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Critical Design readings_Mini-task

Critical design as Constructive Provocation

  • Vu actively states the importance of critical design in response to social, political, and world issues
  • There is a growing interest in creative movements that push specific agendas
  • Problem with CD being perceived as following an agenda is that it has colonialistic connotations.
  • If critical design turns mainstream, it loses its soul.  If you want it to be understood by many people, how can it keep its soul?
  • She shows different objects, each taking an object we already know, and flips it on its head with a specific message.
  • These objects are trying to make an impact, rather than other products that just exist in the world.
  • Makes the invisible visible – Highlights social issues, opens discourse, says “This is problematic, why is it?”
  • Question present conditions

Dunne and Raby, What is Critical Design?

  • About taking objects we already know and flipping them on their head, while retaining the original function.
  • More of an idea or attitude than a method for creating
  • Came From Italian Radical Design of the 1970s
    • One of the foundations of critical design
  • First use of “Critical Design” in Anthony Dunne’s book Hertzian Tales (1999)
  • What’s it for
    •  Think outside the box
    • Spark curiosity about a topic outside the social norms and creating solutions to those issues
    • Create tension between the creator of the design and the audience 
  • Not a movement, can’t be neatly defined
    • About Values and attitude, looking at design and imagining “possibilities beyond the narrow definitions of what is presented through media”
  • Related to:
    • activism, cautionary tales, conceptual design, contestable futures, design fiction, interrogative design, radical design, satire, social fiction & speculative design 
  • Biggest Misconceptions:
    • That it is negative, jokey, fake, not aesthetical, has no power of changing anything, and is against everything.Critical Design is not art
  • Critical Design is more disturbing and continuously changing 

Critical Design – Jackson McConnell

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