IN-FORM: Vilém Flusser on Design
Symposium at the Jan van Eyck Academie
1. Feedback between designer and apparatus
We begin by focusing on the relationship between designers and the tools that are used by designers or artists. For Flusser, new media – beginning with the photo camera – have had a strong impact on people in general as well as on those who work with them. It is not, for example, the photographer who creates the photography, but the camera. For him, the real artists are the people who invented the camera, the chemicals, and the technical process of photography. If the photographer intends to be more than a Funktionär of the camera, he needs to achieve what Flusser calls Technoimagination; the photographer needs to fully understand the inside of the ‘black box’ before he is able to use it in ways not predetermined by its programme. Yet Flusser sees not only the camera as an apparatus, but also society (if it is one) that is structured in a discursive, non-dialogical way. Designers or artists are not only limited by the tools they work with, but also by certain structures of the society they live in. The first part of the symposium will try to name as many limitations of the production process as possible and then look for strategies to avoid or go beyond them.
The following questions could be discussed:
What feedback is taking place between the designer and his tools?
Which parts of the design are done by the designer (the artist, etc.); which parts are done by the computer or other tools?
How does society influence the creative process?
In general: How determinate/free is the designer?
Lecturer: Christian Gänshirt (Berlin)
Christian Gänshirt is a Berlin-based architect. He studied architecture at the Universität Fridericiana (TU) in Karlsruhe and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He worked with José Paulo dos Santos in Oporto and was a project architect at the office of Álvaro Siza in Oporto. He has worked in the fields of competition, design, and site management in Berlin, where he set up his own architectural practice in 1996. He taught at the Brandenburg Technical University (BTU) in Cottbus from 1998 to 2004, where his dissertation on design theory and practice was accepted for the doctorate in 2007. He is co-editor of the Internet architectural theory magazine www.cloud-cuckoo.net. Recently he published Tools for Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Design (Basel 2007).
2. About the necessity of communicative objects: Toward ethical design
In Flusser’s lecture, “Gebrauchsgegenstände” he argued that design should not be used to create objects that stand in the way of other people (that are a Widerstand), but rather those that support communicative and “intersubjective” aspects. For Flusser, objects are created to free people from the circumstances of nature. However, every object becomes part of the environment people must cope with. Thus, as more objects come into the world, it becomes necessary to design new objects to free people from extant objects. Yet, at the same time, Flusser believed that objects also work as a means of mediation between people, since the creation of the object is a reflection of the creator, giving designed objects not only an aesthetic, but also a social relevance. Looking at it from this kommunikological point of view, he demands that objects are created that care about their function as media in a communicative process. “Kann man seine Entwürfe so gestalten […],” he asks in this context, “damit das Kommunikative, das Intersubjektive, das Dialogische daran stärker wird als das Gegenständliche, das Objektive, das Problematische daran?”
The following questions could be discussed:
How can objects be designed to function in one of the ways Flusser described?
What other social, ethical and political aspects of designed objects can be found in Flussers essays?
How can Flusser’s ideas help to find new approaches towards a theory of design?
Lecturer: Chadwick Smith (New York)
Chadwick Truscott Smith is a doctoral candidate in German Studies at New York University, where he also received an M.A. in the Humanities and Social Thought. Currently, he is writing his dissertation on media, aesthetics, and political rights.
3. Creativity on a dialogical basis
In several essays, Flusser demands teamwork that has a dialogical structure of communication, and criticises works that are done by only one person, as well as works created by persons having the same background. His main argument against the former (the “genius”) artist is that information that is combined and processed in one mind is too similar to bring up new and unexpected results. If two or more people are involved and bring in similar information, the situation is the same. As his basic idea of creativity is that all ‘new’ information is just a variation of existing information. Creatio ex nihilo is not a possible option, and thus the manner in which information is combined and where it comes from is crucial. Taking game theory into his consideration, Flusser demands a situation in which as many people as possible exchange information and receive permanent feedback on the information they bring in – what he calls the Telematische Gesellschaft. In essence, the more information is exchanged, combined, and commented upon, the more unexpected, and therefore creative, the result will be. Looking at different ‘new media’ – especially the computer – he describes the coming homo ludens as someone who projects his ideas in an unlimited Möglichkeitsfeld and in this utopian life he expects the invention of theories that will enable mankind to be methodically creative. As a result, he expects an explosion of creativity within the near future.
The following questions could be discussed:
How is it possible to involve a larger group of people in the process of designing?
Is it possible to optimise the process of designing by using certain methods?
Lecturer: Marcel René Marburger (Cologne/Berlin)
Marcel René Marburger studied art history, German literature, and philosophy in Cologne. He wrote his M.A. dissertation on Survival Research Laboratories art group (2000). Journalism traineeship (1999-2000). Participation/collaboration in various exhibitions and art projects in Cologne (since 1990), New York (1993), Austin, Texas (1997). Since 1994 he has worked as a research assistant at the Hohe Dom Cologne, and since 2005 at the Vilém Flusser Archive. In 2007 he became lecturer at the Universtät der Künste Berlin and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden. He is currently completing his Ph.D. on media theorist Vilém Flusser. Recent publications include (edited with Silvia Wagnermaier and Siegfried Zielinski) Klaus Theweleit: Übertragung, Gegenübertragung, Dritter Körper (Cologne 2007); Norval Baitello: Flussers Völlerei (Cologne 2007); Christoph Asendorf: Knoten des zwischenmenschlichen Netzes (Cologne 2007); Peter Weibel: Time Slot (Cologne 2006); Hinderk M. Emrich: Was Avatare und Engel uns sagen können (Cologne 2006); (edited with Renate Buschmann and Friedrich Weltzien) Dazwischen. Die Vermittlung von Kunst (Berlin 2005).
4. In the books Gesten and Vom Stand der Dinge and many other writings, Flusser uses the phenomenological method (or his interpretation of it) to analyse phenomena like Stöcke or Schöpflöffel. Performing what he calls vorurteilsloses Schauen (analysing without prejudices), he usually comes to very interesting results. Although Flusser never attempted it, an interesting approach could be to try use his method not only to analyse certain phenomena but also to create them. This would mean that the process of designing would become something like a vorurteilsfreies Entwerfen, in which the result is not predetermined by present circumstances. The task would thus be to find a method of designing in which the starting point is not the object that has to be created, but rather the designing process itself, regardless of results. Naturally, such an approach would not be very useful with a view to economic expectations, but could be a possibility to free the designer from some limitations with which he is usually confronted.
The lectures relate to one another through two questions:
What are the restrictions of design?
What are possible ways to free the designer from the restrictions?
and the following general concerns:
Determination and freedom in the act of designing
Social, ethical, political aspects of designed objects
The creative implications of the act of designing
Methodological aspects