Lingua Franca: The 2014 D-Crit Conference

SVA Theatre 333 West 23rd Street New York City

dcrit.sva.edu/conference2014 @dcritconference #dcrit2014

1

INTRODUC TION their Loads, open their Sacks and hold Conversation for an hour together; then put up their Implements, help each other to resume their Burdens, and take their Leave.

Seventeenth-century pirates, merchants, and diplomats were the original inventors of lingua francas—or bridge languages that enabled communication between those who did not share a mother tongue. During the Age of Exploration, it was these professional peripatetics who had the greatest need for a trans-national linguistic currency, in order to trade goods and information with people all across the Levant.

Today, in the world of design, it is we critics who attempt the linguistic universalizing. We travel and trade among design’s disciplines and exchange information between its constituents.

We explore both the elevated climes of experimental design and the noisy lanes of the popular product marketplace. The role of design criticism, as we see it here at D-Crit, is to stake out a common language so that everyone can name and question the manmade things that surround us and impinge on our reality in such profound ways.

Historically, efforts to come up with a new common language have not been particularly fruitful. One hundred and thirty years after its invention, Esperanto languishes in the innovation landfill, along with the Sinclair C5 and rollerblading. Despite Polish physician L.L. Zamenhof’s optimistic goal of global peace and understanding, his late-nineteenth-century international auxiliary language has only attracted only a cultish following and remains little more than an academic curiosity.

Eighteenth-century Irish essayist Jonathan Swift famously satirized the arbitrariness, unwieldiness, and cultural specificity of any attempt to reinvent the communication wheel.

In his book Gulliver’s Travels, the protagonist encounters a “Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever,” in order to save time and oxygen. The scheme was premised on the fact that, “since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on.” Gulliver was interested to meet adopters of the scheme struggling to tote around all the things they might need for a conversation:

As Gulliver waxes lyrical about the benefits of this invention, Swift deftly undercuts his dupe with irony, revealing his real views in the exact opposite of all that Gulliver says.

Swift’s linguistic dexterity further reinforces his views on the superiority of richly nuanced language over the ridiculous imprecision of proposed alternatives: Another great Advantage proposed by this Invention, was that it would serve as a Universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations, whose Goods and Utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their Uses might easily be comprehended. And thus Ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign Princes or Ministers of State to whose Tongues there were utter Strangers.

This would appear to present us with a not insignificant challenge. How do we find a way of talking about design that makes sense to regular people, whose mother tongue may not be design-ese, but without flattening out our rigorous research or rounding the edges of our distinctively hued perspectives? Can we plumb the potential of an encompassing and popular “lingua franca” while retaining our sensitivity to the texture of a particular language?

At D-Crit we hope to reach as broad an audience as possible for our investigations into design, its contexts, and consequences. The way toward this critical fluency, we suggest, is to strive to convey our unique, and deeply researched, viewpoints, not by resorting to design Esperanto or to Swiftian “artificial converse,” but by developing them with conviction, and expressing them with precision and panache.

Thank you for being here today to help celebrate design discourse in all its accents.

Alice Twemlow Chair, SVA Department of Design Research, Writing & Criticism

I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs, like Peddlers among us; who when they met in the Streets would lay down 2

SCHEDULE

12:30 1:00 1:15 1:45

Doors open Alice Twemlow, Opening Remarks Nicholson Baker Discussion: Nicholson Baker with Alice Twemlow

2:00 Justin McGuirk, Opening Remarks 2:15 Emily Stokes-Rees: “Museumizing the National Imagination: Reflections on Citizenship and Time Traveling”

2:45 Anne Quito: “Designing a Country from Scratch: Nation Branding in South Sudan” 3:00 Anna Marie Smith: “Materializing Miniature Living: The Rise of Tiny Houses and Micro-Apartments” 3:15 Discussion: Emily Stokes-Rees, Anne Quito, and Anna Marie Smith, moderated by Justin McGuirk 3:30 Coffee Break 3:45 Aric Chen: “Building a Visual Culture Museum from Zero: The World, from Another Point of View” 4:15 Nawar N. Al-Kazemi: “Khaleeji Design: An Imported Aesthetic?”

4:30 Sandra Nuut: “Curating Critically: New Forms of Fashion Exhibiting” 4:45 Amanda Vallance: “Thinking Through Chinese High Fashion Design” 5:00 Discussion: Aric Chen, Nawar N. Al-Kazemi, Sandra Nuut, and Amanda Vallance, moderated by Justin McGuirk 5:15 Coffee Break 5:30 Peter Lunenfeld: “Your Client is The Future” 6:00 Lynda Decker: “Sex Wax on the Subway: Mythology and the Urban Surfer” 6:15 Caterina Francisca: “Designers in White Lab Coats: When Design Meets Scientific Research”

6:30 Discussion: Peter Lunenfeld, Lynda Decker, and Caterina Francisca, moderated by Justin McGuirk 6:45 Closing Remarks 7:30 Reception 3

OPENING REMARKS

1:00

A lic e Twe mlow

Alice Twemlow is founding chair of the Department of Design Research, Writing and Criticism at SVA in New York City. She writes about design for publications including Design Observer, Eye, and The Architect’s Newspaper, and has recently contributed essays to Iconic Designs: 50 Stories about 50 Things (Berg, 2014,) Lolita—Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel in Art and Design (Print, 2013) and The Aspen Complex (Sternberg Press, 2012). She has directed numerous design conferences, and frequently moderates and presents at seminars and conferences, including AIGA Design Educators Conferences, and the MoMA R&D Salon Series. Twemlow has an MA and a PhD from the RCA/V&A Museum History of Design program in London and is currently developing her doctoral thesis about the history of design criticism into a book for MIT Press.

MODERATOR

Ju s t in Mc Gu ir k Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic, and curator based in London. He is the director of Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow. He has been the design critic of The Guardian, the editor of Icon magazine, and the design consultant to Domus, and his writings on design culture range from the architecture of Palestinian refugee camps to the design of electric shavers. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank about the Torre David vertical slum in Caracas.

His book, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture, which documents the emergence of new approaches to building in cities from Bogota to Rio by activist architects, politicians and radical communities, will be published by Verso in June 2014.

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KEYNOTE LECTURE

1:15

Nic hols on B ake r “Wrapping Sentences Around Things”

Sometimes we use words like we use those big square pieces of blank newsprint at Crate & Barrel, folding them around an object to protect it and set it apart from everything else in life’s shopping bag. In this talk, Nicholson Baker offers a brief autobiography by way of these objects—including his father, Best Cartoons from Punch, and the Skippy peanut butter jar—who each taught him something about the beauty of the designed and pen-outlined world.

Nicholson Baker is a celebrated writer of fiction and non-fiction who, through his lingering and meticulously detailed observations of everyday rituals and objects, imbues phenomena with new significance. Baker is the author of numerous books including: The Mezzanine (Granta Books), The Anthologist: A Novel (Simon & Schuster), Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Simon & Schuster), A Box of Matches (Vintage Contemporaries), and The Fermata (Vintage), and he writes about technology, among other topics, for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Guardian. Baker is also an activist for the protection and archiving of newspapers. In 1999, he established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, to rescue old newspapers from destruction by libraries as a result of the microfilming boom of the period. His 2001 book on the topic, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Vintage Books) won a National Book Critics Circle Award.

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GUEST SPEAKER

2:15

Emily Stoke s - Re e s

“Museumizing the National Imagination: Reflections on Citizenship and Time Traveling” Despite frequent assertions that we are living in an era of mass globalization, there has been a startling resurgence of nationalism in many regions of the world.

This talk examines the critical role museum development is playing in processes of national identity construction, particularly in postcolonial contexts. From new building construction to the re-purposing of colonial monuments, and from essentialized narratives to spaces that encourage visitors to dream, representing the national imagination is never a homogenizing process, and whatever form they take, museums are never quite what they seem to be.

Emily Stokes-Rees is a material anthropologist whose research centers on evolving ideas around cultural citizenship and representation in postcolonial Asia. After receiving a doctorate from Oxford in 2007, Stokes-Rees spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, where she spent much of her time hidden away in the collections of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Currently based at Harvard, Stokes-Rees is a resident dean at Cabot House and holds an academic appointment as lecturer in the Anthropology Department, currently teaching courses on “Anthropology in/of the Museum,” “The Material as Culture: Objects, Meaning and the Self,” and a freshman seminar on visual representation. Recent publications include “Recounting History: Constructing a National Narrative in the Hong Kong Museum of History” (National Museums: New Studies from Around the World, 2011) and “Making Sense of a Melange: Representing Cultural Citizenship in Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum” (Museum Anthropology, 2013). Stokes-Rees has worked on a variety of museum projects and exhibitions in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

2:45

A nne Q u i to “Designing a Country from Scratch: Nation Branding in South Sudan”

“We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians,” said Massimo d’Azeglio.

Speaking at the inaugural parliamentary meeting of the newly formed Italian kingdom in 1861, the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia captured the greatest challenge of newly formed modern states: how to create a national identity that would unify a disparate population. In 2011 the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s newest country and the 193rd member state of the United Nations.

The new East African nation comprises of a population of over sixty tribes from five major ethnic groups, speaking sixty indigenous languages across ten states.

As with the Italian republic a century and a half ago, defining its unifying identity became (and remains) South Sudan’s most urgent project. The perceived need for official symbols—such as a flag, bank notes, coat of arms, and a first national building—establishes unique roles for designers and architects during a time of emergence. It’s not often designers get to design a country’s image from scratch.

Using first-person interviews with graphic designers and project managers in South Sudan, this presentation recounts the challenges and opportunities of creating a national corporate identity suite, and explores the politics, aesthetics, and pragmatics of representation at a national scale.

Anne Quito is a design writer and art director. She graduated from Georgetown University with a master’s degree in Visual Culture in 2009 and has spoken at TEDGlobal in Oxford, TEDxPhoenix, AIGA DC, and the CDC about public sector design. Anne was a member of the curatorial team for “Spontaneous Interventions,” presented at the Chicago Cultural Center, and organized a celebrated interactive exhibit at the Museum of Arts & Design called “Take One/Leave One” that was featured in The Atlantic. She is the recipient of the 2013 Maria Popova Scholarship for Homecoming to Purpose and the SVA Henry Wolf scholarship. Her writing has been featured in Designers and Books, Design Observer, Core 77, and a forthcoming book of essays published by the Cooper-Hewitt. At D-Crit, she has written about the neon Pepsi sign in Long Island City, a profile on the brand director of the Museum of Sex, and bouts of ontological discomfort at five-star hotels in Bangkok. She aspires to write the first compendium of national symbols covering all countries around the world.

annequito@gmail.com @annequito

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STUDENT SPEAKER

3:00

A nna Mar ie Smi t h

“Materializing Miniature Living: The Rise of Tiny Houses and Micro-Apartments” The rise in population and subsequent need for adequate housing in cities is changing the housing landscape, specifically in New York City. Based on the 2010 US Census, thirty-three percent of people in New York City live alone. Yet only 1.5% of New York City’s rental housing stock comprises a studio or one-bedroom apartment ready for occupancy. To make matters even more complicated, government policy from the 1980s currently requires the size of a studio apartment be more than four hundred square feet. Tiny houses and micro-apartments, which are living spaces complete with a bed, kitchen, and bathroom, represent what appear to be progressive, sustainable housing options better suited to the reality of our demographic. But their success will be determined by factors including how these spaces are designed, their commercial and political value to policy makers and developers, and, most significantly, the extent to which their inhabitants will embrace them.

Will micro-living provide a viable, cost-effective living option for the changing demographics of the United States? How will designers create scalable housing models that are easily replicated in different contexts? What lifestyle changes must be made in order for downsizing to lead to a better quality of life? This talk explores the future of micro-living, impelled by both the necessity of spatial restraints as well as preference towards a more reductive lifestyle.

Anna Marie Smith is a design researcher with fluency in multiple media platforms. She specializes in social media and has created content for companies including Jola USA and Speak Thunder Films. During her time at D-Crit, Anna Marie’s research topics have ranged from the fashion choices of Swedish pop star Robyn to chickens in Park Slope. Her thesis focused on the architecture of tiny houses in rural America and micro-apartments in New York City. She has conducted research for Metropolis, created a podcast for Design Observer, and blogged for Dwell magazine. She has also received fellowships to attend The Feast Conference and the United Nation Foundation’s Social Good Summit. Anna Marie is currently working on a project that investigates the design of college readiness programs across the nation and is organizing college admission workshops for non-profit organizations. Anna Marie received a BA in Theatre from Davidson College in North Carolina, where she was a recipient of the Staley Scholarship and Dean Rusk grant.

ansmith09@gmail.com @ansmith

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GUEST SPEAKER

3:45

A r ic Che n

“Building A Visual Culture Museum from Zero: The World, from Another Point of View” Located in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ is a museum for visual culture—encompassing twentieth and twenty-first century visual art, design and architecture, and moving image—with a 650,000 square-foot building scheduled for completion in late 2017. An ambitious project being built from scratch, it is a museum with a permanent collection, rooted in Hong Kong, China and Asia, but global in scope. That is to say, it’s a museum for visual culture as seen from an Asian perspective, not a museum for Asian visual culture—a critical distinction. In an increasingly multi-polar world, where discourses and histories are ever more fluid, fragmented, and intertwined—where once-peripheries have become new centers—how can a global museum in Hong Kong contribute to a richer, more diverse discussion?

Aric Chen is curator of Design and Architecture at M+, the new museum for visual culture being built in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, and set to open in 2017. The museum will present twentieth and twenty-first century art, design, architecture, and moving image, from a Hong Kong perspective. Chen previously served as creative director of Beijing Design Week, helping to successfully re-launch that event in 2011 and 2012. Formerly based in New York, Chen has curated and organized numerous exhibitions and projects internationally, at venues such as Design Miami, the Center for Architecture in New York, ExperimentaDesign in Amsterdam, the SaintEtienne International Design Biennale in France, and the Design Museum Holon in Israel. He has been a frequent contributor to publications including The New York Times, Fast Company, GQ, Wallpaper*, Architectural Record, and PIN-UP.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

4:15

Nawar N. A l - K a ze mi “Khaleeji Design: An Imported Aesthetic?”

The twenty-first century is a golden age for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); in many ways its member states are, as Arab affairs commentator Sultan AlQassemi has termed them, “new centers of the Arabian world.”1 His statement refers to a modernizing impulse in countries such as Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, manifested in the construction of grandiose architectural projects as well as attempts to improve educational standards, including design education. In the rush for modernization, and the enthusiasm for global assimilation, local cultural values are being left out of the equation. In institutions that offer design majors, such as the American University of Kuwait, the American University of Sharjah, and Virginia Commonwealth in Qatar, a combination of factors is resulting in the erosion of students’ and instructors’ knowledge of the local culture. Design students in the Gulf region should be empowered to learn about their region’s history, its distinctive design aesthetic, its use of patterns, and Arabic typography and craft skills, for example.

This presentation focuses on the role of design education in re-energizing Khaleeji cultural identity, in a region where design is witnessing an influx of imported identities.

1. Sultan AlQassemi, “Gulf Cities Emerge As New Centers of Arab World,” Al-Monitor, October 8, 2013, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/abu-dhabi-dubai-doha-arab-centers.html.

nalkazemi@gmail.com @Nawar_NAlKazemi

Nawar N. Al-Kazemi’s research interest is in design education in the Arab States of the Gulf Region.

She studied Public Relations and Advertising, with a minor in Graphic Design, at the American University of Kuwait (AUK). After graduation, Nawar interned in creative departments of international and local advertising agencies in Kuwait, including Saatchi & Saatchi, Radius Leo Burnett, and Circus BC. She designed “The White Show,” AUK’s portfolio exhibition of graduating design students in 2010, the same year as she collaborated with designers to establish JDN, a design project dedicated to challenging the status quo and standards of the design field in Kuwait. At D-Crit, Nawar explores the integral role of design education in shaping and solidifying Khaleeji cultural identity in the Gulf countries. As an advocate of design possibilities, she looks forward to working on projects that highlight and discuss the relationship between design and cultural identity.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

4:30

Sandra Nuu t “Curating Critically: New Forms of Fashion Exhibition”

British fashion historian Christopher Breward writes that all fashion exhibitions,― from those displaying specialist dress research and boundary-pushing fashions to blockbuster showcases of mainstream-brands,―have their place in the museum.

Since the Second World War, when costume and textile departments had been established in the major European and American museums, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, museums have been considered the primary venue for exhibitions of fashion design.

And yet there are many manifestations of fashion curation to be found beyond the museum’s walls. Fashion is explored and displayed in galleries, department stores, on city streets, on runways, and also in the non-physical, digital environment. In these expanded conceptions of exhibition space, the various roles of fashion curation—such as research, critique, promotion, and education—can be fully explored outside the confines of the museum and its commercial interests. This presentation will discuss innovative instances of fashion curation and demonstrate the ways in which new critical approaches might provide inspiration and exemplars for museums seeking to escape commercial constraints.

sandra.nuut@gmail.com @sandra_nuut

Sandra Nuut’s research focus combines fashion and curation. She came to D-Crit with a bachelor’s degree in Art History from The Estonian Academy of Arts, and experience as an exchange student at Johannes Gutenberg UniversitätMainz, Germany. Sandra’s first introduction to curatorial work was an internship at the KUMU Art Museum, Estonia in 2009. With her classmates in 2013, she co-curated an experimental exhibition at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, “Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One.” Sandra gained further exposure to design curating through her internship at Moss Bureau in the summer of 2013. Her interest in fashion led her to organize a lecture by the photography critic Vince Aletti as part of the D-Crit Lecture Series and to develop and present (with Caterina Francisca) a paper on fashion photographers Steven Meisel and Steven Klein at the Critique 2013 conference at the University of South Australia, Adelaide.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

4:45

A manda Vallanc e “Thinking Through Chinese High Fashion Design”

If you read the headlines relating to the global fashion industry, you will have noticed that more and more of them concern Chinese high fashion designers. One of these designers—Ma Ke, whose work is characterized by its criticality and visual austerity—was even invited to show at the Paris Haute Couture week in 2008.

This is an extraordinary time in the fashion industry’s history, as a country that was previously known for the production of fashion, is now gaining respect for its authorship of fashion. As the number of Chinese fashion design graduates increases, and as inspirational role models such as fashion designers Wang Yiyang and Uma Wang become more visible, the ubiquitous “Made in China” label is gradually being challenged by the label “Designed in China.” Even more interesting is an emerging ethos in Chinese high fashion design that might be termed Thinking Dao (Thinking The Way). Its tenets—simplicity, “thinkering,” and connectivity—combine to form a more thoughtful, sustainable fashion design practice, which rises above China’s recent heritage as “the world’s garment factory.” This presentation is a spirited speculation about the potential for this Thinking Dao ethos to address issues in the global high fashion industry: time (hyper fast production and consumption cycles); space (disparate production networks); identity (cultural homogenization); and volume (over-production and consumption).

amandavallance@hotmail.com @MuseAV

Amanda grew up in New Zealand, and has worked between New York and Shanghai to accomplish her MFA in Design Criticism. She was the recipient of SVA’s Henry Wolf Scholarship and a Silas H. Rhodes Award. While conducting thesis research on the practices of contemporary Chinese high fashion designers, Amanda interviewed some of China’s most prominent designers, including Wang Yiyang (Zuczug, Cha Gang) and Qiu Hao. Amanda is interested in design and visual culture developments in emergent countries like China, and she promotes and writes about critical fashion design and sustainable business. With undergraduate degrees in business administration (commercial law, marketing, and management) and the arts (design studies and art history), and an eight-year, multi-national career working in brand strategy, brand design, and marketing communications/ advertising management, Amanda aims to continue working in management, research, and contentcreation capacities at the intersection of creativity, culture, and business.

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GUEST SPEAKER

5:30

Pe te r Lune nfe ld “Your Client is The Future”

There are risks to thinking about the future through the lens of design. Such activities can bring us dangerously close to technocratic fantasies of rational utopias, allow us to elide the problems of contemporary life, and even squander our energies in the sheer unlikeliness of it all. Not thinking about the future—both seriously and playfully—can be even worse hubris. One inspiration is the practice of design itself, where designers regularly take on pro-bono work. What would it mean for design to take on The Future as a non-paying client? And might it insist on a “better” Future, to prod a dream client into existence? Drawing from emerging discourses like design fiction, media philosophy, and digital humanities, this Future-as-client model moves us past the defaults of non-toxic inks, recyclable consumables, and walkable cities into deep issues of sustainability, and the very future of design as a human activity.

Peter Lunenfeld, Ph.D, is a professor in the Design Media Arts department at UCLA, and core faculty in the Digital Humanities program.

His books include The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading (2011), winner of the 2013 Dorothy Lee Prize, Digital_ Humanities (co-authored with Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, 2012), USER: InfoTechnoDemo (2005), Snap to Grid (2001), and The Digital Dialectic (2000)—all from MIT Press. Between 2001 and 2005 Lunenfeld founded and directed Mediawork, a multi-award-winning transmedia publishing project, which included: Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel, designed by Denise Gonzales Crisp; Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles, designed by Anne Burdick; Rhythm Science by Paul D. Miller, designed by COMA; and Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling, designed by Lorraine Wild. He has held fellowships at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris, and in the Vectors program at the USC Annenberg Center.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

6:00

Ly nda De c ke r “Sex Wax on the Subway: Mythology and the Urban Surfer”

If it is true, as Roland Barthes postulated, that myth is a communication system, then surfing is a complex one. While a sport, it is also a subculture with its own fashion, language, film, music, and design. Its legend has long been associated with 1960s California; yet, surfers live all around the US. In New York City and its environs, surfing was not much of a phenomenon until 2005 when a law prohibiting it in the Rockaways, New York City’s nearest oceanfront beach, was rescinded.

Surfing in New York often tries one’s patience; there are transportation and equipment storage issues, small waves, and murky, thirty-degree water to contend with.

In spite of these challenges, the sport has experienced tremendous growth in the past five years, especially among the city’s creative class of photographers, graphic designers, and artists. They have set up surf shops, clothing lines, and many new magazines—all bearing traces of a distinct design aesthetic which, with its literary typography and abstract imagery, avoids the typical Californian tropes. This presentation explores the extent to which regionalism might still influence design, and how the emergent surf design ideology may be in the process of re-mythologizing surfing for its new east-coast urban context.

lyndad@deckerdesign.com @lyndadecker

Lynda Decker is creative director of her firm, Decker Design, and works with some of the world’s most admired companies on corporate communications and brand initiatives. Concurrent with establishing her business, Lynda took up surfing, finding renewal in its physicality. Through D-Crit, she has integrated many of her interests, working on numerous multi-platform projects, including podcasting, researching infrastructure in New York City, and scripting a video about a Saturday afternoon in Central Park. Her essay on the idiosyncrasies of working in the building where Edith Wharton was born was published by The Mount, the blog for the Edith Wharton Foundation. Her D-Crit research examines Southern California surf culture in post-war America, and explores myth-making and the influence of regionalism on design—particularly in New York’s nascent urban surf community. Lynda now incorporates critical thinking and writing into her firm’s methodology, to improve the way large organizations approach their design initiatives.

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STUDENT SPEAKER

6:15

C a te r ina Franc i s c a

“Designers in White Lab Coats: When Design Meets Scientific Research” Increasing numbers of designers are working in the realm of biological research, creating speculative and critical research-based design projects in an effort to encourage the public to actively participate in discussion of scientific advances and the ethical issues that surround them. And yet, as bio-artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr write, the exact function and responsibility of a designer within areas of scientific research is under-scrutinized.1 This presentation examines some key transdisciplinary research and speculative design projects, such as Conflict: Rejection/ Attraction by Olga Noronha, Biophilia: Organ Crafting by Veronica Ranner, and The Immortal by Revital Cohen, that have engaged with the human body as a material, a medium, and a site for critical intervention. It argues for a definition of—and more serious guidelines for—the role of a designer within scientific research that concerns living organisms.

1. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, “Towards a New Class of Being: The Extended Body,” Artnodes, November 2006, 6:1.

caterinafrancisca@gmail.com @CaterinaMAF

Caterina Francisca moved to New York City in 2011 to study Design Criticism at SVA, after completing her undergraduate degree in Interior Design at Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Turin, Italy. In 2012, she interned with architect and RISD assistant professor Eduardo Benamor Duarte, helping to produce an exhibition project for the international design event “Wanted Design NYC.” In the same year, she was research intern for Domus’ 2012 Design School Guide. Caterina’s essay about contemporary fashion design trends was awarded “Student Notable” in the Writing and Commentary section of the 2013 Core77 Design Awards. She co-presented the paper “The Design Evolution of the Generic and Adaptable Body in Steven Meisel’s and Steven Klein’s Fashion Photography” at the Critique 2013 conference held at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. Caterina is interested in the many ways that design projects impact their audiences, and her current research negotiates between the disciplines of design, science, and technology.

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THESIS EXTRACT

A nne Q u i to “Brand Politic: Contextualizing Design’s Superpowers in Emergent States” Juba, South Sudan, April, 2011—There was no time to waste. After a nationwide referendum resulted in a resounding 98.83% affirmative vote for independence from Sudan, the newly appointed South Sudan officials had less than six months to design a nation. With the declaration of independence ceremony set for July 9, there was a long to-do list, and near the top was to design the national coat of arms.

The South Sudan coat of arms comprises of an eagle and a shield over a spade and a spear. “It’s a fish eagle,” explains Hakim, a graphic artist and manager at the Juba County printing press. Hakim was a member of the technical committee handpicked by the minister of culture tasked to select, refine, and finalize the state emblem.1 The forty-something pressman with an affable smile was wearing a simple white button-up shirt, his only accessory being a plastic-coated commemorative pin bearing the South Sudanese coat of arms. He wears it every day, he told me, touching the pin on his shirt pocket just below his heart.

“The fish eagle is powerful. It can pick up a small crocodile with his claws. It has great vision and can see from afar,” Hakim says, taking off the pin so I can inspect its design closely.

The choice of motif is intriguing: A bird of prey often mistaken for a raptor, the fish eagle is a kleptoparasite that feeds by stealing food from other birds. I ask Hakim about its symbolism. Hakim ignores my question. I bring up the fact that the fish eagle is actually Zambia’s national bird, and is used in their own seal as well as in Namibia’s. Did they consider other animals for the emblem? What about the bull? (I recalled seeing a billboard painted on the wall of our camp with the words: White

Bull Beer: The Taste of a New Nation).

“This was what the majority liked,” Hakim explained. “Ultimately, the vice president decided. And that beer is from South Africa, not South Sudan,” he added.

According to Hakim, the central shield was the most debated design element.

South Sudan is a nation composed of ten states with more than sixty tribal groups, and so the design on the shield could not resemble any markings from any one tribe too closely. The challenge was to find a pattern that was neutral yet meaningful—an inclusive and unifying symbol for all. Working 24/7 in a suite at the Sahara Hotel in Juba, the nine-member committee huddled around a computer loaded with CorelDraw, turning around the several required versions of the design as rapidly as possible. They bonded over long nights away from their families, sequestered in the modest space that had become the design nerve center leading to the July 9 independence ceremony.

At every juncture, all twenty-eight cabinet ministers were required to comment—essentially to art direct. “Drop the wings… turn the head to the left…” When designer and decision-maker share authorship, consensus is often elusive. The politics of aesthetics is a loaded discussion.

After weeks of debate, the National Legislative Assembly ratified the final design in June, with only four weeks until Independence Day. But there was no time to celebrate. There was still a long list of official documents, medals, passports, letterhead, business cards, signage, and other communication materials to prepare.

From an outsider’s point of view, there is nothing remarkable about the design of the South Sudan coat of arms. It looks

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Design Checklist for New Nations: A Projected Priority List

formulaic, almost a non-design design. A survey of existing coats of arms testified to the ubiquity of the eagle-shield-cartouche combination.2 The trope is so commonplace that it looks ready-made. It was the graphic design equivalent of an instant meal.

In hindsight, I realize that I had been asking the wrong questions all along. As a critic of design, I had a myopic obsession with the emblem’s lack of graphic distinction. It was not going to win any design awards, I thought. But looking back, this was not the creative assignment during the time of emergence. The very fact that the coat of arms has made South Sudan look like a legitimate nation is enough—a high achievement in design and world affairs.

Through creating an array of symbols that projects nationhood, South Sudan has successfully staked a claim on a territory, earned representation on a global stage, and bought themselves time to continue the debate about their national identity.

As we say goodbye, I ask Hakim if he likes the final design. He nods, deftly slipping the button back on his shirt pocket without looking. “I’m very proud to have been part of the process. It’s a story I can tell my grandchildren,” he beamed, his eyes visibly welling with emotion.

• Choose an official name.

• Disseminate an official map.

• Design a flag.

• Compose a national anthem.

• Choose a capital city.

• Design a coat of arms.

• Print official letterhead, stationery, business cards, and correspondence cards for departments.

• Design and print currency and banknotes.

• Update signage on all government buildings.

• Obtain International Dialing Code from the International Telecommunications Union.

• Obtain Internet Domain Extension from the International Organization for Standardization.

• Launch national website.

1. A nationwide contest was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage in March 2011.

The Ministry received twenty-six entries, including a submission from the artistically inclined health minister, whose design was not selected.

Chol Anei Ayii took the first prize, Moses Kur Akech second, and Mark Mabior won the third.

Ayii later sued the government for defaulting on the five-thousand-dollar cash prize.

2. An updated visual gallery of national coat of arms is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Gallery_of_country_coats_of_arms

***

Commemorative pin bearing the South Sudanese coat of arms.

Photo by Anne Quito, 2013.

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THESIS EXTRACT

A nna Mar ie Smi t h “Materializing Miniature Living: The Rise of Tiny Houses in Rural America and Micro-Apartments in New York City” It takes a unique mindset to live in a micro-apartment. When I asked The New York Times Real Estate reporter and editor Constance Rosenblum about her thoughts on small living quarters, she responded, “That’s only going to work for a certain type of person.”1 As someone who has interviewed hundreds of people about their definition of home, I expected her response to be more optimistic, especially since micro-living could be a feasible solution to New York City’s housing crisis. Rosenblum highlighted that the only kind of person who can survive in a micro-apartment is someone who doesn’t own anything. This got me thinking: What type of person does it take to live in a tiny house? And what obstacles, both psychological and physical, must they overcome to make this living choice a reality?

In the end, my conversations with architects, city planners, and residents of small spaces centered around how to design a space that was suitable for micro-living, detailing floor plans, amenities, and the future of urban planning. But few focused on designing for the inhabitant. Smallspace homes will figure prominently in the future of our urban housing landscape, and designers must work on designing not only the residential structure but also the person who will reside there.

In designing for the small-dwelling inhabitant, there are several key aspects that must be considered. First, the resident must have a choice in their living situation. We cannot force a person into living in a home the size of a closet against their will and expect the results to be successful. Living in either a tiny house or micro-apartment means a commitment to shedding possessions, keeping a home ultra-organized, and

accepting the fact that amenities will be shared with a larger community.

The resident is likely going to either need to own very few possessions or have access to a storage space. Most people own objects that have been passed down as heirlooms or possessions that are in some way valuable to them, meaning they will need somewhere to keep things while they are not in use. Considering these living spaces are all less than four hundred square feet, there will likely be a need for storage when people transition into a micro-home.

Small-dwelling inhabitants must have a desire to downsize. And yet Americans have a habit of acquiring more goods than we need or will ever use. For example, according to Cotton Inc.’s Lifestyle Monitor survey in 2008, Americans consumers ages thirteen to seventy owned an average of ninety-two clothing items, not counting underwear, bras, and pajamas; whereas a middle-class worker during The Great Depression had a wardrobe of less than fifteen items.2 In a micro-apartment, there simply is not enough room for excess stuff, so residents must be more selective in shopping choices and learn to limit purchases to things used on a regular basis.

Shared economies are essential to microliving. Inhabitants of micro-apartments will have to embrace collaborative consumption, which requires that our intake of goods and services be based on sharing with others, as opposed to purchasing everything individually. In order for micro-apartments to be successful, we must design systems for sharing resources. This already comes in the form of public lounge spaces, bike storage, and community gardens, but it must extend further.

Designers should ensure residents’ access to necessities like tool kits, non-essential 18

appliances, and extra furniture for special occasions. Even if these things are only available on a rental basis, inhabitants must have access to the things they will be sacrificing when moving into a tiny home. *** The American Dream of owning a big house is changing, and our housing policies and options must adapt to fit the needs of the shifting housing landscape. In the United States, population density does not compare to countries like China and Japan, both of which adopted micro-apartments into the housing vernacular decades ago.

For that reason, American lawmakers and designers have global examples from which to draw when developing our own micro-housing complexes. Outdated housing regulations are preventing cities like New York from expanding housing options, which is a necessity to resolve the growing housing crisis we currently face. Similar laws in rural America limit residents’ options for a sustainable lifestyle. The inhabitants of a micro-apartment or tiny house are ultimately going to determine the success of this lifestyle. Instead of limiting their contribution to the aesthetics of micro-living, designers must negotiate the entire living system and embrace realistic options to give tiny houses and micro-apartments a chance.

These dwellings may seem small, but their impact on American housing landscapes could be tremendous.

Filmmakers Christopher Smith and Merete Mueller in front of the 130-square foot Tiny House that they built from scratch in the Colorado mountains, as part of their documentary TINY: A Story About Living Small. Photograph by Kevin Hoth.

1. Constance Rosenblum, personal interview by Anna Marie Smith, September 17, 2013, New York, NY. 2. Virginia Postrel, “Saved by the Closet.� Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2010.

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THESIS EXTRACT

Nawar N. A l - K a ze mi “Modernity and Identity in the Gulf: The Role of Design Education” The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States are competing to set the tone for modern Arabia and multifaceted social transformations in its urban landscape, architecture, and education. As a result design in this region is either purely Western-influenced, or the product of superficial attempts by local as well as international designers to engage with Gulf culture and heritage. Examples of the latter are found in the growing numbers of designs which arbitrarily incorporate Arabic calligraphy or traditional motifs such as Sadu weaving. These include the Duraibah brand in Saudi Arabia and logo designs in the UAE and Qatar, defined by attributes like the color gold or the silhouette of a horse. This research argues that this paradox is exacerbated by the design education system in these Gulf States.

With the rise of design education, specifically in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which started in the late 1990s and in Kuwait in 2006, the price of Western domination within the education system at large was revealed, both in approach and content. My research examines design education’s obvious lack of emphasis on the region’s rich history and distinctive culture, resulting in Gulf-native design students’ deficient knowledge of their own cultural environment. As such, the region’s authentic identity essentially remains obsolete amidst the hegemony of foreign influence.

As a result of my analysis of curricula and syllabi used in the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar’s MFA Design department, as well as the College of Architecture, Art, and Design at the American University of Sharjah and the American University of Kuwait, it became clear that the principles of Arabic type are

not taught as core requirements to design students, and that the visual language studied in history classes is not one that originates from the region or the Middle East.

The disregard for the unique culture and heritage of the GCC States is not confined to educational settings. Design is used as an expression of Gulf countries’ identities, and is therefore inextricably linked to self-definition, not only on the regional scene, but ultimately on the international one as well. The role of local design is colossally misunderstood by the region’s decision-makers, however, a fact which is reflected in designers’ shallow engagement with cultural identity, such as their constant use of the Arabesque in interior spaces as well as product designs as a representation of Arabia. Jean Baudrillard’s ideas about the ways in which cultural expressions are depicted using elements that are not related to the culture are evident in Gulf States.1 It is time for design institutions to start reevaluating their curricula. VCUQ MFA Design faculty member Thomas Modeen asserts that in some instances it is hard to apply change since operations in some institutions require an overwhelming amount of bureaucracy.2 Nevertheless, it is vital for the quality of education that institutions realize the importance of such an overhaul. Design schools should involve local design professionals in the educational realm, to interact with students and address issues in the profession from local designers’ perspectives. There must also be a conscious effort to invite local Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Emirati designers to panel discussions alongside foreign speakers at public events.

While some institutions are interested in introducing a more Gulf-centric cultural approach to design education, most lack

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determination. Introducing Arabic type classes to the program is a good example of this. Charles Osgood, the American psychologist who developed a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts, asserts in his semantic differential theory that type is more than aesthetic—it communicates values, and measures attitudes and opinions.3 VCUQ alumna Aisha Al Suwaidi argues that unless the instructor speaks the dialect of the Gulf—by either being a native or expert on the region—the process is rendered counterproductive. She further explained, “we [in the Gulf] have a lot of poetry and sayings that originated from within our culture.”4 A faculty member from the Levant or North Africa would not necessarily relate to that and understand it because “it’s a different accent,” she added.5 Despite it being a central component of local signage and advertising design, for example, Arabic typography remains, if it is present at all, merely an elective on the curricula in design schools of the region.

Memory of the Car, by Aisha Al Suwaidi, 2012.

1. Jean Baudrillard and Mark Poster, Selected Writings (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 6–9.

2. Thomas Modeen, personal interview by Nawar N. Al-Kazemi, November 5, 2013.

3. Aisha AlSuwaidi, personal interview by Nawar N. Al-Kazemi, November 2, 2013.

4. Ibid.

5. Charles Egerton Osgood, George J. Suci, and Percy H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 195.

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THESIS EXTRACT

Sandra Nuu t “Exhibiting Fashion: Between Culture and Commerce” The central focus in a fashion exhibition is dress: a design object that reflects era, place, class, and gender. It shows for whom and by whom it was designed, sewn or manufactured, and worn. Although dress was collected in European museums’ textile and costume departments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it did not mean that collecting fashionable European clothing was regarded highly.

Museum officials saw dress—mainly historic costume—as a product of the textile industry. Fashionable dress had negative connotations, and was seen as “vulgar commerciality, valueless, ephemeral, feminine style” by the mainly male museum staff.1 It was only in the 1950s when women became part of the decision-making process at museums, and attitudes about showcasing fashionable garments began to change in Europe as well as in the United States, that what we might recognize as examples of fashion design was collected.2 Real change came with Cecil Beaton’s curatorial work in “Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton,” an exhibition staged in 1971 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, for which Beaton showcased significant design work and contemporary garments. Beaton’s practice differed from Diana Vreeland’s curatorship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, since he was not interested in including celebrity costumes, or celebrating the lives of women who wore elite fashion. Cecil Beaton was concerned with selecting the finest examples of contemporary fashion design (haute couture)— rather than responding to what was merely offered—and in reflecting the making of these designs.3 It was not until 1993 that counterculture clothing entered the institution,

when the Victoria & Albert Museum, under Amy de la Haye’s curatorship, put on a show titled “Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk” in 1994.4 The exhibition showcased objects that the public could relate to. Material objects take on another quality when exhibited in a museum: they become removed from their conventional everyday context, are seen as an exemplar of the culture from which they derive, and therefore serve a new function. These examples of dress objects stand between being appreciated as a culturally significant specimen on display and a common item that might be worn by an exhibition visitor. Pierre Bourdieu wrote that, “Cultural objects, with their subtle hierarchy, are predisposed to mark the stages and degrees of the initiatory progress which defines the enterprise of culture.”5 The garments exhibited within today’s exhibition spaces reflect the diversity of our cultural climate. Aspirational mainstream exhibitions which feature well-known designers include “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” (2011) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to the Catwalk” (2013) at the Brooklyn Museum.

Research-based exhibitions include those

by Judith Clark at the Simone Handbag museum in Seoul, South Korea. In August 2010, Clark started collecting for the museum, and since its opening in 2012, she has displayed historical handbags held by reconstructed mannequin hands that imply the gestures of the era in which they were worn, and therefore push the boundaries of curatorial practice. More radical experiments, where a fashion object is used as a device to communicate a message, can be found in Marit Ilison’s “70 Cotton Smocks,”

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a 2011 fashion show performed at the Design Night Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, that critiqued the contemporary fashion runway, mass media, and production.

The fear of commercialism, a common reaction to most mainstream fashion exhibitions, is indicative of our socio-economic and cultural environment. Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, contrasts the current attitudes with those of the design exhibitions from the 1960s such as the 1962 “Design for Sport” exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art: “Catalogs in the 1950s and 1960s had prices of the showpieces and also detailed information, where you could buy the exhibited cars. This was not critiqued the way it is today. Cars were sculptures on wheels. Commerciality did not have a negative connotation.”6 Today the museum appears to function like the late nineteenth-century department store which, when it was introduced in France, had a significant impact on culture.

The French bourgeoisie identified with, and expressed themselves through, the available fashionable goods. Objects gained value because they represented the material form of their owner’s values, attitudes, and aspirations.7 Today the very act of going to the museum is fashionable. Our capitalist economy influences museums as much as other institutions that compete for their survival. The museum is not solely a cultural archive, but a cultural center open to large audiences, that maintains itself by organizing lectures, conferences, film screenings, and programs, with educational as well as promotional motives. Museum objects are valued intellectually as well as physically, and the museum visitor, eager for knowledge, constructs a fashionable identity through being part of the “elite” crowd.

Exhibiting commercially available objects enhances our tendency to fetishize commodities. Karl Marx observed over one hundred years ago that we never own commodities, but we own the commodities’ value. Today, according to art curator and writer Joshua Simon, “nothing can be owned,―only looked after […] we also

require new ethics for using objects―for taking care, looking after, and watching over them.”8 We buy into materialistic values through the very acts of displaying and viewing objects. The high numbers of exhibition visitors reflect a collective desire to grasp prestige. The consumer, like the exhibition-goer, seeks to define his or her personal identity and status by owning and using commodities that signify something desirable, but also by consuming the exhibitions in which they are displayed.9 The fashionable object that was once seen as irrelevant, not worthy of being part of the museum collections, or not part of our cultural legacy, is now made visible by an expanded and enriched exhibition practice.

1. Lou Taylor, “Doing the Laundry? A Reassessment of Object-based Dress History,” Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Volume 2, Issue 4, 1998, 342.

2. Ibid, 339–343.

3. Amy de la Haye, “Vogue and the V&A Vitrine,” Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Volume 10, Issue 1/2, 2006, 129–130.

4. Lou Taylor, “Doing the Laundry? A Reassessment of Object-based Dress History,” Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Volume 2, Issue 4, 1998, 351.

5. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction—A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge, 1989), 231.

6. Paola Antonelli, SVA MFA Design Criticism seminar for “Exhibition Curation,” The Museum of Modern Art, January 31, 2014.

7. Yunija Kawamura, Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion Volume 10: Global Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 201.

8. Joshua Simon, “Neo-Materialism, Part One: The Commodity and the Exhibition,” e-flux, 2010, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/neo-materialismpart-one-the-commodity-and-the-exhibition, accessed, October 9, 2013.

9. Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety (New York: Random House, Inc., 2005).

Performance view, Marit Ilison, “70 Cotton Smocks,” Design Night Festival, Nisurukkiveski, Tallinn, Estonia, 2011. ©Marit Ilison.

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THESIS EXTRACT

A manda Vallanc e “The Nature and Potentiality of an Emerging Ethos in Chinese High Fashion Design” “This skirt is a complicated piece to design and produce,” Chinese fashion designer Qiu Hao explained to me.1 By the time it is swinging on hot hips along the Shanghai streets, it will have circulated five local textile and garment manufacturing factories.

The designer used a specialized leather-folding technique; the strips of leather were not left with a raw underneath after being laser cut from the hide (as might be seen on a typical mid-Western American cowboy fringed leather jacket), but rather the sides were folded over and pressed down. This creates a jangling needle effect, as the leather strips rustle with a slick, determined sound. And it means the strips won’t soften as they are exposed to grease and moisture over time, because their outer facing surfaces are the treated, outer hide.

The skirt was finished by hand at the QIUHAO studio. There wasn’t a formulaic pattern for how the dangling leather strips were woven through the front of the skirt; the pattern was instead determined by the designer’s eye. It was between this process, and the leather’s treatment, laser cutting, and folding, that the skirt passed through the five production locations. “If you don’t know the story behind these things, you just think ‘okay, it’s a woven leather skirt,’ but we really try to do unique things—to ask for different things,” Qiu Hao said.2 Since the 1990s, Chinese textile and garment manufacturing factories have predominantly been interested in working to deliver to the big quantity, low price model demanded by Western fashion design companies. When Qiu Hao started his prêt-à-porter line Neither Nor in 2001, it was difficult for a small-volume Chinese business like his to even get its clothing designs produced at all.

One big production house in particular, with technically skilled workers and specialist equipment that can produce high-spec designs like Qiu Hao’s, caters to big volume global high fashion brands such as Céline, Nina Ricci, Balenciaga, and Alexander Wang. As of 2014, QIUHAO is the only Chinese fashion design brand that they will do work for, and Qiu Hao has personally worked hard to establish this business relationship. “I re-educate them. So I explain to them what I am doing, what the future will become, and I pay extra money—this is about making them interested in working with my business.”3 The designer even invites influential people from the production house to his fashion shows, to show them explicitly how the innovative production requests he makes materialize. He feels this has been successful in overcoming the skepticism he used to encounter when he made production requests that hadn’t been tried before or copied from Western brands.

To explore Qiu Hao’s approach, I had a discussion with social and cultural professor Thuy Linh Nguyen about her 2011 book The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion. Nguyen’s research is based on thirty Asian-American prêt-à-porter designers who were operating within New York’s fashion industry between 1990 and 2010.

She analyzed how these designers related to the garment workers who produced their goods, identifying family-like connections, which she linked to the success of the Asian-American designers within a brutally competitive globalized economy. Nguyen observed that the designers had, for various reasons, formed intimacies that challenged, what she calls the fashion industry’s logic of distance: “This logic seeks to delink fashion 24

design from garment manufacturing and to render the two as distinct practices.”4 Likewise, in order to get his designs produced, Qiu Hao is squeezing in small orders with factories by developing relationships and by sharing in the creative and innovation process with the garment manufacturers. He is navigating the demands of the fashion industry by engaging in small, sporadic acts of exchange that allow him to access important resources, and therefore he is transforming the typical “market relations” of globalization into “intimate relations” of kin or culture.5 In doing this, he gets business done, but—more importantly, I think—he is educating the production houses on how to innovate, by taking a local, personal approach. He is generating innovation exchange.

1. Qiu Hao, personal interview by Amanda Vallance, Shanghai, January 22, 2014.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Durham and Duke University Press Books, 2010), 9.

5. Ibid.

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Zuczug advertisement, iLook Magazine, January 2014.

THESIS EXTRACT

Ly nda De c ke r “Sex Wax and Subways: Redesigning the Archetypes of California Surf Culture” A teenage girl named Gidget launched an American pop-cultural phenomenon, and the tropes that advertising would co-opt for decades. She also set into motion what would later become a six-billion-dollar manufacturing industry. According to Peter Lunenfeld, author of an essay entitled “Gidget on the Couch,” “The thing to remember is that, since 1957 [when the book was published], surfing as something you buy has overshadowed surfing as something you do. I would hazard that no other activity has ever generated as many products among people who neither know how to do it, nor follow those who do.”1 In 1964, Bruce Brown released the surf documentary The Endless Summer—which celebrated youth and unbridled freedom from the responsibilities of adulthood. Gidget and the Endless Summer were the building blocks of California’s surf mythology. The subsequent mediatization of vivacious, clean-cut teenagers, driving convertibles with surfboards sticking out the back combined with catchy music and beautiful scenery added to the allure.

Why does surfing have an enduring appeal? Walking on water has JudeoChristian resonance. Even without religious overtones, mankind’s relationship with the ocean is fraught with meaning, and has been analyzed by writers, philosophers, and psychologists from Shakespeare to Freud.

Philosophers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant aestheticized the ocean as an example of the sublime—a mix of imponderable vastness, danger, intensity, and beauty tinged with terror. Burke wrote: “Another source of the sublime is infinity […] Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime.”2

Kant associated the mind’s perception of “fear in the face of overwhelming forces of nature” with its concurrent pleasure.3 Freud claimed humans strive to regain primal harmony through risk-taking—the greater the danger conquered, the greater the thrill and sense of oneness with the world. While the combination of these arguments seems to rationalize why surfers find the sport compelling, they fail to fully explain why non-surfers in the larger cultural realm seek affiliation.

Surfing’s countercultural position and emphasis on individuality aligned with the 1960s Cultural Revolution. And yet, as Thomas Frank, author of The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counter Culture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, observes, its radical elements were often edited as its image proliferated and spread: Between the denunciations of conservatives and the fond nostalgia of 1960s partisans, we have forgotten the cosmic optimism with which so many organs of official American culture greeted the youth rebellion. It was this sudden mass defection of Americans from square to hip that distinguished the culture of the 1960s—everything from its rock music to its movies to its generational fantasies to its intoxicants—and yet the vast popularity of dissidence is the aspect of the sixties that the contemporary historical myths have trouble taking into account.4 Corporate marketers embraced counterculture motifs from anti-heroes to flower children to create the concept of hip consumerism. Surfing played a large role in creating these themes. Surfing engages

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viscerally because it is beautiful and graceful. It is youthful and free, yet highly individualistic. Surfing blasted out of the blandness and conformity of the 1950s— iconoclastic, colorful, and musical at a time of great optimism in the United States— before anyone was aware of what would be the darker side of American hegemony.

The civil rights movement, assassinations, the Vietnam War, the riots of 1968, the Watergate scandals, all loomed in the future to irrevocably alter American culture.

John Van Hamersveld was a student in 1964 when he created the iconic Endless Summer poster for filmmaker Bruce Brown. It features silhouetted figures holding surfboards against a fluorescent pink and orange background—silkscreened with inks that had previously only been available to the military for equipment identification. The popularity of the image led to much imitation. As a result, surf posters from the mid-sixties tended to incorporate illustration or super-high-contrast posterized photos with figures in black silhouette against neon-colored backgrounds. Like Van Hamersveld, many of these designers were college students producing their work with equipment available at their schools. Limitations of skill and the equipment probably drove aesthetic choices.

Silkscreen reproduction necessitates the use of flat shapes and figures and the thick black lines simplify color registration.

These same tropes would continue to be used to express California surf culture for another fifty years. Then, in the early twenty-first century, the visual vocabulary of surfing finally began to change through its re-interpretation by New York’s community of designer-surfers.

1. Peter Lunenfeld, “Gidget on the Couch,” The Believer, Vol 6., No. 5, October 2008, 16.

2. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1757, 2008), 64.

3. Philip Shaw, The Sublime (London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 81.

4. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 13.

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WAX Magazine, Issue 3, Summer 2013, image courtesy of WAX, readwax.com.

THESIS EXTRACT

C a te r ina Franc i s c a “Humans By Design: How Design Reconsiders the Human Body as a Material, a Medium, and a Site for Critical Interventions” “As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, it becomes ever clearer that the ultimate, most intimate territory for design is not electronics, or interiors, or furniture, or the web. It is us—our own living, breathing, biological selves,” the British design critic Rick Poynor points out.1 While the topic of human body modification has been regularly discussed in fields like anthropology, technology, and science, the design field is only now starting to pay more attention to the potential of the human body as a material, a medium, and a site for designed intervention.

The exhibitions “Biodesign” in Rotterdam by the design critic William Myers, “Grow Your Own” in Dublin by the British designer, writer, and artist Daisy Ginsberg, and “Out of Hand: Materializing the Post Digital,” by curator Ron Labaco at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, all include the work of designers who engage with genomic modifications, human organ bioprinting, and the design of synthetic organisms in the biosphere.

Additionally, both the Wellcome Collection in London and the Waag Society in Amsterdam show design and art projects where the work relates to the human body in the context of technology and science.

When the British design commentator Alice Rawsthorn reviewed the Wellcome Collection’s “Superhuman” exhibition, she observed that, “design has played an important part in translating past scientific breakthroughs into practical forms of human enhancement, including prosthetic limbs, and cosmetic ones, like high-heeled shoes;” and that, “it will prove equally decisive in determining the evolution of future developments in response to innovations in robotics, nanotechnology, and other fields.”2

Indeed, tissue engineering, biomedical engineering, bioprinting, and the design technology of 3D printing are widely used today to add, modify, or replace missing limbs or organs or to update preexisting parts.

Graduate design programs like Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London and Contextual Design at the Design Academy of Eindhoven encourage collaborations between design and medical institutions and have classes in bio-laboratories as part of their curricula.

Beyond these educational settings, there are laboratories open to the public, such as Genspace in New York, and The Kitchen and the Biohacker laboratory in London, where people can work and become familiar with the biological field.

In the last decade, designers have participated in scientific conferences and competitions, and their work has appeared in both design and scientific publications. For example, the German designer Veronica Ranner’s work about organ crafting, “Biophilia,” was presented to both scientific and design audiences at the Milan Design Week in 2013, the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation in 2012, Department for Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK, and Fraunhofer Institute IGB, Stuttgart in 2011.

All of these initiatives are encouraging, but a robust discussion of the ethical issues around the topic is still lacking. And when such projects get discussed in the press, the differences between science fiction and reality are often confused, and readers are thus misinformed. In its design section, Wired magazine has reported on the 3D printing of ears and noses, and the concept of shrinking humans “to save the earth.”3 One of the most influential and popular

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architecture and design blogs, Dezeen, has featured stories on designers who design new human species such as “I Wanna Deliver a Dolphin”4 by Ai Hasegawa, or designers who bioprint human organs such as Agatha Haines’ “Frankestein-esque Hybrid Organs.”5 Such headlines, as well as the articles and posts they herald, do not help to explain these projects; instead they contribute to the reader’s confusion.

Designers have been complicit in creating and selling the fantasy of a mutable body through speculative, fictional, and critical design projects—prototypes, which imaginatively represent research evolutions and their impact on society and culture.

Now they have a new realm in which to work—the design of actual body parts using synthetic biology, bioengineering, and nanotechnologies. In this territory the line between embodiment and disembodiment gets more and more blurred, and the definition of prosthesis is challenged.

In a time where designers are inspired by the medical research and propose to genetically modify children and bioprinting transhuman body parts, it is necessary to start a substantial discourse on the role and the meaning of designers when collaborating and consulting with scientists.

1. Rick Poynor, “Upgrade Yourself,” Design Observer, June 20 2013, http://observatory. designobserver.com/feature/from-the-archiveupgrade-yourself/37943/.

2. Alice Rawsthorn, “Messing with Mother Nature,” The New York Times, July 8, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/arts/design/ messing-with-mother-nature.html?_r=0, accessed November 10, 2013.

3. Kyle Vanhemert, “A Foolproof Solution for Saving the Earth: Shrink All Humans,” Wired, November 13, 2013, http://www.wired.com/ design/2013/11/a-foolproof-solution-for-savingthe-world-shrink-all-humans, accessed February 5, 2014.

4. Dezeen, http://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/18/ i-wanna-deliver-a-dolphin-synthetic-biologyconcept-humans-giving-birth-to-food-by-aihasegawa/, accessed February 10, 2014.

5. Dezeen, http://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/14/ circumventive-organs-by-agatha-haines/, accessed February 10, 2014.

Conflict: Rejection/Attraction II: Clavicle Plate, by Olga Noronha, 2012.

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ACK NOW LEDGE MENTS Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the success of the D-Crit program over the years, and to those who have helped to stage this conference.

Emily Weiner, Program Coordinator Victor de la Cruz, Systems Administrator Steven Heller, D-Crit Program Co-founder David Rhodes, SVA President Anthony Rhodes, Executive Vice-President Andrea Codrington Lippke, D-Crit Thesis Sponsor Alan Rapp, External Reader Julie Vance, Presentation Skills Coach Thesis Advisors: Amy de la Haye Michael Rock Melanie Swan Guest Critics: Michel Bierut Rob Giampietro

D-Crit Faculty: Kurt Andersen Paola Antonelli Akiko Busch Russell Flinchum Steven Heller Karrie Jacobs Alexandra Lange Adam Harrison Levy Andrea Codrington Lippke Leital Molad Murray Moss Ginger Nolan Phil Patton Robin Pogrebin Elizabeth Spiers Karen Stein First Year D-Crit Students: Mariam Aldhahi Meg Farmer Lauren Palmer Justin Zhuang Visual Arts Theatre: Vidya Alexander, Operations Manager Vincent Burich, Technical Director Jessica Jackson, Business Manager Adam Natale, Director

Design: Matthew Rezac, Conference Identity and Design Eric Price, Web Design Modern Press, Printing Photography: Michael George, Event Photography John Madere, Portriat Photography Aldo Malaspina, Videography

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PARTNER S Supporting Partner

Coffee Partner

Refreshments Partner

Furniture Partner

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The SVA MFA in Design Criticism is devoted to the study of design, architecture, and urban infrastructure. The innovative two-year graduate program trains students to interrogate and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications, and to experiment with ways to engage design criticism’s publics. Working alongside New York’s best-respected editors, authors, critics, curators, and historians, D-Crit students learn how to build an argument, develop a critical stance, and hone a writerly voice. Instructed by such faculty members as MoMA’s senior curator of Design and Architecture Paola Antonelli, urban design critic Karrie Jacobs, and online media maven Elizabeth Spiers, students communicate their unique perspectives through a range of media, including radio podcasts, exhibitions, video essays, events, syllabi, online media, and books.

School of Visual Arts has been a leader in the education of artists, designers, and creative professionals for more than six decades. With a faculty of distinguished working professionals, dynamic curriculum, and an emphasis on critical thinking, SVA is a catalyst for innovation and social responsibility. Comprised of more than 6,000 students at its Manhattan campus and 35,000 alumni in 100 countries, SVA also represents one of the most influential artistic communities in the world.

For information about the College’s thirty-two undergraduate and graduate degree programs, visit sva.edu.

SVA MA IN DESIGN RESEARCH, WRITING AND CRITICISM

We are accepting applications to the program, on a rolling basis through the end of June 2014. All successful candidates will be granted significant scholarships. More information about the program, and details of how to apply, can be found on our website at designresearch.sva.edu.

Combining the rigor of its predecessor, D-Crit, and the velocity of the annual Design Writing & Research Summer Intensive, this one-year MA offers a highimpact, targeted program of study well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. With a two-semester, eight-month timeframe (September to May), the SVA MA in Design Research provides an intensive immersion in techniques for researching and interpreting design, its contexts, and consequences.

The program’s curriculum charts the cutting edge of design practice and is responsive to exciting developments in the media landscape. Through studying images, objects, and environments, and learning ways to construct multi-format narratives that bring them to life, students will be amply prepared to launch or develop research-related careers in publishing, education, museums, institutes, design practice, entrepreneurship, and more.

dcrit.sva.edu/conference2014 @dcritconference #dcrit2014 32