as agents of change

The aim of this essay is to critically analyze the role of critical within contemporary design.

Using the work of Dunne & Raby as a bastion for the developments in the field, I will consider the underlying theme of their work. As Dunne & Raby have said in their book Speculative everything they prefer to think of critical design as “-design about ideas”(Dunne, 2013,p.13), I will try to asses what this idea means, how it manifests, criticisms of it and solutions to improve it. It must be clear going forward that this essay is focusing on Dunne & Rabys idea of critical design and how they've articulated what that means rather than an examination of how that idea is materialized in specific pieces.

Critical design is a research through design methodology that tries to place the ethics of the practice of design to the fore, it tries to uncover potentially hidden agendas & values and explores alternative design value. Critical design pulls from a variety of different fields of study & practices such as: Radical design from the 1970s, experimental design, adversary design, discursive design, & transitional design. In the words of Dunne & Raby it is described as “not taking things for granted, being skeptical, always questioning what is given” (Dunne, 2013,p.35). Critical design doesn't necessarily have to be negative, critical design is described as successful when people need to make up their own mind (Dunne, 2013,p.40). It pushes boundaries between being real and unreal, serious and ironic, trivial and absurd. Currently, the work is viewed through the lens of art criticism but increasingly critical design practice is becoming a practice in corporate research and development.

An understanding of Dunne and Raby's work is probably best conceived through the lens of . Even though Dunne and Raby intentionally distance themselves from the

(Dunne, 2013,p.35)the formulation of their practice has unmistakable affinities with it.

1 “Product genre…offers a very limited experience. Like a Hollywood movie, the emphasis is on easy pleasure and conformist values. This genre reinforces the status quo rather than challenging it. We are surrounded by products that give us an illusion of choice and encourage passivity. But ’s position at the heart of consumer culture (it is fuelled by the capitalist system, after all) could be subverted for more socially beneficial ends by providing a unique aesthetic medium that engages the user’s imagination (Dunne, 2013,p.35)

Their choice of vocabulary such as “illusion of choice”, “passivity”, “reinforces the status quo” have a resounding similarity to the Frankfurt ideology. In Traditional and Critical Theory (1937),

Max Horkheime defined critical theory as social critique meant to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions.

Critical design like the Frankfurt school is a research strategy dedicated to transgressing & undermining social conformity, passivity and similar values contained within the capitalist ideology, in hopes of bringing about social change. (Geuss, 1981,p.51)

Understanding that critical design has deep roots in critical theory the question becomes, in what ways does critical design, subvert the system, engage a users imagination and bring about social change. Their practice consists of thinking through design rather than through words. (Dunne,

2013,p.35) By this, they suggest that their specific goal is leveraging design itself to “to make us think. But also raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, sparking debate, even entertaining in an intellectual sort of way, like literature or film”. Throughout their book, they create an impressive compendium of what they would call critical . Although at the beginning of this essay I defined critical design as a methodology it is hard to find any concrete examples of this.

The criticisms of this have been that critical design as articulated by Dunne and Raby is not so much a rigorous method but an ethical stance for designers. This creates at the core of their thinking an opposition between affirmative design and critical design, which is to say, designs that affirm vs.

2 Subvert the system, ie. Global Capitalism. The problem associated with this kind of thinking is that through the lens of critical design, affirmative design becomes somewhat pejorative and that critical designers act as a kind of moral agent seeking to change society for the better. Good design should have criticality embedded within it. They certainly allude to this idea by referencing science fiction writer Frederick Poel by saying that the good writer does not think up only the automobile but also the traffic jam. (Dunne, 2013,p.49).

Due to the way in which critical design is presented, often in museum contexts, there exists a common perception that critical design is art. Dunne and Raby assert on numerous occasions that it is not. Two criticisms of this assertion have come from Bardzell and Malpass. Both arguments allude to the fact that the conceptual vocabularies surrounding their work are strongly associated with the history of , philosophy and art history. The two arguments from Dunne and Raby to refute the idea that critical design is art are that “art is kept away from the everyday” and that art is “shocking and extreme”(Dunne, 2013,p.43). In relation to the first that art is kept away from the every day which allows it to be ignored, it should be noted that this view seems to fly in the face of experience. Art is a symbolic expression of the everyday, the simulacra of humanity or even consciousness itself. Bardezell says:

“Art is a part of everyday life: teenagers in high school bands and ballet classes, art house cinema, sacred art, fine art photography on magazine covers, open-air jazz concerts in city parks, graffiti, etc. We couldn’t avoid art—or its messages—if we wanted to. Similarly, the notion that art is

“shocking and extreme” is an overly narrow conceptualization of art. Duchamp, Mapplethorpe, and

Schneemann certainly shocked audiences, but they are in the minority, if we acknowledge such things as Chinese landscape paintings, eighteenth-century chamber music, sculpture gardens, still life painting, pastoral verse, sacred art, and folk art. At best, Dunne and Raby have distinguished themselves from a very limited art practice—the fine arts that are fashionable in today’s artworld.”

3 (Bardzell, 2013,p.4)

Malpass in his piece “criticism and function in critical design practice”, also acknowledges this blurred line between art and critical design and why a distinction needs to be made between the both, what he instantiates, along with the help of various other figures is that critical design to be properly understood it must be framed as industrial design (Matt, 2015,p.5). By framing critical design within the context of art, he says that “it feels like an attempt to fit critical design practice into a discourse in which aspires to be art, or at least places design on the same critical footing. Such discourse offers distinct examples of a narrow perception of design. For example, critics Foster and Coles uncritically adopt a theorem formulated by Baudrillard stating that design is limited to a sign exchange value and the symbolic dimension of objects. Furthermore,

Poyner and Mermoz confuse the specificities of art and design practices in an unexamined adoption of relational aesthetics. When work such as that carried out by Jeremijenko and the Interaction

Design studio is discussed in these terms—when it is limited to sign exchange or described as social art—the danger is that the ’s focus underpinning the design work is overlooked.” (Matt, 2015,p.5)

Both Bardzell and Malpass (along with the cited designers in Malpass' piece) agree on the need for an expanded vocabulary in relation to the discussions of design. Bardzell and Malpass both have a different approach for evolving the critical design lexicon.

Bardzells solution is methodological. Rather than shying away from critical theory, critical design practice should subsume critical theory as a methodology. According to Bardzell, a critical thread of

“critical theory is skepticism, a suspicion that social reality is not what it seems but rather that something else quite different is going on underneath its surfaces: capitalist domination, patriarchal

4 oppression, erotic and thanatotic unconscious drives, signifying systems, etc.”. (Bardzell, 2013,p.6)

The most explicit definition of “critical ” akin to the description above, given by Dunne and Raby's was made in an interview from 2009, they said that “the critical sensibility, at its most basic, is simply about not taking things for granted, to question and look beneath the surface”.(Dunne, 2009)

The questions that arise from this, is what does it mean to look beneath the surface? What sort of things are you supposed to find there? How do you know when you've identified the most important things? Rather than answer these questions explicitly, Dunne and Raby offer a thematically organized list of designs that they believe fall into the category of critical design.

For Bardzell, to counteract the forces that make critical theorists seem “sanctimonious” is to also apply the tradition of metacriticism which attempts to answer questions such as: What are the categories of criticism? How do we distinguish good from bad criticism? What is the social role of criticism? Generally, it is concerned with a skilled appreciation of the arts and can be found in the

English-language tradition of literary criticism (e.g., Arnold, Frye, Eliot, Abrams,and Bloom) and analytic aesthetics (e.g., Beardsley, Cavell, and Carroll).(Bardzell, 2013,p.5)

Bardzells rhetorical strategy is to present two “families” of thought, not to assert them as hard ontological categories or as the correct way to think about critical thought, but rather because doing so offers pragmatic benefits by revealing how critical concepts are actually used. Although the definitions he provides don't account for the complex relationships between both, he is aware of this and believes that “by distinguishing them, we can tease out some different threads that constitute critical thought and show ways that they have been used, which in turn reveals their potential usefulness for design researchers.” (Bardzell, 2013,p.6)

5 Malpass, on the other hand, believes that a solution lies in what is focused on will go further in defining the practice of critical design. In the current world of art and design criticism, there exists a

“ narrow conception of function. This narrow conception, limited to practical functionality based on optimization and efficiency, is arguably the most prominent barrier to seeing critical design practice as industrial design. Therefore, to develop critical design practice as part of a disciplinary project, an understanding of function limited to practicality, optimization, and efficiency needs to be readdressed.” (Matt, 2015,p.7)He believes that form can be separated from the function, which according to modernist ideas “” is not possible. He draws on Ligos argument that challenge the foundations of modernist functionalism by classifying 5 different types of function. These functions are as follows:

• Structural articulation, which refers to the object’s material structure;

• Physical function, which refers to the utilitarian task of the object;

• Psychological function, which pertains to the user’s emotional response to the object;

• Social function, which refers to the nature of the activity that the object provides with regard to the social dimension; and

• Cultural-existential function, which has a more profound cultural and symbolic characteristics that include the existential being of the individual using the object.(Matt, 2015,p.8)

Such a definition of function suggests that it depends on the practices that situate it in a system of use. Function is subject to the designer’s intention; however, it is also always open to interpretation

6 by the user. For Malpass, the conversations regarding the characteristics of function give observers of critical design practice to overcome the barrier to seeing critical design practice as product design based on “practical functionality” but rather to discuss the practice in design terms, moving the discussion beyond simple aesthetic questions. (Matt, 2015,p.13)

I can sympathize with the underlying prerogative of critical design which in a nutshell tries to keep ethics and the intentionality of design to the forefront as to safeguard against potentially dangerous ideologies which can harm the public. What Dunne & Raby don't clarify very well is a framework around how to research critically and how to be critical of the results of this type of design. I'm sure as the field grows the vocabulary surrounding it will also. Critical design as it currently stands seems to be more of an intuitive process with critical designers acting akin to a cultural shaman trying to grasp visions of the future.

7 Bibliography

Bardzell, J. (2013). What is critical about critical design?. Indiana: Indiana University Bloomington.

Dunne, A. (2013). Speculative Everything. Massachusetts: MIT press.

Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2009). Interpretation, collaboration, and critique: Interview with Dunne and Raby. http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/465/0

Geuss, R. (1981). The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt school. Cambridge University Press.

Matt, M. (2015). Criticism and Function in Critical Design Practice. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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