DSDN171: Assignment 9

From politics to design all are concerned with our environment. We entered an era where the concept of being 'green' is not only for hippies but rather concept that has reach a popular cultural status. We see how it inform every type of design today. I'll explore the 'green' movement as a form of ideology over taking design by look at Coca Cola's 'green' billboard (see figure 1)

Figure 1: Coca-cola bilboard:
'This billboard absorbs air pollution' (image from engadget)

The Coca Cola ad is a 60 by 60 foot billboard is made up of a number of Fukien tea plants, each of which can soak up around 13 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, for a combined total of 46,800 pounds. The plants are housed in pots made from recycled Coke bottles and are watered via a drip irrigation system. The billboard is the product of a partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines and the World Wildlife Fund (engadget). This ad shows how a green image is use to promote products, coke as a product self has very little to do with being green. Much like ads during the Cold War made people feel that just plainly consuming lets them do their part for their country, today the same idea is used with 'eco' and 'green' advertising, it makes people think they're doing something for the environment even if it is just buying a Coke. 

Pavitt, J. (2008). Design and the Deomocratic Ideal, Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 (pp. 72-91) London: V&A Publishing.

Coca-Cola's green billboard consumes carbon dioxide like so much sugary. retrieved at: sodahttp://www.engadget.com/2011/07/06/coca-colas-green-billboard-consumes-carbon-dioxide-like-so-much/

DSDN171: Assignment 8

I would argue that design today is both an ‘art’ and ‘science' by looking at basic human needs reflect through the psychological theory of Malsow’s hierarchy of needs (see fig 1). 


Firstly looking at design as 'function x economy' or as a 'science': Design at a fundamental level will always need to fulfill  our basic need, physiological,safety, belonging (Maslow) or as reflected in design as object that fulfill a need by  being functional and reliable (see fig 2). These designed objects will always make up societies mass consumption, these object also be of more importance to us during times of struggle than  'art'-design. 


But after these basic needs are fulfilled  each individual according to Maslow's hierarchy starts needing more things base on individual wants and desire, so in the case of a designed object it has to do with aesthetics  (maybe even sacrificing practicality for beauty), making it something more  of an artistic or personal expression. We look at this hierarchy and state that design or making of every day object firstly and always be looking to be functional and economical and only later elements of artistic need will be added for consumer who have the luxury of having surpassed just the level of basic "survival".  


  

Fig1:Maslow's hierarchy of needs (wikipedia)

Fig2:Maslow's hierarchy of needs reflected in design principles (Smashing Magazine)

Conrads, U. (1964). Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.


Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs. (2010) . Retrieved from: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/26/designing-for-a-hierarchy-of-needs/

DSDN171: Assignment 7

 "It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale...We have entered the Facebook age"(Times, 2011)

Social media propaganda, 2011, Wood, A.

(design-milk.com)

The concept of ‘symbolic universe’ is the concept of society progressing and improving to state of utopia, it the way humanity organizes the social world as comprehensible and connected. This help people place them self in known and knowable space in our society.  So how does Facebook relate to a “symbolic universe” today? Facebook in practice may not appear  utopian but its build on base of an idealistic world, world of  openness and connections (Grossman, 2010). Facebook and its creator strives for a world that can be seen  almost as an idealistic self sustained democracy. Its world we each run ourselves not bound by borders but bound by our own networks where each can share their world as they please. Facebook and other social media creates a symbolic universes today which gives us hope for a  better  future.

Kihlstedt, F. (1986). Utopia Realized: The World’s Fairs of the 1930s in Imagining Tomorrow: History Technology, and the American Future (pp.97-118). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.


Grossman, L. (2010, December 15). Person of the Year 2010. Time, 176, 26.

DSDN171: Assignment 9

 "From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.” I must agree with Walter Benjamin there is no real sense in asking for the authentic, but I believe the age of digital design and mass production has changed how we define and look at "the authentic". Now that we have the ability to reproduce and replicate all forms of art, the intention in which we create art has changes making artist question what is truly the "authentic" or original work. 

Artist Sherrie Levine's work 'After Evens Walker' (see figure 1)  takes the idea of what is the 'authentic' to a philosophical level. The work consist of famous Walker Evans photographs, rephotographed by Levine out of an Evans exhibition catalog, and then presented as Levine's artwork with no further manipulation of the images. The original work already being in a sense a print of a print (a photograph reprinted in a book) Levine adds another layer making it a print of a print of a print, in this process asking the viewer what would be the "authentic" work and if  the "authentic" work has any more value than the copies (in reprint or as her own work of art). I think Levine's work proofs  asking for the authentic print makes no sense, mainly because defining what "the authentic" is hard especially now in our digital world,  even more so if works are created with the intent of reproduction. 

figure 1: Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evens

figure 2: Michael Mandiberg, After Walker Evens, 

(to print and get a certificate of authenticity of 

Mandiberg works go to : www.AfterWalkerEvans.com/cert/2.pdf*

*afterwalkerevans.com is an art project by Mandiberg responding to Levin's work, the site "comment on how we come to know information in this burgeoning digital age:AfterWalkerEvans.com you download and print out the images along with a certificate of authenticity for each image, which you print out and sign yourself, as well as directions on how to frame the image so that it will fulfill the requirements of the certificate.  "the certificates here are used to insure that each satellite image be considered with equal authenticity, not the opposite. This is an explicit strategy to create a physical object with cultural value, but little or no economic value."