Design and the elastic mind, museum of modern art (spring 2008)

Design Issues

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 92-101

  Cogdell, Christina ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARCHITECTURAL TEXTILE; DESIGN; MUSEUM; TEXTILE ART;

EID: 67849108492     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: 15314790     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/desi.2009.25.3.92     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Thanks to Joel Dinerstein, Jeffrey Meikle, Dennis Doordan, Carolyn de le Peña, and Irene Cheng for comments on an earlier and much longer draft of this review. Design and the Elastic Mind was created by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini, Curatorial Assistant. Previews and reviews of Design and the Elastic Mind include Paola Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind: An Exclusive Preview to the MoMA Exhibition, Abitare 478 (December 2007-January 2008): 101; Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Soul in the New Machines, New York Times (February 22, 2008): E1; Hadyn Shaughnessy, Creative Impulse Key to Success in Fast Changing World, The Irish Times (May 19, 2008): 19; Tim McKeough, Intelligent Design (By Humans), The Globe and Mail (Canada) (March 8, 2008): L10; Todd Bracher, Exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind Review, Blueprint (May 2008): 115; John Hockenberry, Eternal Sunshine of the Elastic Mind, Metropolis 27:10 (May 2008): 194, 196, 198; Julian Bittiner, "You Say You Want a Revolution? Exhibition Review: Design and the Elastic Mind," Visual Communication 7:4 (2008): 503-08; John Schwartz, Museum Kills Live Exhibit, New York Times (May 13, 2008): F3; Eyal Lavi, MoMA Exhibit Dies Five Weeks into Show, The Art Newspaper Issue 191 (May 10, 2008), online at: www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=8413. Thanks to Peggy Chung for bringing the latter article to my attention. 98
2. The list of participants at the MoMA/ 4 SEED Salons is available at: www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/assets/pdf/DEM-SE EDMoMASalons2007.pdf.
3. Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Applied Curiosity, 46-57; Ted Sargent, 5 Nanotechnology: Design in the Quantum Vernacular, 80-86; and Peter Hall, "Critical Visualization," 120-31; all in Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008).
4. Paola Antonelli's introductory essay to the catalogue is available as a pdf on the exhibition Website at: www.moma org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/assets/pdf/Design_and_the_ Elastic_Mind.pdf.
5. Antonelli, "Design and the Elastic Mind: An Exclusive Preview to the MoMA Exhibition," Abitare 478 (December 2007-January 2008): 101; and Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind in Design and the Elastic Mind, 14, as well as the primary introductory wall text at the entrance to the exhibition.
6. Ouroussoff, "The Soul in the New Machines," noted that the trick of slightly converging the walls of a hallway began with Palladio in the sixteenth century.
7. For more information about any of the themes or objects discussed in this review, please see the MoMA Website: www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/, which has links to the checklist, SEED Salons and other accompanying events and lectures, descriptions of the major themes and works, and much more information than was included in the exhibition itself. The works mentioned here, in order, are Paul Rothemund's DNA Origami (2004-5); Tobie Kerridge, Nikki Stott, and Ian Thompson's Biojewellery (2003-7); Oron Catts's and Ionat Zurr's Victimless Leather (2004, 2008); and Joris Laarman's Bone Chair (2006). For more information on these works, see also the exhibition catalogue by Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, 82-3, 111, 115, and 71. Many of the artists, designers, and scientists have Websites of their own that provide much more information. These are easily found through online searches, but they are too numerous to include in this review.
8. Antonelli, wall text for section "Design for the Senses, in the exhibition described genetic technologies that would revive our long-lost ability to sniff out perfect mates. Works here in order are Susanna Soares, Genetic Trace, Part Two: Sniffing Others (2007); Elio Caccavale, MyBio toy series (2005) and Fertilitoys from the Future Families Project (2007); Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Technological Dreams Series: No. 1 Robots (2007); and Chuck Hoberman, Emergent Surface (2007). See Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, 110, 31-32, 28, and 37.
9. Important works in the complex 12 data visualization section at the rear included: Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora, et al, Architecture and Justice Project (pdf available for viewing or downloading in the Publications section at: www.spatialinformationdesignlab.org/projects.php?id=40); MIT's SENSEableCity's New York Talk Exchange (2008) (available at http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/) and Real Time Rome (2006) (available at http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/); Ben Fry's isometricblocks (2002/2004-05); and Demetrie Tyler's Hypothetical Drawings about the End of the World (2006). See also Peter Hall, Critical Visualization, 129-31, and Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, 139, 142, 149.
10. Scott Camazine, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Nigel Franks, James Sneyd, Guy Theraulaz, and Eric Bonabeau, Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 7-8, defines self-organization very clearly and repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of no external intervention or direction.
11. For examples of self-organizing termite mounds, ant colonies, and beehives, see Camazine et al, 59-60, 285-93; J. Scott Turner, The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); and Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (New York: Scribner, 2001).
12. The ironic words curb our destructive consumerism are Catts's and Zurr's and, as their publications show, they were meant to be provocative. And yet this irony, which is clear from their publications, was erased in the plaque accompanying their piece. Also, their work was displayed in the Organic Design room near the entry to the show. See Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, 115; Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, The Ethics of Experiential Engagement with the Manipulation of Life in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Phillip, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 125-42; Catts and Zurr, "Are the Semi-Living Semi-Good or Semi-Evil?" Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 1:1 (2003): 47-60; Catts and Zurr, Growing Semi-Living Sculptures: The Tissue Culture & Art Project, Leonardo 35:4 (2002): 365-70. On sustainability, the cattle industry, and tissue nutrient fluid, see, The Ethics of Experiential Engagement with the Manipulation of Life,132-33, 141 n.19. The latter footnote cites a state- ment from the chief executive officer of the Australian Association for Humane Research, Inc., from June 30, 2006: It has been estimated that around half a million liters of raw FCS (fetal calf serum) is produced each year worldwide, which equates to the harvesting of more than one million bovine fetuses annually. Some sources have suggested that the actual figure may be closer to two million fetuses per year.
13. Key examples of this boundary-blurring work, coming out of the Royal College of Art, include Susanna Soares's New Organs of Perception series, Mikael Metthey's The Minutine Space, and Michael Burton's The Race and Nanotopia. Antonelli included the work of many more members of this group in the show. See Design and the Elastic Mind, 43, 105, 197-08, and 110.
14. This continual intermixture reminded me of designer Norman Bel Geddes's mantra, the imagination creates the actual, an idea he most famously embodied in his Futurama exhibit for General Motors at the 1939 New York World's Fair. See Christina Cogdell, "The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman Bel Geddes's Eugenic 'World of Tomorrow,'" American Quarterly 52:2 (June 2000): 235, 245 n.125, citing Geddes. See also the first few chapters of Colin Milburn's Nanovision: Engineering the Future (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008) for further elaborations on the back to the future motif, whereby projections by scientists writing nanotech science fiction contribute direction to actual research and development. On religious motifs in nanotech that resemble some of Antonelli's descriptions of designers as priests/mediators, see Milburn, 14-15.
15. A few of the artists and designers who brought a critical edge to the ways in which technologies function, or might function, within culture and society, in addition to Liberti ́ny and Catts and Zurr, are Michael Burton, Demetrie Tyler, SENSEable City Laboratory of MIT, Michiko Nitta, and Jon Ardern. In a few instances, Antonelli notes the critical- ity of the works, and her inclusion of the section Design for Debate also indicates her acknowledgement of this tension. The Debate, however, does not happen within the exhibition's texts. However, perhaps realizing this oversight, her recent column in SEED magazine entitled Of Design and Being Just: In Science Designers Find New Ways to Probe Questions of Ethics, SEED (April 2009): 21-22 addresses in much greater detail the works of Catts and Zurr, their critical message, and the ethical debates instigated by their work and its death during the show. She also mentions that the Design for Debate (aka Critical Design) section was inspired by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, who head up the Royal College of Art's Design Interactions Department. She quotes Dunne: Design in that way can facilitate a debate about whether we want these futures or not.
16. See Michael Adas, Dominance by 21 Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2006); Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell 22 University Press, 1989); David Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994); and Nye, America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
17. Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in 23 the Library (New York: Basic, 2004), xii, coined the term techno-fundamentalism, which Joel Dinersterien fully elabo- rates in Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman, American Quarterly 58:3 (September 2006): 569-595.
18. Antonelli, "Design and the Elastic Mind," 14-15. She writes: A few exceptional individuals are already wired for change, and the masses have a tendency to either admire them as visionaries or burn them at the stake as witches and heretics. However, these individuals do not represent the majority.In order to step boldly into the future, the majority needs design. ...Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. ...Without a visual design translation, many fundamental concepts ...would remain ungraspable by most.
19. Glenn Lowry, "Foreword," Design and the Elastic Mind, 4-5. Antonelli uses the same phrase, evolution of society, on page 24. Italics added.
20. Step back to the mid-1930s, when designer Egmont Arens argued that the fast pace of technology demanded a higher level of national intelligence, a goal eugenicists promised to produce. He said: This age needs streamlined thinking to keep pace with its stream-lined machines. See Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 144-47. Compare his statements with Antonelli's, Design and the Elastic Mind, 14. On intellectual evolution, see Antonelli, All Together Now! in Design and the Elastic Mind (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 154.
21. Antonelli, "Design and the Elastic Mind: An exclusive preview to the MoMA exhibition," 101; and "Design and the Elastic Mind,"14; as well as the primary introductory wall text at the entrance to the exhibition.
22. Antonelli, "Design and the Elastic Mind," 15. On 21, she writes: If design is to help enable us to live to the fullest while taking advantage of all the possibilities provided by contemporary technology, designers need to make both people and objects perfectly elastic."
23. Raymond Williams, In Culture and Society 1780-1950, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 300. He discusses Mass and Masses in detail in relation to the idea of democracy on pages 297-300.
24. On pace and acceleration in nanotech- 26 On the dissolution of the idea of race nology discourse, see Milburn, 10-11; as a scientifically useful construct, see Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, The History and Geography of Human 22. For example, in the wall text for the Genes by population geneticists Luca 3-D Printing section, she describes how Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and rapid manufacturing will become ever Alberto Piazza (Princeton: Princeton more rapid, cutting the time it takes to University Press, 1996); and Jefferson print a chair (now seven days) over the Fish, Race and Intelligence: Separating next few years down to seven hours, and Science from Myth (Mahwah: L. Erlbaum, then a few years later, seven minutes. 2002), 1-28, 113-41. Her emphasis on accelerating pace is 27 Antonelli's final sentence of this final repeated in her recent article Core essay states: For the first time in history, Principles: How Science Can Help Form a crowd of billions of individuals will be a Theory of Design, SEED 20 (February able to unite the power of common sense 2009): 29. David Nye, in Technology and and the imaginative vision of personal the Production of Difference, American initiative with the most advanced prin-Quarterly 58:3 (September 2006): 598, ciples of design wisdom. Antonelli, All elaborates the traits of technological Together Now! 159. For more on recent determinism: belief that technology can interpretations of the global village break down cultural barriers and bring in communication studies, see Douglas, world peace; and when rooted in the The Turn Within, 619-38. free market, it is as if a beneficent 28 Antonelli, All Together Now! 156. For determinism were the inevitable outcome a critical history of the idea that new of 'the invisible hand' in laissez-faire technologies liberate women from work, economics. Historians of technology and opening the door to a life of leisure, culture have worked hard to take apart see Ruth Schwarz Cowan, More Work the myth of technological determinism, for Mother: The Ironies of Household which posits that successful inventions Technologies from the Open Hearth to and technological systems are the the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, primary agents of social progress. 1983). They have done so through close-up 29 Antonelli, Design and the Elastic Mind, examinations of the particular contexts 22; and Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora, et al, within which inventors and designers, Architecture and Justice Project (pdf), 3. out of their own agency and intention, 30 Antonelli, All Together Now! 157. create technologies that then, in combination with other socioeconomic forces, become revolutionary within society. See also Susan Douglas, The Turn Within: The Irony of Technology in a Globalized World," American Quarterly 58:3 (September 2006): 623.
25. See Cynthia Henthorn, From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America 1939-1959, (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), on the continuity of the rhetoric of social evolution from before to after World War II. In her new column in SEED magazine, Antonelli recently stated: Design is looking for a unified theory. See Core Principles: How Science Can Help Form a Theory of Design, 29.
26. On the dissolution of the idea of race as a scientifically useful construct, see The History and Geography of Human Genes by population geneticists Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Jefferson Fish, Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth (Mahwah: L. Erlbaum, 2002), 1-28, 113-41.
27. Antonelli's final sentence of this final essay states: For the first time in history, a crowd of billions of individuals will be able to unite the power of common sense and the imaginative vision of personal initiative with the most advanced principles of design wisdom. Antonelli, All Together Now! 159. For more on recent interpretations of the global village in communication studies, see Douglas, "The Turn Within," 619-38.
28. Antonelli, "All Together Now!" 156. For a critical history of the idea that new technologies liberate women from work, opening the door to a life of leisure, see Ruth Schwarz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technologies from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
29. Antonelli, "Design and the Elastic Mind," 22; and Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora, et al, Architecture and Justice Project (pdf), 3.
30. Antonelli, "All Together Now!" 157.