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]”
Category Archives: Snippets
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’.” “Benjamin thought of writing a book consisting entirely of quotations; Wittgenstein contemplated writing one consisting entirely of jokes.” (Terry Eagleton, 2021) Walter Benjamin and Brian Eno, in differentContinue 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]”
The Twentieth Century, America, Americanisation [Snippets 7]
RELATED TERMS: In 1932, Gertrude Stein wrote that America is, “the oldest country in the world because by the methods of the civil war and the commercial conceptions that followed it America created the twentieth century, and since all the other countries are now either living or commencing to be living a twentieth century life,Continue reading “The Twentieth Century, America, Americanisation [Snippets 7] “
Designing, Theorising, Modelling [Snippets 6]
RELATED TERMS: Narrative Environments – Environmental Psychology in Architecture George Saunders (2022) writes that, “Neuroscientists now suggest that the mind is always doing a form of fiction writing: proposing a broad scale model for the moment that is occurring, then improving that model by way of sensory input. Strangely, this revision process apparently occurs fromContinue reading “Designing, Theorising, Modelling [Snippets 6]”
Designing, Psycho-Semiosis, Bio-Semiosis [Snippets 5]
RELATED TERMS: Hephzibah Anderson (2022) reviews Rachel Aviv’s first book, Strangers to Ourselves: Stories of Unsettled Minds. The book, according to Anderson, is a subtle and penetrating investigation into how ‘mental illness’ is diagnosed. It brings to attention the ways in which the diagnostic language used is far from neutral. Rather, Aviv suggests, such language,Continue reading “Designing, Psycho-Semiosis, Bio-Semiosis [Snippets 5]”
Snippet Methodology: Authoring-Curating [Snippets 4]
RELATED TERMS: Collage, Montage, Assemblage and Bricolage Thrownness, Givenness, Foundness In his book Reality Hunger (2010), part of David Shields’ argument is that non-fiction is better adapted than fiction to address the realities of the modern world (Morrison, 2019). In the book, he defended his habit of quoting authors without attribution as a principled standContinue reading “Snippet Methodology: Authoring-Curating [Snippets 4]”
Narratives of Willpower; Narratives of Disease [Snippets 3]
RELATED TERMS: “We’re transitioning from the personal failure, lacking willpower, lacking self-control narrative, to this narrative that says ‘Obesity is a disease, you need a prescribed cure’ … so we can sell weight-loss medication”. (Marquisele Mercedes, quoted in Kuchler, 2022). The context for this quote from Marquisele Mercedes, a doctoral student in public health atContinue reading “Narratives of Willpower; Narratives of Disease [Snippets 3]”
Investing, Narration, Theorisation [Snippets 2]
RELATED TERMS: A narrative of the ‘past’ is taking shape in the ‘present’ in contrast to which other narratives of the ‘future’, in the form of ‘bets’, are developing. The historical or hindsight narrative suggests that the 30 years from the 1990s to the early 2020s constituted a ‘golden’ age, a period of steady growthContinue reading “Investing, Narration, Theorisation [Snippets 2]”
Politics, Reality, Narrativity [Snippets 1]
RELATED TERMS: Unending Discourse The entries in this Snippets series are cut from larger texts. Although not explicitly focused on design practices, they operate as discourse-collage elements that aim to provoke broader discussions about the potential ethico-political value of what might otherwise be taken solely as the aesthetic value of design practices, particularly those thatContinue reading “Politics, Reality, Narrativity [Snippets 1]”
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