Critical Design

Critical Deisgn Conversations about the Work of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby Copyright Š 2011 Eric Friedensohn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic of mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission of the publisher or author, except where permitted by the law.

Printed in the United States of America.

Designed, printed and bound by Eric Friedensohn enfdesigner@gmail.com

Conversations about the work of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby

This book is dedicated to Michael D. Glaser, father of the Product Design program at Drexel University.

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Introduction What is Critical Deisgn

EVIDENCE DOLLS What if we could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers?

DESIGNS FOR FRAGILE PERSONALITIES IN ANXIOUS times How can psychological realism be applied to designed objects?

TECHNOLOGICAL DREAMS SERIES, NO. 1: ROBOTS What if robots were designed from an emotional point of view?

DESIGNS FOR AN OVERPOPULATED PLANET: FORAGERS How should we direct food design research?

DO YOU WANT TO REPLACE THE EXISTING NORMAL? How will products change when our everyday needs change?

DUNNE & RABY and the rca Where is critical design going?

Table of Contents

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Teddy Blood Bag by Dunne & Raby

What is Critical Design?

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evidence dolls

2005

What if we could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers?

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“ Four women told us about their lovers, past, present and imagined, and speculated on the implications of DNA dating.” ­—Anthony Dunne _

AD: Valerie Guillaume, a curator at the Pompidou Centre was very keen to have something about critical design in an exhibition she was curating so she commissioned the project. We had already sketched out the idea in BioLand and we thought this was a nice opportunity to take the idea further and also explore how it could be used to produce some new insights.

In the projects we ran with students about biotech, there would always be something to help men avoid leaving DNA behind so that they wouldn’t be implicated in future paternity cases. We, well Fiona, thought the woman’s perspective should be represented too. We were inspired by the story of a famous English actress who hired a detective to rummage through an ex-lover’s bin looking for material that could be analysed for DNA and used to prove he was the father of her baby. The detective found some dental floss and it provided enough DNA to prove he was the father.

Fiona thought this process should be made a little easier. The doll is effectively a storage device for DNA from a woman’s various lovers. It would be collected in the form of toenail clippings, hair and other bodily materials. Later, if necessary, they could be analysed. The material is stored in a S,M or L penis drawer. The dolls can be personalised to represent each lover. For the exhibition we worked with ÅBÄKE who interpreted the interview transcripts through drawings on each doll. the interviews with the women were included in the exhibition. The final installation consisted of 25 dolls (with illustrated surfaces) sitting on a large table, 4 DVD players showing edited interviews with the women, and 55 blank dolls on shelves.

D.Day: Le Design Aujourd’hui - Centre Pompidou, France, 2005

The final installation consisted of 25 dolls (with illustrated surfaces) sitting on a large table, 4 DVD players showing edited interviews with the women, and 55 blank dolls on shelves.

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designs for fragile personalities in anxoius times 2005

How can psychological realism be applied to designed objects?

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“ The project focused on irrational but real anxieties such as the fear of alien abduction or nuclear annihilation.” —AD

Design and the Elastic Mind - MoMA, New York, 2008

Wouldn’t it be nice... Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2007

Designs for Fragile Personalities in Uncertain Times, England & Co, London, UK, 2004

Designing Critical Design - Z33, Hasselt, Belguim, 2007 17

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AD: Lot’s of discussion! We’ve known each other for a long time now and we’re always talking about ideas for potential collaborations. Funding is always an issue though, and the lack of it prevents us from doing more work together. Fragile Personalities was funded through sales of earlier projects and the new electronic objects are funded through a small Arts Council grant and our own funds, again, generated through sales of previous projects.

When we’re working together it is a very fluid process. We meet, talk, sketch, visit people (experts), read, and slowly, very slowly, ideas begin to emerge.

Usually they exist as verbal descriptions before they have a physical form. Then we meet to sketch and show each other material samples and at some point we stop designing and begin the fabrication process. Again, during this process the designs continue to evolve in relation to technical constraints and new opportunities.

The poses encourage the occupant to feel in control, proud and comfortable, the opposite of a foetal position.

Hideaway Furniture is for people who are afraid of being abducted. Each opens in a surprising way without disturbing objects displayed on its surface. There are three versions.

Hideaway Type 2 is in the permanent collection of Frac Ile-de-France, Paris. The Huggable Atomic Mushroom is in B&W Photography: Jason Evans the permanent collection of MoMA, New York.

Prototypes for Huggable Atomic Mushrooms in the D&R London Studio

“For this project we made a private blog for posting our research: Examples of work by others, strange devices we like, essays, articles, etc, etc. When we met we talked each other through the things we had posted individually.

Luckily we have a shared idea of what’s interesting and settle on topics fairly easily. All three of us are interested in the psychological and reflective role objects can play in our lives, and in exploring new possibilities for everyday products.” ­—-D&R 15

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technological dreams series: no. 1, robots 2007

What if robots were designed from an emotional point of view?

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20 Designing Critical Design - Z33, Hasselt, Belguim, 2007

Photos of robots by Per Tingleff 21

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designs for an overpopulated planet: foragers 2009

How should we direct food design research?

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AD: We made Foragers last year in response to a brief about the future of farming put out by Design Indaba in South Africa. At the time, there was a lot of discussion in the U.K. media about the fact that there actually isn’t enough land to grow enough food, using current production techniques, to meet the needs of the population forecast for 2050, and that government and big business were planning to work together to discuss how this might be addressed. We thought, well, that’s not going to lead to anything very imaginative or probably even to anything that’s in the best interest of citizens. So we started to wonder what other ways there might be of opening this discussion up.

At the time, we were already quite interested in synthetic biology and DIY bio-hackers. Then, in the process of researching alternatives to farming, we came across foragers—people who gather food rather than cultivating it. Slowly, all these things started to come together and we imagined this group of people who would reject industrial and governmental approaches to food shortages and instead would use DIY synthetic biological processes combined with the spirit of foraging to redesign themselves to different degrees, so that they could digest non-human foods like grass and cellulose and so on.

Once we defined this group of people that hybridized existing trends, and we knew what the technology would be, we started to explore what would be the most compelling way to visualize it, so that it would be an interesting thing to think about and speculate upon. We wanted to get people thinking and talking about whether it’s actually worth looking at how we might modify ourselves to increase the range of foods that we can digest, or whether we should limit our focus to different ways of using land or designing plants to produce more food.

Augmented Digestive System

Tree processors

“ What if we could extract nutritional value from non-human foods using a combination of synthetic biology and new digestive devices inspired by digestive systems of other mammals, birds, fish and insects?” —AD

Algae digesters 25

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AD: I wish there was no lack!

We feel there always has to be some kind of usefulness to our work. The realm in which we see it being useful is in creating discussions and opening up new perspectives on ongoing debates.

That causes us lots of problems. People are comfortable funding artistic collaborations with scientists that result in clear cultural outcomes or even critical commentary. There are also wellestablished funding models for innovation—applying technologies and coming up with new products.

But when it comes to designing ways to look at the impact of different technologies or ideas on everyday life, it’s very hard to identify where the best source of funding would be.

AD: We’d love to work in the food space again—it’s absolutely fascinating. Funnily enough, my college thesis project, more than twenty years ago, had to do with redesigning chocolate from an interaction point of view. The whole form of the chocolate—how it collapsed in your mouth and how you held it and so on—was designed so that it would respond to introverted personality types and extroverted personality types. It was all about designing food so that the way you would eat it would correspond to your nature.

Ever since then, I’ve always been curious about food and the role that design can play in it, but very few opportunities have come up to do more work like that.

Scenario Photos: Jason Evans

The glimpses that gave me into designing sweets chocolate bars and things like that—on a mass industrial scale was absolutely fascinating, because so much goes into the sensation of it. Very little goes into the nutritional value of the food, and that’s an issue, but the actual experience of eating industrially produced sweets can be very well designed. I think it would be lovely to take that expertise and apply it to more nutritional food sources, to make them more enjoyable to eat or look at or interact with in any way. I think there’s a lot of scope to bring the two together.

So far, for us, it’s come from one-off commissions, usually related to festivals or exhibitions and things like that. Although through the Royal College of Art, where I teach, we’re beginning to work with large companies like Intel, applying this sort of thinking in a more limited way to technology-related issues, such as exploring the future of money, for example, if it becomes completely digitized.

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AD: At the very beginning, Fiona talked to some scientists to get a sense of what might be possible one day using synthetic biology, how far away different technologies might be, and what kind of animal digestive systems could potentially be adapted and re-engineered.

But once we had done some basic research into the general plausibility of the ideas, we wanted to shift into a more imaginative space so that we could focus on communicating the idea rather than being constrained by calculating every last detail about the particular quantity of bacteria would you need to break down a particular quantity of each material over a particular length of time in order to produce a particular amount of energy. Our brief was to come up with something that would feed into a debate, and we wanted to keep that debate on the level of ideas rather than fact checking.

Molds for various foraging devices 27

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We always like to talk with scientists to check the edges of reality. We like to know what’s possible, what might be possible but isn’t yet, and even what’s impossible but imaginable. Thus far, we haven’t worked closely with scientists trying to apply their research or even in collaboration with them, although that’s something we might do in the future.

But we are very conscious of the difference between designing a prototype and designing a provocation.

In fact, we try to build into the aesthetics of our designs clues that they’re not real. Everything’s quite abstracted and simplified, so, for example, you can tell that there are straps and you must wear it on your back, but there are no buckles or fiddly little things. We are interested in aiming our designs at people’s imaginations, beliefs, and values and playing with that level of interaction, rather than trying to have an idea that we believe is right, building a prototype to prove that it works, and then trying to find funding to distribute it throughout society.

In that latter scenario, the objects that we’d make would have to exist within and thus conform to our current worldview, and we’re more interested in trying to challenge those beliefs and values. That’s why our ideas are designed in a way that signals that they’re aimed more at the imagination, like playful thought experiments.

Mold for tree processor

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do you want to replace the existing normal?

2009

How will products change when our everyday needs change?

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Rather than tell time, the watch reports information about current dangers, such as the political stability of the country the wearer is in or the current risk of contracting the H1N1 “swine flu” virus. The user presses the object’s gray rubber nipple into his or her ear to receive an audio message. The watch employs the “normal” language of design to comment on the cultural effects of secrecy, security, and fear.

Why Design Now? Smithsonian, Copper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, NY, USA.

“ Do you want to replace the existing normal?

This is a piece of poetry when it pops up on the screen unexpectedly. And its very interesting as it is exactly what we have been specialising all our time through what we attempt to do in design. Design sits entirely in the normal, the banal, the popular, the trivial, the norm is the starting point for every project. The norm is always there to keep a point of reference no matter how strange the project might seem.” —FR

The Statistical Clock checks the BBC website for technologically mediated fatalities: car, train, plane, etc, and pulls them into a database. Each technology has its own channel. The clock checks it every minute or so, and each time it finds a new one it speaks it out loud... 1, 2, 3, etc.

Wouldn’t it be nice... Zurich, 2008 33

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“ Design can only follow our needs and desires, it can’t create them. If our desires remain unimaginative and practical, then that is what design will be. In this project we are hoping for a time when we will have more complex and subtle everyday needs than we do today. These objects are designed in anticipation of that time.

Patiently waiting. Maybe they are utopian.”

—AD

S.O.C.D (Sexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is for people who enjoy porn but feel a bit guilty watching it, or think that it’s wrong. You put a DVD into the black box and hold onto the rubber part of the object which is shiny and soft, a bit like a dildo.

The metal bands sense your level of arousal and pixelate the image accordingly in real time. The more aroused you become, the bigger the pixel size, and the more distorted the sound gets. If you let go the film goes blank. To enjoy your video, you need to hold on but try to de-arouse yourself.

S.O.C.D. - Wouldn’t it be nice... Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2007

A small pressure gauge indicates that it is operational. It could go off at any moment. When the planets are in the appropriate configuration, the airbag is filled. An explosion of pinkness. It takes seconds, like an airbag in a car crash. Voluminous.

Fantastic. A triclinic crystal: a form without 90 degree angles. Perhaps no one sees it, only the aftermath. A landscape of shocking florescent pink rip-stop fabric in sharp fractal forms, strewn across the living room floor. When the owner returns home, they decide what it means and what to do. It’s a sign. It could be about love, money, or career.

It means having an explosive piece of furniture to live with which could go off in a pink eruption at any time, associated with something that is important to its owner, however arbitrary and secret. It knows and when it goes off it means that something significant has changed and it will prompt a decision or demand a promise to be kept. It’s a strange and beautiful concept which has a great open-endedness about it in many ways.

Models for Alignment

Designing Critical Design - Z33, Hasselt, Belguim, 2007 35

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dunne & raby and the rca since 1989

Where is critical design going?

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Design interactons interim Show 39

40 Books written by Dunne & Raby

Dunne & Raby in their London studio library.

" I guess we like pandering to the bad side of people, the side that is complicated, contradictory, irrational. And we're really curious if you filled up a room or a space with objects that reflected those values, how that material world would look different from the material world that surrounds us now." —AD 41

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"We spend a lot of time looking in newspapers for the odd story thats about real things that happen, that's just窶ｦunexpected, and we constantly collect them, continually." 窶認iona Raby

“ I think when we were discussing critical design, we thought it was the opposite of affirmative design. We thought affirmative reinforces how things are, and critical design is a way of offering up alternatives, suggesting that there might be different ways.”

—Anthony Dunne

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BIBLIOGRAPHY