Author Archives: aparsons474

RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Feminism – Material feminism While themes derived from avant-garde art practice may be of relevance to design practices, of potentially more interest may be those practices of the feminist avant-garde. In confronting an oppressive and conformist patriarchal system prevalent in the in the immediate post-World War Two years, feminist artists developedContinue reading “Feminist Avant-Garde Art Practices”

RELATED TERMS: Arendt; Creative Thinking; Critical Theory; Design Practice and Functionalism; Feminism and Materialism; Genealogy – Nietzsche; Historical Materialism – Marxism; Methodology and Method; Modernism and Avant-Garde Art Practice; Modernity; Postmodernism; Theoretical Practice; Critical thinking in the West can be traced back back to the Socratic-Platonic tradition, with Plato formalising the Socratic critique of receivedContinue reading “Critical Thinking”

RELATED TERMS: Avant-Garde Movements; Critical Thinking; Methodology and Method; Situationist International; Theoretical Practice; Design requires critical thinking and creative thinking, but does it need critical theory, in the more narrow sense? Bohman (2005) explains that critical theory in the narrow sense designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European MarxistContinue reading “Critical Theory”

RELATED TERMS: Critical Thinking; Design of Narrative Environments; Design Practice and Functionalism; Theoretical Practice “Above all, and very familiar by now, is the view that critical and creative writing have become one and are indistinguishable.” (Brooke-Rose, 1991: 19) While a design may serve a critical purpose, it does so creatively, so to speak. Designing, therefore,Continue reading “Creative Thinking”

RELATED TERMS: Rodgers, Inella and Bremner (2017) discuss seven paradoxes of design practice, which they characterise as follows: Design is very undisciplined as a discipline The easier it becomes to design, the harder it is to design Design has become impoverished by the claim that good design equals good business The originality claimed by designContinue reading “Design Paradoxes”

**RELATED TERMS: ** Design practices, because they have strong conceptual, theoretical and critical components, may be able to learn from the strategies and techniques of conceptual art. As an art movement, conceptual art arose in the mid-1960s, its influence remaining strong until the mid-1970s before waning. Even so, some artists continue to make conceptual artContinue reading “Conceptual Art”

RELATED TERMS: Interaction; Interaction design; Taxonomy Paul Dourish (2004) brings to attention Matthew Chalmers’ observation that computer science is based on philosophical assumptions and arguments that were prevalent before the 1930s. Dourish continues, “Computer-science in practice involves reducing high-level behaviors to low-level, mechanical explanations, formalizing them through pure scientific rationality; in this, computer science revealsContinue reading “Computer Science”

RELATED TERMS: Design Practice and Functionalism; User-Centred and User-Driven Design As defined by Koskinen and Thomson (2012: 77) co-design is a community centred methodology that designers use to enable people who will be served by a designed outcome to participate in designing solutions to their problems. This assumes a utilitarian, design-as-problem-solving approach. It should beContinue reading “Co-Design”

RELATED TERMS: Filmmaking; Theoretical practice; Apparatus – Dispositif; Rhythm David Macey (2000: 252) informs us that the French film theorist Christian Metz, in his later work, expands on the distinction that he made between film and cinema. He defines cinema as the extra-filmic apparatus of an industry, but also all the psychological forces that makeContinue reading “Cinema and Film Theory”