RELATED TERMS: Politics and the Political That forms of governance are ‘designed’ is often acknowledged only in passing. For example, the trend towards authoritarianism in the politics of the USA is recognised by some to have accelerated under Trump rather than to have begun with him. To argue that US authoritarianism began with Trump, AbdelrahmanContinue reading “Governance, Politics and Design”
Author Archives: aparsons474
World as Geoeconomics and Geopolitics [Snippets 10]
RELATED TERMS: World; World-Building; Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics The context for design practices in the 2020s, the macro framing ‘world’ or the macro framing narrative environment in which they operate, might be described as a period in which the existing world order is in transition. Many of the practices and verities of neoliberalContinue reading “World as Geoeconomics and Geopolitics [Snippets 10]”
(The) Common (World)
RELATED TERMS: (The) Everyday and Design; World; Worldlessness USE FOR: Shared World; World in Common You-I interconnectedness and Being-with The initial discursive sources for the recognition of the common, as the shared world, the only world that there is, are firstly Beata Stawarska’s dialogical phenomenology, which establishes the ontological primacy of the the You-I relationContinue reading “(The) Common (World)”
Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics
RELATED TERMS: Mono No Aware and Ma; Sabi and Wabi-Sabi; World as Geoeconomics and Geopolitics [Snippets 10] Preamble In a post on David Lynch’s film set design in relation to the design of narrative environments (Narrative Environments – Lynchian Set Design), the significance of Tibet, meditation and yoga in Twin Peaks was seen to exhibit signsContinue reading “Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics”
Narrative Environments – Lynchian Set Design
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Defamiliarisation; Liminality; Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics According to Edwin Heathcote (2025), the interiors in David Lynch’s films suggest that, “our environment is somehow theatrical, temporary, a dream – an expression of the subconscious.” Lynch, while working with production designers, “conceived of these rooms as spaces with every bit as muchContinue reading “Narrative Environments – Lynchian Set Design”
Black Studies
RELATED TERMS: Afrofuturism; Afro-Pessimism; Critical Race Theory; Whiteness Studies Writing in 2020, Dhanveer Singh Brar and Ashwani Sharma contend that, “In a manner similar to ‘French’ post-structuralism in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. Black Critical Thought offers an urgently needed – if not always satisfactory – grammar to address the racial faultlines of UK knowledgeContinue reading “Black Studies”
Hallucination and Confabulation
RELATED TERMS: Large Language Models; Paradox of the Anonymous: When We Wake [Snippets 9]; One way of conceiving the co-dependence or collaboration between human agency and artificial intelligence (AI) agency is to consider it through the lens of the metaphors used to understand the processes of Large Language Models (LLMs). Smith, Greaves and Panch (2023), forContinue reading “Hallucination and Confabulation”
The Paradox of the Anonymous: When We Wake [Snippets 9]
RELATED TERMS: History; Large Language Models; Hallucination and Confabulation “The Arcades Project, Benjamin’s great study of 19th-century Paris, is in Jameson’s phrase an unfinished ‘collection of clippings’.” (Eagleton, 2021) “Benjamin thought of writing a book consisting entirely of quotations; Wittgenstein contemplated writing one consisting entirely of jokes.” (Eagleton, 2021) “That there remains so much toContinue reading “The Paradox of the Anonymous: When We Wake [Snippets 9]”
Snippet Methodology [Snippets 8]
RELATED TERMS: Collage, Montage, Assemblage and Bricolage; Large Language Models Roger Berkowitz (2024) sets out a warning of the limitations of snippets if taken as a sole, self-contained method without a framing methodology. He says in an interview, “if I wanna cite a quote about freedom I can just say “Google, find me a quoteContinue reading “Snippet Methodology [Snippets 8]”
Design, Axiology and Value – Part 1
RELATED TERMS: The Commodity; Design History; Libidinal Economy – Part 1 “Valuing is a form of ranking” (Kelleher, 2015) Preamble The question for design practices running through the following text is whether they partake in keeping us focused on, in the words of Issberner and Lena (2023), “a naive faith in progress, consumerist ideology andContinue reading “Design, Axiology and Value – Part 1”
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