[-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

[Gerry Coulter]

Gabriel, please remove me from this list

thanks,

Gerry

________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Gabriel Menotti [gabriel.menotti at gmail.com]
Sent: March 8, 2010 1:59 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

Dear empyreans:

It's a pleasure to introduce this month's theme and guests. Looking
forward to your contributions to the upcoming debate.

Best!
Menotti

* * *

The Prototype Perspective
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Moderated by Gabriel Menotti (UK/BR) with invited guests Adrian Freed,
Rob van Kranenburg, Sonia Cabral Matos, Cristina Ribas, Alexandra
Antonopoulou and Marloes de Valk

The prototype is an object critical of its own function. It is not
finished; it may not work. What characterizes a prototype is, first
and foremost, the self-reflexivity of its operation: to use it is to
put it to test and to engage in its evaluation. The most important
effect of a prototype is, thus, the seemingly collateral reasoning
about its failure, which is feedback into the process of prototyping.
Each prototype is just a dismissible iteration in this chain, a step
to be overcome in order to produce the parameters of design of an even
more ulterior product. Therefore, the prototype cannot be isolated
from this engineering process – it always exists in-between versions,
having no identity apart from this serial progression. The sincere
objective of every prototype is nothing else than to self-differ, in
the same way that the prototyping process aims to produce the
fundamental différance of a standard, driving the fabrication of a
million commoditized entities.

This specific sense is borrowed from the domain of industrial design.
The parameters of mass production set by Fordism demand heavy
machinery and precise techniques, resulting in a rigid topology of
production. Contrary to traditional craftsmanship, the industrial
process cannot be easily adapted or corrected; it must be implemented
as a fully optimized architecture at once. Hence, within industrial
paradigm, projecting and producing (and their respective pedagogies)
become strictly separated activities, which no longer feedback
immediately into each other - only through the process of prototyping.
Being the production of the project, prototyping is the regulating gap
between these two firmly localized territories. It structures not only
the final object, but also with its negative: its mode of fabrication.

Of course, the laboratorial isolation of prototyping loses its meaning
once manufacturing topologies become more fluid. Then, not only the
dynamics of design and production come closer to each other, but they
also become mingled into the everyday use of the objects as well. One
of the fields in which this can be more clearly perceived is software
engineering, which demands the testing of prototypes by a large number
of users. Following the “release early, release often” free software
motto, beta versions are public released as soon as possible, so that
they can be debugged in the wild. Systems such as the Flickr online
photo directory and the Processing programming language spend years as
unfinished products, and nevertheless garnished enormous popularity –
which might be precisely due to their open development. With the
emergence of open, modular hardware, this paradigm is being brought
also to physical object design. A new DIY culture is being promoted
around the Arduino microcontroller and the practice of
fast-prototyping.

In this new scenario, a prototype can be praised as the sufficient
object, whose integrity is produced at the precise moment it is put
into operation. Its whole engineering process is concluded by the user
– sometimes, by its very use. This allows us not only to see the final
object and its production as supplementary to the prototype and the
prototyping chain, but also to engage with this fact in a positive
way.

Roughly, these are the themes to be addressed in this month’s empyre
discussion. We invite the participants to explore the identity of the
prototype and role of prototyping in post-industrial design, as well
as how forms of fast prototyping are renewing DIY culture.

Guests

Adrian Freed
Adrian Freed is Research Director of UC Berkeley's Center for New
Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) and he leads the Guitar and
chordophone Innovation Group (GIG) there. He has pioneered many new
applications of mathematics, electronics and computer science to
audio, music and media production tools including the earliest
Graphical User Interfaces for digital sound editing, mixing and
processing. His recent work is centered around sharing new techniques
for rapid prototyping interactive devices employing electrotextiles
and other emerging materials.

Rob van Kranenburg
Rob van Kranenburg is a teacher and organizer. With friends he has set
up bricolabs.net and www.theinternetofthings.eu. He lives in Ghent and
can be reached at kranenbu at xs4all.nl

Sónia Cabral Matos
Sónia Matos (1978, Azores Islands) is a designer and cultural
researcher, currently working towards the completion of her PhD at the
Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London,
under the supervision of Dr.Matthew Fuller and Dr. Luciana Parisi. For
the past three years, as part of her doctoral studies, she has been
involved in the study and design of language support systems for the
Silbo Gomero, a whistled form of language, still alive in the small
island of La Gomera. Constantly imbued in a transdisciplinary spirit,
Sónia draws from a strong and grounded approach to both ethnography
and design. This process was initiated at Lisbon's Fine Art Faculty,
when combining various design disciplines, material anthropology,
ethnography and philosophy. Further explored during her studies at the
Design Academy Eindhoven, while pursuing a degree in Experience
Design. Today, this same transdisciplinary approach has become a
foundational strength when mobilizing new cultural readings of
technologies, tecniques and artifacts, their relation to human sensory
materialities and the formation of complex modes of knowing.

Cristina Ribas
Visual artist and researcher. Holds an MA in Contemporary Artistic
Processes (UERJ, 2008). Organizes situations and collective projects
gathering artists, researchers and activists. Since 2005, develops
with the Archivist the Archive of Emergence – a research-based work on
Brazilian contemporary art that takes the form of a mobile archive for
documents, creating learning and exchanging situations for critical
knowledge. Has received several awards and bursaries in Brazil and
recently participated in a residency programme in England.

Alexandra Antonopoulou
PhD researcher in design and education at Goldsmiths-University of
London, looking at how children can work in partnership with designers
to create the future fairy tales. Currently an associate Lecturer at
University of the Arts London (MA Graphic Design) and Southampton
Solent University (BA illustration). She also involved as a designer
at University of Newcastle “Culture Lab” and Interaction Design
Studio-Goldsmiths, working with projects in interaction design. Has
presented papers in various conferences in UK and abroad. Her work has
been showcased in London Design Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Newcastle
7 stories Museum, E4 Channel and other.

Marloes de Valk
Marloes de Valk (NL) is an artist and writer, part of GOTO10, a
collective of artists and programmers working in the field of digital
art and Free/Libre Open Source Software. She studied Sound and Image
at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, specializing in abstract
compositional computer games, HCI and crashing computers. Her work
consists of software art and installations, investigating machine
theatre and narratives of digital processes. She is editor of the
Digital Artists’ Handbook and the GOTO10 publication FLOSS+Art,
published early 2009.
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