[-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

[Gabriel Menotti]

>This discussion of prototypes is fantastic, especially when you get into the
>contemporary corporate cultural scene.  Everything could potentially be a
>prototype! (Davin Heckman)

I sometimes get the same impression from any history of technique –
for instance, how cinema theory puts magic lantern and other optical
mechanisms as ‘pre-cinematic’, while this is an obvious reasoning
‘from the point of view of the winner’. Thus, it seems that the
specification of prototypes is mostly a perspective of the progressive
history, either a projection or a revision. But how do we get from
this analytical specification to “bridge the gap between the present
and the future”, as Micha says?

Adrian asked before ‘who decides what starting and finishing [the
process of prototyping] is?’ - terms that denote the enclosure of a
*narrative*. Do the system of
values that specifies prototyping work under this logic, as if it were
a morality tale - the morals of functionality/functionalism? A
Bildunggeschichte of things?

In any case, the available documentation seems to play a very
significant role in both our idea of history and the definition of
prototypes. What is the difference between the patented-substance and
the useful drug mentioned by Davin, besides a proper description of
their purpose and posology (and possibly a commercial name just as
descriptive?). What makes something ‘beta’ is not a direct reasoning
about its functionalities; it is its public identification as such (a
moral excuse?). I believe that this control of descriptions is
precisely what is at stake with Rob’s example of the TomTom that ‘that
send you only past certain petrol stations’.

(Btw, Gabriel, I’d love to hear more about the idea of
autodocumentarian subjects, if possible. What kind of responses did
you get after putting the video online? Will they result in a new
iteration (either of the video or the workshop)? I think this has
interesting connections to our next topics!)

Maybe that’s why the process of naming becomes so important in the
enactment of authority over the process of design, the object and its
uses. I was specially moved by Adrian’s commentary:

>What is interesting is a shift in commitment which you can see in Diane
>Douglas's account of her application of the pads. Notice she doesn't refer to me
>or to the pads construction, they are just a component of the larger instrument
>she is developing and learning to play. (Adrian Freed)

… because I know that Björk has a reactable in her gigs, but I don’t
have the faintest idea of the name of the songs in which the
instrument is used. :P Is it that naming crystallizes the identity of
an object, and provokes its instantaneous rationalization,
automatizing our relation to it? (It also reminds me of the kind of
commitment that leads people to baptize their gadgets, further
individualizing them.)

Best!
Menotti