RELATED TERMS: Theatre; Epic Theatre; Tragic Theatre – Aristotle; Theatre of Cruelty “The tension between the endless desire that is the source of human motivations and the hopeless demands that fail to appease it is the very heart of the human tragedy, according to Lacan.” Mansfield, 2000: 46) In as far as designs intervene inContinue reading “Design: Dramatisation and Narrativisation”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Afrofuturism
RELATED TERMS: Afro-Pessimism; Black Studies; Critical Race Theory; Intersectionality; Identity Politics Afrofuturism has been defined as a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy. It aims to connect those from the black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry (Tate, No Date). ‘The Comet,’ a short story by W. E. B. DuBois that represents DuBois’ forayContinue reading “Afrofuturism”
Design: Incomplete Conjectures
RELATED TERMS: Finnegans Wake (and Design); Methodology and Method First … Design as a professional, social practice has historically been divided according to its material outputs, its concrete products, using categories that have become conventional. For example, jewellery design produces items of jewellery, fashion design produces items of clothing and architectural design produces buildings andContinue reading “Design: Incomplete Conjectures”
Incompletion
RELATED TERMS: Collage, Montage, Assemblage and Bricolage; Sabi and Wabi-Sabi USE FOR: Incompleteness “Abstraction and perfection transport us into the world of ideas, whereas matter, weathering and decay strengthen the experience of time, causality and reality.” (Pallasmaa, 2000: 79) As noted in the About page, the approach to design taken in this website is guided byContinue reading “Incompletion”
Hypomnesis, Hypermnesis and Anamnesis
RELATED TERMS: Remembering: Mnemotechne, Mnemonics and Memory; [Of] Grammatography; Exosomatisation Design practices and designed artefacts may be understood in the context of the discussion of hypomnesis, the weakening of memory, and hypermnesis, the strengthening of memory or the making of an unusually poignant and accurate memory of the past. In Platonic language the relation betweenContinue reading “Hypomnesis, Hypermnesis and Anamnesis”
Black Mountain College
RELATED TERMS: Bauhaus; Hochschule fur Gestaltung Black Mountain College was an experimental liberal arts college in Black Mountain, near Asheville, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice and Theodore Dreier and other former faculty members of Rollins College in Florida. It was “the site of a crucial transatlantic dialogue between EuropeanContinue reading “Black Mountain College”
Khora or Chora
RELATED TERMS: Place, Space, Placiality, Spatiality In philosophy, the term khôra or chora is associated with four main authors: Plato, Heidegger, Derrida and Kristeva. In the context of developing an understanding of design as practice, discipline and material public discourse, that is, as professional, academic and socio-cultural practice at once, khôra or chora is takenContinue reading “Khora or Chora”
Complementarity
RELATED TERMS: Design and General Economic Anti-Epistemology; Uncertainty Karen Barad (2007: 19-20), through a discussion of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, analyses the disagreement between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr concerning the former’s uncertainty principle. She summarises the difference between their views in the following way. For Bohr, what is at stake is that particles doContinue reading “Complementarity”
Artifactuality and Actuvirtuality
RELATED TERMS: Design and Philosophy Artifactuality As Victor Margolin (2006: 107) comments, design is the conception and planning of the artificial. The scope and boundaries of design are intimately entwined with our understanding of the limits of the artificial. As design continues to make incursions into realms that were once considered as belonging to nature,Continue reading “Artifactuality and Actuvirtuality”
Collage, Montage, Assemblage and Bricolage
RELATED TERMS: Narrative Architecture; Incompletion “Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s [novel] The Pledge (1958) … is about the inability of an ‘expert system’ (the police) to solve the ‘problem’, that is, a mysterious crime. Dürrenmatt’s work is all about the demise of rationality and the triumph of chaos. Acknowledging this tragic fact, my book [What Design Can’t Do]Continue reading “Collage, Montage, Assemblage and Bricolage”
Incomplete ... 