Professor Erkki Huhtamo UCLA, Dept. of Design Media Arts. Desma 10 Design Culture - an Introduction. Lecture Notebook 8

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1 Professor Erkki Huhtamo UCLA, Dept. of Design Media Arts Desma 10 Design Culture - an Introduction Lecture Notebook 8 This notebook does not contain complete slides from the lecture! It is only meant as an aid to your memory. To get the complete idea, you must attend the lectures! Illustrations will not be included they are only shown in class! Meeting 9 (Dec.8,2006) Design in the Postmodern Era Sayings about Design in the Postmodern Era Function is Out, Form is In Time Magazine, March 2000 "Design has taken on its own life, and this raises a problem often encountered in consumer culture. The energy is pure delight. But can we turn it off? Herbert Muschamp (2000) **** Postmodernism - Concept that has dominated cultural debate and theory from the 1970s; postmodernism followed the collapse of heroic modernism (modernism: break with the past, arrogance of the New, belief in human capabilities of modernizing society and solving global problems with science - and design!). -Postmodernism expresses scepticism and sometimes nihilism towards progress, seen as typical of modernism; endless recycling of material from cultural archives replaces unique innovation. Celebration and enjoyment of the surface, reckless hedonism... -Postmodernism as a cultural current is seen as penetrating all (or almost all?) forms of cultural production and signification

2 Timing Postmodernism -When did the move to postmodernism happen? Dating a matter of debate: claimed to have happened since the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s...depending on critic, point-of-view, country and the field in question; Was it the nuclear bomb that started it all? -Andreas Huyssen (Across the Great Divide): claimed that postmodernism does not follow modernism; it is a historical current alternating with modernism(s), found periodically since the late 19th century (Art Nouveau was postmodern, then overshadowed by high modernism ; again discovered in the 1960s with Pop, Psychedelia, etc.) Postmodernism - Origins -Origins open to debate; usually seen beginning in the 1960s -Word appears in Charles Jencks: The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977) -Robert Venturi s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) argued that modern architecture was meaningless because it lacked the complexity and irony of historical buildings -Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour: Learning from Las Vegas (1972): praising the cultural honesty of built commercialism in Las Vegas - earlier despised by modernists as decadent and messy. We look backward at history and tradition to go forward; we can also look downward to go upward. (typical quote from Learning from Las Vegas) Some features of Postmodernism -simulation replaces representation (representation told us something about reality, we were confident that there was a link with the reality out there ; simulation creates an artificial realm that only pretends to refer to the real ; we no longer know the ontological status what seems to be represented ) -scepticism about reaching any single truth beyond the surface ; avoidance, veiling, masks; questioning of the truth of the master narratives of culture (religion, philosophy, scientific worldviews...). Reality is in flux; impossibility of grasping it before it turns into something else... -emphasis on external style, surface, visuality, skin ; culture as an endless play of

3 signifiers ; humor and irony replace (modernist) seriousness More features of Postmodernism -Plundering of cultural archives : anything that has ever existed is potential material for creativity. Anything can be connected with (almost) anything else, without respect for their historical relationships or truthfulness -Eclecticism ( Anything Goes ), self-reflexivity, irony, intertextuality, deliberate ambiquity -The obscuring of boundaries between high and low culture, but also between fields like art and design (already evident in the case of of pop!) - Anxiety and pessimism hidden behind the carefree surface? Robert Venturi on Postmodernism (1966) Elements which are hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clear, distorted rather than straightforward, ambiguous rather than articulated, perverse as well as impersonal, conventional rather than designed, accomodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. **** Jean Baudrillard on Postmodernism The visual crisis of culture creates postmodernity" "Contemporary images are the sites of disappearance of meaning and representation -Simulation dominates; simulation precedes the real; it turns reality into its own image (e.g the disneyfication of reality ) Simulation According to critic Gene Youngblood, the word "simulation" has two main meanings: 1) 'fake copy (e.g. digital photographs that only pretend to represent something real )

4 2) 'model of the possible (e.g. using computer-simulated models for cars or airplanes to test their qualities before the prototype has been built). * Bricolage - Mode of adaptation where things are put to uses for which they were not intended and in ways that dislocate them from their normal or expected context. Advertisers often use counter-bricolage. - Originally used by social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in the s about the logic of the concrete of non-western indigeneous cultures (opposite to Western abstract reasoning) Appropriation, Pastiche Appropriation: The act of borrowing, stealing, or taking over others' meanings to one's own ends. Pastiche: mixing things with no reference to their real history or the sense of rules about what is "right" * Intertextuality -The interplay and mixing of different cultural texts -Cultural production that constantly refers to other earlier cultural products -leads to endless recycling of cultural meanings that lose their specific referents; however, they can also be used for critical ends Features of Postmodern Design Culture - Recycling ideas taken from cultural archives ; frequent references to earlier design movements in new design products -Design identified with glamour: "designer as a media star", high design - At the same time the idea of affordable design objects for everyone (chains of stores

5 like IKEA, Muji, Target): design as a way of life; design everywhere! - lifestyle shopping", brand awareness (partly as a result mass-production of fakes - fabricated attitude ), life-style -oriented chains of stores (GAP, Urban Outfitters, UniGlo...) More Features of Postmodern Design Culture - "Product constellations": related products as part of a life-style (Rolex+BMW+Ray- Ban) - branding governs everything, including places like casinos, even cities! Design can help: Geary s architecture identified with Bilbao: symbolic investment! - product semantics : the product as a symbolic expression, as well as an object for use Philippe Starck (1949-): Form Precedes Function - The role of the designer is to create more happiness with less - I am very interested in the unconscious, because it never lies - whilst the conscious is always a lie. I work on the commonplace, on the collective unconscious - Everything is only a game that one has to play with the greatest possible respect, the greatest possible sense of responsibility, and at the same time with humour and lightness of touch More Philippe Starck s famous sayings A Poor Christmas gift designer like me who is obliged to speak out Design doesn t interest me. I don t read about design or go to exhibitions about design. I use this vehicle like other people use political discourse, songs or books. Wake up, stand up, stop being a consumer I am not an icon, a star. It s not a superman thing. Everyone can do it. ****

6 The Memphis Group: Postmodernism as a Design Strategy -Founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass and Michele De Lucchi 1981 "Design should address the symbolic needs of the customer (Mephis manifesto) -Bringing different elements together in surprising ways; wide range of products; endless search for new expressions; Memphis furniture will soon go out of fashion * The Memphis Manifesto Memphis, like fashion, works on the fabric of contemporaneity, and contemporaneity means computers, electronics, videogames, science-fiction, comics, Blade Runner, Space Shuttle, biogenetics, laser bombs, a new awareness of the body, exotic diets and banquets, mass exercise and tourism. (1984) * The New International Style(s) -Origins associated with new design groups like Memphis in the 1980s -Design addressed to the global market; defining trends through prestigious exhibitions. How to design products that would appeal in a similar fashion to any consumer around the globe? -The idea of re-issuing Master Designs (modernist furniture by Le Corbusier, Rietveld, Wright.. by Vitra, etc.) - Particularly important in new categories of global products like mobile phones (how do you recognize a Nokia phone? How do you differentiate it from its competitors?) Development extremely rapid, needs enhanced design strategies, a science of design Postmodern High Design - Design as Art : design as a symbolic elite product; function to the background; limited editions: Alessi s Tea and Coffee Piazzas (Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks, Michael Graves, Paolo Portoghesi..) -pairing designers and architects with fashion designers to produce exclusive luxury products (Michael Graves and Giorgio Armani, Richard Meier and Calvin Klein, etc.)

7 Product Semantics -Rose into prominence in the 1980s -Focus on design objects as signs; design objects seen as complex, and often ambiguous, linguistic enunciations (statements) -The meaning of a design is asserted to be more important than any practical purpose (> the emotional relationship to the user is emphasized; connection with lifestyles) The Philosophy of Product Semantics - "designing by association" - defining the emotional values designers want the consumers to attach to the product - partly caused by developments in microchip technology: miniaturization of internal workings gave designers more opportunities to experiment with the form. It did not need to be tightly determined by internal requirements. - Risk: the emotions and meanings intended by the designer may not always be recognized and accepted by the consumer Mood Boards -"maps" that try to respond to the range of demands by the consumer. The arrangement and presentation of related products, logotypes, environments or other design material onto blank sheets in order to construct an artefactual and associational context for the thing being designed Emotional Design "My personal philosophy, in fact is that form and function are not any more a sufficient response to satisfy customers. Design has also to take care of the emotional aspects, the significance of an object should overcome the mere shape of it. The design of a product, its shape, the colour, the signs and marks should be able to establish a non verbal communication between man and object." (industrial designer Roberto Pezzatta, Zanussi, 1995)

8 Philip Nobel on Postmodern Design Freed from a dominant style, design is faced with the style trap: the limits imposed by glamour... When design is glamorized, it begins to solve problems of image first and problems of use - living - second. "Design, tied as it is to life through use, should have larger ambitions than to feed a market hungry for new images of affluence. What is lost when glamour reigns? (Philip Nobel) "Is good design the perfection of an object for commercial success? For the glory of the designer? For beauty? For glamour? For use?" (Philip Nobel) "Utility, not vanity, should drive change in design; that's one of the things that distinguishes it from art." Herbert Muschamp **** Designers should be building, testing and using the product, not just making it look pretty. James Dyson, inventor and producer of Dyson vacuum cleaners The famous last words: Design can be fun, playful, adventurous. But it should not be just about big gestures, drawing attention, making an impression - it should also be about invisibility, minimalism,functionality - making things work even when we are not conscious of them.