[-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

[micha cardenas / azdel slade]

Having worked with both ABS fabrication of 3d models from second life
as well as (much more extensively) arduino/freeduino electronics
experiments, I've been thinking about prototyping a lot lately! This
topic is very exciting, thanks gabriel!

In my talk at DAC and my paper at the Ctheory digital studies
workshop, I proposed the idea of prototyping the world we want, using
prototyping as a form of social struggle. In this way we might cross
out building in the phrase "building the world we want" and replace it
with prototyping, for many reasons. I bring this up because of all the
recent university occupations that have inspired so many of us and
have begun to be the place where we're putting our energies. It seems
that the intention of many of these spaces, the occupations, is to
prefigure a university or a society in a horizontal way, to both
reimagine it and then begin creating it. We could also see many other
experiments in the alter-globalization movement in this way, as
prototypes for future organizations of society. This is a possible
strategy for bridging the gap between the future and the present,
where some argue that we can't imagine new modes of living outside of
capitalism because our whole lives have been shaped by capitalism, but
I reject that claim. It sounds similar to me to arguing that we could
never imagine new genders because our whole lives have been structured
by gender binaries, and yet many of us are doing just that, creating
new genders on a daily basis.

This is just a quick note of excitement, I can't wait to hear from the
invited guests, but also to say that perhaps we can discuss how
prototyping is informing not only modes of labor and production, but
how it may be a form of social engagement and artistic practice that
can bridge the incommensurable gap between the present and the future,
that can relieve some of the burden of finding the perfect solution
before proceeding and can open up spaces of experimentation with new
forms of living which challenge current forms of biopower.

  micha


2010/3/7 Gabriel Menotti <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>:
> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
micha cárdenas / azdel slade

Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Artist/Researcher, Experimental Game Lab, http://experimentalgamelab.net
Calit2 Researcher, http://bang.calit2.net

blog: http://transreal.org