The affordances of art for making technologies

Navigating artistic inquiry in a creativeproduction thesis: the narrative and illustrative potentials of realismo maravilhoso, 2018

Abstract This article considers the concept of artistic research as an approach to knowledge generation and understanding. It begins with a brief consideration of the historical development of artistic inquiry and its relationship with research processes and artefacts. It then discusses a specific artistic PhD research project, “Magical realities – A creative consideration of the narrative and illustrative potentials of realismo maravilhoso”, as a form of a ‘creative-production’. The thesis project, which is formatted as a printed storybook, explores the potentials of polyvocal narration and syncretic illustration when aspects of a narrative can be digitally expanded. In actioning the iterative development of the research, a methodological framework is used that integrates heuristic inquiry and reflexive practice. Enabled through this are three interrelated methods: designer’s journals, iterative assembly, overviewing and testing, and the strategic use of feedback.

2009

The language of generative architecture inherently focuses on typologies of processes which are non-material. Algorithmic language assumes virtual materiality and relies on computerized images. Generative design processes therefore present unique aesthetics that carry within themselves traces of materiality, which architects such as Oosterhuis, MatSys, ChrisBosse, Morphosis Architects, Zaha Hadid, Biothing, Material Ecology, Gregg Lynn and Evan Douglis explore in the physical world. This research examines aesthetics of Parametric design, Cellular automata, Flocking of birds, Genetic algorithms, and Shape grammars to define framework for evaluating material applicability to generative design processes. In this paper, I put the Aesthetics of Generative Design in a historical context. I define aesthetic implications of algorithmic systems with regard to shape generation and systemize generative design according to essential and accidental aesthetic qualities. Finally, I link Materialit...

Adaptive Behavior

We organized our reply to the rich set of commentaries on Erik’s inaugural lecture—The affordance of art for making technologies—around the following five themes. (1) The experience of artworks and whether such experiences can be described in terms of the affordances of artworks. (2) The possibility that engagement with artworks offers for the transformation of ourselves and the sociomaterial practices we take part in. (3) The claim that artworks can serve as what Annemarie Mol describes as “material propositions” that can be used to engage philosophical reflection. (4) The temporality of making practices and how art installations can be thought of as places in which past, present, and future meet. (5) How art could potentially enable a better embedding of technologies in society.

From the time we are bornm we start making sense of our worldm we form ideas of who we are and what our world is. These become the stories we know and believe in. They are at the core of who we are. From a state of tabula rasa we are able to develop a paradigm which we use to outline our worldview. Everything we do bears the imprint of our evolving paradigm and our creations express it in diferent ways. Design is an activity as old as humankind itself; looking at fre and harnessing it for our needs can be seen as one of our earliest design acts. We havem through designm transformed our world in ways that have helped us evolve to our present selves. We have created a world of our makingm nestled in nature and drawing sustenance from it. Our institutionsm our belief systemsm our knowledge systems. Our citiesm our networks of various kindsm our buildingsm our products. A complex ecosystem of interconnected parts which governs every aspect of our lives. We have created an environment that manifests our collective selves. Examine your city. Its marketsm its roadsm its hospitalsm its services for the poorm its sense of wellbeing and safetym its institutionsm its infrastructure. They are unique to it and are a testimony to the thoughtsm emotions and stories of its inhabitants and generations of people who have passed through. Our many stories have crystallised into concrete forms and abstract thoughts. At all times our motivations have been rooted in a search for improvement. How we perceive ourselvesm our values and our motivations are part of the paradigm within which we approach questions of 'uality' and the meaning of making things beter'. This determines our needs and desiresm the nuances of our likes and dislikesm our comfort zones. These in turn determine the form of all that we build. Contemporary Design can be seen in terms of actualization of intent. An intent to make things beter. It harnesses our stories to satisfy our needs and desiresm to transcend the

The invitation to participate in the conference, and to address the topic of exhibiting and curating graphic design, offers us the opportunity to reflect on some aspects of our approach to design as a (potentially) critically-engaged practice. More specifically it spurs us to reconsider to what degree the notion of 'embodied criticality' -as proposed by ~heorist Irit Rogoffl -which is central to our practice, shapes the moments in which our work directly meets and interfaces with the public.

Critique d'art, 2014

2013

This dialogue between an artist and a design studies scholar debates whether (contemporary) art might save us from what Heidegger characterizes as closing metaphysics of technology which manifests as (contemporary) design; or whether, because art no longer has agency (following Hegel), it is the practice of designing which, as the danger, must also be the response to that danger.

PEP/COPPE/UFRJ, 2022

According to philosopher Vilém Flusser, the emergence of historical consciousness in the Western world was a product of a culture based on linear writing. This culture shaped by linear writing is the only one that can really be called “historical”—the cultures that preceded it were prehistorical, and our current culture, shaped by the technical images produced by apparatuses like smartphones, computers and tablets, is posthistorical. This increasingly abstract culture has engulfed almost all the media that made up the “body” of the previous culture, but while drawings, photographs, books, films and music have all become digital, architecture seems to be one of the last points of resilience of the material world. However, to which extent are the ways in which we relate to our buildings and cities—and especially the way we analyse and value these objects—still based in historical criteria? In the increasingly abstract universe of technical images, is the materiality of architecture an ahistorical presence connecting different worlds, or a problem to be overcome? This thesis will explore these questions with the intention to devise strategies to help contemporary architects to structure our existential space in terms that can be understood and appreciated in this new era, shaped by gestures that seem to lack any historical precedent.

2008