Phd Candidate in Design
these are experts who envision and investigate new product meanings through a broader, in-depth exploration of the evolution of society, culture, and technology. these experts who pursue R&D on meanings, may be managers of other companies, scholars, technology suppliers, scientists, artists, and of course, designers.
- design driven innovation, roberto verganti.
I attended an event the other night, featuring current projects going on in Pittsburgh, or concepts aiming for better Pittsburgh futures. The projects are diverse, from arts to education, health to infrastructure. Presenters include Susan Everingham, director of the RAND office in Pittsburgh; Scott Faber, a developmental pediatrician at the Children’s Institute; Raymar Hampshire of sponsorchange (.org); Sean Jones of the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra; Alexi Morrissey, a poet; Priya Narasimhan from Carnegie Mellon’s Mobility Center; LaVerne Baker Hotep from the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime; Hilary Robinson, dean at the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon; Jon Rubin, artist, and the man behind The Waffle Shop; and Janera Solomon, executive director of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Each of the presenters took 3 minutes to present their concepts/projects. Concepts have different approaches how to facilitate social change, from the arts to the education. People from arts express strange ideas, like constructing huge fans in downtown Pittsburgh to create a climate change or creating a local Maoist revolution sending academia to the city-field. I found these defamiliarizations quite witty to open up a discussion space or re-framing of possible visions. Among these concepts, I like the LaVerne Baker’s holistic approach best. She is trying to create a five year community program, aiming at changing diet (food habits) of a community gradually, to decrease the (tendency of) violence. It sounds bizarre when you first heard it, but she has conducted some research showing that people consuming healthy and less meat-type products have more calmness than the ones who consume meat. This reminds me Eastern religions diet/fasting practices, especially Buddhists and Sufis a lot. I am looking forward to see more programs from City-Live initiative in the new year..
one of richard mckeon’s article, character, the arts, and education, helped me in my attempt to clarify what we really mean by right action, or rational action, in a very precise way. i want to quote from him:
An action is right if it is well adapted to the circumstances, resources, needs, and purposes of the agent, that is, if it is well done; an action is right if it improves the circumstances, realizes the potentialities of available materials, orders needs, and develops the abilities and interests of the agent, that is, if the end achieved is good. All actions, even erratic and neurotic actions, are reasonable, since they have discoverable causes of which the agent is frequently explicitly conscious. An action is rational when it is well adjusted to the character of a person and his purposes under the circumstances; an action is rational when the reasons for the action and the values achieved by it have been examined and judged. Good skills and good habits may be badly used, but they have the rightness and rationality of actions well performed; and such actions are put to good uses when they conform to rules of reason and norms of rightness, which need not be reviewed in each action or by each agent.[Richard Mckeon, Character, the Arts and Disciplines]
recently, our workshop paper on getting hold on to immaterial materiality of interactive behaviors got in to CHI 2010. I will be presenting the findings from the two workshops in Atlanta this April. I want to share some of the insights we have developed later on.
every narrative combines two dimensions in various proportions, one chronological and the other non-chronological. the first may be called the episodic dimension, which characterize the story as made out of events. The second is the configurational dimension, according to which the plot construes significant wholes out of scattered events. Here I am borrowing from Louis O. Mink the notion of a configurational act, which he interprets as a grasping together .I understand this act to be the act of the plot, as eliciting a pattern from a succession.
paul ricoeur, narrative time.
the word personality is sometimes treated as interchangeable with character, although its connotations are often very different. Anthony Quinton has suggested that we tend to speak of personality when our concern is how a person presents her/him self to the world. one might be tempted to contrast character to personality as the inner to the outer, as what a person really is to her/his self presentation…one might wonder, indeed, why psychologists had not chosen to speak of character theory. Part of the answer, surely, is that the word character has moral overtones the word personality lacks..(joel kupperman, character, p.5)
..to distinguish between dramaturgy and dramatism is to distinguish between the statements: it is as if life is theater, and life is theater. in the first instance, the theater is a grand metaphor. social action may be understood as analogous to stage actions. in the second instance, social organization and the roles that constitute it are ontologically theatrical. p.25 role transitions as social drama, theodore s. sarbin in role transitions explorations&explanations.
“who are you?” said the caterpillar. “I- I hardly know, Sir, just at present, ” Alice replied shyly, “at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”
- Carroll, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
..many products already fall into genres- Alessi products attempt design as comedy, designs for weapons, and medical equipment can shock and horrify, sex-aids obviously a form of design porn and white goods express a wholesome and romantic idea of settled domsesticity-they do not aesthetically challenge or disturb. (design noir, page.45)
God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures.
“man is a living creature of varied, multiform and ever-changing nature.”
But what is the purpose of all this? That we may understand — since we have been born into this condition of being what we choose to be — that we ought to be sure above all else that it may never be said against us that, born to a high position, we failed to appreciate it, but fell instead to the estate of brutes and uncomprehending beasts of burden; and that the saying of Aspah the Prophet, “You are all Gods and sons of the Most High,” might rather be true; and finally that we may not, through abuse of the generosity of a most indulgent Father, pervert the free option which he has given us from a saving to a damning gift. Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment. Let us disdain things of earth, hold as little worth even the astral orders and, putting behind us all the things of this world, hasten to that court beyond the world, closest to the most exalted Godhead. There, as the sacred mysteries tell us, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones occupy the first places; but, unable to yield to them, and impatient of any second place, let us emulate their dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing.
But how can anyone judge or love what he does not know? Moses loved the God whom he had seen and as judge of his people he administered what he had previously seen in contemplation on the mountain. Therefore the Cherub is the intermediary and by his light equally prepares us for the fire of the Seraphim and the judgement of the Thrones. This is the bond which unites the highest minds, the Palladian order which presides over contemplative philosophy; this is then the bond which before all else we must emulate, embrace and comprehend, whence we may be rapt to the heights of love or descend, well instructed and prepared, to the duties of the practical life. But certainly it is worth the effort, if we are to form our life on the model of the Cherubim, to have familiarly before our eyes both its nature and its quality as well as the duties and the functions proper to it. Since it is not granted to us, flesh as we are and knowledgeable only the things of earth, to attain such knowledge by our own efforts, let us have recourse to the ancient Fathers. They can give us the fullest and most reliable testimony concerning these matters because they had an almost domestic and connatural knowledge of them.
must do in our turn, who, I ask, would dare set muddied feet or soiled hands to the ladder of the Lord?
The Paradise of God is bathed and watered by four rivers; from these same sources you may draw the waters which will save you. The name of the river which flows from the north is Pischon which means, `the Right.’ That which flows from the west is Gichon, that is, `Expiation.’ The river flowing from the east is named Chiddekel, that is, `Light,’ while that, finally, from the south is Perath, which may be understood as `Compassion.’ ‘
Scrutinizing, with greater penetration, that harmony of the universe which the Greeks with greater aptness of terms called sympatheia and grasping the mutual affinity of things, she applies to each thing those inducements (called the iugges of the magicians), most suited to its nature. Thus it draws forth into public notice the miracles which lie hidden in the recesses of the world, in the womb of nature, in the storehouses and secret vaults of God, as though she herself were their artificer.
w means the same as our word “reception.” The precise point is, of course, that the doctrine was received by one man from another not through written documents but, as a hereditary right, through a regular succession of revelations.