Grace Lees-Maffei, ed. Writing Design: Words and Objects (London: Berg, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2012)

// This is the second installment in a three-part series on the craft of writing. While the first article explored writing as a situated practice, today’s review of a recently published anthology investigates the relationship between writing and design.//

The prevalence of text in the design process requires serious consideration on the part of the historian and practitioner. Writing Design: Words and Objects provides a compendium of methodologies for studying the complex relationship between text and things. This relationship is important not only for the designer translating their ideas into physical form, but also for the writer interpreting meaning from the material world. Thus, the publication functions on two levels, first as an exploration into new ways to understanding the design system, and second as a self-reflexive consideration of the practice of ‘writing design’ itself.

Developed from a similarly titled conference held by the Design History Society in 2009, the publication is divided into four thematic sections, including design criticism, mediation, production, and, conversely, the areas where words are absent in design. Paralleling the different roles writing plays in the design system is the variety of contexts where such roles are enacted. Although most contributions focus on Western territories from the twentieth century to the present day, ultimately the approaches presented could be applied in  range of spatial, temporal, and thematic topics.

Given the focus on textuality, it follows that the book maintains an overarching emphasis on applying literary strategies to the history of design. For example, in one chapter the metaphorical language of John Ruskin, a famous design critic, is used to discuss how design is constructed in the imagination of the viewer/reader. In another, the consideration of books as designed objects complicates the literary technique of comparing writing style to content. However, in my opinion, the application of close readings to the design process results in some of the most exciting examples. For instance, architect Mhairi McVicar uses the correspondences concerning a particular architectural detail on the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood to discuss how technical drawing can be used to understand the cultural context of a design. McVicar’s extrapolation of supplementary printed material to comprehend the mechanisms of design is both an exciting as well as useful way to understand the role of creativity in production. While this is not the first time literary methods have been used in design history, the compilation of such approaches is certainly advantageous for the field.

Along with exploring the different ways writing interprets, translates, and informs the design process, many chapters also address alternative understandings of words and objects. Among such are cases that speak to using oral histories as sources, the influence of copyright on design practice, and understanding how models function to communicate in exhibitions. This innovative twist on the idea of writing design provides a group of thought-provoking and at times experimental studies. I was pleased to see the anthology even includes an analysis of the effect of digitization on design and its history. Designer and lecturer Barbra Brownie, for example, traces developments in typography in relation to relatively new screen-based technologies. As a design writer on a digital platform, I cannot help but think there is more work to be done in understanding the effects of the internet on design media and consumption.

Lees-Maffei’s collection is both a reminder of, and a toolbox for, the interdisciplinarity required of the design historian. Not only do the authors originate from a diverse range of fields, including art and architectural history, design practice, and design history, but the approaches reflect such a variety of backgrounds as well. However, perhaps the only missing element to this otherwise well-crafted examination of design writing and writing design history is the voice of a practicing literary historian. Although the writing of those trained in such fields are certainly present, for example Jeffrey Meikle’s reflection on interpreting objects through words, the collection would certainly benefit from an expert from the field itself.

Within History of Design, Writing Design is a timely publication, especially in relation to what Lees-Maffei has elsewhere identified as a ‘mediation’ turn.1 In 2009 she argued the field showed increasing concern for understanding objects through mediation. Her anthology provides a collection of examples and tools for doing just that. Lees-Maffei has begun a productive conversation. Writing Design has certainly sparked discussion amongst the editors here at Unmaking Things and what it means to publish within the context of our own self-proclaimed ‘digital studio for the history of design’.

© 2012 Marilyn Zapf. All rights reserved.

Grace Lees-Maffei, ed. Writing Design: Words and Objects (London: Berg, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2012)

Footnotes

1. Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘The Production-Consumption-Mediation Paradigm’ in Journal of Design History Vol 22 No 4 (2009), pp. 351-377

Entrance and façade of the British Museum, London © Britannica online

// Priya Khanchandani is an MA Candidate in History of Design at the Royal College of Art specialising in Asia. This article is based on a talk delivered at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India as part of a joint workshop with the Royal College of Art / Victoria & Albert Museum on exhibition design. //

When I visited the British Museum recently I was witness to a man with his hands joined in prayer before a statue of the Hindu elephant god Ganesh. Stood there among the crowds of tourists in backpacks and Saturday visitors gaping at the Indian sculptures around us, and unaware of me observing him, he closed his eyes and shut himself off with the statue in veneration. His act of worship in the midst of the gallery showed me he did not see the transferral of the statue from temple to museum as rendering it devoid of religiosity. This made me think about the way in which objects are portrayed in museums once they have been removed from their original environment. Isn’t something lost in the process? How do museums re-create an authentic encounter with the object in an essentially staged setting? These questions are relevant not only to religious objects but all objects.

It is universally acknowledged that language can be lost in translation. The nuance of a word may not be done justice or the meaning of a gesture might not come across; and the same is true of things when they are displaced from their original time or place and put on display. Our perception of them can be altered by something so apparently simple as the colour of a wall, the juxtaposition of one object with another, or the creation of categories that imply connections or historical continuities. The aesthetics of exhibition spaces are therefore not neutral. They have significant implications for the ways in which objects they display are tacitly imbibed with meaning. The way in which objects from India are displayed at the British Museum is one example of this.

The permanent Indian collection is mainly found in two areas of the museum: the Asian sculpture galleries (rooms 33 and 33a) and the Islamic gallery (room 34). Room 33 contains a collection of early sculpture from the Indian subcontinent, most of which was acquired in the nineteenth century under the curatorship of a Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks. It is an enormous gallery with the larger sculptures running down the centre on plinths and a series of sections like large alcoves along the sides, divided by two parallel rows of pillars and large Victorian cabinets that contain smaller objects.

Room 33: China, South Asia and South-East Asia, British Museum, London © Trustees of the British Museum

The choice of objects from India displayed here is in itself far from neutral. They reflect attitudes to art at the time of their acquisition; the predominance of sculpture fitting with a nineteenth century fascination with neoclassical European statues. Moreover, the very idea of collecting and displaying Indian objects was bound up with the politics of Britain’s colonial rule. Museums were a way of projecting Empire in an apparently objective form for Europeans to apprehend the distant East, which for most was beyond physical reach. The portrayal of an ancient India through the collection of early sculpture painted a picture of the East as being different from the rapidly industrialising West; a form of imperialism Edward Said has famously defined as “Orientalism” 1.

In this gallery, objects from as far and wide as China, South Asia and South East Asia are united on the basis that the following three religions are found there: Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. The union of these extremely diverse regions in room 33 poses further questions. What do South Asia and South East Asia have in common? Is religion a valid basis for categorisation? Geographical distances seem to shrink, as we find sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses from India alongside Buddhist sculptures from as far afield as South East Asia. And how should objects from different periods be displayed? Temporal gaps are inadvertently made to dissipate in, for example, the placing of a bracket from a stupa gateway at Sanchi from the first century alongside an Indian container for powder from the eighteenth and the nineteenth century.2 These two objects, created nearly two millennia apart, are allied solely by their association with Hinduism. Their juxtaposition seems, however inadvertently, to orchestrate an image of a timeless India in which those two millennia have seen little change.

The so-called Islamic gallery (room 34) further complicates the division of objects from India on religious lines. Alongside objects from countries including Iran, Turkey, and Syria, we find several cases of objects from Mughal India, including a collection of seventeenth century jewellery, on the basis that the Mughals were Muslim, too. The result of including ‘Islamic India’ in the museum’s ‘Islamic gallery’ is a stark division of Indian objects, with so-called Hindu, Buddhist and Jain objects in one gallery and so-called Islamic ones in another. The intention was clearly to tease out the cultural similarities between the nations of the whole of Asia; and I do not suggest that this is anything but a complex and delicate task. But the consequence of categorising object by religion is that India, a multi-faith nation, is fragmented and there is little or no acknowledgement of the cultural fluidity between religions there in real-life.

Gold pendant inlaid with jewels, Mughal dynasty, 17th century, British Museum ME OA +14178, room 34 © Trustees of the British Museum

verso of gold pendant inlaid with jewels, Mughal dynasty, 17th century, British Museum ME OA +14178, room 34 © Trustees of the British Museum

 

 

We can see here the curatorial challenges of displaying objects that are dislocated from their original context, rendering them fragments of some larger cultural whole to re-create their significance for the visitor for the museum. But there are also administrative factors at play. Practical factors also shape how the museum is configured. There is a substantial collection of Indian paintings that is not on display (even though the BM acknowledges the public are interested in them in the fact that prints of some of them can be purchased from the museum shop) because of the limited available gallery space. There are legal issues at work, too. Interestingly, I learnt that the main factor governing the layout of the sculpture gallery (room 33) is the fact that the large, imposing wooden cases dating from the nineteenth century are listed. This means that they cannot be destroyed or re-configured to mobilise the space and fit in objects currently confined to the museum’s storerooms.

 

Painting, Mughal dynasty, 18th century, in storage at the British Museum, 1880,0.411 © Trustees of the British Museum

The stark contrast in the way objects are displayed in the museum’s temporary exhibitions versus its permanent collection shows how big an impact the aesthetics of display can have for the way in which we perceive objects at the British Museum. An exhibition of Indian objects called ‘Garden & Cosmos’ that took place in 2009 featured a selection of royal court paintings from seventeenth to nineteenth century Jodhpur.3 What was striking when you entered the exhibition was the bright green colour of the walls (quite unlike the neutral cream of permanent sculpture gallery). The colour was much more than a backdrop. It brought the paintings to life by picking out the shade found in many of the landscapes, themselves highly saturated with colour. The visitor could not only go to the exhibition, but also attend a series of related talks and meander through a modern re-creation of the gardens of Jodhpur; since there was an entire programme of events alongside the exhibition entitled the “Indian Summer” which included an impressive botanical garden that was installed in the museum’s forecourt by Kew Gardens.4 Thanks to the flexibility allowed by the temporary exhibition as a medium, the sumptuous Jodhpur paintings were brought to life.

It may be possible to alter the way the permanent collection of Indian objects is displayed so that they can be more objectively understood. It may be possible to change the configuration of the Asian sculpture gallery at the British Museum, for example, or bring Indian paintings out of the storeroom, practicalities permitting. However, like any other cultural medium of representation, museums will never cease to be a product of their historical setting. They will never be an equivocal statement of the way objects existed in their former lives. Some nuance will always be added or subtract something from the meaning of an object in the way it is displayed; like a word or concept interpreted in another language. But this does not mean that objects in museums are necessarily lost in translation. Nor does it render our service to the historical integrity of objects futile. On the contrary, it means that the role of curators in assuring the fair representation of objects is essential; and this is something that can only be achieved where political and administrative factors come second and scholarly ones are paramount.

 

 

---

1 Edward Said, Orientalism (1978; reprint, Penguin Books: 2003)

2. British Museum numbers OA 1842.12-10.1 and OA 1921.10-23.18 respectively

3. Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (London: 28 May – 11 October 2009, British Museum exhibition)

4. India Landscape: Kew at the British Museum (1 May – 11 October 2009, West Lawn, British Museum forecourt)

© Priya Khanchandani, 2012. All rights reserved.

Large scale branding, Times Square New York, © Katherine Elliott 2009

Katherine Elliott: Could you briefly outline what your company does and your role within that company?

Anne Defay: I work for a private equity company that acquires the intellectual property to heritage and celebrity names and develops them into brands. I currently have a multifaceted role within this company. I am responsible for everything from copy writing to crafting pitches for new business, to coordinating events. Essentially we find names and brands from the past that we think have a certain cache or that are undervalued but that we see as having potential to develop into a contemporary brand that can be utilized across multiple categories and multiple geographies. We basically re-brand and re-package these names to re-create and re-constitute them in order to make them relevant today.

K: When you incorporate a heritage name and re-brand it creating a new identity how much of the old brand do you keep and how much does it influence the new brand identity?

A: There is of course an element of wanting to tap into and capitalise on the heritage of an old brand and to take the core values that made it so attractive but at the same to time you have to re-invigorate it with some new life. You have to make it relevant to today’s consumer and sometimes you do have to separate it from its original existence.

K: Do you rely on the fact that people will already know this brand and have some pre-existing notions about it or is it more about the brand having this history that consumer’s could find out about as a result of hearing the name?

A: Some of the time it is about taking ‘comatose names,’ names that did have recognition in their hey day and reviving and resuscitating this history by for example, creating a new website for the brand and so linking its old and new identity. This is something we have done before with some of our heritage brands, when they do have roots and a rich historical background we create websites to re-emphasise and re-articulate these roots. In that sense there are always some people that will recognise the name and that it is something with authenticity. This is such an important concept at the moment along with other buzz words such as ‘heritage’, ‘bespoke’ and ‘vintage’ which are all part of today’s luxury lexicon so to speak. The epitome of luxury today is to have something that is crafted, customised, and has a story.

There is however, another element to this where a name has an inherent attractiveness about it. The name itself may have some history associated with it but people may not be aware of it but the name itself carries an inherent playfulness and appealing nature enabling you to capitalise on it. For example, the use of French words in brand names is often enough for a lot of people to think of it in a certain way, it is an elevating factor.

K: What is your research process or ways that you go about looking for these heritage brands?

A: The business of buying up intellectual property is quite a small world and as a result we don’t have to actively go out looking for heritage brands they tend to present themselves to us. Often names can go through multiple hands before they fall into the right ones to be able to channel the full potential of the name.

K: So once you have acquired these names how do you create the new brand identity and whom do you work with?

A: We work in conjunction with stylists, directors, designers and copywriters, much of this is done in house but sometimes we do employ external creative direction.  This team then creates a three dimensional vision around the name; we consider who is our target market, what does this customer want, what are their priorities and values, where do we see the brand going and where is it going to be sold. We really try and think of the whole picture and most commonly this is achieved using mood boards to come up with the ‘brand DNA.’ As such we take the elements from the heritage brands roots that we find appealing and we aggrandise and stretch them and craft a complete concept so that when we pitch this idea to a retailer, to a wholesaler or a private label supplier we know what we are presenting to them and they know exactly what they will be getting from us. We want to ensure that we can work in partnership with these other companies in order to maintain the brands integrity and if you don’t have the identity of the brand firmly in place from the outset it is very easy for the brand to become de-valued over time.

Burberry label © Katherine Elliott, 2011

K: I think that Burberry is a great example of this as its name and identity was used across a vast array of goods in very different markets, which were out of the control of Burberry, its brand identity and integrity, therefore, became diluted. Now, however, they have managed to bring their identity back under their control to be seen again as one of the UK’s top fashion brands.

A: What is fascinating about Burberry is that they run a huge licensing operation and are an example of how this model can fail and be successful. In recent years many large brands have been buying back their licenses as inevitably you do lose some control when you sell a license, you are basically saying this is mine but you can develop it on my behalf and as such there needs to be very clear parameters and terms and a clear understanding between both parties to make that hand over successful. Burberry, however, now manage to have their brand successfully distributed across a wide range of products such as home-wares, fashion and fragrances without it losing its status. Calvin Klein is another brand that has managed to do this really successfully and again they operate a huge licensing model.  This just goes to show that with a clear and transparent concept a licensing relationship can be hugely successful and financially beneficial.

K: What is the relationship between the brand and the product, what leads the development process?

A: For us brand concept is the most important as most of the time our goal is to develop a brand that can be applied to multiple product categories, multiple distribution channels and multiple geographies. We do, however, want to maximise our outlets so we will take a name, hash out the brand DNA then we will conceptualise and ask what does this look like in eyewear, jewellery or leather goods. Essentially, however, the product categories are the same across the board and I think that while we do obviously have to think about product the consumer and thinking about what will make the consumer gravitate towards the brand is more important, as once this is fixed it is then much easier to translate into product than to start with the product and back track.

Chanel brand sunglasses © Katherine Elliott, 2011

K: It seems to me that some of the most successful brands have a lifestyle element to them you don’t just buy the product you buy into a particular way of life?

A: You definitely buy into a feeling people are emotional and a lot of the time you buy into an aspirational quality and with a lot of the heritage brands that we work with we try to evoke a luxurious quality and vibe. So, we take a premium, luxury lifestyle feeling and our aim is then to deliver that to the mid to mass market. You are directly channelling a desire that everybody has to live a particular aspirational lifestyle and this kind of brand development taps into the aspirations of a particular market.

K: You mentioned earlier that you also buy celebrity intellectual property could you talk a little bit about that process.

A: What this means is that we work very closely with a particular celebrity as such this process is very bespoke sometimes the celebrity in question will come on as a creative director and sometimes the celebrity has a strong background in design and wants to have a large hand in the design process other times they will act only as a symbolic figure head. In many cases celebrities have multiple brands in many product categories working under their name and have very little input in what’s going on.

We have recently been working on an exclusively online celebrity brand, which has for us been a huge learning curve because online brands function very differently to the physical bricks and mortar world. There is a pace online that is not reflected in the standard fashion calendar. In the traditional fashion world the year is split into autumn winter and spring summer with a very specific calendar of shows and times that defines when you release your collections and when they are in store. Online brands, however, have a pace two or three times faster than this because things get stale so quickly online. People want to see product move so every six to eight weeks you need to have a new drop, you need to have a new collection online. This has been fascinating to see and experiment with. The volume you can sell online in a day is unbelievable for example in one day can sell 1500 pairs of shoes, it is really taking the consumption of brands to a whole different level and for us seems to be something very fruitful to pursue further.

K: What, for you, have been the most rewarding and challenging things from this experience.

A: Well for me as I have no background in branding, getting to grips with the terminology was demanding. It is a very niche area where you are working in a world of ideas and concepts with its own language and terminology and for me the most challenging thing was figuring out what these words mean, what does IP mean, what is the difference between a franchise and a license? It has a language as many fields do, that is industry specific. So the de-mystification of this terminology has been challenging. The most rewarding part of this experience, however, is being able to see how you set up small businesses as with a lot of our small brands we treat them like small businesses, we open companies, we register their names, we set up service companies, we set up bank accounts and work space and being able to see the whole design process, creating concepts and ideas that go through to sampling and then production has been fascinating.

All rights reserved, © Katherine Elliott 2011.

Summer Term 2012
All Seminars Take Place at 5pm at the V&A and IHR
All those with a research interest in the field are welcome, no booking is required.

Wednesday 9th May,
Holden Room 103, Senate House, South Block, Ground Floor, IHR
Spike Sweeting (Warwick University)

‘Placing Sugar: Dock Design and Commercial Disputes in London 1740-1800’

Wednesday 16th May,
Seminar Room A, V&A
Dr Kate Smith (East India at Home Project, University of Warwick)

‘A Foreign Presence? Ivory Chairs and the Concept of Hybridity’

Friday 18th May,
Seminar Room 1, Sackler Centre, V&A
Professor, Pamela Smith (Robert H. Smith Fellow, V&A)

‘In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, Meaning’
The Robert H. Smith Renaissance Sculpture in Context Research Seminar

Wednesday 23rd May,
Athlone Room 102, Senate House Block, First Floor, IHR

Dr Marta Ajmar, (V&A/RCA)
‘All the Arts are Mechanical’: Investigating the Common Ground of Craftsmanship in Renaissance Italy’

Wednesday 30th May
Seminar Room A, V&A
Dr Simona Valeriani (URKew Project, London School of Economics)

‘Exchanging Knowledge and Creating New Things: Three Dimensional Models and ‘In-between Objects’
in Early Modern Times’

Figure used to ward off malevolent spirits, painted wood, Nicobar Islands, Bay of Bengal, 1880-1925, Photo: Wellcome Library, London

When entering the dimly lit interior of the Wellcome Collection with its wooden panelling for the first time, it is easy to get carried away by the plethora of weird and wonderful objects on open display. Exhibited inside glass cabinets these visible but untouchable artefacts take the spectator into the obscure and esoteric world of the ‘Medicine Man’. In here, the tools of the medical trade still allow no clear delineation between the functional and the spiritual, between science and art. Grouped loosely around large issues such as ‘The Beginning of Life’, the heterogenous exhibits seem to stem not just from an other world but from as many other worlds as there are objects. There is one thing though, that they all have in common: their close connection to the human body.  All artefacts deal with the visible and invisible threats to our well being. This holds true for the brutal looking forceps and saws displayed in the vitrine ‘Metal Instruments’, which were used to operate inside the opened human body, as well as for the Peter Pan like wooden figure in the vitrine ‘Seeking Help’ (pictured left), which served to ward off malevolent spirits before they could do any harm; a metaphysical firewall against invisible threats.

It is probably only now, after having explored the openly displayed tools of treatment and torture, that one might, on closer inspection, have a look inside the closed wooden drawers that are tucked in neatly into the wall, under the same wooden veneer that the whole cabinet of curiosities is embedded in. Hidden from direct sight and protected from the light, a small collection of delicate prints can be discovered here by the curious visitor. One particularly interesting etching in this closet is made by the British caricaturist William Heath, published in 1828 under the title ‘Monster Soup’.

Engraving: ‘A Monster Soup commonly called Thames Water’ by William Heath, London 1828, Photo: Wellcome Library, London

The illustration on the right depicts a bourgeoise lady spilling her cup of tea in a state of shock, confronted with microscopic revelations about the quality of the water that presumably was the source for her tea. In a parallel montage the artist shows on the left side of the image what the Thames water is used for, in this case tea, and on the right side what it consists of, a myriad of malevolent life forms that breed and dwell in it; a biosphere usually invisible to the human eye and revealed only through the technology of the microscope. The top caption of the print reads: ‘Microcosm dedicated to the London Water Companies. Brought forth all monstrous, all prodigious things, hydras and organs, and chimeras dire.’ At the bottom, a subtitle states: ‘Monster Soup commonly called Thames Water being a correct representation of that precious stuff doled out to us!’.

The caricature was a reaction to the particularly critical situation in water supply that London was suffering from at the time of publication. Only three years later, the city experienced its first outbreak of cholera. The poignant sarcasm in the captions points to the helplessness and passivity of the people at the receiving end of the water supply. They have to trust the source without being able to see with their own eyes what they have to consume. The citizens are at the mercy of the private suppliers and can only rely on experts from science, or in this case, on a caricaturist, to reveal the invisible threats delivered as a commodity to their homes.

State-trojan in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 9.10.2011, Photo: Benjamin Fischer

This specific form of revelation that William Heath pursued with his etching almost 200 years ago has a very contemporary counterpart which is only slightly less scary than the contamination of our drinking water. In October 2011, the influential conservative German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) made a similar move: Over several full pages of its widely read Sunday issue, it printed the source-code of a particular nasty piece of malware, the so called ‘Staatstrojaner’ or ‘State-Trojan’ (pictured left). A tiny piece of software that was designed by a private company, DigiTask GmbH, as a commission for the German federal police in order to infiltrate the computers of suspects. The program not only empowers state organs to record emails and listen to Skype-conversations, it can also send screenshots of the suspects computer to the prosecutors in real time. Furthermore, probably the moment where to drop the cup of tea, it enables whomever has control over the program, to download the whole hard drive and, most importantly, to remotely upload files and even further malware at will. In other words: evidence can be produced and placed wherever and whenever needed without the suspect having the slightest idea of what is going on under the bright and shiny surface of its desktop. The green meadows covering the operating system would show no traces, no footprints of the invaders.

Thanks to the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), a hacker organisation that, in spite of its misleading name stands up for civil rights, constitutionality and privacy of data (Datenschutz), the Staatstrojaner with its wide political implication was brought to daylight. Without this tech-savvy group of geeks and nerds, who are usually seen as outsiders and renegades, even as threats to society, the public would be as oblivious to the state-malware as our tea drinking lady would be to the sprawling life in her teacup without the help of the microscope. Frank Rieger, spokesman of the CCC and one of the hackers who exposed the malware explains the discovery in the FAZ under the descriptive headline: ‘Anatomy of a digital pest’. Indeed the parallels between the biological viruses, parasites and worms that live in our bodies and their digital counterparts that infest the nervous system of our personal computers are striking. Or, as Frank Rieger puts it: ‘Analyzing malware can be compared to dissecting an unknown species. The idea is to identify individual functions, like eyes, ears, the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the intestines or vocal apparatus’. The vivisection of the still fully functional specimen under scrutiny was programmed so recklessly, that not only the police but any knowledgeable hacker could take advantage of the loquacious intruder. Instead of protecting its citizens against harm, the German police had not only broken the law, it eventually rendered its suspects defenceless against all kinds of criminal cyber-attacks.

Human Genome Volume One, Designed by Kerr Noble for the Wellcome Collection 2005, Photo: Wellcome Library, London

It is already a peculiar circumstance, that a conservative newspaper teams up with the seemingly ‘chaotic’ hackers to undeceive the public about the governments use of malware. Even more noteworthy is the editors decision to print the actual code over five full pages. By making it an ‘open source’ in that way, the FAZ made it readable to everybody, deliberately shocking its readership, while at the same time pointing to a new form of illiteracy that has become a serious problem in our society. We are embedded in code, computers are ubiquitous in our lives, they control our lives, code is law, it is of utter importance. But still, even when it is spread out in the Sunday paper, the vast majority of people has not the slightest idea what these lines mean. They might as well be written in ancient Greek or Latin: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who is watching the watchmen?). As with the classic form of illiteracy, early schooling in programming languages could, in the long run, contribute a solution to the problem. But still, it will remain highly unrealistic that a majority of the population will be able or willing to keep up with the ever increasing speed and complexity of technological development. There is not much more then the belief that, while we touch the sensitive surfaces of our ubiquitous quasi-magical devices in awe, someone will take care of their integrity and ward off malevolent spirits. Since governments not only in Germany have disqualified themselves of this guarding role it becomes ever more important to promote the ideas of the open-source movement and to support independent groups of experts like the CCC to watch the watchman and to illuminate the secret life of our devices.

After closing the drawer with the ‘Monster Soup’, when leaving the ‘Medicine Man’ through the nearby glass door, the visitor finds himself in the exhibition ‘Medicine Now’; far from being a dimly lit cabinet, this part of the Wellcome Collection is a brightly light, aseptic representation of the modern day, purely scientific approach to medicine. No magic lurking under the surface here. But in a huge white floor-to-ceiling bookshelf full of white ring binders, the visitor can have a look into his own source-code printed on paper (pictured above). With its three billion letters in 119 volumes The ‘Library of the Human Genome’ , points at the future strands of code and hacking.

© 2012 Florian Alexander Schmidt

‘I wonder how you are going to feel

when you find out

I wrote this instead of you.’

Billy Collins’ poem, ‘You, Reader’ provides a helpful avenue into investigating the site of writing itself. 1 The question posed in the opening lines draws attention to the relationship between the author and reader as well as the act of writing. While literary analysis is familiar with the concept that the ‘authorial voice’ of a work does not necessarily correlate with the actual views of the author, the image provoked here resonates with recent trends in critical, creative, and design writing.

The poem playfully flirts with the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, leading the reader to conjure up vivid scenarios of Collins at his desk, pen in hand. What was he thinking about when the nib finally touched down? –- Or maybe he wasn’t at his desk at all. Perhaps he wrote at his laptop, on a porch, or on his couch with the television on. How do the image and the situation of the writer effect what he or she writes? And, does it matter?

Lucien Faure. poster, 1897. Britain ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

A recent event organized by the Royal College of Art’s Critical Writing Program addressed just such issues. Architectural theorist, Jane Rendell, recent writer-in-residence at the Whitechapel Gallery, Sally O’ Reilly, and Cabinet magazine’s UK editor, Brian Dillon, spoke on their own work, which all addresses a different aspect of the ‘situatedness’ of writing. As the flyer for the discussion explained: ‘where, when and how words are written can change how they are read and understood.’

This statement was made explicit in Brian Dillon’s recent performance and publication I Am Sitting in a Room.2 Written in an open gallery space in New York in 24 hours, Dillon became the author on display. The product of his day’s work addressed the relationship between authors and the space they worked in. One of the most provocative hypotheses he raised was the idea that the writing space congeals around the author, becoming a prosthesis to the writing body.

The desk as an extension of author has concrete implications on the agency of the author him/herself. It suggests that the writing product is a consequence of a network of actors, locations, and social contexts, rather than the immaculate conception of a genius. This complex system is what Jane Rendell refers to as the ‘architecture’ of art criticism in her 2010 publication, Site Writing.3

Rendell uses the metaphor of constructed space to imagine these relationships – between critic, text, and reader, but also the artwork, spaces of interpretation, social and economic factors, and even the fallacy of memory itself. Honesty about the factors of producing criticism is the ultimate goal for Rendell. The best example of which is her catalogue essay, ‘She is Walking About in a Town Which She Does Not Know’.4 For this piece Rendell was asked to write about a series of works not yet produced by the artists, nor installed in the exhibition spaces. Therefore, she used the maps, pictures, and artist statements to construct a fictional narrative that draws attention to the supplementary tools she had been given to write the catalogue text.

The apparent honesty of production reflected in both Dillon and Rendell’s titles (I Am Sitting in a Room, and ‘She is Walking About in a Town Which She Does Not Know’), raises questions about morality and writing criticism. The ethical aspect is made clear by Rendell’s term ‘situated criticism’ which combines the feminist notions of ‘situated knowledges’ and critical concerns with relational aesthetics, in other words the participation the viewer plays in completing a work.6 Developing both of these notions simultaneously, Rendell forms a hybrid idea of situated criticism, where the critic as a specific type of viewer recognizes her own situatedness, her own embodied position and conditions in order to not augment the ‘power of the critic’.

Joseph Hornung. 'The Village Turner' oil on panel, 1850 ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

What are the implications of situation (or ‘situatedness’) for the craftsman?”

Perhaps one way to answer this question is to compare the image of the writer as his desk to the craftsman at his workbench. Consider the painting, ‘The Village Turner’ by Joseph Hornung. Depicted in the oil on panel is a nineteenth century craftsman at work in the interior of his shop. Standing in front of two open windows, the turner concentrates on a piece of wood attached to a lathe in front of him.  His sleeves are rolled up, hat and jacket abandoned on the side of the picture frame. The jumble of tools, wood, and shavings sprawl across his workbench and onto the floor of the shop where they mingle with the toys of two children playing at the turner’s feet.

Today we can recognize how constructed this image of the craftsman is. Not only is the painting part of an art historical movement committed to depicting the everyday – like genre scenes – but the pastoral romanticism of the image (the blue sky outside the window, the unity of work and family like, etc.) leaves the question of reality behind.

Qualifications aside, the workbench (or potters wheel, or metalsmith’s anvil) is an essential element of the craftsman’s work. Tools have been theorized as prosthesis throughout the twentieth century. For example, Martin Heidegger argued for the supplementary (and therefore essential) nature of tools in his 1927 publication, Being and Time.7 Tools, and by extension the workbench, are a familiar means of production.

Perhaps it is because of our consciousness of the idea of tool as prosthesis that we might not be as surprised to find Billy Collin’s words inscribed on a vessel in the silver galleries of the V&A:  ‘I wonder how you are going to feel when you find out I [made] this instead of you’?  The ethical implication of ‘situatedness’ has no less meaning for the maker. As the Hornung painting shows, the image of the rural craftsman works just as hard at maintaining previously established moral ideologies . ‘Honesty’ about the means of production has become almost a trope in the consideration of objects -‘the mark of the hand’ a gold standard in economic value. What would it mean for the authority of the craftsman if he/she acknowledged the site of making as a co-producer of his/her work?

© 2012 Marilyn Zapf. All rights reserved.

 Footnotes

1. Billy Collins, ‘You, Reader’ in The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems (New York: Random House, 2005).

2. I Am Sitting in a Room (Cabinet, 2011).

3. Jane Rendell, Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

4. Ibid.

5. Rendell, Jane ‘Site-Writing: She is Walking About in a Town Which She Does Not Know’ in Home Cultures Vol 4 No 2 (Berg 2007) pp177-200.

6. Rendell, Site-Writing, p. 2.

7. Martin Heidegger Being and Time (1927).

Further Reading:

Mieke Bal, Louise Bourgeois’ Spider: The Architecture of Art-writing (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001)

Donna Haraway  ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’ in Feminist Studies Vol 14 No 3 (Autumn, 1988) pp. 575-599

Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. (1964)

An Easter hiatus for the editors here at Unmaking Things.

Posting will resume Thursday of next week.

Detail of pattern from the Esemplario Nuovo, by Tagliente, Venice, 1531. © Soersha Dyon, 2012

Much has been written about the extent of the contact between the Middle East and Italy during the Renaissance – with a marked focus on Venice.  Various authors have traced the circulation of objects around the Mediterranean; a circulation that can be followed back to the Middle Ages, thanks to the crusades and the fashionability of Middle-Eastern textiles and rock crystal vessels. These are all however objects of luxury, which held a high prestige amongst the treasuries of Europe and cabinets of curiosities of Princes. Considering the everyday material culture of Italy, and the extent to which Middle-Eastern influences can be found, only underlines the depth of the exchanges taking place in that period. A perfect example of this is the embroidery pattern book of the Renaissance.

German in origin – the first recorded pattern book was printed in Augsburg in 1524 – embroidery pattern books became a hallmark of Venetian visual culture. The sheer amount of re-editions and new books being published throughout the sixteenth-century – not only in Venice but also all over Europe – attest to their popularity.

A woman 'using' a pattern book. Taken from the frontispiece of Il Burato, Venice, c.1527. © Soersha Dyon, 2012

Books such as the Essempio di Recammi are seen as items of female domestic culture, providing women with the latest fashionable patterns they could recreate as lace or embroider upon linen shirts, cuffs or collars. Indeed their format would have made them ideal for a companion book to hold in their hands, all books being smaller than an A5, and as such could have been easily transportable and readable when working. The frontispieces of many books show women at work, and pattern books can be sighted in the vicinity of the group. It is usually resting beside the embroiderer or lace maker, perhaps as a visual inspiration. However the consensus in the scholarship remains that the patterns must have been pricked through, accounting for the low survival rate of such items. For example, there are only three known examples of the Essempio di Recammi – a book published in 1527 by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente. If the very material of the book was essential to its function, then it would make sense that few examples would survive and that those that do would not bear the marks of such use.

Women using the tools of geometry to measure patterns. Taken from the frontispiece of the Opera Nova, by Domenico da Sera, Venice, c. 1543. © Soersha Dyon, 2012

Additionally, parallels can be drawn between the pattern book and the Renaissance calligraphy book, generally aimed at men. One of the most prolific publishers of pattern books was Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, also renowned for his calligraphy manuals, where he taught how to write in an aesthetically pleasing manner. It is perhaps surprising that he would turn his attention to embroidery pattern books. Nevertheless, he draws a series of interesting parallels between the two genres. The tools he cites as necessary for the use of the patterns are the tools used for drawing and therefore are part of the calligrapher’s outfit. Furthermore, this symmetry is echoed by his use of the same woodcut representing the tools mentioned beforehand in both publications. The use of similar tools can be seen in the frontispiece to the Opera Nova by Da Sera, in which a woman is seen using a compass to measure a pattern. This parallel between writing and embroidering is echoed by an extract from Ludovico Dolce’s treatise on the education of women, in which he states: “Truly all embroidery is beautiful and ingenious work, not being as necessary as sewing, it carries no shame in not knowing how to do it … but to tell the truth, knowing how to sew for women is equivalent to knowing how to write for men.”

arabesque ornament from Ain New Formbüchlein, Hans Hofer, Augsburg, 1545. © Soersha Dyon, 2012

Calligraphy books were aimed at wealthy merchants, and usually included a variety of ‘foreign’ alphabets such as ‘hebrew’ or ‘African and Arabic’ ones as well as complex mathematical formulas suited for trade. The embroidery pattern books were therefore published by men aware of the latest fashions in the circle of wealthy merchants. It is in this context that the 1530’s saw the inclusion of the arabesque, a Middle Eastern ornamental motif adapted from imported bookbindings and metalwork. The inclusion of the arabesque is generally unexplained, or described as the inclusion of “Moorish knots and arabesque” by the authors. By the 1550’s, and the publication of Vavassore’s Ornamente delle belle e virtuose Donne, arabesque patterns had disappeared from Venetian embroidery pattern books. This slow recession in the use of the arabesque in pattern books points to its ephemerality as a fashionable pattern – a phenomenon that is echoed by the gradual stop in the use of the pattern on other mediums, such as maiolica. However it is its very status as a fashionable item of decoration that reveals the extent to which Middle Eastern influences pervaded aspects of everyday life in Italy.

This brief time frame saw the inclusion of what would typically be regarded as a Middle Eastern motif within female domestic culture and craft. The pattern books are a precise example of the extent of the contact and exchange that happened during the Renaissance between Italy – and more widely Europe – and the Middle East. Removed from the stunning pieces in treasuries and curiosity cabinets, a more ‘common’ material culture can be widely found, one that features objects from Egypt or the Ottoman Empire or directly inspired by these, one that tells the story of the ease with which objects circulated within the Mediterranean during the Renaissance.

Recommended Readings:

Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta & Dennis, Flora, eds, At Home in Renaissance Italy. (London, V&A Publications 2006)

Howard, Deborah, Venice and the East: the impact of the Islamic world on Venetian architecture – 1100-1500. (Cambridge, Yale University Press: 2000)

Mack E, Rosamond, Bazaar to Piazza – Islamic Trade and Italian Art 1300-1600. (London, University of California Press: 2002)

Schmidt-Arcangeli, Catarina & Wolf, Gerhard. Islamic artefacts in the Mediterranean World – Trade, Gifts, Exchange & artistic transfer. (Venice, Marsilio: 2010)

© 2012, Soersha Dyon. All rights reserved.

// Emilie Voirin is a French product designer working in London. She is currently attending a MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art. //

Emmanuelle is Shy © Emilie Voirin 2010

With strong concept-led projects and an impressive series of limited editions, Emilie Voirin’s collection of works does not seem to give in to easy categorisation. The clever Independent Arms which play on the fact that people sit on the arms of a sofa regardless of whether there is someone in it or not (see below), or again the rattan chair Emmanuelle is Shy, which hides the face of the sitter are both very playful, pictorial pieces with vivid narratives supporting them.

She has also produced much more literal products, such as her collection of cups exhibited at IMM Cologne International Furniture Fair Germany in 2008, which feature a rubber band to prevent them from slipping from your hands. Such hybridity in her practice makes it difficult to label Emilie and the temptation to put her in the loose, formless category of Designart is tempting.

A highly controversial term and difficult position to hold, Emilie has kindly agreed to explore with me the ins and outs of what it means to be a ‘design artist’, and the shortcomings of being categorised as such.

Trained as an artist at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy where she graduated in 2002, Emilie took a turn to product design in 2004 when she attended a furniture class at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. From then on she nurtured her career within the design field, but not without causing a stir. Recalling the early days in France, she underlined the weight of categorisation there, and the uneasiness her work would sometimes cause within design schools.

Independent Arms © Emilie Voirin 2010

Recognition first came from abroad, with invitations to exhibit and work in Germany and Italy. To her great relief, the French National Collection of Art and Design in Paris later acquired some of her pieces. In 2009, her collaborative chair collection Made in China, which revisits iconic designs in rattan, was acquired by the prestigious Neue Sammlung design collection in Munich – formal acknowledgments of the value of her work from both the art and design worlds.

Cups © Emilie Voirin 2007

“I think the difference between art and design is shrinking: museums exhibit designers, art fairs have a design corner… Creative disciplines cross over, they exchange and feed off each other. To define one’s practice is important but not essential – a good project is a good project, whatever the label. It is very important to me not to be categorised. My work is not just limited to designart – lately I have been trying something different, which has more to do with installation and technology, but I don’t know how to call it yet. It is only once I have completed a project that I am comfortable applying a label to it. It’s easier for me to talk about it when it’s finished.”

The porous nature of the physical frontier between art and design can be partially explained by the changing definition of the term ‘product’. As Emilie puts it: “Product can mean anything: a service, an installation… As long as something happens and that someone has produced an object according to an original idea within a specific social, cultural and economic context, then it is a product.” So what are the determining characteristics that make one product fall into a category or another?

Function is a key concept when dealing with the critique of design. However, this term itself is highly problematic, as it is not semantically stable. Emilie dexterously plays with the idea of the functional by taking it from a literal level to a more conceptual level – a skill mastered by many critical designers:

“If an object is useless, then maybe it’s a work of Art! If the intent of the designer is to produce a useful object, it certainly carries a message. My collection “Usual Unusable Objects” asks the question of the pragmatic qualities of the object with regards to its visual meaning, thanks to a semantic twist in its name. Where uselessness starts, functionality stops to give way to a questioning of the object.” And that in itself, is the function of this object.

Usual Unusable Objects © Emilie Voirin 2006

Relentlessly wondering whether an object is art or design can sometimes be a red herring in trying to conceptualise the work of a designer. It is much more helpful to start from the genesis of the project, and see what emerges from there. Emilie has not been commissioned yet, however, her experience working with institutions has given her some insights into the incidence of the brief on the development of a project:

“My objects stem from observation, feeling, and experience, which then trigger the creative process. Commissions are a different matter because very often you have to negotiate with more or less specific requirements. The industrial designer must take into account a number of parameters – ergonomy, sustainability, ecofriendliness, and economic factors – whereas with limited editions, one can slightly overlook some of these concerns. The industrial designer wants requirements, but the designer artist maybe not so much. If you are given a specific brief, then it can be tricky to move away from it.”

The level of freedom of the design artist is only proportional to his financial independence. The fact that everyone has to make a living is a determining factor in the blurring of roles amongst designers. Very often, a young creative will have to have a job on the side – more often than not in interior design – which logically entails a healthy hybridity in practice. Designers don’t work in a vacuum; different practices entail different ways of securing an income. “Let’s start from the principle that a designer has already started his practice, alone or with a few assistants. If he manages to have a certain number of products on the market, his income will be more regular than a designer artist, who will sell products at a higher price, but more sporadically.”

Made in China, Emilie Voirin & Jerome Nelet © photo Philip Radowitz 2009

The price of limited editions (a term that Emilie significantly seems to prefer to designart) definitely influences their reception: “I don’t think people would use an expensive limited edition the same way they would use a more common object. It would be like sitting on a sculpture – except that you would be sitting on a sculpture intended for that purpose… This is why I argue that design art is a trend, a movement that will probably be short-lived. One day we will have to move on and I feel this is already happening, even simply when we say that product design can be a service – this can possibly lead to something spectacular.”

Discussing the new trends in product design inevitably led us to the ubiquitous topic of open source and open design, in which Emilie foresees the end of the design/art debate. “Open source is a new word that has been applied to processes that already existed, and I wonder whether this is not due to this need for a new trend.”

“We will always need designers. However I am wondering whether we actually need designer artists, and whether there is an actual demand from the public for that kind of work.” On being asked whether the public of designart could actually be industrial design, rather than a generic ‘audience’, Emilie insisted on the connections between the two: “Very often, design art will use the design industry, the manufacturers, and will therefore follow what is happening technically in the world and what the current resources are. And that is what makes it relevant. Industrial designers heavily criticize designer artists, but still they keep a close eye on them – maybe in the same way they would keep an eye on contemporary art.”

Designart seems to be evolving in parallel with Industrial Design, as an outlet for the profession, a space of experimentation. It is not uncommon to have designers moving back and forth from one to the other, whether it is a question of means, or a temporary gateway from the constraints of industrial production and the dealing with its many agents. This flexibility seems to be necessary to keep the discussion alive and going, and it is therefore essential not to try and pin down designers to one or the other side of the illusory design ‘fence’.

Emmanuelle takes a stand on globalization © Emilie Voirin 2009

“Nothing is set in stone, all that we’re saying is subject to discussion, which maybe is the essence of design art – that it can be discussed. As long as the industrial designer follows the brief, the creative system cannot really be discussed. Of course the choice of materials, the angle of the chair can be criticized, but the general, overarching process which is to answer a brief that corresponds to a certain demand won’t be challenged. On the contrary, the designer artist is going to produce something that does not correspond to a demand, and that will trigger a discussion. So all in all is it not just art? Since it is not expected, that there is no preliminary brief, maybe it is art.”

Discussing the matter with Emilie was a very enlightening moment, which has led me to wonder why we talk about design art at all, as it does not seem to be a separate category from design. The designers themselves can go from one to the other, and products developed as limited editions are often just waiting to be edited on a larger scale. It is a shame that design with a discourse, experimental design should be considered a separate category. The more I talk to practitioners, the more ‘Designart’ seems to me to be a short-sighted conceptual shortcut that comes in the way of fully addressing – and embracing – the hybrid nature of design creativity.

© 2012 Justine Boussard and Emilie Voirin. All rights reserved.