designswarm thoughts

Had my exam 1 on friday, some really nice crits were there: Mark Delaney from Plan Design, Jay Melican from Intel research, Chris Downs from Live|Work and Steve Thompson from Newport School of Art and Design in Wales.

I hate to say the critique was very harsh and pointed out some really important gaps in my thinking , maybe related to the fact that i had so little time to prepare for this exam, right after Salone. Well that’s no excuse really. So i thought id make a diagram of the foundation of my thesis so i avoid having to discuss it again and can go: here it is and avoid a lot of communication problems i encountered in my presentation.

So essentially I am looking at sustainability and the ways in which our society is supposed to address it. Through concepts like PSS (Product Service Society and service design, we are advocating that we should do more with less; use more services and less material objects, transition from a society that values access versus ownership. I think that this is a very valuable way of looking at the future but it hardly addresses the designer’s role and how we design within and for these services. If we are advocating that we should use less, does that mean that we should care more and therefore throw away or discard less? When we talk about high tech personal devices, we often find ourselves with a little bit of ause-phobia mainly because use and the degradation of those objects is not something that is desirable or appealing. I am calling this negative history. What i seek to find out is if we can design for “positive history” or to create meaningful object-subject relationships by using and treating fabrics as a material that displays history in an appealing and engaging way. History of use is something desirable in a pair of jeans or a teddy bear, so why not in a high tech device?

To test this theory out, i wanted to find a design space that would allow me to address mack of emotional relationships and i found that the area of music and its more recent form the mp3 and its player was a convenient case study. With the disappearance of a physical token for music and an ephemeral attachment to its containers, this was the perfect area to start.

So there, I have laid down the foundation of my thinking for this thesis and can now concentrate on the design work that is necessary for the next review which will take place on the 15th and 16th of June 2006.

The redesigned radios were on show at Salone del Mobile 2006 and are still at La Fabbrica del Design till the 22nd of april from 12 to 17 every day except the 16th and 17th.

Hope to see you there!

“Mon nom est Stéphanie, je suis née et vis à Montréal depuis 19 ans. J’ai reçu cette horloge d’une photographe exeptionnelle; le projet suggéré m’a semblé fabuleux. Le tissage, les fils qui s’entremêlent, ces tous petits réseaux de tentions, une obsession chez moi… J’ai voulu en lien avec le temps figer ou du moins, rendre le temps difficile à changer( voir la mobilité des aiguilles). Chaque petit réseau de fils se croise, comme chaque humain se croise sans se voir sous le stress de la vie, n’ayant jamais de TEMPS devant eux pour respirer un peu. Il est maintenant à mon tour de céder cette horloge à quelqu’un qui aura selon moi une forte imagination pour la transformer d’avantage.

Stéphanie Sauvé, artiste à en devenir”

( My name is Stephanie and i was born and have been living in Montreal for the past 19 years. I received this clock from an exceptional photographer and the project sounded fabulous. Knittings, strings, these small webs of tension, an obsession for me. I wanted with this web to stop time or make it difficult to change (thus blocking the clock movements). Every thread that crosses another is like every person who goes by another without stopping to look, buried under the stress of life without breathing a little. It’s now my turn to hand this over to someone who i think has a strong creative force to change this even further.

Stéphanie Sauvé, artist-to-be)

This Boston-based fashion and technology show has an online video of the show. Very interesting to ludic, to silli projects in my mind. The David Lu iPod Status project is shown there as well.

“J’ai voulu donner un look Hitchcockien, avec 2 plumes de corbeau, et des droplets de peinture, mais rouge aurait fait trop évident, alors j’ai choisi jaune. Je l’ai ensuite passée hier à une amie peintre, qui est très enthousiaste du projet et qui va faire ça beaucoup plus rapidement que moi.”

(I wanted to give it a Hitchcokian look with 2 crow’s feathers and drops of paint, but red was too obvious so i used yellow. I then gave it to a painter friend of mine who was very interested in the project and will be quicker than i am.)

Valérie Sangin, Photographer in Montreal.

Great Wired article on the future of electronic devices and the trends towards wearables. One thing that this thesis has highlighted so far is the lack of aggregated information on the subject of wearables, although a few craft-based blogs etc, nothing too impressive or picking up a lot of momentum online which makes me think that maybe i should put my money where my mouth is and start something… having ideas, hmmm coming soon. This also makes me think more generally about technology and how close we are willing to be to it now versus the fears that people had when the radio and the television came out in the last century. Wearables is of course as step before the implanted RFID chips under your skin : )