Champions League Roma 09

Journal Entry 1

Looking back on what I have written here, it seems to be a reflection of my past, present and future.

I grew up in Lodi, New York.  It is a small town near Ithaca in the wine-loving region known as the Finger Lakes.  Our home lives on the land of the old Lehigh Valley Railroad, featuring old mill buildings, bridges over creeks, woods and fields. I spent most of my childhood running around outside, exploring and imagining. Everything was anything I wanted it to be. We even turned our shale filled creek into a makeshift town, complete with bank, shale money and forts for my cousins, my sister and me.  I was engulfed by nature.  My Mom, an earth science teacher and my Dad, a carpenter, raised me well and have always been open, encouraging parents.

As a teenager, I looked to find things that were new and different to me.  This is where my interests in design began. I’d always been involved in the art and music, but it wasn’t until I began following sneaker design and culture that I had something specific to look at. Most likely, this rose from my love of sports; I’ve played basketball and soccer my whole life. The sneaker has lines, materials and colors, all put together in this beautiful, collaged object. I followed new releases, new technologies and old-school classics for a few years.

A degree in Industrial Design was what you needed to become a sneaker designer. I had heard of RISD when visiting my uncle in Rhode Island and RISD had an Industrial Design program. I applied here and other ID schools thinking that would be my major and footwear design would be my career.  To my surprise, I was accepted.  But freshman year happened, a crazy time. I was exposed to many new people and ideas. I began to lean towards the fine arts side of design.  I love working with wood, I thought, and Dad was a woodworker, I should do that.   Now, I wanted to be furniture designer/ maker, and I declared that so. But what can I really do with Furniture degree? Where will this education lead me?  What am I doing?

These questions arose over the summer before sophomore year and came right to the table days before classes started.  “I am going to switch to ID” and I did.

Last year, I had no direction and no focus.  Id lost my interest in sneakers and there was so much to learn in so little time. In the end, that whole year was a flurry, just doing to get done - going by without a real, solid thought. Although, something about sustainability poked its head through once in while, grabbing my attention. I could feel that there was good to be done with my skills.

And here I am, about to finish the first semester of my junior year. Everything I have done this semester has had an effect on me.  Manufacturing Techniques has showed the depressing reality of production, cost and consumer goods—a world I see myself fighting down the road.  I am volunteering with young teens on Fridays to make art projects, revealing to me how vital young minds are to the future of the world. I am doing my best to affect them positively.  The main thread has been my Design for Social Entrepreneurship studio.  We are seeing the social and environmental issues of the world and learning everyday about the ways others are attacking them and seeing outlets that we, ourselves can take action. I see no other application for design at this point.  From food security to energy to educating underprivileged youth, our world is headed for catastrophe.  If we don’t start using our remaining physical and intellectual resources to prepare and change our ways, tomorrow is doomed.  I can see how it is easy to turn a blind-eye to this, being in the carefree life of an American design student, but it is time to sift through the bullshit and pay attention.

The Social Entrepreneurship studio has influenced the majority of what I wrote in my blog; which was possible only through how and where I was raised. I don’t think I would be in that class, were it not for my roots.  Something inside me said ‘You’ve got something to do here’ and now I can do it.  I think that the things imprinted in me as a child—creativity, nature, and freedom—are what I fight for in the future.  I know that sounds cheesy, but I believe it’s true.

All of my writings on this blog, in one way or another looked to address social and environmental change.  I criticized Tobias Wong’s work, since he is obviously a thoughtful and talented man, but puts his effort into making statements about consumer culture, instead of actually trying to make change. I raved about Janine Benyus and Biomimicry; her examples of using nature to design and preserve are music to my ears. Designing With was the application of a large concept learned at the ‘better by design’ conference to questions posed by Dr. Becker’s lecture. Using guitars as an example, I pushed for meaningful design as something that empowers, connects and encourages creativity.  My ‘Peacocks and Lilies’ reads as a sort of manifesto for my current design ideals, a complaint  and call to arms.

I don’t think I presented any surprising or groundbreaking positions on these people and issues, but they are my own and they reflect where I am.  I will continue to fight for environmental and social justice. If this path leads me to use design as my weapon, so be it. 

Popping the Design+Art Bubble

I think if I were 17, Tobias Wong's work would be much cooler to me.  At that point in life my interests in design were naive; everything was so new and all was amazing. I failed to look at design critically. Cleverness in design is very intriguing, but I think when applied to useless things, cleverness looses most of its fascination. Tobias’ work does this for me, as does many of the other designer’s that place themselves along the boundary of art and design. As citizencitizen puts it, they are “…constantly questioning the value of and our relationship to objects.” (Now I don’t know if this makes complete grammatical sense to everyone else out there, maybe it does and I’m wrong, but I think it means constantly questioning the value of our objects and our relationships to them.)

In a number of instances of ‘pieces, ’ Tobias comments on mass culture and mass consumerism. He often uses a design classic object and reappropriates them, highlighting the original beauty and adding his own observation or take to create a new idea. I fully support attempts at artistic commentary on our mass consumer culture, but Tobias seems to go about in a contradictory way.  In 2007, he created the ccPhone.  It’s an iPhone (though I would not call this a classic design object yet, many would), that has some surface additions and a cd with a bunch of crap on it to upload to the phone, and citizencitizen is trying to sell it for $2000.00.  I was angered upon seeing this on the online store, such a blatant waste of time and energy, and what was written in the product description caught my attention: “ As a social commentator, [Tobias] is highlighting our constant need to consume and our obsession with differentiating ourselves with the objects in our life.  Wong plays to both our brain and our gut, the logical and the visceral. On the one hand, he makes us aware of our obsession as consumers, on the other hand he lures us back in by creating such beautiful observations, ones that we invariably want to consume.” 

 What strikes me about this is that, as a social commentator, Tobias would theoretically be looking to achieve a conversation or action of some sort, but the majority of the people this information will reach, seems to not really care for change.  Though this may be a sweeping generalization, I bet nearly all of Tobias’ for sale works are bought by rich kids from Los Angeles. I apologize, but it’s probably true.  They must care more about what’s hot and expensive, not the artist’s intentions.  And the greatest chunk of America’s consumers will never see, buy or care about these things. The press surrounding them circulates between shiny design magazines and pretentious design blogs. 

 Anything is possible for someone working between art and design, but it is a difficult line to walk.  By design being the medium by which their art is expressed, these artists start off within a certain bubble and struggle to break free. Therefore these design objects do not to achieve either the original object purpose or the artist’s secondary intent.

www.brokenoff.com

www.citizen-citizen.com

Beautiful Biomimicry

A week ago today I sat listening to Denise DeLuca speak; she was representing the BioMimicry Institute. Her lecture was on the topic biomimicry, which is the conscious emulation of life’s genius; it was beautiful presentation straying from the super-techy talks of the day. She showed how people are learning an idea from an organism and applying it to the problems of our day. For billions of years, natural organisms and systems have achieved what many designers strive to accomplish in their work. These solutions are able to adapt and evolve; they are locally attuned and responsive, and are cyclical and resilient. As is the opposite of most of our current designs, natural organisms are conducive to life: they optimize, they are interdependent and their ‘manufacturing processes’ are benign. Ms. Deluca went on to list numerous examples of how designers are taking inspiration from nature, from Boxfish aerodynamic Mercedes cars to Gecko dry adhesive bandages.  She mentioned a women by the name of Janine Benyus, who’s name I have highlighted in my notes from that weekend.

Janine Benyus is president of the BioMimicry Institute; a non-profit organization whose mission is to naturalize biomimicry in the culture by promoting the transfer of ideas, designs, and strategies from biology to sustainable human systems design. She has written six books on the topic of biomimicry and even had the chance to speak about it at the TED conference in 2005. Here, she had three main points: How does life make things? Adding that man’s approach is the heat, beat, and treat method. How does life make the most of things? Saying that it adds information to matter and has a structure of function. How does life make things into systems? She pointed out that in nature, no things are divorced from systems.  Janine also had a dozen examples of innovations inspired by nature, one of them being ‘CO2 as a Feedstock.’  Plants do not see CO2 as the most problematic compound of our time, we do. Plants have the ability to take this and make long chains of starches and glucose. Geoff Coates, of Cornell University has come up with an efficient chemical route to make a catalyst that makes a self-degrading polycarbonate. The thermoplastic polyester is widely found in nature, particularly in some bacteria, where it is formed as intracellular deposits and used as a storage form of carbon and energy. Another example of biomimicry is the ‘Power of Shape,’ where organisms such as Humpback Whales have inspired efficiency in transportation and wind energy. The bumps or tubercles on the whales’ flippers drastically improve its maneuverability and aerodynamics, and these are being applied to many technologies including airplane wings and wind turbines. The most intriguing of Janine’s examples was that of ‘Metals in Mining’ where companies like MR3 of San Francisco have developed technologies to mine waste streams.  Looking at microbe molecules, they embed mimics into the filters for wastewater streams, removing the dangerous heavy metals produced in manufacturing. 

There was a main point that I took from both the Denise Deluca lecture and this Janine Benyus TED-talk, and I think it was what they try to  convey by looking at nature. And that is THE design challenge: Finding out a way to do what we do, without destroying the place that will take care of our offspring.

MR3 Systems

Geoff Coates, Biodegradable Plastic

Whalepower

Designing With

The topics posed by Dr. Becker’s lecture directly reflect my current work and both have brought much of my focus to the same question: How can we, as people from vastly different cultural and economic backgrounds, best use our skills to help those people in greatest need? What I have found, though not yet experienced, is that in order to have what we are doing be real and have true effects, we need to go to these places and be with the people. ‘Designing’ something for a people, place and history we do not know personally, will, in the end do nothing more than the years of failed aid money and supplies sent to these impoverished nations. It is insensitive and unrealistic to believe we can make change for a people we do not understand.

Dr. Becker’s experiences gave him insight into the  problems of the developing world and refugee settlements. When presenting these to us, he posed many of the problems in terms of design opportunities for our creative minds to ponder.  If we ever are in a position to put an idea into reality and are within the communities, we must start with the assumption that they don’t need our ideas.  And this, in turn, will lead to richer experiences and questions that yield better solutions.  Ross Evans, founder of Worldbike, enlightened me with this concept at a conference recently. His work brings extended frame, load-carrying bikes to Kenya and other developing countries. The work to create the bikes and the end products empower and employ locals and use local materials. In a number of instances, Ross described how he became part of a community and therefore made his design part of the community. 

It is cases like this that show what ‘Humanitarian’ needs to be. We cannot set ourselves apart from the people we are trying to help. They should be as much as, if not more of, a part of the process as we are.  They are the experts and we are the observers.  It is terms like designing “for the other 90%” and “the bottom of the pyramid” that start to create a divide right from the beginning. Worldbike also shows that concepts for ‘developing’ nations should go beyond achieving their initial goal. Again with the example of the Worldbike, the main goal is to make a bicycle that can carry more, but as is used, it empowers those who use it, and allows them to sustain themselves. Unlike foreign aid, it is solutions like these that give the power to the people and push change and innovation.

Where can we begin?  What are the most important projects? Who needs help or even wants it?  These are the difficult questions.  We have to start somewhere, thinking globally, but acting locally.

I end with more from Ross Evans, who had a profound affect on me this past weekend:

“A great problem picks (and follows) you.”  To me, this embodies the spirit of designing to do good. If you are truly seeking to help people and understand people, than the quest has begun, and the pieces will fall together in front of you.

Sex, Shoes and Rock n' Roll

When thinking about products and what gives them meaning, I first look at things in my own life. I start right here in my bedroom, looking at the objects that surround me.

I find that it is difficult to start identifying their meaning before differentiating what meaning is in this case. To me, there are two kinds; the first deals with itself, which is to say its own intended message.  The second deals with an object's interactions and potentials and occurs only after that piece makes a connection between more than one person and more than one idea.

 For example, there is a meaningless piece of candy wrapper on my desk. The piece is shiny red, has no writing, and exists only to be a part of the whole candy wrapper; it is plain and uninspiring, I throw it away. In contrast, I see my guitar lying on the floor next to my bed. To me, this is an object that is meaningful.  It was my father’s when he was young and makes me think of him playing at home when I see it. It creates beautiful tones and puts me at peace when I play and will continue to do so into the future.  In terms of design, what this means is that products get their meaning from people and the things that people do.  The designed object can certainly affect how this happens; as in the guitar, it is an object meant to interact with, but the principles of music and musical tones are what make it have meaning.  This object could be bare bones and still have the same affect on me, as long as it makes the sounds. 

 The guitar is an interesting object to look at in terms of controlling how a person acts and how it may create identity.  It is not bound to or any specific gender or race or type of people, accept to those who enjoy music. And though it generally directs the user to physically hold it in a certain way, many different sounds and styles of play have arisen from this object. In the end, the user determines the meaning of this thing and can therefore create an identity through that meaning. The guitar creates an extreme sense of personal freedom. 

 The guitar is a unique thing, being so universal.  There are objects, such as vibrators or Stiletto high heels that are not. Though these objects seem out of place in a conversation about guitars, I think they offer an important contrast in regards to design and identity.  First off, vibrators and heels are, for the most part, gender specific.  Both are limiting, but you do see some freedom being exerted in the case of the vibrator, in its shift from a medical device to a pleasure device.  The heels were created out of a want for change in style and a reflection of women’s want for more freedom.  But eventually came to be a symbol of oppression and were rejected in the late sixties.  It is interesting to see the shifts of these limiting products. 

 In the end, this shows that these two objects are created on a superficial basis.  One took an insensitive look at female sexuality and decided to save time and the other sought to make freedom a footwear style.  This goes to show that designs should not isolate, oppress or deform, but instead be based on historically beautiful and culturally universal ideas. These objects should empower, connect and encourage creativity.

Peacocks and Lilies

There was a particular quote from our class lecture on functionalism that caught my attention; it comes from William Morris, and reads:    

“Our epoch has invented machines which would have appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and those machines we have yet had no use…it is not this or that tangible steel and brass machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us.”

In my notes for that day of class, ‘intangible machine of commercial tyranny’ is underlined, for it is the most powerful part of what Morris said here.  To me, functionalism is a part of this machine, and a movement that furthered it.  Morris not only sees this as a problem in his own time, but a grave one for the future:

“So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.”    With this in mind, a real shift truly needs to occur.

We in the design world love beautiful things within beautiful systems; especially if we are the ones who create them. It is satisfying and fulfilling to make something elegant and coherent.  Nature serves as the reference to all things beautiful, since it is the original.  But the natural is disappearing and being replaced, in great quantities, with the artificial.  Our ‘beautiful’ systems of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal are plundering the earth and filling it with static, useless crap. I couldn’t help but think about this the other day while doing laundry in my basement. The basement in our house is dirty, dark and filled with crap.  Stuff like bags of past tenants unwashed laundry, broken guitar amps, six vacuum cleaners, Christmas decorations and countless Tupperware boxes filled with who knows what. I started Satur-daydreaming, and saw millions of peoples’ basements filled with stuff that is no longer used; unwanted gifts that were never returned, forgotten workout equipment, ‘obsolete’ computer monitors, an artificial wasteland in our own homes.  I can even picture my own basement back home showing the same scene of stuff. There are factories, warehouses, garages, attics and abandoned buildings filled with the same surplus of shit.  As much as I enjoy it, the TV show ‘How It’s Made’ describes that surplus and leaves me a little angry every time I watch it.  The program basically shows how things are manufactured in today’s industry and leaves me asking, how can we use up enough that new has to be made again and again at such a rapid rate?  These things need resources, people, and energy to make, and now they are doing no good for anyone or anything, and for what?

The money. The money and the power to make more money.

The giant corporations of the world put so much energy into being efficient and productive, that they are really being more efficient at ending our own existence.

But I’m not going to go on and on about how unethical, irrational and manipulative the corporation of today is, I’ll save that for another day.  I will say, that as designers we have played partner to the corporation and therefore have the ability to affect change. In our last class, a discussion arose from functionalism on ideas of ‘affordability,’ paradigm shifts, and the power of design, among other things.  I recall a fellow classmate, Will Harris, volunteering to speak about his timeline on functional chairs.  Specifically, he was admiring this idea of affordability and that good design could be brought to the masses reasonably priced. He praised companies like IKEA for making a fifteen-dollar chairs that doesn’t sacrifice style.  I can see his point, but in today’s age, I don’t find this admirable at all.  A few other classmates spoke up to disagree with Will, pointing out that these chairs will break quickly, and that people should look to invest in a piece of well-designed, well-made furniture.  The question was then raised, well, what is affordability? Is it that someone can afford to by a chair in a given day or can a ecosystem afford to have its resources continually depleted in order to make that chair?  This is what it comes down to for me. I think in most cases, design fails to look at the bigger picture.  It fails to ask: What effects will this really have on the world? Does this thing even matter? Is what I am doing more important than the livelihood next generation of people?

Designers throughout history have asked big questions, but the majority of them have been to further production, profits or consumption.  In this though, I do see the power of design. In our timelines especially, there is evidence of its influence as well.  In showing the progression of an idea or an object throughout time and how those things have taken hold, we show the power of design to change.  We show that designers are people who create taste; we can change attitudes.  And in this power, we can make a shift.  We need to, as scientific philosopher put it, “…see the same information in an entirely different way.”

This is in fact a paradigm shift.  But, for many people, that is an extremely radical idea. Especially in this day in age, where we are experiencing an international economic collapse, it is difficult for anyone to think anything but capitalist growth.  In America, where capitalism reigns supreme, there is significant economic struggle.  Our immediate reactionary tactics to current problems were to use our most reliable weapon, business.  I would hope that someone in that decision-making pointed out that this is exactly what got us into this mess.  We need to free ourselves of this commercial machine, and use these wild times as an opportunity to change.

I just wrote this, but does it really matter? This essay is lost in a sea of internet pollution. Maybe we will have a discussion tomorrow, but then what, is it forgotten as soon as class ends?

Two quotes from John Ruskin:

“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence.  The only consequence is what we do.”

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.”