Reflections on an impostor's ideas

This month's Wallpaper* issue has as guest editors Karl Lagerfeld and Philippe Starck. They have been invited to design the cover of the issue and to present in 15 pages their visions of humans' future.
I have to admnit that Starck's vision has delighted me,something that has not happened before with Starck and his ideas.
In his introduction note he declines the role of the "ambassador" of life and he declares his new mission that is nothing than giving the platform he has been given to scientists and people that have something to say. It is amazing to hear that words from the man who put design in the stardom. I hope he will be faithful on his own words and continue the new adventures with the same passion and craziness that have characterized him up to now.
As for me and my diploma, his statement confirms my daring deed to go to design directions that are not the conventional and fashionable ones.
Thank you Mr. Starck!!!

Summing up the last weeks

The last weeks have been a blending of different events and things concerning the project.
First I had to prepare a presentation for the IDE department which was the first public presentation of my diploma. Basically was an internal discussion within the department of what this diploma is about and how it will develop further the next 2 left months. The presentation went well and the comments concerning the presentation and communication of the diploma were pretty significant. Both my supervisor and the institute leader were marking off the need to personalize more the theme and not academizing the theme. It finds me totally agreeing and I think that will help me a lot to walk away from ambigous ideas and statements.
Another event took part this week. On Monday morning I came across with a press release for an event at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters on "Evolution, Culture and Society" , which had just started. I immediately called my supervisor and we simple ran to the Academy. We were lucky and they were nice so we simple joined the seminar without pre-registration. The program was full of interesting lectures and the speakers all around the world with great names on the list.

http://www.dnva.no/nyheter/vis.html?tid=41387

The seminar of course took me away from the desk work, but it was worth it!
It was worth it first because it confirmed my choice to work on a field that I was not expert and I did not have the depth. In this seminar evolution theory and its processes was applied in so different fields from linguistics and game theory to religion theories. That really makes the use of biology as framework to explanation of product design development (and specific this of childlike characteristics) necessary as never before.

The other advantage from this seminar was the fact that I confirmed my suspicious about pedomorphosis and the agenda of evolution biology. In my research the modern references to the term were almost inconsidereble and it is true that is a part of the evolution theory that is not often under investigation or use. Two of the people with who I talked in the seminal, an old psychologist and a biological student, had only a small clue about it. That makes the choice of Montagy's and Gould's books as my primary references unquestioned.




photos by: Professor Jan Michl

Workshop on childlike design with design students at AHO

Last Monday (21.09.09) I held a workshop with the Master's level class of Technoform in AHO.

The workshop was on childlike design and how can we apply the elements that constitute that morphology.

The participants was 18 (4 female- 14 male) and with different ethnical background.

The participants had a variety of chosen design fields (automobiles, furniture, lighting, food related design, urban design, oil-spill related products (sic!), dry cleaner's apparatus)

The workshop lasted approx. 3hours.

The workshop was divided in 4 tasks (2 individual tasks and 2 group tasks):

• Task 1: First application of the 9 words that reference to the morphological characteristics of products (3min per word, approx. 40min)
  
• Task 2: Second application of the 9 words that reference to the sense related qualities (emotions or intellectual) (3min per word, approx. 40min)
  
• Task 3: Description from the teams of forms, materials, colors in relation with the intellectual properties that has been described in the task 2 (10min)
  
• Task 4: Finding 3 existing products that represent these relations and choose the best examples for presentation (10min+ 5min per team for presentation)
  

Task 1: The words the student invited to interpret were small, round, smooth, partial distorted, fragile, light(weight), flexible, stretch, colorless-colorful.

Task 2: The words the student invited to interpret were joyful, energetic, exciting, curious, fantasy-like, playful, friendly, optimistic, fresh, cute, childlike.

The students produced around 320 drawings and 40 mock-ups in clay. There was not a limitation on their choice in tools of representation and they came out with different techniques as collage, small 3d clay models, use of color pens or combination of all the above.

The actual drawings and photos of their models will be on hand this Friday.

The goals of the workshop were:

• To see how the designers unconsciously can apply childlike characteristics to products.
  
• To see how the designers consciously can apply childlike characteristics to products.
  
• To see how ethnical background can combine with the phenomenon and how ethnical background can affect the design process in the concept of pedomorphosis.
  
• To see which fields of product design are more compliant to the intrusion of childlike qualities.
  

The photos are from the workshop in action. Sketches and the rest of material will be uploading when I will have it on my hands.

Thank you guys! You are awesome!

Pedomorphosis, physical deformations and Arts' interpretation

Reading the today's' news I came across with an article for the smallest girl in the whole world.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3278492.ece

By being involved in a subject like pedomorphosis my antennas are very sensitive to these kind of news. Probably because I am hoping to see the word of pedomorphosis to be mentioned somewhere in the articles. In the very begin of the diploma I had found several articles on different physical deformations on human body concerning always the rate of development. It seems to me (and with the minimum medical knowledge) that pedomorphosis has nothing to do with all these deformations. The rate of growth is a totally different mechanism than this of pedomorphosis. All these with the deliberation my insufficient knowledge to the medical issues.

What was interesting from the beginning was the Arts' perception on such kind of themes. There are specific films that they come and go frequently in my mind all this period. Hollywood has work pretty often with aging disorders. Copola's film from 1996 Jack is a great example of a kid turning older faster than normal (in medical terms is called gerontomorphosis and its the opposite of pedomorphosis).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116669/
Another worth noting film is all the "Peter Pan"'s films and as well all the "Alice in Wonderland". (Looking forward to see the new version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/)
A more intellectual interpretation of aging disorder was from Günter Grass at his famous book The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) which was transfer to cinema in 1979
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078875/
The boy is born with an adult's capacity for thought and perception, he decides never to grow up and stops his physical development at the age of three. He is though sexual maturating and develops an adults behaviour(political decisions). The way Grass has perceived his main character reference exactly to the first observations biologists had made to salamanders and their sexual development while in a immature stage of development.
I will keep my eyes open for more films and books that have worked in these subjects.

Methodology

In a former post for my diploma description I had a quite fuzzy methodology. The only sure thing was that I was intent to see the theme in a holistic approach within always the limits of time.
Re-writing the diploma description has helped me a lot to clarify my methodology and my goals.

"Methodologically speaking, I have chosen to work with observations, mapping and categorizations.

Observations will be take part during the whole semester with the use of

- existent bibliography on design product history and morphology

- popular journalistic articles

- web research on blogs, forums and websites

- a workshop with design students

-a study trip to Disneyland

- trips to National Kunstindustrimuseet and Norsk Folkemuseet (OBOS-gården)

The categorization will be based on form, color, material, proportions, names and context.

The mapping will consist the development of pedomorphosis in possible fields of design and the possible questions that pedomorphosis can arise within these fields. "

Paris, Renault and childlike advertisment

These days Paris is been taken by an amazing advertisement from Renault.
They make an analogy between their car models and babies. I still try to find someone who talks French to translate me the whole campaign.



I am pretty fascinated that car industry is really a pioneer of using children themes and childlike elements through all its history to achieve better sales. In this specific case it does not have to do with the design morphology but more with the context the product is loaded.The whole advertisement can be found under this link
http://www.renault.fr/
It is easily understandable that Renault's advertisement plays among others with the emotions of joyfulness, playfulness, imagination, enthusiasm and optimism, that Montagu characterizes them as pedomorphical.

Eurodisneyland and childlike design.

Last week I visited Eurodisneyland in Paris and I got amazed. Soon I will try to reflect to most of the things I found interesting. I just only want to say that I have never seen such elaborated and well thought environment. To be continue...