September 03, 2005
Comments function now works
Thank you to Jon Harris!
Posted by william temple at 02:36 PM | Comments (1)
September 04, 2005
In Pursuit of Designer Overalls
They’re out there, hung haphazardly on a rack way in the back part of Wal-Mart. They’re also at Neiman Marcus glamorously draped over a faceless, plastic mannequin. They’re there I tell you. Each made by “Juanitas” from Honduras, and they’re perfect. They’re Marxian in their timeless transcendence; at once relevant to the logger, to the tree-hugger, to the fashionista, to the Russian immigrant, to the artist, to the farmer, and to the inmate. They are the most ubiquitous ‘jean-esian product in form, but also in content because they’re meant to fit me. Or you. Or him. Or her. Or a set of Siamese twins inhabiting one pant-leg each.
Marx would have shopped at Wal-Mart. Yes, it’s true! He said so! Listen: “The free trade system pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentleman {and women, and unisex organisms}, that I vote in favor of free trade”. (Hardt, 158). He would have done so, to help bring them down.
Marx believed in the future. He believed in money as a complete social form and “Golly, Wally” so does Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has complete (nearly monopolistic) control over low-priced goods, which has allowed them to dictate a new consumer culture, a new (and horrendous) working culture, and therefore a new (just accept it) social order including all networks of Jeandom in-between.
Now let’s get back to the overalls. Listen to that name ‘Over All(s)”. It’s a word of Jean ne sais pas that lords over the masses (meaning that indiscriminate and indifferent body described by Michael Hardt that I interpret to mean ‘the poor’). AND! It’s a word that likewise entrances the multitude (meaning a network of singular identities bound in today’s new social network of endless mixture again described by Michael Hardt that I interpret to mean 1st world nations and their inhabitants). Therefore, we (collective global citizens of both mass and multitude) are alike or even “universally standard” in our wearing of overalls. Only some are more expensive, more exclusive, and more elusive, stitched with a particular type of class struggle. Even MY class struggle: The Jessica’s, the Jews, the women, the Americans, the post-moderns, the Gen XY’s (I’m both), the unmarrieds, the designers, the confuseds, the athletes, the cat-lovers, and the skeptics in no particular order of allegiance.
All of this leads me toward wondering about my “class” (yes, we 12) struggle as well, and I look to Marx as a kind of style guide. He said, “The key is to grasp the direction of the present” (Hardt, 140) and that’s what I aim to do. I am for Wal-Mart (in the Marxian sense). And more practically, I am for the “common” we (global citizens) share and the “common” we (again, global friends) produce (these are Hardts’ definitions that I refer to). And as stated above, I also believe in labels, in groups, in co-identities split in threes. I don’t understand the notion of “universal standard” because it is myth. Instead I believe (or rather respect) the notions of power, of growth and of change. This is what’s happening now before my eyes; this power, growth (Wal-Mart) and change. It’s in motion, evolu-motion and it is fascinating and gruesome. It’s Wal-Mart (and the rich) as Golem. Only, this is no parable. We can’t reduce Wal-Mart back to clay. The WTO, IMF and countless other organizations are not going to repent before God to help them find their way.
So unlike that fantasy made colorful by the antics of the “Yes Men”, I don’t believe in a form of isolated radical activism that’s so esoteric, it’s meaning is masked. But I also ask is it enough for an all-class boycott of Wal-Mart? Is it enough to shop at Neiman Marcus (symbolic for “alternative”) instead? Is it enough to not shop at all? No. None of this is usable, tangible, or real. The most I can do is recognize that I am in a fight for an identity amidst a world of distraction.
So, today I’m going to purchase my overalls at Wal-Mart in solidarity with Marxist ideology. Then I’m going to work hard and assume my place in the current global order. Is this passive-aggressive, useless, rubbish? Well, yes. However, I soon predict a shortage of designer overalls. Where are you going to buy yours?
Posted by Jessica Gladstone at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2005
Long Installment Inspired by Manifesto
In response to :: Michael Hardt: Affective Labor :: http://www.makeworlds.org/node/60
When asked what I do, I always hesitate before responding with graphic design. It’s not that I don’t “do” graphic design or that I’m not a graphic designer :: more to the point, I “do” so much more. As my response slips out of my mouth, I watch the person’s face twist in attempts to make sense of the title. Then clarity strikes and they respond, “Like advertising and stuff?”
When Michael Hardt optimistically describes the new labor as highly mobile with flexible skills, design immediately comes to my mind. “Knowledge, information, communication, affect” check. “Continual exchange of information and knowledge” check. “Symbolic-analytical services” check. “Problem-solving, problem-identifying, strategic brokering” check. “CREATIVE SYMBOLIC MANIPULATION” CHECK! It sounds to me like Hardt is describing the new paradigm as design labor, not just “informatization.” This reminds me of Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.
The designer walks a fine line between service provider and product provider (splashing around in the blurred boundary more than setting up camp on either side). The government’s taxation structure is a bit confused about this (in California anyway). As a freelance designer, I charge sales tax for a project if I provide any physical item including a CD recording the project, but do not charge tax if I email the same document. As human relations become capital, intellectual property (immaterial ownership) will be structured with much harsher guidelines.
Imagine being charged a monetary amount every time you said something that “belongs” to someone else. Imagine selling your “visual angle” (by cameraesque device) of an event to millions of virtual participants, who are continually switching “channels” to find the best view for the best price. This takes design away from the singular possessable object, and shifts it to the production/ orchestration/ choreography of intangible products. Designing relationships with actual/virtual presence would utilize gist to leave plenty of room for interpretation and decision-making. Design labor could be about “social networks, forms of community, and biopower.” Amen.
The most intriguing concept Hardt expands upon regards the “collective subjectivities” that form society, and how production is shifting to reflect the complexity of human interaction. Despite the generalized paradigmatic assumptions, I hope he’s right. I wonder, though, about the outsourcing of “lower value tasks” in favor of keeping the “high value tasks” within the U.S. borders. Currently, the educational structure cannot support this proposal. It’s also distressing to assume that knowledge, information, communication, and affect could not originate elsewhere. Perhaps the power to manage life (create, manage, control populations) will need time to move away from the models established by trade.
Taking a bit of an egocentric stance, designers are responsible for the artifacts that act as a filter through which artificial constructs of self and interaction are formed. As a step away from rationalization and disembodiment, I propose to embrace a flexible mentality with open curiosity, to tease apart or put together the expectations and manipulations that make people think and decide the things they do. In the name of informatization, I will avoid treating the end users (who are intrinsic to my feedback cycle) as farms, factories, or computers, and instead embrace them for the gooey biological anomalies that they so cleverly attempt to mask. (I am part of the “they,” by the way). Allan Schore, a neuroscientist, has devoted his career to understanding Affect Regulation and emotional development of humans. If I am to create/manipulate affect, then it seems pertinent to also comprehend how affect adapts and loosely forms artificial constructs. I should probably acquire a more in-depth appreciation for information and communication beyond the “design world.” In Hardt’s words, “The production of affects, subjectivities, and forms of life present an enormous potential for autonomous circuits of valorization, and perhaps liberation.”
So, maybe, in say, 15 years when someone asks me what I do (which, by the way is a sign that our social structure is built around labor), I will hesitate still before saying design, because by then, I will be “doing” so much more.
Posted by amber howard at 12:47 AM | Comments (2)
Graphic Designers, the Immaterial Laborers
I am no longer in a state of despair when looking at this massive concept of globalization and how I can contribute to fixing the problems it creates. In past weeks I have only read about all of the problems of globalization and how it is only going to continue on, to the detriment of everyone on a local level. I wondered how a graphic designer, from Cincinnati, was ever going to be able to change this destructive force. Well, I began by not thinking of it as a destructive force. Secondly, I read Michael Hardt's book, Multitude. Many of the concept presented has made me feel that graphic designers do have some power to shape, reshape the thought of leader in the world, due to the fact we are immaterial labors.
It was very enlightening for me to realize how the worlds labor system is being redefined in our postmodern time. The new vocabulary Hardt introduces is helpful and (I feel) necessary to understand before I move full force ahead in taking a stance on globalization. In past times Hardt points out that the true function of labor was to create a tangible product for economic gain. We can see evidence of this when examining the history of industrial labor. Today, Hardt contents we have an immaterial labor form, which is a labor that creates immaterial products, such as knowledge, and information. From reading his definition of immaterial labor I immediately realize that I am this type of worker. What is great about being this type of laborer, in today society, is that it has the potential to change the very essence of society, or so Hardt believes. “Immaterial labor is biopolitical in that it is oriented toward the creation of forms of social life; such labor, then, tends no longer to be limited to the economic but also becomes immediately a social, cultural, and political force.” (p. 66) Wow, this statement empowers me as I look within my self to find out how to make a stand. I am not just a laborer who is constantly churning out logos and ads that persuade consumers to keep over-consuming. I can be biopolitical, in that I use my design skills to shape ideas and concepts that will better society.
I feel that Hardt's concepts on immaterial labor supports the First Thing First Manifesto from 1964. In the manifesto 22 designers all believed in their ability to use design to communicate concepts that would build up societies. In many respects they believed that they were immaterial labors. They firmly thought that what they create should not be just for economic gain or to start a cool trend design. No, graphic design is more than that. We are communication persuaders that when done effectively can change the way our communities functions. It seem as though it is crucial to our profession that we start to see ourselves as having this power. It may seem like this notion makes us out to be superheroes, and I do not mean to imply that that is what we need to become. I just feel as though when we see ourselves as an immaterial labor we might not feel so helpless in trying to realize our role in globalization.
Another empowering aspect of Hardt's thoughts on immaterial labor is the idea that as immaterial laborers we are leaders in the changing of culture. “In any economic system there are numerous different forms of labor that exist side by side, but there is always one figure of labor that exerts hegemony over the others. This hegemonic figure serves as a vortex that gradually transforms other figures to adopt its central qualities.” (p. 107) In past weeks I have been frustrated in trying to understand whether it was really my place as a designer to suggest solutions to problems caused by globalization. Hardt's description of the new laborer system begins to convince me that my suggestions could in fact transform others to adopt my ideas. I do understand that economist and other experts in the field of globalization are immaterial laborers as well. However, if there is this possibility that my ideas could influence their thoughts I am willing to attempt to sway their positions.
In conclusion, I understand that my response to the problems of globalization might not immediately change the face of the world. However, I now have hope in thinking that what I could in some small way help. For now, I will be satisfied to contribute in a small way. I do not believe globalization to be a bad thing. It just needs help in correcting some of the problems it is causing to people and as an immaterial laborer I do possess some power to make this happen. That thought make me smile.
Posted by reneé seward at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)
common contributions
there were so many things about the reading i did that i found compelling that it would be foolish to try to comment on them all. so i will try to pinpoint one small issue and examine the implications of that issue. here’s a quote:
“the difference of immaterial labor, however, is that its products are themselves, in many respects, immediately social and common. producing communication, affective relationships, and knowledges, in contrast to cars and typewriters, can directly expand the realm of what we share in common.” Multitude p 114
if hardt/negri’s assertion here is true, then it raises a few questions for me:
1) what is my responsibility as an immaterial laborer (graphic designer) to the common?
hardt also says that immaterial labor moves beyond economic to become social, cultural, political. these notions help me to recognize the multiple implications of the work that i produce. not that i’m changing the world, but contributing in small ways to people’s perceptions of their world. it helps to define what my larger societal role as a designer is and how i might expect to contribute to society. if i understand that what i produce has immediate social implications, then i can address those possibilities as part of the project. of course there is always the spectre of doubt. i certainly believe that a design artifact can be simultaneously political, social and cultural, but it seems nearly impossible to make something worthwhile what that kind of (self imposed?) pressure.
2) what does my internal desire to claim an idea as my own say about my relationship to the common?
i personally love and identify strongly with the ideas of both the multitude and the common that the multitude shares. at the same time, i recognize my internal desire for recognition, which stems from pride. even within a collaborative setting i sometimes find myself trying to recall who came up with the initial idea that generated the product, even as i recognize the uselessness and pettiness of that effort. it has been necessary to remind myself that it is not important who generated the idea, but that it was generated; it is out in the world ready to be taken in by others, mutated, improved, distilled into something more. we can recall meredith’s claim as to why a phd program is important -- that much new design knowledge is proprietary (i would say ‘belonging to empire’) and we need public knowledge (for the common). and hey, if meredith and michael hardt are on the same page, who can argue with that?
3) how and where does the common knowledge base intersect with empire’s ideas of intellectual property?
obviously a big topic and one that will keep cropping up. right now i feel that the desire to claim intellectual property rights is a product of pride -- my personal issue mentioned above. i am in disagreement with this policy not just because pride is bad, but because the notion of a proprietary idea seems to run counter to the notion of contributing openly to society. it amounts to token contribution, and tokens (money) are needed to access the idea, effectively rendering it unavailable to the underpriviledged. i admit much ignorance in this specific area, outside of these course readings, and perhaps i am polarizing and simplifying the debate too much. right now it seems like a major ideological chasm between empire and multitude.
4) what are the implications of a reduction in the qualitative divisions within labor?
my first thought on this is the notion of interdisciplinary collaboration, not unlike what michael schmidt discussed last week. but if you reduce qualitative divisions of labor, doesn’t that suggest that boundaries between jobs are blurring, that others will soon know more about design, that i will begin to learn more about other disciplines? i believe this is true, and is already happening. ncsu design undergrads are sometimes double majors, or have a strong minor at least. it seems smart to develop multiple interest areas that will facilitate collaborative environments.
Posted by tyler galloway at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2005
Design and Multitudes
Thinking of the collection of “us” in different forms really helps me to think of possibilities in how design could function. Just creating a distinction between people, masses and multitudes is huge for me. I think the finer I can understand who I am in relation to everyone else helps me define what I can do as both a designer and a person. By thinking of my relationship as the commonalities between disparate peoples within a group or the common resistance to other oppressive groups really makes me think of how a designer can function as facilitator. Acting as the means of communications between groups with common interests is a direction moving away from the client-based system.
The concept of multitude also influences traditional concepts of audience. Moving from an understanding of a group as many of the same to a group of unique individuals with common goals really forces designers to rethink design strategies or to rethink how design functions. Rethinking our voice, as arbitrator to the multitude or facilitator between groups should have some strong implications for how design functions. I am not sure right now how that changes design and design communication strategy but thinking of groups as disparate members with common goals seems pretty different than how many conceive of design today. The way I think design is largely practiced is thinking of audience as people or masses, not really as multitude. I’m curious to know how others think designing for multitudes changes the equation.
Posted by jon harris at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2005
thoughts on Yes Men
Maybe I'm relegating myself to the role of studio cynic, but I couldn't help notice the hypocrisy rearing its ugly head in the scene where Andy Bichlbaum is shopping for a shirt for his upcoming lecture to the accountants, and he's more concerned with the cotton content than where it's made…
It's not that I can't appreciate the extremes to which the Yes Men are willing to visit to subvert the WTO and Corporate America—at least on some levels, but my skepticism shoots into high gear when the activism is so militant that it inevitably wreaks of hypocrisy just by way of having nowhere else to go. In addition to the shirt clip, there is also the (small) matter of the film having been funded by
UA and MGM, and the PCs being used for the construct of the powerpoint presentations. I like the subversive use of the very products one is commenting on as tools of the commentary, but it quickly becomes a blurry line, yeah?
BTW, there has been a thesis on the Yes Men
(source: IMDB.com)
However, if one is to find some positive end to this verrrrrrrry frightening expose on the inanity of our world/corporate leaders and their willingness to go along with the absurdity of what was presented to them, I guess it's found in the classroom in Plattsburgh, where the students spoke up very loudly in protest & opposition to what was being suggested to them. Perhaps the future isn't so bleak after all?
Posted by tracy kroop at 09:59 AM | Comments (9)
September 08, 2005
the very local
So far this semester the topic of globalism has remained abstract and distant for me. But the events of the past week have transformed the blurriness of globalism into the all too tangible and frighteningly clarity of the local.
(In this post I will be responding to Hardt's article "Why We Need a Multilateral Magna Carta" http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/04/11/1722238&mode=nested&tid=8) along with some international news headlines.)
For me, the revelation of the global becoming local is made evident in the images and stories of destruction and despair in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This tragedy has happened within our own borders, not but a few states away. In a city I have visited. (I always have sympathy for rest of world) but it is now so much more real when I see it at the local. Our governments bureaucracy and general indifference bears all responsibility for the excessive death-toll and super-dome chaos and I see no other excuse than its rampant march towards globalization and absolute free market policies.
And the media, is the willing coconspirator. For example, look to the skewed headlines of "looting" committed by African American's vs. the "finding of food" done by caucasians. An article in ZMag (http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/09/03/1346217&mode=nested&tid=8) articulated this racially biased and material oriented connection to globalization, stating "it was property before people, just like the free marketeers always want."
Often I project globalization out into the world. But I think Hardt's concepts on the multitudes is equally applied to our own boarders. The Hurricane aftermath has revealed to the rest of the world the true state of fragility in the US. The emperor has no clothes. The waters have revealed what the U.S. normally so adeptly keeps hidden from world view; that of her own desperately poor population and its general indifference to them. A reporter from Kenya's Daily Nation said "My first reaction when television images of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans came through the channels was that the producers must be showing the wrong clip. The images, and even the disproportionately high number of visibly impoverished blacks among the refugees, could easily have been a re-enactment of a scene from the pigeonholed African continent."
Katrina's aftermath (specifically the government's non-response to protect and take care of its people) is a manifestation of the neoliberal agenda. I see this agenda, not as a struggle of US over the 3rd world. But the power of capitalism over humanity. Corporations over the poor. In New Orleans, the poor were ill-served, locked up, ignored. Criticized for not heeding the warning. But I ask, how can you evacuate when you have no car? What hotel would they afford? To me this is a local visualization of Hardt's message that "economic exclusion and marginalization of large populations are indication(s) of the failure and unsustainability of the neoliberal regime." Thus, the imposition of the neoliberal regime has been made evident through the disposability of human lives (and land) in New Orleans. And still, even after this disaster, the US government continues with its "go it alone" attitude.
And lets not ignore the government's globalization crusade against the environment and its dire conseqences. The issues that normally reside in the macro sphere of global warming has once again reaped consequences all too local. In New Orleans the broken levies and eroded wet lands are a direct result of harmful environmental oversight and the intensity of the storm has direct correlations to warming ocean current. Yet the government continues to remain aggressively opposed to progressive measures like the Kyoto Treaty. It was known for years that the levies would not hold back a large scale Hurricane, yet legislation was never passed to reinforce it. In fact the government recently passed laws to "divert" funds. Hardt states that our global monarch is "unable to pay for its wars, maintain peaceful order and, moreover, provide the adequate means for economic production." As a reflection of Hardt's statement, last week Switzerland's Le Temps paper surmised that "The sea walls would not have burst in New Orleans if the funds meant for strengthening them had not been cut to help the war effort in Iraq and the war on terror..." A newspaper in Colombia commands, "It is now urgent that the world's leaders take heed of nature's warning, look at the evidence and realize that the climate, on a global scale, is changing. This is already known from scientific reports, but they continue to ignore it, to play it down, or not to care about it." The rest of the world sees the correlation, but not the US. After the storm, the government's primary concern was opening its oil reserves and lessening its environmental standards.
Could an immaterial workforce find it's metaphorical place in New Orleans? Providing the necessary "affective" and "intellectual" labor that is so necessary before- during- and after- these times of crisis? We now have proof that this global monarchy can not (or will not) protect the people in a time of crisis. The myth of homeland security is shattered. At this moment people are angry - but for how long I don't know. So I hope that if the "multitudes" truly are the future that this forced suffering will not be replayed in the aftermath of future natural and/or man-made disasters.
Posted by jamie gray at 09:47 AM | Comments (1)
Forests and trees
I found myself visualizing the difference between the people and the multitude as such:
The notion of the people is like a series of dots (or data points, or molecules) constantly moving in sync in space. They're (it's?) like a supersolid in that way. The multitude, on the other hand, is a set of molecules all moving in various directions and with various velocities (and constantly changing).
From afar, the two will appear quite similar: a fairly even gray. You address too great a reality and must utilize averages. It's when you look closely that you can assess the instructive differences.
This hints at the importance of the scale at which you measure something. There is an anecdote that I've encountered when reading (I forget what, I think it was Stephen Jay Gould referencing another source)... The length of the coastline of Cape Cod is contingent upon the fineness of your measuring stick. If you take an accurate map, and calculate the length at scale, you will get quite a different result than if you were to focus in to the point that you're wrapping your line around individual rocks (or grains of sand). The latter measurement will profoundly exceed the former; yet both could be said to be true.
Posted by matthew peterson at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)
Thoughts on Multitude (up to page 157)
I am finding Multitude to be an incredibly inspired and inspiring book. This is the main reason I have so many questions and concerns about what it is saying.
It seems to me that when Hardt refers to biopolitical production apart from that which is generated by the “state of exception”, inherent in and fundamental to this production of resistance is a shift in our way of thinking. If this is the case, I ask how can we move beyond our current, limited understanding of what is implied by the word “freedom”, for example. One could argue that, in light of the feebly contested reauthorization of the Patriot Act, there are many who will cling to a hollow concept, even as all evidence indicates that the rhetorical use of that concept has been misleading. Those who might see themselves within the multitude, instead remain comfortable within a culture of fear.
Although Hardt states that Multitude is not a utopian vision, it nonetheless seems a highly optimistic one. The greatest obstacle to this vision is not the spirit or content of the message, but discovering a viable way of disseminating the message. When we speak of Mao, for example, are we considering the intentions of the person, the little red book, or the less than desirable outcomes of the cultural revolution? My point is that any idea can be misunderstood or misused, especially when it is reduced to a buzz-word. I’m sure Hardt dreads the day “Multitude for Dummies” appears on bookstore shelves. Yet how else will an awareness of the possibility of Multitude reach people of drastically different educational backgrounds?
Unfortunately, the kind of distorted patriotism we see today is attributable, in part, to the work of immaterial laborers. There will always be forces which serve to create divisions between those who look to network outside of existing, conventional systems, forces which seek to prevent immaterial laborers from becoming aware of commonalities between them. Furthermore, immaterial laborers themselves will continue to do their part in perpetuating myths of exaggerated difference. Hardt points out that we begin to look at all social relations through the matrix of war when we live in a society which is perpetually engaged in war. Yet, there is also the historically transmitted presence of fear. Only effective education dispels irrational fear and replaces it with awareness.
How will networking become something different than the kind with which we are most familiar—that which occurs within the strata of class? After all, if i only put my words on-line to communicate my ideas, i have narrowed my audience significantly. If I use a broad vocabulary, i have narrowed it even further. I correlate education and class here because the two are so often closely related. The book Multitude will be discussed more among those who have the time and the ability to read it, for example.
Again, all of my statements here are based on the assumption that the project of the Multitude necessitates a shift in our way of thinking. Continuing with that assumption, are there those who would cynically attempt to exploit the project of Multitude, even while understanding its greater purpose? My cable internet provider comes to mind… Beyond accessibility, there is also the issue of choice. Will those who are comfortably enjoying the fruits of their investments ever make a decision to reacquaint themselves with what Hardt refers to as the poverty of labor?
Having posed these somewhat cynical questions, I am in agreement with most of what I have read thus far. The prospects for graphic designers within Multitude seem exciting. We have to carefully consider the role that we play, however, as Hardt proposes that “the subordinated are often the most creative agents of a linguistic community, developing new linguistic forms and mixtures and communicating them to the community as a whole”.
Posted by jonathan hyland at 08:33 PM | Comments (1)
September 09, 2005
networked practice
one of hardt/negri's ideas which would seem to have direct relevance to design in the moment -- and has been briefly touched upon in some posts -- is that of distributed networked structures (pp 79-92).
certainly a "hot" issue in practice these days is less-hierarchical, collaborative process. the "network" is also showing up in design writing/content -- with blogs, wikis, etc; even published writing has taken on a "thought experiment" tone which seems to include the reader. this influence also speaks to the unpopularity of the Rand-mold Art Director in progressive practice, the death/decline of the Big Idea school, and the proliferation of events like "roundtables" and "breakout sessions" at conferences.
this would seem to be an organic shift in professional values that is interesting not so much in terms of how design affects the global, but an abstract reverse. as will put it, "we are the fish who do not know we are wet."
meredith is fond of saying that design has long appropriated the language of war; i find it interesting that (structurally at least), the profession is mirroring the recent evolution of military structures outlined by hardt/negri. i don't mean to suggest anyone has directly appropriated these structures(*). physics teaches us that similar forces on similar objects will yield similar location; the same "global" forces are having effects not just on economic/political/military structures, but on the very nature of our profession, and the structures, tools and methods we use.
during our discussion to date, we have tended to frame the "global/local" in empirical terms, looking at services, products and consequences more than structures; how design can behave/make more responsibly and ethically to affect Massive (or Micro) Change. to those ends, perhaps there is something to learn from studying the unconscious behaviors which may already be in motion.
= = = = = = = = = = =
*: though, i'd bet their origins can be traced to the Wired/Fast Company view of "new" business in the 90's, which thomas frank might argue did consciously take much from rebellion.
Posted by jay harlow at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2005
Within and Beside
Michael Hardt’s presentation offers some important entry points for understanding design’s relationship to globalization. In the Michael Schmidt seminar session two week s ago, I suggested that individuality and collectivity were important anchoring points in our study. Michael Hardt reminded us that Marx praised the factory for its ability to create cooperation among its workers. This cooperation produces a collectivity existing both “within” and “beside” the real work of factory production. It is the cooperation that is produced beside and in excess of that necessary for the production of marketable goods that becomes interesting in relation to the problem of globalization. We should also extend the imagination of this “within” side of production from that of “real” products to the production of markets and audiences (a factory worker produces a shirt and a filmmaker implicitly contributes to the production demand/market for that shirt by costuming actors in it.). For the sake of discussion, I am interested in how to imagine this “beside” space, recognizing that it is produced simultaneously to the “within.”
Questions:
1. Is this process organic or synthetic? Is it conscious and planned or does it just exude of its own accord, according to logics that can’t easily be mapped ahead of time? What role would design play, if any, if design implies rationality, planning and an authoritative response? Obviously these are leading questions.
Is it not difficult to “make” authoritatively as a designer, without having a foundation to which one must retreat to maintain that authority? This foundation would seem to necessitate the taking of sides, either within or beside, lest ones goals become ambiguous and one’s position ambivalent.
2. Thoughts on this?
Posted by william temple at 12:00 PM | Comments (15)
Subversion
It seems that the logic of subversion (as in “The Yes Men” dvd I screened for seminar last week) is an “older” model of the 80s and 90s.
Questions:
3. Thoughts on our potential post-subversive period in design, the visual culture political activism?
4. Leaving aside my first question above, how would one design for this “beside” space?
5. Given Michael Schmidt’s admission two weeks ago that his new role as “Designer as Facilitator” is shaped largely by new digital technologies, what is the computer’s place in constructing this space of beside “already” for designers?
6. How does the computer, having in some ways, already “beaten us” to this new political frontier get at the larger issue of cybernetics and prosthesis that Michael Hardt brings up in his Immaterial Labor online article cited by Amber above?
Posted by william temple at 12:02 PM | Comments (2)
September 13, 2005
Species
I am going to take a stab at answering these question(s) here…
I’m going to posit that Will’s term “beside” refers to the affective, cultural, and therefore immaterial “products” or rather “potential” that every corporation generates (in addition to their physical/rational gadgets, gizmos, doodads and so forth). And this being said, the category of “beside” is larger and more important that the physical “excess” that a corporation generates which makes the “beside” more of a real and consequential contribution to society.
I wholeheartedly believe that the example of film-maker who comments on the value of the shirt-makers product by promoting its’ use in his/her film, is a phenomenon that is completely organic. This belief is ABSOLUTE to me, even if both of these seemingly disconnected bodies are owned by a huge conglomerate like Viacom that forces cross-promotion among all of it’s children companies. If Viacom forces Paramount to promote the new SpongeBob car trinket in the current kids’ movie, it doesn’t mean the public will desire it any more or any less.
See, the shirt maker company can strive to reach as much of the market as possible, but it can in no way design whether the product will be respected and then remediated successfully, authentically, striking a chord among the consumer population. And further, the “shirt” story could devolve and no one would or could plan that either. What I mean is that the shirt, via the movie exposure, could become so high in demand, that the factory can’t accommodate for its’ spiked sales, which in turn, could cause total consumer rage, which would then be satirically documented by any number of authoritarian periodicals destroying all equity and all allegiance to the shirt maker and his/her body of products.
This association between the two variables can be good or bad. But it is in my opinion, a roll of the die.
Where does design fit in all of this? Can this process be rationalized? Honestly, I feel like those questions are akin to asking, can response to product be controlled? And see, people like Al and Laura Reis would like us to think so. But come on! We (the 12 of us) smirk with derisive laughter at such outlandish claims! I don’t fault their enthusiasm for going global, not at all. But even I find fault with their colonial-style manifesto that reads like a list of assumptions, simplifications and empty promises. I like what they are saying about branding and such, but not how they say it. The how in this case, is the design…
One last idea about this organic, mutating “besideness”… involves kids. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about them for thesis and I’m positively convinced that they know more about networking, fractioning, riffing, spliffing, mixing, matching and other various “beside” issues than any of us could ever hope to understand. They don’t really produce anything, instead they comment, critique, conform, ignore, distribute, repeat, etc…And for them, it’s purely organic. I’m not talking about products and advertising, I’m talking about communicating. One person is in fact many people in one crossing many boundaries many times. And today, more than ever before, “beside” is no design, it’s survival.
Posted by Jessica Gladstone at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
William Morris on Globalization
i mentioned Morris' 1890 socialist utopian novel "News From Nowhere" during Michael Hardt's visit. here are some excerpts, keeping in mind Hardt's idea that you don't always want what you think you want. it's stunning how prescient Morris was, and how much of the current process was already in motion in his time, or at least evident. it likewise makes evident that some of the ways in which we've so far considered globalization are =very old models= based on theories of mechanical/industrial production (e.g. Marx).
Some excerpts that I found relevant follow...
{ the following excerpts are a conversation between a time-traveller from the 19th century and a wise man of Morris' vision of the early 21st century--i guess our time }
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from chapter XIII, Concerning Politics
"How about your relations with foreign nations?"
"... the whole system of rival and contending nations which played so great a part in the 'government' of the world of civilization has disappeared..."
"Does not that make the world duller?... the obliteration of national variety?"
"Nonsense... You will find plenty of variety... How should it add to the variety or dispel the dulness, to coerce families or tribes... into certain artificial and mechanical groups, and call them nations, and stimulate their patriotism...?"
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from chapter XV, On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society
"/All/ work is now pleasurable... even when the actual work is not pleasant... there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the work itself."
"... Can you tell me how you came to this happy condition...?"
"Briefly, by the absence of artificial coercion, and the freedom for every man to do what he can do best..."
{ ... explaining the history of how this change occurred in society... }
"... in the last age of civilization men had got into a vicious circle in the matter of production of wares. They had reached a wonderful facility of production, and in order to make the most of the facility they had gradually created (or allowed to grow, rather) a most elaborate system of buying and selling, which has been called the World-Market; and that World-Market, once set a-going, forced them to go on making more and more of these wares, whether they needed them or not. So that while they could not free themselves from the toil of making real necessaries, they created in a never-ending series sham or artificial necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid World-Market, of equal importance to them with the real necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious mass of work merely for the sake of keeping their wretched system going."
"... it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than one -- to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible. To this "cheapening of production," as it was called, everything was sacrificed... the whole community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening monster, "the cheap production" forced upon it by the World-Market.
"... You know that according to the old saw the beetle gets used to living in dung; and these people, whether they found the dung sweet or not, certainly lived in it."
"... the World-Market grew with what it fed on: the countries within the ring of "civilization" (that is, organized misery) were glutted with the abortions of the market, and force and fraud were used unsparingly to "open up" countries outside that pale... When the civilized World-Market coveted a country not yet in its clutches, some transparent pretext was found... to "create a market" by breaking up whatever traditional society there might be in the doomed country, and by destroying whatever leisure or pleasure he found there. He forced wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their natural products in "exchange," as this new form of robbery was called, and thereby he "created new wants," to supply which (that is, to be allowed to live by their new masters) the hapless, helpless people had to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they might have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of "civilization."
Posted by jay harlow at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
inequality matters
forgive the onslaught today. anybody seen these?
Posted by jay harlow at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
test
Posted by william temple at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
hey
Hi everyone, I hope I'm doing this right.
Sorry to take so long to enter the blog. I found our discussion a few weeks ago really interesting. I've continued to think about design and how it relates to immaterial labor more generally. In fact, last weekend I was having a similar discussion with graduate students at York Univ in Toronto and I was trying to explain to them how designers are the paradigmatic workers of immaterial production, how they directly create experience. All that just to say, our discussion has stayed with me.
I read through what you all had written in the blog, some of it before I came over to Raleigh. I found it really interesting, from Katrina and the Yes Men to William Morris. But I didn't immediately have any direct responses.
Have you continued to think about it?
Tomorrow I'm going up to DC for the anti-war demonstration and I'll be back in a few days.
Michael
Posted by michael hardt at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)