Desma 10 Design Culture – an Introduction 2008 NOTES Meeting 2 (Oct.3,2008) Design Culture - Basics Design and Art The Etymology of the Word “Design” The Origins of Design Culture These notes are NOT meant to replace the experience of attending the lectures! They don’t contain everything that was discussed in the class. They are only an aid to the memory! ***** High and Low Design high design ~ ”design for display", luxury design. Often bought for symbolic value, which is at least as important as practical use. Highly visible design. low design ~ ”design for living" , practical designs for everyday use. Function often dominates, symbolic value secondary. Everyday use makes these objects invisible. ***** However, the situation is not so simple: - There are objects that pretend to be classy and stylish, although they are not very expensive and produced as large series (IKEA, MUJI) - There are objects that give the impression of improvised ‘streetwise’ look, although they may be expensive. Good example are some designer clothes based on hip-hop styles that originated as ‘bricolage’ – the act of combining existing, often cheap, pieces of clothing. Reading the ‘value’ of such things depends on the observer’s codes. ***** Status Objects; the case of Philippe Starck In our time many design objects have become collectables, status objects, rather than things for use. This issue will be discussed in more detail later in the quarter. Good example: The French designer Philippe Starck’s kitchen utensils for Alessi, the Italian design company. Many people buy these as gifts. They are eagerly displayed bytheir owners, but not necessarily used often. The best example of this is Juicy Salif, Starck’s Lemon squeezer (Alessi), which is certainly one of the most famous design objects of the past twenty years. It is continuously in production, and sells well, although it is not considered functionally very successful. Visually it is very ambiguous which explains partly its popularity. It is possible to read many kinds of meanings into it. It is a concersation piece, more than a thing for use. ***** Philippe Starck about Juicy Salif (lemon squeezer) "This is not a very good lemon squeezer: but that's not its only function. I had this idea that when a couple gets married it's the sort of a thing they would get as a wedding present. So the new husband's parents come around, he and his father sit in the living room with a beer, watching television, and the new bride and mother-in-law sit in the kitchen to get to know each other better. 'Look what we got as a present', the daughter-in-law will say.” (1999) ***** Form follows function (Louis Sullivan) used to be the most famous slogan of design culture. It was the credo of functionalism, stating that the function is always the primary value of design; form comes only after. Many people still believe in it. However, in the postmodern design world where ‘Starck reigns’, “function” should perhaps be replaced by some other F-word: - Fashion? - Finances? - Fantasy? - Feelings? - ??? We will return to this toward the end of the quarter. ***** Design and Art have often been considered to be two separate things. Emphasizing this divide, ‘design’ used to be known as “Applied Art” or even as “Decorative Art”. These words are used more rarely nowadays. What is the relationship between art and design today? ***** Art and Design: the Traditional View - an artwork is an expression of the creative freedom of an individual, a design object isdetermined by industrial and commercial concerns - an artwork is unique, a design object is mass-produced - an artwork does not have a practical purpose, a design object serves a concrete function - an artwork has a spiritual "surplus" value, while the design object is more down-to-earth - an artwork is a goal in itself, while a design object serves a goal ***** In out times, the boundary between art and design is being blurred: - In the wake of Andy Warhol and pop art (1960s) an artwork can now be mass produced and commercially distributed. This is true of many forms of media art, for example Toshio Iwai’s work ElectroPlankton, produced for Nintendo’s DS game console. -Some recent design object are not - primarily - functional - symbolic and ‘emotional’ values have been emphasized! -Design objects are now also produced as ”limited editions” and treated almost like ”works of art”. Alessi has hired famous architects like Frank Geary and Michael Graves to design coffee and tea services, that are very expensive luxury items, mainly for collectors and museums. There are also unique experimental and conceptual designs, that are not meant to be mass-produced at all (Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunny)! -Classical artworks have inspired other artworks, but they have also inspired designs for various purposes (Picasso T-shirts!). ***** Anticipation: Museum of Modern Art’s (New York) Machine Art exhibition in 1934 was a pioneering event. Functional mechanical machine parts were shown as aesthetic objects for the first time in an art museum. MoMA has since created both art and design collections and often displays them side by side. This is a strong statement: art and design are not the same thing, but they can co-exist as two forms of contemporary creativity under the same roof. ***** Andy Warhol’s Pop Art from the 1960s is a very interesting phenomenon when it comes to the relationship between art and design. Was it art or design? Obviously art inspired by product and package design. As we will later see, pop art inspired design in return. We will return to this topic later. ***** Japanese “Device Art”These are artworks that are often functioning gadgets and meant to be massproduced. They are sold in design stores and department stores. This blurs the boundary etween art and design. Some of the most important “device artists” are: - Maywa Denki (’Maywa electric company’), a Japanese artist group that actively blurs the boundary between art and design. Many product lines, including the Naki series and KnockMan - Kazuhiko Hachiya - another “device artist”, whose work raises questions about the relationship between art and design. PostPet, ThanksTails, Open Sky - Ryota Kuwakubo: BitMan, VideoBulb - Toshio Iwai: ElectroPlakton (for Nintendo DS), Tenori-ON (music instrument for Yamaha) You can find out more about