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Metadesign As an Emergent Design Culture

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Metadesign As an Emergent Design Culture Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0024094054762098 by guest on 26 September 2021 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE Metadesign as an Emergent Design Culture Elisa Giaccardi ABSTRACT The concept of metadesign was adopted in the 1980s very time the word metadesign is used, it causes of integrating systems and setting regarding the use of information E technologies in relation to art, even more confusion than the word design. The term seems actions in order to create environ- cultural theories and design vague, elusive. Semantically, the principal meaning of the ments in which people may culti- practices (from interactive art Greek word meta- when used as a prefix is “change of place, vate “creative conversations” and to biotechnological design). This order, or nature” [1]. Historically, since the 1960s, the term take control of the context of their article introduces theories and metadesign has been used to focus on the possibilities of “de- cultural and aesthetic production practices of metadesign and signing the design”—possibilities that later, in the 1980s, were (Fig. 1). contributes to the unfolding of metadesign as an emergent realized by using information technologies. In the last two Some years later, in his 1995 essay design culture, calling for an decades, the idea of metadesign has appeared as both a theo- “Networked Art and Virtual Com- expansion of the creative retical issue and an operational methodology; however, it has munities” [4], Derrick De Kerck- process in the new design always been an isolated concept, producing neither an estab- hove defined metadesign as a space engendered by informa- tion technologies. lished approach nor a coherent theory. The development of quality of the new art forms that the notion of metadesign can be categorized as critical and were emerging over the Web in its reflexive thinking about the boundaries and scope of design, early years. According to De Kerck- aimed at coping with the complexity of natural human inter- hove, metadesign is the kind of de- action made tangible by technology. Metadesign seeks to trans- sign that puts the tools rather than the object of design in the form this complexity into an opportunity for new forms of users’ hands, and defines the conditions for the process of in- creativity and sociability. This text aims at tracing the devel- teraction rather than the process itself. However, in subsequent opment of the notion of metadesign and the multiplicity of writings [5], De Kerckhove has addressed metadesign as a its definitions by offering a map of correlated concepts and es- model of design actually mediated by digital networks rather tablishing the foundations of metadesign as a distinct and than an emerging quality of design promoted by art experi- emergent design culture. mentation. As such, metadesign can be described as the de- sign of tools, parameters and operating conditions that allow an infinite flexibility in tailoring the industrial product and METADESIGN IN ARTISTIC enable the end-user to take charge of the final design by choos- AND CULTURAL DEBATE ing among many different options. Within the artistic and cultural debate, the idea of metadesign In the same period, Paul Virilio expressed shock at Stelarc’s has primarily addressed the emergence of digital networks and techno-performances. In his book The Art of the Motor [6], pub- biotechnologies. Both represent alternatives to “juridical” lished in 1995, Virilio wrote that he feared the advent of a neu- models of communication, interaction and life—as embodied rological form of design directed at shaping our perceptual by mass media and moral law. and cognitive systems via information processing and further In 1986, at the time of the emergence of advanced tele- directed at reorganizing the organic according to a machinic communications and the first virtual communities, Gene model. He called the aftermath of this “technomorphization” Youngblood wrote “Metadesign: Toward a Postmodernism of of society “metadesign.” Reconstruction” for Ars Electronica [2]. Inspired by the pio- Biologist Humberto Maturana refuted the idea that such a neering work of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz [3], process of adaptation to electronic media can ever take place Youngblood defined metadesign as a strategy for instigating a in his emblematic 1997 paper “Metadesign” [7]. In this paper, revolution in the communication world and overcoming the Maturana argued that if a process of metadesign as design of broadcasting style of mass culture. As such, metadesign deals living systems does exist, this enlarges the issue of design to with the creation of context rather than content; it is a mode include the nature of our very existence, and it implies an epistemological and ethical rethinking of the relations be- tween human beings and technology. He strongly disputed any Elisa Giaccardi (theorist, researcher, designer), Center for LifeLong Learning and Design deterministic understanding of biological evolution, and there- (L3D), University of Colorado, ECOT 717, 430 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0430, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Web: <http://x2.i-dat.org/~eg/>. fore of “human design.” From Maturana’s perspective, meta- design is a dynamic work of art: It produces an aesthetic experience of the world that is intertwined with our social and Article Frontispiece. NOX, V2_Lab, 1998. (© NOX Architects) By technological present. Like art, metadesign has the potential means of their metadesign technique, NOX Architects adapt archi- to open up new relational dimensions and create a grounding tecture to evolution. Their architecture is an interface for a dynamic organization of space in which visitors act upon architectural struc- reality in the course of human history. tures that respond in real time to their needs. The social construction of reality is for Maturana—from a ©2005 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 342–349, 2005 343 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0024094054762098 by guest on 26 September 2021 design perspective—an ethical impera- but crucial theoretical writings on meta- sign to participation and co-evolution. tive, as it is for Youngblood [8] and Gal- design—reflecting on the scope, bound- However, these concepts are often tied loway and Rabinowitz [9]. On this point, aries and qualities of the expanded together. Eugene Thacker, in a workshop paper, design space that is engendered by in- The idea of reflexive thinking about “Bioethics and Bio-ethics,” for the 2002 formation technologies—have found design has been commonly translated in conference “Towards Human Technolo- some conceptual frameworks and opera- the application field as the “design of a gies” [10], explicitly tackled the question tive methodologies in several application design process.” In graphic design and of biotechnological design and bioethics. domains. These ideas combine here with industrial design, in particular, metade- In this paper, Thacker tried to clarify that design theory and methodology with sign has primarily been connected to the even though metadesign is a kind of de- promising results. idea of working with computational sign that is not instrumental, but ethical, structures on a higher level of design it is nevertheless not based on a moral [11]. Because a computational object has ONCEPTUAL RAMEWORKS law. Metadesign must allow a social mode C F a discrete structure, parts of the object of existence that is flexible and based on AND PRACTICES OF can be easily accessed, modified and sub- mutual processes of affecting and being METADESIGN stituted by other parts; it is not fixed and affected rather than on a juridical model. The notion of metadesign has been ap- it can be generated and manipulated According to Thacker, metadesign repre- plied in many fields, including graphic without actually drawing it. In this con- sents a critical and creative investigation design, industrial design, information ar- text, metadesign can be associated with into the possibilities of transformation of chitecture and system design. These ap- the passage from traditional typography human beings and culture. plications have focused differently on the to interface design [12]. John Maeda The ideas expressed around the last concepts associated with metadesign, [13], in a series of short essays published decades of the 20th century by these few ranging from processes of high-order de- in Japan for MdN Magazine in 1995, men- Fig. 1. Mobile Image, Electronic Cafe International, 1984. (© Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz) An early example of a metadesign environment, ECI was a telecommunications system characterized as an accessible, flexible and end-user-modifiable system that allowed users the greatest possible freedom to design and control their own information environments. 344 Giaccardi, Metadesign Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0024094054762098 by guest on 26 September 2021 variations the result that better fits his or her needs and subjectivity (Fig. 4). Like De Kerckhove [16], Soddu empowers the user as consumer, making him or her proactive, but does not question the user’s passive role as designer. Evolution here is the result of the execution of a no- tation and its exploration, rather than the aftermath of the user’s full partici- pation in the creative process. In this gen- erative process model, the “seed” can be defined and modified only by the de- signer. In the last few years, two organizations have been working on frameworks and applications of metadesign: the Labo- ratory for Architecture and Urbanism (Lab[au]), a collective of artists, archi- tects and computer scientists based in Brussels; and the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) of the Uni- Fig. 2. John Maeda, reactive graphics, 1995. (© John Maeda) Maeda’s metadesign technique allows generation of visual experiences that involve the viewers in the creation of the form versity of Colorado at Boulder. These two by responding to their inputs in real time. organizations have developed research agendas that incorporate most of the aforementioned theoretical statements and operational methodologies.
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