semeiotica recombining contemporary art, design strategy and life science
Archive for visual culture
August 13, 2008 at 10:56 pm · Filed under Design, art, critical theory, interdisciplinary, metaphors, visual culture
Yesterday I made a point of visiting the exhibition “Design in the Age of Darwin” at the Block Museum of Art on Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, IL. The title of the exhibition caught my attention when I was flipping through a Chicago guide while visiting with some family there. The terms “design” and “Darwin” are usually brought up in a controversial opposition. However, this exhibition promised to take a deeper look at the relationships present in the fundamental orderings of Darwin’s work on natural selection and decorative design.
The exhibition takes a sort of auteur-like approach, focusing on a few men prominent in the decorative arts at th turn of the century and just before the birth of so-called modernism. The title includes the notables William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright as well as C.F.A. Voysey, Louis Sullivan, and Christopher Dresser, an English botanist turned industrial designer.
I wrote in the comment book that the exhibition was well-presented, but that it lacked an engagement with the discipline of evolution as well as any other social and cultural field beyond traditional notions of design.
The missed opportunity lies in the ability to untangle well-tread debates of form versus function from ideas about natural and sexual selection, the role of mutation as a creative force, and the cultural and social appropriation of “selection” in the burgeoning onslaught of mass production and “upward mobility”.
I would have liked to see, for instance, a more overt discussion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spandrel and the famous (at least within evolutionary biology) paper “The Spandrels of San Marcos”. In it Gould and Lewontin take on the adaptationist perspective which basically says that form must have function and needs a explanation. The adaptationists neglected the role of happenstance (technically, genetic drift) and frequently created “just so” stories to explain the unexplained. Gould and Lewontin’s view was that evolution is a side-effect of a true adaptation, where some traits arise from correlations between a networked body (i.e. gene networks), rather than arising from natural selection. Admittedly, I haven’t read the catalog for the exhibition, but here was a golden opportunity to flesh out the role that complex dynamism plays in evolution. As it stands, the exhibition just furthers the paradigm of intention and selection in the interplay of form and function.
I would agree with the curator’s thesis that Darwin’s ideas contributed to the design sensibility of the age, but it was probably only the case insofar as both Darwin and these designers relied on the metaphor of selection.
Another missed opportunity was the role that social Darwinism played in the development of modernism. For an excellent paper on the subject, see Christina Cogdell’s “Products and Bodies: Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology.”
What was there were some fantastic examples of Arts and Crafts and Prairie-style decorative and architectural renderings from Chicagoland area collections. It seems almost like the curator was constrained in the availability of ideas and objects to articulate the thesis, and while the show is a unified presentation, there isn’t anything novel to suggest that accounts of art history haven’t yet “speciated”. For the discipline’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t go extinct.
Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581-598. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/77447
Cogdell, C. (2003). Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology. Design Issues, 19(1), 36-53. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/074793603762667683
June 16, 2008 at 9:31 am · Filed under boundary objects, community interaction design, interdisciplinary, making it public, maps, network entrepreneurship, science, teaching and learning, technology, visual culture, visualization
This is a nice compilation of resources assembled for a course entitled MAPPING CONTROVERSIES in MIT’s STS program. The course focuses “…on developing aptitudes for combining multiple ways of knowing: textual interpretation, intensive search in heterogeneous databases, and design tasks; all of which point to the invention of new tools of representation for an increasingly complex environment.
Sounds fun.
Addendum: you can also view an explanatory video about Mapping Controversies, narrated by Bruno Latour
May 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm · Filed under art, biology, biotechnology, boundary objects, visual culture
Regine Debatty discusses biology, art, and technology
April 4, 2008 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Design, cognitive justice, technology, visual culture
Check this: This report is intended to help companies design specifically for the so-called base of the pyramid in Emerging Economies such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.
An EMERGING ECONOMY is a country that is experiencing rapid informationalization under conditions of limited or partial industrialization. In the past, some of these regions have been understood as being in the process of industrial development, and were therefore described as ‘developing countries.’ Alternatively, they have been described as ‘emerging markets’ for goods and services created in the industrialized nations of the world. Our conception of Emerging Economies, however, recognizes that these parts of the world are not merely slow to industrialize, nor merely markets, but strategic centers for the emerging networked knowledge economy.
One of the biggest challenges found in India is convincing others about the value of design and design research. On the other hand, I have never been in a better place for learning and conducting research that takes into account the views, perspectives, and voices of others. Call it a post-colonial mandate or whatever, but in terms of making design adaptable and responsive to user needs, the context couldn’t be better for innovation and the creation of appropriate technologies and product service systems.
January 24, 2008 at 11:23 pm · Filed under Design, complex systems, design ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, proposals, technology, visual culture
The Emerging Economy Report is coming! This is a project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s been in development for almost a year and a half and represents research in seven countries, all of which have been identified as emerging economies. An emerging economy is a country that is experiencing sustained economic growth as a result of rapid informationalization and limited or partial industrialization. Economic growth in the information economy will continue to be driven by these emerging economies who will benefit from rapid informationalization, innovation, and ephemerilization of the economy, leapfrogging many of the requirements and costs of the Industrial Revolution.
We’ve been working to develop insights into global trends and user perspectives across seven nations including: India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By examining specific case studies, visual research, economic trends, and user perspectives on (among other things) technology, access to information, heathcare, and economic resources, we have been able to create strategic knowledge for those wishing to do business in these emerging economies.
The 7 emerging economy countries studied in this report account for 46% of the world population. The report offers a variety of innovative recommendations that will help businesses engage with these economies.
Visit emergingeconomyreport.com to find out more.
July 24, 2007 at 10:43 pm · Filed under art, narration, visual culture
From the Leonardo website:
Forty years ago in Paris, a group of artists, scientists and engineers got together and decried the lack of professional venues where emerging work bridging the two cultures could be presented, debated and promoted. Frank Malina, himself a research engineer and a professional artist, convinced publisher Robert Maxwell of Pergamon Press to take on the challenge of publishing a peer-reviewed scholarly art-science-technology journal, the first time such a project had been attempted.
To date they have published the work of more than 5,500 artists, researchers and scholars. In keeping with our networked times, the Leonardo community is collaborating with groups around the world on a variety of events.
Watch an interview with Executive Editor Roger Malina as he explains a little more about the history and activities of the Leonardo community.
July 12, 2007 at 8:22 am · Filed under digital design, visual culture
This week I am attending the ECHO (exploring and collecting history online) workshop about “Doing Digital History” hosted by the Center for New Media and History at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
After starting out with introductions (you can see participant profiles at the ECHO site above), we surveyed a range of digital history genres from archives, exhibits, and teaching sites, to online communities and journals.
Later in the afternoon on Thursday, we looked at a very cool organizing tool for gathering online sources. Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] “is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.” It’s going to be huge for my work which often involves collecting movie citations or references that I know–but don’t have entered into Endnote.
At the end of the day we perused javascript for building behaviors into websites. It’s always great to get any expert detailing their strategies. Jeremy Boggs gave a great rundown and suggested some good books. Jeremy is writing his dissertation on the history of CSS. Nice.
Today, Friday, we’ve launched into looking into some of the available tools for doing digital history…things like blogs, timelines, archives, wikis, feeds and so on.
Now (11:04), engaging the public…
June 11, 2007 at 10:43 am · Filed under cinema, visual culture
Rudolf Arnheim, a pathbreaking psychologist of visual experience in the arts, died at the age of 102 in Ann Arbor, Michigan on June 9, 2007.
Roger Malina, Editor of the journal Leonardo, had this to say:
Arnheim was a giant in our community, a long time Leonardo Editorial Advisor and seminal figure bridging the era that saw film theory develop to the era of new media.
Arnheim was an honorary editor for the journal.
An obituary by Marvin Eisenberg is forthcoming from the Ann Arbor News.
wikipedia’s entry on Rudolf Arnheim
March 26, 2007 at 8:45 pm · Filed under art, bioinformatics, genes, genomics, interdisciplinary, visual culture
As part of the Penny Stamps Lecture Series at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will perform excerpts from Ferocious Beauty: Genome on April 5th at 5pm in the Michigan Theatre, Ann Arbor, MI.
Liz Lerman, founder and artistic director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, recently completed a four-year collaboration between scientists and choreographers culminating in Ferocious Beauty: Genome, a multi media dance/theater work that explores the human implications of discoveries in genetic science. Created with geneticists from organizations including The Institute for Genomic Research, Wesleyan University, Stanford University, Princeton University and Howard University, Ferocious Beauty has toured from Connecticut to California, deepening dialogue between science and the arts. Lerman will be joined by two dancers who will perform excerpts from Ferocious Beauty: Genome.
more…
http://www.art-design.umich.edu/ev_lectures.php?aud=e&menucat=ne#lerman
http://www.danceexchange.org/performance/ferociousbeautygenome.html#ff
March 23, 2007 at 10:41 am · Filed under art, biology, visual culture
The idea of making art with living systems is not new; you might even consider a garden or a goldfish pond to be biological art. What is new is the degree of control over biological systems and materials contemporary technology offers us. Topics on the organism weblog include technical, practical, aesthetic, and ethical issues related to making art with living systems. Artists, scientists, engineers, students, and anyone else with an interest in this area are invited to contribute.
visit organism
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