After all, Anthony Dunne is the pop star among design researchers. He is the one guy with a PhD that (interaction) design students have heard of. He exhumed critical theory for design. He surely built a bridge to art for interaction designers. Critical design projects are perfect for the press. And they might have opened a "designerly" approach to research (have they?). At least the community showed some serious interest into the ideas around Critical Design.
So much about the merits. Maybe now it's time to critique the critics, from a constructive point of view. Because Critical Design has my sympathy, I have to ask those nasty questions:
Can design ever be "just" critical? Or is it always constructive? The dark scenarios that some CD projects present are realistic enough to be implemented. They should show what we are not supposed to want (most of the time). It could also be that they serve as an inspiration for those who don't have so many doubts. So what if CD helps to generate what they want to criticize? The broad (uncritical) response e.g. to the Tooth implant suggests that once there is an object, there is a need for it.
Is it enough for designers to be "just" critical? CD projects are not about designing commercial product development. So they don't get they hands dirty. Critical designs stay in their academic niche, as narratives, scenarios, expositions, prototypes. So we learn more about what we do not want, but what do we want?
Please take this as a starting point and add your thoughts to the topic.
Katharina.
'Critical' has different meanings
Hi Katharina,
thanks for the serious post. i think the entry on 'critical theory' from wikipedia might belp us think : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
"There are two meanings of critical theory which derive from two different intellectual traditions associated with the meaning of criticism and critique. Both derive ultimately from the Greek word kritikos meaning judgment or discernment, and in their present forms go back to the 18th century. While they can be considered completely independent intellectual pursuits, increasingly scholars are interested in the areas of critique where the two overlap.
To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in 1968 in his Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination. From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or oughts, or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values."
I think one can do critical design and get her hands dirty...depending on what one means by critical.
Have a good week!
Rosan
"just" critical
hi Katharina,
a friend pointed me to your thread, and I've just signed up to the DESIGN RESEARCH NETWORK, hello!
I'm a former student of Tony Dunne, and count myself as a teacher, a designer and a researcher working very much in this context, though I would hesitate in call myself a critical designer.
I'd like to respond to your second question, 'Is it enough for designers to be "just" critical?', which has two parts, getting dirty hands and getting stuck in a niche.
I think it is possible to work in a critical way and get your hands dirty. In fact when it comes to teaching I advocate an approach that is all about getting your hands as dirty as possible; getting out of the studio and amongst researchers, policy makers, curators and scientists as a key part of thinking through your design. This is a pedagogical approach that Matt Ward and Alex Wilkie discussed in their paper "Made in Criticalland: designing matters of concern", delivered at the Networks of Design (discussed in another thread). Critical Design can be located in a heterogeneous network of practice, and the designer can look to social science (STS in particular) as a way or orientating their practice within this network, rather than staying distant and reading canonical critical theory at the desk. The point I'm making is that it is possible for Critical Designers to develop, so that while they are not making commercial products, they can make complex prototypes or other formats of work, in a manner that complicates and challenges the practitioner, and is thoroughly dirty.
This ties to the second part of your question, which is about working in a niche. I'm not sure this is true. You mention James Auger's and Loizeau's Audio Tooth Implant, which was reported in Wired over seven years ago. This work has not yet been described well (academically that is), so like much of critical design practice, there is a multiplication of the iconic and headline descriptions of the work. Hence we see 4000 blog posts with the same image, and 1000 duplications of the designers short description. I would say that there is some interesting stuff going on with the Audio Tooth Implant, in terms of how design generate public discussion about technology. Arguably it involves a more diverse set of actors than a real product. So perhaps we need richer accounts of this work, above and beyond the text written for exhibition catalogues, to demonstrate the ways in which critical design interacts with other types of practice, method and knowledge.
In terms of my own practice, and the ways in which I'm trying to write about it in my thesis, I'm following a particular pathway for critical design, that has taken it (via projects like Biojewellery and Material Beliefs) into a particular area of funded practice based research - public engagement of science and technology. In this way (and if things go well!), I'm hoping that this might contribute to the development of a practice that is clearly historically linked to critical design, as well as establishing contributions from other - more disciplinary! - disciplines. Incidentally, James Auger, Elio Caccavale are also PhD students, so it seems that we will hopefully have more rigourous accounts of this practice by practitioners, and more related PhD's on the scene.
Dirty evil capitalist production
Hello Tobie,
Thank you for your reply. I’m glad you joined the discussion.
So from your perspective, what has been formerly known as Critical Design now turns into tactics of “making things public”? My reading of Latour was that designing (like technology) always deals with matters of concern, in contrast to science. From this point of view, CD has been hands-on and dirty and deeply involved with the social implications of scientific and technological achievements ever since. And of course objects in the discourse have an effect on the actors they reach. To me, SST is very much in line with the initial ideas of CD.
However, by getting your hands dirty, I wasn't referring to getting practical alone. Designing for mass-production always implies imposing the inherent values in the artefact upon a huge number of other people. For single prototypes in an exhibition, this is not the case. Although the idea might spread, the material artefact does not, unless it is commercialized, I would say.
This is why I consider most CD projects as acting from a niche. I am not sure about the connection of those projects to everyday design practice, if there is any. My understanding was that the commercial mass-production is exactly the “system of domination or dependence” that designers need to emancipate from. But then it would be absurd to feed ideas back into that very system. Maybe you can tell me more about this relation.
From what I know so far, I can see the merits in other areas as well: as excellent examples for scenario-building; or as a way to come up with and test extraordinary ideas as prototypes. As a practical approach to testing theoretical assumptions.
So I insist, and hopefully you can elaborate a little: What can we learn from a critical design artefact?
Looking forward to your reply,
Katharina.
'critical design' vs. criticality and design
Hi.
‘What can we learn from a critical artefact?’ The answer to this is as simple, and as complex, as saying ‘all sorts of things’, and who is understood to constitute the ‘we’ is very important here.
But before getting into that... I have to say it kind of troubles me, the way ‘critical design’, as expressed here (and in many other places), is used as a synonym for ‘criticality in design’.
Yes, Tony's work has proved seminal. I don't mean that as a complement (although I've taken a lot from it, myself): I mean it quite literally - Hertzian Tales and Design Noir are some of the few references that the spate of recent design phDs tend to have in common, for example. But criticality in design is a much wider tendency than is represented in D&R’s work, as they themselves acknowledge:
"It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. There are many people doing this who have never heard of the term critical design and who have their own way of describing what they do. Naming it Critical Design is simply a useful way of making this activity more visible and subject to discussion and debate." (http://tinyurl.com/d5wzdc)
Outbreaks of activity guided by the common sensibility D&R refer to above have gone under such labels as anti-design, non-design, interrogative design (Kryztof Wodiczko), device art, ‘visionary’, ‘critical’ or ‘post-critical’ architecture, and many others - plus we should acknowledge the work of people like Natalie Jeremijenko who make no effort to affix a label to their work (Ramia Mazé's recent book Occupying Time (2007) provides an excellent historical account of the aforegoing.)
All kinds of - heated! - debates have been had about the merits, or otherwise, of such approaches. I won’t try to summarise them here, expect to say they range from absolute dismissal - design can’t be sufficiently autonomous from circulations of capital to be critical of them (Manfredo Tafuri in the ‘70s) - to arguments that this closeness to what is criticised is not a problem but a strength, as the work both gains greater subversive potential and it is (argued to be) easy for most people to engage with (the ‘post-critical’ architecture of, for e.g., Diller Scofidio + Renfro, or Tony’s conception of critical design in Hzian Tales). (For a good introduction I suggest Jane Rendell’s edited volume 'Critical Architecture', 2007.)
Rather than rehearse the various theories at play, what I want to point to here is that in this broader sphere of 'criticality', particularly in architecture, a focus on the ‘critical artefact’ is usually accompanied by work in other registers. Lebbeus Woods draws and makes models and installations, but he’s also a prolific writer and, I hear, a quite gifted teacher. Simon Sadler devotes a fifth of his recent-ish book on Archigram - who disseminated their ideas chiefly through a self-published magazine - on the way their presence, work and advice informed their students at the Architectural Association in the late sixties.... and the *massive* impact it's had on many architects working commercially today.
And D&R, let’s not forget, teach, write, lecture etc. as well as exhibit ‘critical artefacts’ in galleries. Now, saying these artefacts serve to encourage ‘critical reflection’ or ‘debate’ is a useful way to separate one’s work from commercial mores, and being given an opportunity to work in this way can, naturally, broaden a designer’s perspective (largely the intended dynamic between criticality and education on the DI course at the RCA, I suspect). But at a professional, rather than educational, level, we need to answer questions about who is involved in this debate, where and when, what is said, how positions are altered, vistas opened and horizons narrowed, etc.; that is, we need to think harder about what complex of situations and practices these artefacts inhabit and shape.
As the above examples from architecture clearly show, this kind of non-industrial practice tends to be interwoven with all kinds of other practices, of teaching, writing, researching, presenting, etc. etc etc. Really, we’re talking more generally about how designers (might) work in spaces, physical and psychological, that differ from the commercial studio environment that has become the dominant container for design practice. That is, in environments that are non-commercial and/or pre-competitive, as Anne Galloway parses it - which includes The Academy, but also others, like para-academic institutions along Xerox PARC or Interval Research Corporation lines, for example. There are many potential positions designers could adopt here, and ‘critical artefacts’ could accordingly play different roles. In work like that of Tobie (hi Tobie!) or myself (although I think our approaches are quite different), the question of 'the connection of those projects to everyday design practice, if there is any', is an object of study itself, rather than something treated as already resolved. The relationships that exist - or might exist - are, no doubt, complex and sometimes subtle. We’re trying to work them out, in quite a formal way - not because ‘critical design’ is currently useless, but because we are not sure exactly how and how well it’s working. This is, as Ramia Mazé says, a disciplinary project.
To finish, a really nice quote from Jon Hill about how the production of artefacts can be preferably mixed up with other practices:
"Sometimes a building is not the best way to explore an architectural idea. Consequently, architects, especially influential ones, tend to talk, write and draw a lot as well as build. The relations between drawing, text and building are multi-directional. Drawing may lead to a building. But writing may also lead to a drawing, or building to writing and drawing..."
terms
hi,
yup critical design is a slippery term, and perhaps it makes sense to talk about individual projects, or particular designers, or exhibitions?
I outlined a trajectory for design where it does public engagement of science and technology. This is where the research is funded in a particular way (in the case of Biojewellery and Material Beliefs the funder was the EPSRC). This can for sure be theorised using Latour, you mentioned this essay From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public, which accompanied an exhibition at ZKM. Designing for issues seems like an interesting way to think about critical design, and as you mention it is just one example of where STS literature might help designers write about what they do, or provide resources for others to write about design.
Ben makes an interesting point that when it comes to critical design and related practices, it's not just about exhibiting prototypes. There are many other things going on. This was for sure my experience with Material Beliefs, and to Ben's list I would add various types of public engagement events as well as the reflexive and informal moments which are also made visible in the project documentation (BTW I'm happy send a MB book to fellow list members if it is of interest?).
There can be quite big groups of people encountering the design through these various contexts. Again from my own experience, when Biojewellery was discussed in New Scientist it was heavily blogged, and the website was hit 125,000 times in a day. I only bring up numbers because on the other hand manufactured designs can of course fail. I'm not sure it's useful to discuss critical design and related practices as being niche, while characterising industrial design as being everyday, to then build an argument about relevance.
To go back to your original post Katharina, how about unpacking a little what you mean by Critical Design? What designs to you include? I don't mean to be provocative, I just think it will help the discussion.
Another issue I'd like to raise is what this critical stuff does when its circulated. Does design achieve debate? Who is debating, and about what? How do we account for that, if indeed we claim to create debate (or in my case do engagement)?
bests,
Tobie
Criticality and some useful byproducts
Hello Ben and Tobie,
when I presented Mazé's & Redström's paper in our colloquium (Difficult forms: Critical Practices of Design and Research,credit goes to Ben who recommended it to me), we also felt uncomfortable about the term ''critical'' in general. Maybe because in German, it is often associated with a destructive outside position. ''Reflective'' sounds more modest to me, and this is the label that I often came across in HCI.
The paper is quite condensed and very useful, as an overview on critical movements in architecture and design, a proposal on how to possibly arrange practice and criticality/reflection, and connections to the issue of boundaries and foundations in design (research). They also propose that reflective practice in interface design also requires a reflective user. For us, this ended up in a discussion if and how use can be reflective, or if it is rather a constant manoeuvering around the boundaries, as they propose, oscillating quickly between action and reflection.
I am personally completely unfamiliar with the critical literature in architecture. There seems to be quite a lot to learn from architectural theory. If the adoption of critical avantgarde accounts has happened there, I am curious what it looked like. Ben, can you illustrate that with an example? You know quite a bit about it, don't you? The example of Memphis or Anti-Design, as M&R shortly describe it, sounds depressing – that their ideas were taken up commercially without their critical position.
Maybe we can also use the trajectories they propose to help us in the discussion – if we have criticality inside-out (reflect things by means of design) of the discipline (or profession?), or outside-in (reflect design by means of other disciplines) or purely internal or external.
Material products offer a different kind of engagement and experience than other artefacts such as text or pictures. Material is in a very mundane way pretty authoritative. And products are a particularly tacit way of expressing norms (and imposing them on others). It is true that commercial design practice is not necessarily successful. But when it is, it helps to distribute norms in a very stable form and large number. This effects a very concrete change in social reality. And this is why I keep on asking about the production stuff.
Anyway, I wouldn't dare to say (nor dare to think) that discourse is irrelevant. As you say, it can reach many people, maybe even more than a product. And you mention writing, sketching, exhibiting and teaching as different was of distribution and dissemination of ideas. You also describe critical and reflective practice as a way to open new fields for designers (and thus maybe a reflection on the condition under which they normally practice), and enter other networks of practice than the established ones.
About unpacking my notion of Critical Design: What I understood by Critical Design is using design as a means
The means include narratives and scenarios, pictures, drawings, concepts, prototypes. At least. Agreed?
For the reasons mentioned above about material products, I am especially interested in the prototypes, and even more specifically if they have been hosted in an everyday environment (as for the placebo objects). Making products (or letting other people make products) is something very central to design for me.
So I also see much value in some of the ''by-products'' of Critical Design... in propagating digressive (?? exotic??) variations of forms, and idiosyncratic understanding and use of products. The early interest in emerging technologies from a design point of view. The material product as a part of the design argumentation. As an example of practice as part of design research projects?
Katharina.