aestetics of innovation

DESIGN, ARTS & AESTHETICS OF INNOVATION ELEONORA LUPO, POLITECNICO, MILAN LATIN DESIGN PROCESS FORUM 2010| AVEIRO (PT) OCTOBER, 28, 2010

thesis “aesthetics of innovation” as the possible design driven result of an innovative integration between arts (aesthetics) and design (innovation).

hypotheses convergences between arts and design art as constellations of values for innovation shift from arts to aesthetic action for innovation

BETWEEN ARTS & DESIGN looking for convergences and analogies

DONALD JUDD

RON ARAD

the aesthetic function of objects as DorUles remarks, a certain degree of aesthetic pleasure is always present in Italian design, that is an aesthetic function associated with the utilitarian one or a kind of ergonomics‐aesthetics questioning the taste for the form of objects (DorUles, 1970).

Interestingly Brusatin too writes, in its book “Arts as design”, that the ideas of pleasurable utility and useful quality, dated back to Enlightenment, still are part of Italian design culture (Brusatin 2007). << Bruno Munari, Falkland, 1962

art is a place for design experimentation probably the demarcation between art and design is not “utility”: many designers are able to use the aesthetic driver to experiment, giving to “no functionality” a value in terms of opportunity for research and innovation (Sudijc, 2009)

similarities between art and design concern both forms and processes the border is permeable: «once an artist decides on a goal to pursue, his creative process looks very much like a design process. Artists have effectively turned their self‐made challenge into a partly determined design problem» (Dorst, 2003).

Process models: Information driven Problem driven Solution driven Knowledge driven

challenge any cultural hierarchy that exists between art and design the permeability is not neither only from art towards design (Coles perspective of artists who make a foray into design to refresh their art, ) nor from design towards art (Sudijc idea of designers creative and innovative detournement in a more free environment, Sudijc, 2009), but a kind of two­ways blurring boundaries. << Archizoom associati, La superUicie neutra, habitable wardrobe, 1972

ABOUT ART

exploring the boundaries of art as designed activity

MARIA PAPADIMITRIOU | T.A.M.A. TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS MUSEUM FOR ALL, AVLIZA1998‐2000

STEFANO BOCCALINI, WILD ISLAND, MILANO, 2002‐2003)

Art is a form of knowledge, and therefore of reasearch «Arts based research practices are a set of tools used during all phases of social research, addressing it in a holistic and engaged ways in which theory and practice arte intertwined» : they are innovatively suitable to different research questions of social and qualitative research because of the «profound possibility of the arts to jar people to see things differently, to transcend differences and to foster connections» (Patricia Leavy, 2008) <<Marcello Chiarenza, What a wonderful world

Art is a visionary, imaginative and creative tool «To art, in every culture, has been assigned the task of creating a different world, facing the daily one, in other words a different reality» (Francalanci, 2006).

For Garroni art is a kind of creative and “constructive” tools for humans in the sense that functions to compensate emotionally the dif=iculties of adaptation to the environment. He considers art a specialisation of creativity Uinalised to practical knowledge and communication, in a correlation between practical‐intellectual behaviours and aesthetic behaviours (Garroni, 2010). << Collettivo Oda Projesi | Appartemento collettivo a Galata, Instanbul, 1997

Art is an organised and structured form& process According with de Monthoux, in art there’s no creativity that it’s not, at the same time, organisation too: many artists, by one side, have developed organisational and productive models inspired by the rationalist paradigm (Markus Bandur, “serial thinking”), by the other side organisation can refer to processes, structured in wide range of variations. From artists who control and follow the full process from ideation to prototyping and personally realize the work manipulating the matter (the work of art is the piece, with its tangible quality), to artists who, after the conception, rely on a relatively complex supply chain, from materials to Uinal realisation, not participating to any practical activity (the work of art is the idea, the conception). << Piet Mondrian << Arnaldo Pomodoro

Art is a social system exploring art as society, that is art as a social system of relations and actors in the evolutive process of making.

Being a such complex system, art can be examined as a set of activities like production, intermediation and reception that are relations and processes that happen by means of artefact, speciUically works of art (Nathalie Heinich, 2004) Alfred Gell calls “art nexus” this system of relations which connect production, circulation and reception of works of art (Gell, 1998).

Art is an identitary consumption practice For the collectors the possess of art is a communicative medium for an immaterial consumption of social status and prestige.

For the general public, the accessibility to art, through museums, exhibitions, events, democratises and makes possible this consumption practice.

For both of them the consumption of arte is more than mere and passive fruition but a practice to participate the “aura” of art. << Barbara Kruger

FROM ART TO AESTHETICS for an art “in action”

MIRCEA CANTOR, LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING, TIRANA, 2003

the aesthetic perspective arts have a “cold polarity”, self‐referred, and a warm polarity, that is the one that crosses the borders of social behaviours and worlds.

This second aspect is called “aesthetic action” and is marking the difference from art to court, being an aesthetic action prone to expand in a denser and blur effect (Menna, 1968).

Coherently, Menna proposes an “aesthetic perspective”, conceived not as a contemplative action, but as a way to act within a situation to understand and transform it, thus in order to make dialogue politics, technique and aesthetic. << Eva Brunner Szabo, Gert Tschögl | Museum of memories , Calaf, 2000

aesthetics from performative to conformative This aesthetic dimension of action and practice seems more able to dialogue with the social and politic practices than institutional interventions do: for its attention to the process (the performance) and probably being not deliberately addressing the achievement of results but simply the enabling of behaviours, the aesthetic action results to be more effective in turning performances in performative actions, able to produce or permanently change a form or a context, to enable expressions, to create community, to become a cohesion and integration factor. << Add on (http://www.add‐on.at )

AESTHETICS OF INNOVATION the role of aesthetics and the modalities in which it “functions” in the settlement of the innovation

drivers of innovation

design driven forms of innovation

technology languages behaviours

> new forms‐function (adoptation) > new forms‐ meanings (signiUication) > new forms‐process (enabling)

aesthetics of innovation Our proposal is based on a triad of interactions among aesthetics (art) and innovation (design) that identiUies, as possible replicable processes: technological aesthetics (driven by new technologies and leading to new forms‐function through languages and behaviors), symbolic aesthetics (driven by new languages and leading to new forms‐meaning through technologies and behaviors) relational aesthetics (driven by new behaviours and leading to new forms‐process through languages and technologies).

technological aesthetics When technology is the driver for a change, according to De Kerckhove, art is a “corrective” in elaborating new strategies and interpretations (languages, behaviours) of these new technologies and their representations; similarly, according to Carmagnola art “translates in forms the technological essence of our time”. paradigm: “objecti=ication” (Hustwitt, 2009) Super design: elazioni/afUinità/ibridazioni linguistiche e metodologiche con altre discipline artistiche (Petroni, 2008) hyper design: design and imagination at Shanghai Biennal 2006

technological aesthetics

new forms­ function (from art…)

action (paradigm: objectiRication)

images object spaces

Alteration ibridation

Johann‐ Johannsson

Decostruction/reconstruction Gordon Matta Clark

deformation trasformation Rachel Whitered

reparation

Gordon Matta Clark

technological aesthetics

new forms­ function (… to design)

action (paradigm: objectiRication)

communication product interiors

alteration ibridation Decostruction/reconstruction

Anna Ter Haar www.pem.org/sites/ibc/

deformation trasformation Pieke Bergmans

reparation Liliana Ovalle

symbolic aesthetics When a new language is the driver for change, the Return of the Real (Hal Foster, 1996) is the reference for meanings that go beyond Uiction paradigm: re­econtextualisation

symbolic aesthetics

new forms­ meanings ( from arts…)

action (paradigm: re­contextualisation)

images object spaces

Citations simulations/Uiction

narrations Matthieu Laurette

Liam Gillik

translation/interpretation

intermediation

John Armleder

Gordon Matta‐Clark

symbolic aesthetics

new forms­ meanings (… to design)

action (paradigm: re­contextualisation)

communication product interiors

Citations

Dubini

simulations/Uiction

narrations

Anke Weiss

Tom Price

translation/interpretation

intermediation

Forma fantasma

Tom Price

relational aesthetics when the drivers for change are new behaviors, art uses its participative and diffusive skill to adopt or develop those techniques and languages in order to enable the new behaviors "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space”: artists produce social models (Bourriaud, 2000) paradigm: post­production Artists who use existing forms, selecting, interpreting, mixing, reproducing and including them in their work through new protocols of representation: artist produce forms and objects informed by other objects ‐ using forms ‐ using objects ‐ using images ‐ the society as repertory of forms <<Félix González‐Torres << Rirkrit Tiravanija

relational aesthetics

new forms­ processes (from art…)

action (paradigm: post­production)

use of: images object spaces

incorporation addition John Miller

ricombination (mixage, trickster)

Douglas Gordon

Lucy Orta

Jorge pardo

dominique gonzalez foerster,

Carlos Garaicoa

relational aesthetics

new forms­ processes (…to design)

action (paradigm: post­production)

communication product interiors

incorporation Frank Willems

Adami

Tim Vinke

addition

Jurgen Bey

ricombination (mixage, trickster)

Peter Marigold

conclusion art as open­ended” repertory of forms function, meaning and process for design from the use value of aesthetic elements (images, object, spaces) to the aesthetics (technological, symbolic, relational) of use value

thanks eleonora.lupo@polimi.it http://designview.wordpress.com