week 5. Hertzian Tales (chap 3)

 泛功能 - 赫茲故事第三章

The prefix “para-” suggests that such design is

within the realms of utility but attempts to go beyond conventional definitions

of functionalism to include the poetic.

泛功能（超越功能）超越傳統定義，包含了詩意。

Eccentric Objects: Para-functionality and Non-design

Some naive, curious, or eccentric objects, outside the world of conventional design,

unintentionally embody provocative or poetic qualities that most product

designs, even those intended to provoke, seldom achieve.

某些天真的、好奇的、古怪的物件，落在傳統設計之外，它們偶然地賦予了挑臖的和詩意的品質，是多數產品設計即使刻意追求也很少達成的。

This is also the case with “Chindogu”. Their individual

elements are recognizable, but the reason for combining them is at first bewildering.

The meaning behind the object is derived from “sense-fiction”: the objects

make functional sense, but are still useless.

Forbidden Emotions: Para-functionality and Design

In a field where　“product design is thoroughly integrated in capitalist production, [and] bereft　of an independent critical tradition on which to base an alternative,” only a few

designers use the function of products as criticism.

在產品設計完全整合在資本主義產製的領域，失去了獨立批判的傳統，只有一些設計師使用產品功能作為批判。

...what Baudrillard has called the “crisis of functionalism.”

Baudrillard (1981) argues that the acceptance of functionalism as an arbitrary

but dominant rationality gave rise to an irrational counter-discourse that

moves between the two poles of kitsch (庸俗作品) and surrealism:

The surrealist object emerges at the same epoch as the functional object, as its derision (嘲笑)

and transgression. Although they are overtly dys- or para-functional, these phantasmic (幻想的)

objects nevertheless presuppose—albeit in a contradictory sense—the advent of functionality

as the universal moral law of the object, and the advent of this object itself, separated,

autonomous and dedicated to the transparency of its function. When one ponders 

it, there is something unreal and almost surreal in the fact of reducing an object to its

function: and it suffices to push this principle of functionality to the limit to make its

absurdity emerge. This is evident in the case of the toaster, iron or “undiscoverable objects”

of Carelman. (192–193)

Jacques Carelman's Impossible Objects

Catalogue of Extraordinary Objects

philip garner alienature

Heterotopian Gadgets: Para-functionality and Art Objects

異托邦工具

The heterotopia

described by Michel Foucault (1970) illustrates what a literary gadget

might be like:

Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic,

untroubled region in which they are able to unfold;... Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they destroy “syntax” in advance, and not only the syntax which causes words and things (next to and also one another) to “hold together.”

Jean Tinguely useless machine

Whereas artists like Jean Tinguely have constructed

useless machines that comically mirror rationality, Panamarenko’s objects rarely

work (figure 3.11), provoking the viewer to think about the nature of invention

and the desires that motivate it. ...His scientific theories on flight

also highlight the fictional nature of scientific knowledge and blur the boundaries

between words and things.

Panamarenko's Voyage to the Star (1979)

The inventor-artist Steven Pippin meditates on photography. He coats with

photographic chemicals the interior surfaces of everyday objects like washing

machines, toilets, and bath tubs, turning them into cameras. His ingenious experiments

interweave the host object’s original functionality with that of a camera,

resulting in objects that occupy a difficult conceptual space outside the usual

polarization of functionalism and surrealism. They do produce sense, and we

understand them, but it is hard to say what exactly we understand about them.

In a world of artificial objects shaped almost entirely by functionalism, devices

like an Object with Which to See the World in Detail do not attempt to escape the

dictates (支配) of functionalism but instead work from within, extending it to include

the poetic and playfully subversive (figure 3.12).

Although often threatening, Ramette’s objects do not shock. Their critical content

is hidden beneath the poetry of construction and the humorous appreciation

of their function.

Wodiczko’s designs show how simple electronic technologies can challenge

preconceptions, but are at the margins of design. Although I see them as design

proposals not artworks it seems that, to hold a design view where electronic objects

function as criticism, one must move closer to the world of fine art because

the design profession finds it difficult to accommodate such research.

Alien Staff

Hertzian Pathologies: Para-functionality and Electronic Objects

赫茲病理學

Between Rationality and Reality

The most effective examples in this chapter function as test pieces that, through

their marginalization, make visible the barriers limiting poetic experience in

everyday life.

透過邊緣化，將"限制詩意經驗" 的障礙，凸顯出來

Driven by poetry, imagination,

and intuition rather than reason and logic, they have their own rationality,

an alternative to our everyday scientific-industrial rationality.

...This is the role of

the para-functional as criticism.

Within this space lies the bizarre world of the “infra-ordinary,”

the subject of the next chapter

Homework 2:

Designing Para-functional Objects:

誤用，錯用，邊緣化，已有之技術或設計，展現新奇，古怪，詩意之暢想。

(photos of mark-ups)

2021/4/7