Finding Design Value in Modern Mundanity - QUT …eprints.qut.edu.au/94370/1/FindingDesignValueinModernMundanity.pdf · Finding Design Value in Modern Mundanity ... its level of significance

Pictorials DIS 2016: Fuse, Brisbane, Australia

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AbstractThis pictorial is a visual pondering of the potential hidden within the mundane aspects of everyday life. Grounded in the theoretical concepts of ‘design futuring’ and ‘undesign’, it is framed in a speculative context and seeks to propose avenues for thought within the design space. This paper is not a reflection of a design process, nor is it presenting new and novel concept designs. Instead, this paper combines visuals and literature to encourage the reader into a mode of theoretical and personal reflection on the open possibilities for the future of design - through the reimagining of the mundane.

Authors KeywordsInteraction design; design research; urban informatics; design futuring; imagination; modern mundanity; everyday life.

ACM Classification KeywordsH.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

Finding Design Value in Modern Mundanity

Heather McKinnonUrban Informatics Research LabQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australia

[email protected]


IntroductionThe aim of this paper is to encourage creative reflection of ordinary, everyday life, its level of significance within society, and the opportunities for design that may lie hidden in the obvious. The focus on everyday life is not a novel concept. Many writers, scholars and creatives such as Georges Perec, Michael de Certeau, William H. Whyte, Stephen Johnstone and Godfrey Reggio have highlighted the potential value of this concept, suggesting that the critique of everyday life is vital to the continual questioning of our existence (Perec, 1997). Their broad range of interdisciplinary work provides evidence of collective interest in the everyday – where continual critique of people’s quotidian habits and mundane daily rhythms has transformative value. In this light, this paper seeks to encourage the design community to reflect on the concept of ‘modern mundanity’: where the everyday rhythms and patterns of modern life may present possibilities for the future of design. A note to the readerThis paper is presented as a collection of instant film photographs designed to convey glimpses of ordinary scenes from everyday life in Brisbane, Australia. The visual collection is intended to fuse together imagery and literature throughout the paper, to highlight varying aspects of everyday life. The use of instant film photographs was carefully chosen for this work due to their raw aesthetic, non-filtered lighting and un-editable nature. All images were taken with the Fuji Instax 500 and remain the © of the author. At the end of this pictorial lies the background description to this research. Inspired by similar formats of past pictorials (e.g. Blevis, 2014), it is up to the reader to decide whether they wish to view the collection of images first, or alternatively, read the background first. This format offers a contrasting glimpse into the differences between written and visual form, the value of both mediums to convey meaning, and the merit of visual thinking in our design research community (Blevis, Hauser, & Odom, 2015). Stairwell in an office building.

A.


Train arriving at 6:10pm on a Sunday:Photograph B was taken at a suburban train station early on a Sunday evening. The half hourly train service meant that there were a number of people waiting for this train. The light was fading and people were silent. This image is representative of the number of daily rhythms and patterns that consume life in the suburbs. Is there value for capturing such a moment in time?

“The everyday is an elusive subject, a kind of residual realm encompassing those activities, practices, spaces, and things that exist beyond or beside the reach of society’s official dictates and actions.” (Blauvelt 2003, pp. 17-18)

B.


C. D.Train leaving at 6:11pm on a Sunday while travellers wheel their suitcases up the station:Captured minutes after the previous image (B), photographs C and D are filled with movement and purpose. People are leaving the station with their belongings and heading to their next destination. The pair of images provide a glimpse of the day drawing to a close.


E.A father grocery shopping with his young daughter: Saturday afternoon at the ‘Quick & Easy Meals’ aisle of the supermarket. There is a busyness as people shop for their groceries before closing time.

“Everyday life is what we are given every day (or what is willed to us), what presses us, even oppresses us, because there does exist an oppression of the present. Every morning, what we take up again, on awakening, is the weight of life, the difficulty of living, or of living in a certain condition, with a particular weakness or desire. Everyday life is what holds us intimately, from the inside.” (de Certeu, Giard & Mayol 1998, p. 3)


F.An office worker sits at her desk: An image of a familiar scene taken on an unremarkable day. The office was back to work after a long lunch. There are minimal windows in this office space, so there are many lights.

“What interests the historian of everyday life is the invisible.” (de Certeu, Giard & Mayol 1998, p. 3)


G.

“Do you really think you have understood what the words critique of everyday life actually mean? Is it a question of describing, comparing and discovering what might be identical or analogous in Teheran, in Paris, in Timbuktu or in Moscow? Such an aim would indeed be restricted to the basic and the phsysiological. The aim of a critique of everyday life is quite different. It is a question of discovering what must and can change and be transformed in people’s lives, in Timbuktu, in Paris, in New York or in Moscow. It is a question of stating critically how people live or how badly they live, or how they do not live at all.”

(Johnstone, 2008, p. 26)

H.

Busy traffic intersection at dusk:Photograph G is a scene from a normal weekday evening in the suburbs of Brisbane. The humidity on this day was severe. This intersection was recently upgraded to expand the road from four lanes to six. There is a constant flux of traffic, including cars, large trucks, and pedestrians.

Lounge-room view - the neighbour’s washing line:Photograph H is the view from the lounge-room of this particular home into the neighbour’s backyard. A full washing line and a large water tank. In the shadows lies a large amount of rubbish, sorted and stacked into different piles.


Lunch rush - office building with a busy restaurant out the front:A typical scene at lunchtime on a weekday. The popular restaurant is made from a large shipping container and custom makes burgers.

The focus on everyday life can be seen as “...a desire to bring these uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility.”

(Johnstone 2008, p. 12).

I.


J.A family gather after a water fight on a hot summer’s day:Another humid day in the suburbs of Brisbane. Sitting in the front yard of a house that is in the middle of renovations. This image was taken right after a waterfight, where buckets of water and water balloons were thrown over everyone.

“There are as many everyday lives as there are places, people and ways of life. Everyday life is not the same in Timbuktu, in Paris, in Teheran, in New York, in Buenos Aires, in Moscow, in 1900, in 1960.”

(Johnstone, 2008, p. 26)


K. L.

Two friends catching up on a Saturday:Photograph K is of a bright sunny day in early spring. A group of friends gather once a month for a lazy lunch and a catch up.

2 year old eating lunch with her baby doll:Photograph L is just a regular day in this household. A quick break for vegemite sandwiches before she goes back to playing.


M.Council employee empties the city’s rubbish bins:Walking home from work through the city mall. A glimpse of the rubbish removal process of the city’s bins. In the distance, an electrician stands on the roof to fix the air conditioning.

“How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infraordinary, the background noise, the habitual?”

(Perec 1997, p. 10)


Grounded in these theoretical concepts, and building on current research within this space, this research explores the design opportunities that exist within the context of modern mundanity. It uses the theoretical lens of the everyday to critique and reflect on current modes of being. It seeks to explore opportunities for the field of design to explore and reimagine the mundane - one which subscribes to the concept of design futuring - and inherently seeks to utilise creative ways to address the current state of unsustainability.

SummaryGrounded in the theoretical concepts of design futuring and undesign, this pictorial seeks to propose avenues for thought and reflection around design value that lies within the concept of modern mundanity. It presents a series of instant film photographs designed to represent ordinary scenes from everyday life in Brisbane, Australia. This paper is not a reflection of a design process, nor is it presenting new and novel concept designs. Instead, this paper combines visuals and literature to encourage the reader into a mode of theoretical and personal reflection on the open possibilities for the future of design.

AcknowledgementsMany thanks to CitySmart Brisbane for your funding and support of creative research into sustainable futures for our city. Special thanks to Professor Marcus Foth and Associate Professor Gavin Sade for your encouragement and supervision.

BackgroundAs researchers stress the critical need for rethinking our unsustainable mode of existence (Alexander, 2015), there has been significant research undertaken regarding the redirection of established design practices and approaches (Blevis, 2007; DiSalvo, 2012; Fry, 1999; Sade, 2012). Designer and theorist Tony Fry argues that the current state of the world is structured in a way that sustains the unsustainable (Fry, 1999), emphasising that “as change has to be by design rather than chance, design has to be in the front-line of transformative action” (Fry, 2009, p. 6). As such, Fry calls for a future that “arrives by design” (UICA, 2012); one which is adaptable with time and purposely thought out. This concept is referred to as ‘design futuring’, which explores preservation of the future, through redirection towards sustainable modes of being (Fry, 2009).

This notion can also be discussed alongside the concept of ‘undesign’, which Pierce (2014) describes as “design as the ability to understand that-which-currently exists, to make it disappear in concrete form as a new, purposeful subtraction from the real world” (2014, p. 37). The discussions around undesign contextually refer to the “inhibiting, displacing and erasing and foreclosing” (Pierce, 2014, p. 37) of redundant or destructive technologies or practices that have negative impacts both socially and environmentally. The concepts of undesign and design futuring are inextricably linked and represent ongoing opportunities for the field of design. Firstly, they suggest that to begin to undesign technologies, practices and ways of being, arguably we must first propose new alternatives. Secondly, they emphasise the critical need for designers to make mindful decisions about the future.


References1. Alexander, S. (2015). Prosperous Descent: Crisis As

Opportunity in an Age of Limits. Simplicity Institute Publishing.

2. Blevis, E. (2007). Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 503–512). ACM.

3. Blevis, E. (2014). Stillness and Motion, Meaning and Form. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (pp. 493–502). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

4. Blevis, E., Hauser, S., & Odom, W. (2015). Sharing the Hidden Treasure in Pictorials. Interactions, 22(3), 32–43.

5. DiSalvo, C. (2012). Adversarial Design. The MIT Press.

6. Fry, T. (1999). A new design philosophy: an introduction to defuturing. UNSW Press.

7. Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring: Sustainability. Ethics and New Practices, Berg, Oxford.

8. Perec, G. (1997). Species of spaces and other pieces. Penguin.

9. Pierce, J. (2014). Undesigning interaction. Interactions, 21, 36–39.

10. Sade, G. J. (2012). Designing well: sustain-able interaction design and vegetarianism. Design & Ethics: Reflections on Practice, 74–96.

11. UICA. (2012). Tony Fry: Penny W. Stamps Lecture at UICA. Youtube. Retrieved on 1 April 2016 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ThYiyP7MU

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Finding Design Value in Modern Mundanity - QUT …eprints.qut.edu.au/94370/1/FindingDesignValueinModernMundanity.pdf · Finding Design Value in Modern Mundanity ... its level of significance