Design Writing Spring 2010
During the Spring Term we will run a short series of visits to current design exhibitions to inspire some written work. This may be of particular relevance to first year students who will be thinking about how to approach writing their dissertations, but everyone is welcome to attend.
After each visit, write a short review of the exhibition, or a personal response to one or more of the works in it.
•For the review, consider what you think works well about the design and organization of the exhibition, and what you would change. What did you learn about the subject, and what did you think was missing?
•For the personal response, think about which exhibits appealed to you most, and why. Did they appeal to you emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, or in other ways? How do they make you feel about your own work?
We will arrange for the texts to be posted on the RCA Design Products website after each visit.
We will meet beforehand in the 2nd floor studio so we can travel and arrive as a group. These are the exhibitions we will visit:
Wednesday 20 January
Design Real
Serpentine Art Gallery
Leaving the RCA at 4pm
Wednesday 10 February
Decode: Digital Design Sensations
V&A
Leaving the RCA at 4.15pm, immediately after the CHS lecture
Wednesday 3 March
Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2010
Design Museum
Leaving the RCA at 3pm
Wednesday 17 March
Ron Arad: Restless
Barbican Art Gallery
Leaving the RCA at 3pm
Attua Aparicio-Torinos
DESIGN REAL, Serpentine Gallery
20 January 2010
Today I went to the Serpentine Gallery to see the exhibition Design Real curated by Konstantin Grcic.
Is an interesting selection of 44 industrial design objects (43 officially, I’ll explain this later).
The objects are shown with no more info than the generic name of the object itself. Then there is a trench-like room with a sofa made out of sandbags where all the information of the objects is displayed in the forgotten object. This is an ebook -the Amazon Kindle DX- when I saw the ebook what I did first was to try to find the information about it, but sadly this was not taken into account. May be it could be a good excuse to talk about paper as a material, as a way to spread information, and link this with the new technologies and why not, about trees, deforestation, recycling and much more.
What I enjoyed most about this exhibition is the information given about every object, its not just information about the object itself. There is information about the material, the sociopolitical matters, the idea, the designer... that helps to create a very rich landscape around every object. And the best thing: all this information is online in www.design-real.com
One object that especially caught my attention was the carafe, because I didn’t see anything special in this object. And it made me feel the need to know why.
The interesting thing about this object is its story.
Its aim is to promote the use of tap water, reducing the disparity between its quality and the public perception of it. Is an object to celebrate Parisian tap water, to return its dignity. It’s a good example of how through an object peoples’ behaviour can be changed.
But is not in the exhibition just because of this: Is the only piece made out of glass, so through this object Grcic introduced to the exhibition glass, water -which has become a socio political matter- and plastic -with a list of fun facts to put into the scope the magnitude of this pollution-.
So yes, there is not one reason, but at least three for this carafe to be in the exhibition.
On the other hand, I find a bit pathetic that to change the perception of Parisian water an object is needed. May be if instead of spending money on 30.000 carafes they invest this money in a good campaign for a wider audience the results.
And about the carafe’s design, I think is nice for restaurants but for using at home it is very small and difficult to clean besides it looks more like a milk or a wine carafe. For domestic use I prefer the Venetian one, less glamour but more capacity, easy to use and clean, with a handle and free!Tom Hatfield
Design Real, Serpentine Gallery
Instrument
Walking up to this instrument intrigues me to what this object means, to an industry that is going through a change where success is gained as easily as winning a raffle. The instrument, in the shape of a trumpet, suggests that it would be played in the same way as a trumpet would, with the valves on top and the finger hooks in the same place as you would find them on a brass trumpet. Only then a degree of simple tweaking of the volume, the style of sound of which you want it to be heard in, will then be established after you have plugged it in.
Traditionally, a wind instrument player has intimate connection to their instrument. It takes an established amount of time to build this relationship, to learn its sound, taste, how long it takes to warm up and the feel of the keys and where they are. Something that can detect and rectify imperfections in your playing, so you sound like a first class player, seems a fast tracked experience, and would lack the quality of sound of a well rounded performer.
Learning to press buttons in different ways to create a sound, seems to lend itself to a one man band era where any track can be played over create a sound.
Looking at the Music industry's point of view, it performs well in producing the same sound time and time again, especially in a recording situation, to then go and play to a large audience. Although, to take synthesizers out of modern music, the top ten could be left with a well presented person singing out of tune.
Looking back at the instrument makes me ask the question does it need to be the shape of a trumpet?.Tom Jarvis
Design Real
It is evident that choosing to go to art college 65 years ago was not as common as it is today. The image one has of the early post war artist is that of a reclusive, broke and tortured man. It is the artist of 55 years ago that most are familiar with today. The direction and momentum that this romanticised profession gained the following 54 years has shaped cities and fuelled economies. The classless entertainment provided by the reaction to abstract expressionism made artists of the pop movement desirable people to be, therefore “artist” a desirable job title to have.
But the art market has entered the new decade financially decrepit, its 50 year economic dependence as obsolete as the banking system that invested its profits. Britain's small independent galleries where in trouble as the art going population became serious and it's investors became broke; enthusiasts, having turned to spending on the necessary have developed a taste for real function rather than gestured statement.
Design Real at the Serpentine continues from where Gustav Metzger left off, using the latest artistic display trends. Untreated plinths support a selection of literally named, anonymous objects, of no apparent category, of undistinguishable value and in positions of non function. But the similarities stop there. By carefully selecting fragments from top design portfolios and placing them in the context of cultural entertainment, Grcic gives an insight into a non fictional world, enabling the spectator to create a personal image of the application and natural setting of the works. Their sterile display is contrasted with the abundance of information available in the central room, their designer, background, and use are discovered using Amazon E readers. When gathering information in this way one gets the sense of researching the product, a possible training exercise for the reborn design enthusiast, implying that regardless of the setting design is present, unlike art it supports itself outside of a gallery, one is able to autonomously research what interests us, but, like art, you do not have to own it in order to know it and admire it.
The significance of the Serpentine's first design show is not to be underestimated, this substantiates the interest that industrial design is beginning to hold again internationally. When treating products as culture rather than consumerism one puts pressure on designers to consider the holistic product value and in doing so designs better. The viewer and potential users form a valued opinion, they have the influence akin to that of a consumer union, able to dismiss a product if they so choose. Now finding themselves a critical part of the design process rather than just a naive end user, a community engaging in design dialogue is one closer to an awareness of the impact of products and one that may be inclined to buy a higher quality product or may reconsider ownership altogether. Design Real points towards an imminent “real design” rebirth. Empowered by knowledge, concerned consumers and designers alike can shift demand, a shift that one day may enable us to implement systems such as a service based cradle to cradle product life cycle or alternatively one where disposable gadgetry for a jaded elite is eradicated from our list of “wants” altogether.
Is this Grcic's anti-sensationalist answer to Saatchi's 1997 Sensation? Were Pop Life at the Tate Modern and Telling Tales at the V&A the celebration of a climax in the narration based visual arts? To believe this would be foolish, but I cannot help but leave Design Real with a sense that as we exit this recession, the blossoming, concious and pragmatic visual arts enthusiast will be showing interest in solutions rather than statements.Robert Maslin
Design Real
Design Real, curated by Product Designer Konstantin Grcic, is a selection of 43 products conceived in the last ten years. Spanning a numerous typologies, each design is selected to contribute to a sort of manifesto on good design, which seems to largely constitute improving function, lowering environmental impacts where possible, looking at advances in manufacturing and inclusively offering people a better quality of life. All of the work on display is in serial production, and all the products are fully working. To give the viewer a purity of experience there are no explanations next to the items only the topological names to give a clue to its function. However, at the centre of the exhibition is the information point where people are given meticulous, but balanced, research on each of the designs.
The show builds many conflicting tensions, where the work is practical and fully functioning, but viewers were not allowed to experience what they were designed for. One viewer was even asked not to touch a heavy-duty paving slab, made for millions of people to walk over it. This left me with a sense of lost potential. Confusion from the flip side of these conflicts has been felt by friends in the art world, who seem to feel the focus on the products functions are an imposition on sacred ground.
Nevertheless the designs are essentially very well researched, designed and have interesting implications.Tom Jarvis
Decode
The date at which our ancestors started to use tools can only be estimated. As early tools where made of perishable materials it is believed that the recovery and analysis of such relics is near impossible. What we do know is that 2.5 million years ago Hominins fashioned stones to use as tools and it is the use of these implements that has led to our dramatic evolution as a species. Following this primitive technological advance we continued to extended our capabilities by shaping materials, enabling a rich and varied diet, resulting in a significant development in cognitive aptitude. The Stone, Bronze and Iron ages describe a pallet of resources and a fluency in their processing, eventually leading us to the society that we are familiar with today. The objects and manufactures attached to these ages define them, throughout, we have adapted to physical interface and in doing so have developed spiritual connections with these tools to whom we owe our survival.
Following the development of agriculture and the consequent birth of civilization, the irony of this tool based worship has dwelled in the provenance of these advances. The invention of a large proportion of these tools can be credited to the manifestation of our most basic territorial instincts. At the cost of many human lives, the technological developments induced by conflict are perhaps the largest leaps in the evolution of our material shaping knowledge. The last of our world wars was no exception. In the midst of global warfare John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed a code that has defined our present age. The machine that processed this code; the ABC computer, changed mankind's previously predictable information-led patterns beyond recognition. Large portions of our existence and occupation are embedded in binary code to the point that we no longer temporarily extend our “self” through physical interface but conveniently fluctuate between the states of virtuality and physicality. The philosophical conversations and neuroanthropological theories spawned from this cyborg state of being are of huge potency, and for this reason the fertile artistic field concerned with the post-human condition in a postmodern society is boundless. It is imperative that a comprehensive exhibition attempting to map and celebrate the value of code as a creative medium conveys the weight and influence of this young, exiting, diverse but potentially tragic technology.
Decode sets out with clear intentions at the visual end of the coded spectrum. Predictable reliance on screens, projectors and sensors quickly extinguishes ones excitement by a coy use of dated technology. Admittedly a difficult note to strike, binary code is in no way celebrated or criticised in a show that neither impresses nor frightens. Subjects of huge existential implication are discarded to make way for unintelligent, cursory play. At the palatable end of Decodes chromatic spectrum stands a two state, three stage shadow mimicry work by Daniel Rozen. In this piece information contained in the viewers periphery leaves its physical state via a mounted camera to return by means of woven, motorised, gradiated rollers; a work that stands out from a wash of screens as poetic, touching on more than just visual parade and technological novelty.
In my mind the questions raised when abstracting the information age are not of digital shape, crude interaction or flamboyant colour but of social effect, and global consequence. Pre World War Two the non-physical was a state we evolved to perceive as spirit, haunting or philosophy. The pubescent nature of binary code categorizes it in our mind as exciting, novel and safe, but as with the over-specialization of almost any species one must be aware of the dangers of being inordinately reliant on specific tools. In overlooking this we risk evolving into a lineage of motionless, antediluvian, info gluttons, incompatible with the habitat of the stone shaping Hominins and insensitive to species with whom we share physical space, these of course constituting the only truly authentic human interface.