Roland Barthes, Myth Today - notes:

language before verbal language was created
Tri-dimensional pattern in Myth:
- the signifier
-- the signifier expresses the signified
- the signified
- the sign
-

1. the authors death when his creation reaches the hand of the consumer
2. how language is agreed upon by a collective

connections:
connections between text and you
concepts:
key concepts
challenge:
what assumptions can you argue against
change:

Object analysis

1. Empirical Analysis
a. The base of the object is square shaped and wider than the rest, it also has a textured surface. Soon after, it narrows down and becomes wider again, but not as much as it was initially, while still maintaining the square shape. The object then has a narrow metal rod that sticks out from the handle. On the tip of the metal rod is a 4 cornered black head to allow the user to be able to screw screws.
b. The screwdriver is made of textured rubber and metal. The rubber is used in the handle for an easy and secure grip, while the metal is used to make the screwdriver sturdy.

- https://www.amazon.nl/ToolTech%C2%AE-10395-schroevendraaier-kruis-125/dp/B004OZHL7M

2. Functional Analysis
The company ToolTech made this screwdriver as a simple everyday use tool. It was made to be ergonomic as visible from its form.

3. Contextual Analysis
The vision and intention of the designer is to make an efficient tool that can easily be handled and used by a variety of people.

4. Interpretation

connections:
- myth connection between language in general
-- text of last week
--- for Barthes image and idea of an object is the same value, while Hall does not see them as same value

concepts:
- myth is the total sum of the sign
- signifier is the tool to convey they idea
- the signified is the idea he is conveying
- sign is the physical way he does it

challenge:
- plastic was used to replace diamonds and gems, but now we replace plastic with natural materials like mycelium

change:

Class notes

Product semantics is the study of the symbolic qualities of man-made forms

connections:
-
concepts:
- communication of the ideas behind creations in the field of product design, architecture, art, etc.
- quality and use of new technologies, is it really needed? is it beneficial
- how he defined ethos pathos and logos, what we intend and what we express through design (ethos)
Challenge:
-
Change:

Ethos:
- products have character because they reflect their maker
- designers fashion a product imbuing it with personal qualities/their ethos
- kitsch - Avant grade

Pathos:
- product has to persuade emotionally
- experience may remind us of fine art but objective is practical
- resource emotional persuasion: physical contact with objects or active contemplation of object. feeling conveyed in experience of movement
- visually and physically satisfying

Strong designers use emotional appeal to surprise audiences discover new possibilities

Diester Rams - good design...

I agree with what she said:
- Visual clutter
- gifts reflection of you
- Adult are big kids
Interesting:
- Disconnect between bad design (user and product)


Studio EO (Stockholm)

The Wedgwood Slave Medallion:

- fashionable medallion made to signify the abolishment of the slave trade
- sent by Wedgewood to many people
- men and women added the accessory to their clothes in different ways
- man on the coin is depicted as if he's westernized: praying with one knee, two hands reaching for the heavens, English text (to signify how slaves have been so westernized)
- moreover, man is depicted to wait to be freed rather than breaking out of his own chains to further resemble how he's waiting to be liberated of the black persona (racism, oppression, slavery)
- medallion set movement to abolish slave trade in 1807
- selling medallion was for profit, however not selling would have given him publicity, so did he do it for himself?... kind of a bullshit statement, however little evidence supports that he did it for selfless reasons
- African king also dealt in slaves???

Decolonization:

- decolonization means changing the way we think
- decolonization is also the acknowledgement that in the west, society has been built upon the colonization of other nations, that we exist within a system of privilege and oppression, and that a lot of culture we've come to see as our has actually been appropriated or stolen.
- distinctions and division between designers and the labels they receive
- "our reliance on western culture inhibits our ability to incorporate other standards." this relates to techniques and styles like 3D drawing which is a western style while in Japan it's based on one plane, not x,y and z. Zulus also live in "circular culture", their huts are round, they don't plough land in straight furrows but in curves instead. Unseeing western culture is like getting a fish to understand that it lives in water.
- capitalism is an instrument of colonization, which makes it difficult to change
- the tea packaging design for the UK's East Indian company uses font from traditional Indian fabric, which is very insensitive and an example of careless design appropriation because historically the East Indian Trading Company has exploited many of India's resources.

- Ultimately, there is no finite end that we're trying to reach: decolonization is a process. The fact that it's a journey means that in order to keep evolving, we must be continually curious, and educate ourselves about what we haven't experienced directly.
- “For far too long, designers have remained married to the concept that what we do is neutral, universal, that politics has no place in design,” says Abdulla. Yet the choices we make as designers are intrinsically political: With every design choice we make, there’s the potential to not just exclude but to oppress; every design subtly persuades its audience one way or another and every design vocabulary has history and context. Learning about the history of colonialism will open our eyes to how power structures have formed society today, and how they dominate our understanding of design.

Class notes 5/11/2021

Franz Fanon - "Sometimes people hold a core believe that is very strong. When they are presented with new evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable called cognitive dissonance. and because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit n with the core belief."

Cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation - adopting an element of a culture from another without appreciation or due to a by product of colonialism.

How can we borrow elements of other cultures without offending said culture?
- you must respect and understand the culture you're 'borrowing' it from
- give credit, don't imitate, learn from those who practice the culture or are included in it
- "the key to expressing appreciation rather than appropriation is to understand the vulture from which you borrow, including the history of oppression and marginalization. Appropriation is most strongly in misunderstanding and ignorance.
- it makes a difference when you educate yourself about the culture you are interested in and recognize your position on it.

books to read that are now in the library: History of design (inclusive book of design, various nations/cultures), Women in design (feminism book), design history.

competency 2: ability to reflect critically, create a portfolio with 6 or 8 subjects
- level 2: profession & concept (quarter 7)

competency 6: Context awareness

Doing something

- it is as if we're waiting for the right kind of data, but this data will never arrive, because its delivery mode is designed to prevent the appropriate reaction.
- massive problems like mass extinction and global warming are upon us but we don't have a solution for them, they have too many little factors
- isn't the PTSD mode the reason why we can't do something, anything? You're stuck with these big problems in your head and don't know where to start
- part of the problem is trying to figure out where the problem is going, this is the wrong direction, these ecological are very often about the unintentional consequences of human actions.
- we know what to do yet it will never feel as if we are doing it exactly right
- we are stuck in the initial stages of going through a trauma, one that is still happening, one who's painfulness is obvious if you care at all
- funnily enough, living in a scientific age means that you realize more and more that you are shrink-wrapped in your experience
- when you get really close up to things, they start to dissolve, this is another way of saying that when you let go of a normalized reference frame, things become very obvious
-

Notes 26/11/2021 - Anthropocene, eco-awareness,

ecology: study of organisms and how they interact
ecologism: ecologism is a new political ideology based on the position that the non-human world is worthy of moral consideration, and that this should be takes into account in social, economic, and political systems. recognized as a major development in environmental politics. (baxter)
ecological footprint/carbon footprint

sustainability video - what is sustainability UCLA (sustain,ucla.edu/what-is-sustainability):
when replenish rate and use rate is in balanced
when you buys stuff you are a part of the cycle of the guy that made it, you are part of the factories and sweat shops
- environment, if you're not focus on this one the environment starts to decline
- equity, if you're not focusing on this some people get more while others get less
- economy, if you're not looking at this one...

the Anthropocene video - the age of humans (smithsonian.com/antropocene)
- we consume too much
- altered more than 50% of land
- change the atmosphere
- even if we stop, it'll still cause damage long after

starting point for the Anthropocene epoch?
- start of agriculture -+ 6000bc
- industrial modernity -+1800
- great acceleration -+1945
- consciousness about our geological role -+2000

Timothy Morton - philosopher of the Anthropocene - author of the text
- in the text he doesn't want to dump info on you but rather state how the problem is so big
- ecological facts are often facts about the unintended consequences of human actions
- ontology vs epistemology, what is a fact?
Ontology is concerned with what us true or real, and the nature of reality.
Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge and different methods of gaining knowledge.

scientific data? 'factoids' and 'truthy'
- the problem lies with the interpretation of data
- scientific facts are social constructs because it is humans making sense of those facts, basically it's biased
- factoids: chunks of data that has been interpreted so as to appear truthful; truthy. truth like

Bruno Latour and actor - network theory
- he argued that scientific facts should be seen as a product of scientific inquiry. facts, Latour said, were "networked"; they stood or fell not on the strength of their inherit varacity but on the strength of the intuitions and practices that produced them and made them intelligible. if this network broke down, the facts would go with them.
Latour uses the term actor-network to describe how the development and distribution of facts and artefacts happen through negotiations between different interest groups.

Post- truth- Latour
with this rise of alternative facts, it has become clear that whether or not a statement is believed depends far less on its varacity than on the conditions of its "construction".....

Post-truth
Latour believes that is scientists were transparent about how science really functions - as process- they would be in a stronger position to convince people of their claims. Climatologists, he says must recognize that, as nature's designated representatives, they have always been political actor, and that they are now combatants in a war whose outcome will have planetary ramifications. we would be in a much different situation.....

Latour believes that if scientists were transparent about how science really functions - as a process in which people, politics, institutions, peer review and so forth all play their parts - they would in a stronger position to convince people of their claims.
- can a designer play a part in this?
wont transparency cause more use of resources?

The paradox
- we know exactly what to do; limit carbon emissions. why are we not doing it?
- the feeling that we will never do it right even if we try. you will never be able to check if your actions has the desired affect; like looking down upon earth and directly seeing your results.
- we want to get right of uncertainty and anxiety, but we can't; data in general is a all about anxiety and uncertainty.

Hyper - objects
example of apple; there is a lot of apple data but none of these things are the apple as such.
hyperobjects are real, they exist in a world, but they are also beyond us. we know a piece of styrofoam when we see it - it's white, spongy light as air - and yet fourteen million tons of styrofoam are produced every year; chunks of it break down into particles that enter other objects, including animals. although styrofoam is everywhere, one can never point to all the styrofoam in the world and say, "there it is."

Object Oriented Ontology argues that nothing can be accessed all at once in its entirely, by access is eant any way of grasping a thing; thinking about, inching, making a painting, eating, etc.

politics and nature and the parliament of things
- the parliament of things is a theory of developed by Bruno Latour that makes a case for the rights and objects. According to Latour, modern man refuses to recognize the rights, autonomy and agency off objects. He argues for a vision of the world in which the value (not the worth) of objects and other entities play an active role.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, designed for the Sixth Extinction, 2013 - CHECK OUT
- chemical designer

Catherine Sarah Young, The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store, 2014
- how might climate change make the world smell different?
- makes its appeal through the senses rather than through statistics. smell is viscerally linked to memory

Victor Papanek - Design for the real world - human ecology and social change (book)

Rachel Carson - Silent Spring - the classic that launched the environmental movement (book)

Zomes in Drop City, near Trinidad, Colorado, 1965

Creating awareness since 1960 and still a problem: we will not solve the problem of climate change/mass extinction.

Anila Quayyum Agha - Intersections

Arthur louis ignore - Urban carpets

Nespoon Lace - Murals