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

Sterling’s ‘spimes’ will be uniquely identified objects that will track every
interaction throughout their life cycle. These will be self-identifying, locationaware
and self-documenting (Sterling, 2005, p.77). They will change the human
relationship to time and material processes, by making those processes explicit
and traceable. The apparent flaw in Sterling’s argument is his implicit
assumption that by capturing more data about the world that we will be able to
exert more power over it. Sterling’s solution is to make a design problem out of
it. Designers are charged with creating the systems that will manage all this
data and to design the means through which human beings will interact with
it 19 . This is where ‘Shaping Things’ gets particularly interesting for this research
project:
“The modelling arena is where I shape my things. The physical object
itself has become mere industrial output. The model is the manager’s
command-and-control platform. The object is merely hard copy.”
(Sterling, 2005, p.96)
Sterling states that ‘fabricators’ – the likely developments of RP&M machines
will produce these hard copies. However, he points out (Sterling, 2005, p.106)
the virtual representations of the object are more valuable than the objects
themselves. The implications of this for practitioners engaged in the design of
objects are widespread. For example, Sterling points out the ‘machine
aesthetic’ of Modernism is rendered meaningless when the machinery is as good
as invisible (Sterling, 2000, p.49). Instead designers need to help users to form
emotive bonds with unintelligible circuitry (Fairs, 2004). Technology-enabled
objects need to be embedded, personalised, adaptive, and anticipatory
(Thackara, 2005, p.196). Perhaps in developing these new orders of object and
experiences the use of computer-based design and fabrication tools will form
the basis for a recognisable cross-disciplinary discourse?
19 “Speaking as Yankee pragmatist type, I think it needs less interdisciplinary hand waving and more actual heroobjects.
As it is, it sounds like Steve Jobs doing an iPhone rap: “it's a browser, it's a phone, it's also an iPod,” without
actually having a physical device to wave at the audience. “As you all know, the only way we can possibly make this
valuable and profitable is with my new craft architecture sculpture computer-science scheme."
Okay, great, so what is that? It sounds like I'd write it up for MAKE magazine pronto.” Bruce Sterling in an email to
the researcher on 01/03/2007.
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