matters in the same category – and as if that wasn’t enough – also eliminating the superiority of human perspective. Quoting Markus Krajewski “No world format can function without a world that accepts it” and today, when the drawbacks of claiming human authority starts to emerge and humans even feel threatened by other non-human factors, OOO might have a chance to challenge the dominant discourse. As all ontological theories, Object Oriented Ontology is nothing else than yet another human interpretation on how humans interpret their being. So why would it make any difference? Well, the way we view ourselves in the world will affect our behavior – and right now the way we humans behave drastically needs to change. I was recommended to read Karen Barad's theory ethico-onto-epistemology which describes something similar, and I wanted to highlight her description of the problem with conventional ontologies: "This ontology [ethico-onto-epistemological] rejects the foundational separation between ‘object of observation’ and ‘observer’ because this division assumes the object as passive and the observer as active". Even tough we as humans will continue to interpret our reality as observers, it is necessary to address the theory of OOO and other speculative theories in order to recognise that our interpretations of the world does not make us the ”creators” of existence. At least to me, OOO succeeds in placing the human in relation to their surroundings in a more appropriate way than before. I also find the abstract view on existence – everything is equal – interesting in a time that faces problems beyond humanity.

The round O

While the theory as a whole resonates with me, I don't think that the word object is doing the complexity of OOO justice. Because of this thought, I once again pick up the red thread from my previous writings; exploring how to use visual epistemology in complex knowledge creation. I put this idea to practice by connecting my childhood idea of the round form with the theory on a visual level: Imagine OOO explained with the help of the circular form as a metaphor, or alternative theory, for ”everything equal” instead of the word object. Object might be a versatile word, but it is still a description of an artifact, while the "everything" that OOO refers to goes beyond atoms and physics. It includes abstract matters and even notions of the world that the humans not even know yet, and might never know. While a word is restricted to its meaning, the round form is infinite. A circle is equally full as it is empty. Equally enormous as it is tiny. Equally abstract as it is tanglible. It can be nothing and everything. It doesn’t matter what these circles contain, because they are all equal.Explaining ”everything” with this abstract visualization would better represent the ”equal existence of things” that OOO describes. It might be just because I am a visual person, but somehow I strongly believe that theoreticians would benefit from using visual form as a way of exploring, evaluating and explaining. Visualizations travels through space and time differently than words; not as fixed ideas to be understood, but as dynamic building blocks to re-used over and over again. For example, If someone would have written down my childish "deep thoughts", the words would have been of no use for me today. But because I visualized my idea with a circle, I have been able to put more and more knowledge into that same form. The round form I imagined as a child do not contain the same knowledge as the round form I have described today, but it is still the same exact form. I think it is remarkable that a visual idea I created as a four year old, have helped me understand – and challenge – a speculative realistic theory called Object Oriented Ontology today.

“post-truth”

• The reading material managed to provide something fresh to digest; such as the definition / concept of ‘meme’, which both Amelie and Jolanda commented to be a new one for them.  • There was also discussion about how the term/title of a  ‘craftsmanship’ has recently been a trendy trick, that companies have seen it a valuable asset to use for the marketing. And the intention for that might not have anything to do with the so-called-truth behind a company’s real protocol. Instead, it might just be a wise move, feints targeted to consumers, just to serve the purpose of increasing the sales. We made a notion that similar terms have gasped the attention of salesmen, like the ones used for ‘greenwashing’ practice in the near past. 

Today's group discussion really took a drift on where we stand as designers among this capitalistic system that we live in. How can we preserve our own moral values and still be active in this system? Are all design practices in the end only endorsing this destructive "merchandising machine"? Well, I don't really think so. Personally, I think we can still use design as a resistance weapon, creating alternative narratives that will encourage people into more sustainable and meaningful ways of living their lives. One way of doing this, for me, is to pursue a track of work turned into the promotion of culture and art. I find real pleasure in doing that and also think that this could make the world a better place.

Summary

Reading II: Design and Knowledge

Tintin Rosvik 1.10.2019

The discussion began with us agreeing on the fact that it was hard to synthesize one’s thoughts on the reading into a coherent entity. These text evoked such a great extent of possible routes to take, that it was impossible to present all ideas in one short introduction. We also noted that we all had, in one way or another, continued on our own string of thoughts from last week. At first, it seemed like we all had very different entry points to the discussion about design and knowledge, but quite quickly we found common ground in what could be summarized into “the capitalistic trap”. Kaisa called it the power of repetition. Jolanda explained it as not getting paid more for the design job even though the sales of the product increase. Lari saw the individual choices of craftsmanship as a possible solution. Amelie, on the other hand, criticized craftsmanship as something romanticized and ultimately commercialized. And I thought about it as designing other’s truths, saying nothing else but “buy this”. But how can we escape capitalism? It is difficult to get beyond the cynical belief that it is impossible to escape. Advertisement will always find new ways of making itself visible in the most invisible way possible, and there will always be those willing to do shit job for money.However, we really tried to look beyond this cynical assumption and speculated how visual communication design would function if it was placed outside capitalism. We moved on to talk about education. How should we reframe what we are doing now to make sure that we are building the future we want? At the moment the field has an opening to reinvent itself – we have freedom, but where do we belong? What stuck with me the most, was visualizing design as a morphing, interactive and flexible mass in between cultures and in between stakeholders – in between anything, actually.

by João Emediato, 30 Sept 2018

When I started reading the texts from, I was still a bit confused by the notion of a visual epistemology. I couldn't really understand if we were talking about ways of learning how to design or ways of using design to learn about anything else? Gladly, Drucker had a very on-the-point determination for that: she calls the language of graphics both "a highly formal set of visual elements with rules for their use and a verbal description of this system and the ways it works". Further on in her text I questioned myself what would be the actual difference between her notions of visual epistemology and semiotics. I realize, by the end of the text, that it comes down to dissecting the visual elements, isolating them and creating a more clear way of scrutiny for a visual (graphic) work. It is about creating common ground to discuss our own sensorial experiences related to vision, like perceptions of size, scale, depth, shade, rhythm, color, vibration, order and hierarchy, balance, symmetry, weight, volume, and so forth. These aspects constitute any visual creation, much before any conventions of style, taste or particular cultural symbolism. In fact, by being able to analyze these elements we can understand the very concept of style, taste and symbolism more clearly and also become critical of them.

Also, I became intrigued by the particularities of what we call "graphic". How does it differ from other kinds of visual work, especially now when design practice is no longer restricted to the creation of printed images. 

Another thing that grabbed my attention is the understanding that the systematization of design as a language, or what Drucker calls visual epistemology, is mostly related to the process of industrialization. This has very much to do with the topics approached by C. Wright Mills on his text "The Politics of Truth". He reveals how this so called language had to be more and more developed for the sake of capitalism. In other words, this language had to become more and more eloquent in the ways it would persuade the masses.

Design and knowledge

By: Fanni Perälä

30.9.2019

Summary

In our meeting we mostly discussed knowing, learning and consciousness in a more of a broader sense and not just in terms of design. We pondered what does it mean to know something, can only conscious beings know something? What is a conscious being? And what does this mean in a world of machines, algorithms and artificial intelligence? We had a bit of a hard time connecting the dots between all the reading materials — we felt that they were circulating the same subject, but all from a very different point of view: Drucker from historic and reaserch-, Gleick from a phenomenon-, and Mills from a perception, interpretation and designers point of view.

In all knowledge and information we agree that objectivity is a virtue and something to seek for, but most of the ways we come across information, it is often biased or spiced up with a bit of attitude. Also in terms of adopting new knowledge, we tend to perceive it in a way that reinforces the notions we already have. It is hard for people to understand that their point of view, their every day normality might not be universal. Algorithms in social media for example work very much in this way and strive to feed us information we already agree with to keep us happy, this way creating and reinforcing stereotypical thinking – even though we inherently think it is a good idea to predispose one self to new ideas and challenge ones thinking.

I guess memes work in a similar way, thoughts and ideas that resonate with our previous knowledge tend to stick with us, repetition and recognizability is key. One could imagine this way of fast learning is great news but Gleick in his text cultivates a variety of negative analogies for this phenomenon such as disease, infectiousness and humans as hosts for these paracites. I guess the negative connotations stem from the uncontrollable nature of memes. The malleability of these structures makes them prone to shift further and further away from objectivity and origin. Gleick actually portrays memes as independent living structures not just metaphorically but techincally – not conscious actors but arguably entities with some elements of their own interests and goals.