CRITICAL DESIGN

CRITICAL DESIGN    –

September 2012    –    Three Prints.  Each 13 x 18cms    –

Photo etching + Chine Collé    –

Critical Design focuses on studying the impact and possible consequences of new technologies and policies, and of worldwide social and environmental trends, as well as on outlining new goals and areas of interest for designers.

 The Critical Design process does not immediately lead to useful objects, but rather to food for thought whose usefulness is revealed by its ability to help others prevent and direct future outcomes. The job of critical designers is to be thorns in the side of politicians and industrialists, as well as partners for scientists or consumer advocates, while stimulating discussion and debate about the social, cultural and ethical future implications of decisions about technology made today.

We need to move beyond designing for the way things are now and begin to design for how things could be, imagining alternative possibilities and different ways of being, and giving tangible form to new values and priorities.

Bark, be my limbs, my hair be leaf.

Daphne, the spiritualization of nature,

an invisible spirit in a tree.

Metamorphoses into a tree

The sublimation is at the same time

a fall, into a lower order of

creation; an incarnation. The

way up is the way down.

from Apocalypse or Metamorphoses

by Norman O. Brown