Core Concepts
Pluralism- both multiplicity and pluralism are concerned with the relationship between the one and the many
Multiplicity
readings: twentieth century multiplicity (Daniel H. Borus) and Architectures of time (sanford, Kwinter)
In the 20th century there is a growing sense that self- evident definition of the truth beauty and good could no longer provide a secure, meaningful orientation in the world (Daniel Borus)
Others stand as a vertiginous unmooring of existence
Henry adams (publishes autobiography, 1909)
the historian Henry adams worried that change variety and the unbridles acceleration of experience, might dissipate the energy that the people could muster to face challenging.
At the level of politics multiplicity ultimately fall out with ww1
Multiplicity and the movement of the new offered temporary contingent, or provisional understanding.
Henry Adams termed the condition- Adams thought it unlikely that there was a unity to the world.
Multiplicity brings a pluralistic vision of truths, goods beauties
Contingency
Multiple causation
Transforming ideas concerning the material world
Pragmatism Charles Sanders Peirce and William James
Relied less on the presumption of a single truth and unified set of goods. By 1920 every basic and central premise and physical, intellectual, and existence had ben subject to critique.
new philosophers, moralists scientists and artists raised meaningful challenges to the unified postulates that had looked so obvious/self evident half century earlier.
Dewey art takes place in a material environment: experience as negotiation in the face of changing/ provisional reality
Politics of representation/ theorisation constitutes removal from experience
Dewey shares much in common with Delouse, nut his position is more moderate.
dewy- Experience and education 1938
Importance of qualitative, experimental learning to construct continuities
progressive education- less structured/ more open—— Traditional education- heavily structured
A theory of experience will make use of continuity over time as well as the influence of situation on experience
Positioned as having social as well a political ends
Dewey was particularly interested in democracy and the growth of individuals
He saw democracy as providing opportunities for for individuals to steer government and participate in the construction.
Application (general)
Inter-disciplinary (collaborative)
Coming together of areas of expertise/ multiple way of knowing
Broadly Critical Realist in orientation
Trans disciplinarily
More radically constructivist
Attempts to cultivate new ways of knowing/ new ways of working through the intersection of disciplines
More direct forms of contact/ exchange with the aim of innovation
Same individual/ team operates across boundaries.
Application (specification)
Design- art/design activism- straddles design art engineering cop science agitprop & consumer production- Critical forms of making (design as social critique- Expanded practice
Adversarial design (Carl Disalvo, 2014)
Agnostic pluralism.
Cacophony of voices that functions as the ground of democracy.
Design for politics
Merging form and content in aesthetically compelling and functionally appropriate way to support means of governance.-single Manuals -Get out and vote campaigns
Political Design
Design for the dimensions of antagonism inherent in human relations
The political - on going contest between forces and ideals
Implicitly contestation
Embodies a kind of intensive, social thermodynamics- locate hot spots of political tension in society
Million Dolllar Blocks Project:http://designandviolence.moma.org/million-dollar-blocks-by-the-spatial-information-design-lab/
