Test 2: Review• test will follow the same structure as test 1: multiple choice, short answer questions, essay questions

• remember [important!] always be as specific as possible and include as much ‘evidence’ in your Reponses. If it is a 5-point essay question, make sure you provide 5 examples, or specific and unique references from lectures, readings, or tutorials

• make sure you are familiar [and have clear notes] for each of the main points from each week’s theme

• test will cover weeks 8 – 12: critical visualisation, post-digitalism/steampunk, morphogenesis, and emergence

What is “visualization”?Visualization is the process of presenting data in a form that allows rapid understanding of relationships and findings that are not readily evident from raw data.

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

In what ways are visualisation techniques used to express prevailing mythologies or belief systems?

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

Do you agree with Peter Hall’s claim that there is “no such thing as raw data”? Why or why not? What about this visualisation?

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

What is the role of narrative or storytelling in visualisation? How did the Eames use narrative techniques in the ‘Powers of Ten’?

Postdigitalism + Steampunk + “E-coco”

What similarities can you identify between Malevich’s “Black Square” and the ipod/ipad? how do both represent a kind of aesthetic ‘essentialism’?

Postdigitalism + Steampunk + “E-coco”

In what ways does the Ulysse Nardin Chairman Mechanical Smartphone offer an alternative to Corporate Modernism [like the ipod]? How is it different? WHY is it different?

Postdigitalism + Steampunk + “E-coco”

Analyze these images what characteristics of steampunk can you identify? Why do you think there is such an emphasis on luxurious materials and ‘heavy’ metals in the steampunk movement?

What is “slow design”? How is that concept embodied in the 10,000 year clock?

How might ‘slow design’ give a sense of “aura” to a technological object – are these objects (and the others we saw this week attempting to recreate a pre-industrial aura for the digital age?

Postdigitalism + “Slow Design”

Postdigitalism + “Slow Design”Longevitywith occasional maintenance, the clock should reasonably be expected to display the correct time for the next 10,000 years.

MaintainabilityThe clock should be maintainable with bronze-age technology.

Transparency It should be possible to determine operational principles of the clock by close inspection.

EvolvabilityIt should be possible to improve the clock with time.

ScalabilityIt should be possible to build working models of the clock from table-top to monumental size using the same design.

E-coco/Steampunk

• Curvalinear, organic• Exuberant and

emotional• Amoral and irrational• Synthetic and inclusive• Artisanal• heterogenous

Modernist

• Rectilinear, geometric• Restrained and

rational• Moral and rational• Reductive and

exclusive• Academic• homogenous

• Bottom-up design• repurposed• DIY• Aura/authenticity• Protoindustrial• Nostalgic• Postmodern?• Postdigital• Critical?

elements of steampunk

Why?

• Dissolution with homogeneity of mass market goods (iphone)

• Reemphasis on the physical world• Pre-digital and pre-electrical nostalgia• Reconnection with embedded cultural meaning• Reconstitution of “aura”• Antidote to digital-age attention deficits

Morphogenesis What is ‘morphogenesis’?

How might we a better understanding of biological processes be useful for designers?

Morphogenesis What does Christopher Alexander mean by “Forces generate form?”

How might we understand his model by examining the formation of sand dunes?

Forces generate form.“All systems, whether they are individual human organisms, social systems, or mechanical systems, share the following property: when in certain states, they have inexorable tendencies to seek certain other states.”

Christopher Alexander, “From a set of forces to a form,” The Man-made Object (1966)

Essentialism verses Materialism

What is the difference between ‘Essentialism’ and ‘Materialism’ according to Manuel Delanda? How might we understand these terms considering these two forms [above]?

Manuel Delanda suggests that we might think of the genesis of form by combining scientific tradition with a materialist philosophy. Delanda identifies three ways of thinking:

population intensive topological

Can you define each term?

Morphogenesis

How does slime mould represent “emergence”?In what ways does it exhibit “bottom-up” organisational properties?What does that mean “bottom-up”?

Dictyostelium discoideum (slime mould)

Emergence

Smart Mobs

What are ‘smart mobs’ or ‘flash mobs’? How do they work? How do they take advantage of digital technologies, portable devices, and wireless networks? Is there potential in these technologies for social activism?

What is “XMX” according to Paola Antonelli? How are we using portable digital devices and wireless networks to ‘expand’ our digital reach? In what ways can we think of these devices and interfaces as ‘home’ or as providing a ‘private’ bubble in public spaces?

In what ways do we see the concept of ‘community’ changing today? How do our digital relationships impact upon traditional cultural identifiers such as age, gender, class, nationality, or religion? Do you think design is implicated in the erosion of cultural specificity?

“The move from minimum to maximum echoes the twentieth century’s evolution from the dream of a

better society based on objective, almost mathematical rules of distribution of space and

resources to the idea of a self-organizing, bottom-up society in which individual initiative can shape a more

just and efficient world.”

-Paola Antonelli, “All Together Now!” Design and the Elastic Mind

Do you agree with Antonelli’s statement above, or with Howard Rheingold’s warning of the risk we are creating another generation of ‘consumers’

rather than users? Why or why not?

How might design better integrate emergent strategies and collective intelligence?