John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

design, technology, economics and history. Sterling is not afraid of conjecture,
supposition or eclectic language - a fact which has caused this book to be
derided by more empirical or positivist commentators. Nevertheless, in the
context of the present study it is a useful indication of the spectrum of ideas
currently being considered for the use of computer-based design and fabrication
tools towards the development of new orders of object and possible new modes
of design practice.
Sterling makes a timeline of objects, starting with ‘artifacts’ and going through
‘machines’, ‘products’, ‘gizmos’, and finally ‘spimes’ and ‘biots’ (Table 1). The
category of object that is of interest to this study is that of the ‘spime’- a
neologism, a contraction of ‘space’ and ‘time’ – the idea is you no longer look at
an object as an artifact, but as a process (Alexander, 2006). This recalls Gilles
Deleuze’s definition of an ‘objectile’ (Deleuze, 1992, p.19) where objects are
mediated between the virtual and the tangible and become an ‘event’:
“The new status of the object no longer refers its condition to a spatial
mold – in other words, to a relation of form-matter – but to a temporary
modulation that implies as much the beginnings of a continuous
variation of matter as a continuous development of form” (Deleuze, 1992,
p.19)
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