RELATED TERMS: Everyday; Alienation; Situationist International; Historical materialism – Marxism; Critical Theory; Avant-Garde Movements; Alienation effect – Verfremdungseffekt A critical, creative and reflexive design practice could benefit from an understanding of the issues raised by Guy Debord in his book, Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967. It is a manifesto of 221 theses on capitalistContinue reading “Spectacle – Society of the Spectacle”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Sociology
RELATED TERMS: Actor-Network Theory; Anthropology; Ethnography; Ethnomethodology; Design practices would do well to be sociologically informed, particularly in relation to micro-sociological studies. The decades from the 1960s to the 1980s saw an increase in micro-social studies and methodology. The 1980s saw an attempt to bridge the gap between the more recent micro- studies and theContinue reading “Sociology”
Socially Engaged Art
RELATED TERMS: Modernism and avant-garde art practice Vid Simoniti points out that the work of politically committed artists has radically shifted since the mid-1990s. A new generation of artists has sought not just to represent social reality, but to change it, by blending art with activism, through social regeneration projects, and even by oursuing violentContinue reading “Socially Engaged Art”
Sloterdijk
RELATED TERMS: Heidegger “Humanity becomes a political concept. Its members are no longer travellers on the ship of fools that is abstracted universalism, but workers on the consistently concrete and discrete project of a global immune design.” (Couture, 2016: 73) The work of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (1947-) has direct relevance for design practices. AsContinue reading “Sloterdijk”
Situationist International
RELATED TERMS: Dérive; Détournement; Spectacle – Society of the Spectacle; Walking; Of particular interest to design practices, in the context of the relations among art practices, aesthetic practices and everyday action, is the Situationist International and its forerunner, the Lettriste International. Bonnet (1992: 76) considers that the most determined challenge to the categories of artContinue reading “Situationist International”
Semiotics
RELATED TERMS: Structuralism; Poststructuralism Semiotics can be of great value in design practices, especially in the ways in which material semiosis can be understood to be an active constituent of the networks of social practice. Umberto Eco (1979: 7) has an interesting approach to defining what a comprehensive programme for a general semiotics would be.Continue reading “Semiotics”
Sculpture
RELATED TERMS: Landscape Design; Structuralism; Theoretical practice; Narrative environment design; Architecture Designed artefacts, while being environmental and situational, are not, in any simple or straightforward sense, architecture nor landscape. Nor, furthermore, are they sculpture. Yet they bear some relation to all of these forms of spatial practice: architectural design, landscape design and sculpture. Such fieldsContinue reading “Sculpture”
Science
RELATED TERMS: Paradigm; Method and Methodology; Research Methodologies The term science has come to refer to a set of practices whereby knowledge is obtained through observation and experiment, critically tested and brought under general principles. Scientific method in the natural or physical sciences is a three-step process: careful observation of some aspect of nature; speculationContinue reading “Science”
Sabi and Wabi-Sabi
RELATED TERMS: Avant-Garde Movements; The Everyday and Design; Mono No Aware and Ma; Incompletion “Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function. We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful. We fashion wood forContinue reading “Sabi and Wabi-Sabi”
Research Methodologies
RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Multimodal research; Method and methodology Two major research philosophies or methodologies have been identified in the Western tradition of science: positivist or scientific, which is quantitative in character; and interpretivist or anti-positivist, which is qualitative in character. In the context of design practices, a third, performative, paradigm is relevant, which isContinue reading “Research Methodologies”
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