Design History, Today?
Hi there, my name is Ceara McCurdy. I, along with the five other members of this blog, am currently studying at Dundee University in Scotland. I am in my second year of a four year course in Interactive Media Design, which I love, for which this blog is an assignment as part of my design module.
I will be posting on topics covered in my CMT (Contemporary Media Theory) lectures which start next Friday, 6th. I'm really hoping these lectures will give me some inspiration for future projects. I am especially looking forward to our Disney lecture, although I've a feeling that might just be my inner child hoping to reminess on memories of talking dogs, dopey dwarves and battles were good and love always succeed. Anyway, I hope that what I say will strike a spark with someone, whoever it may be, even if just myself when I read over what I've written.
So far I've had two lectures which aren't part of our CMT course, on the Industrial Revolution and Great Exhibition. Personally I found it very difficult to relate to these lectures, to be honest they just didn't interest me! I'm finding it hard to see how the industrial revolution relates to me and my process of design. I know the past has gotten us to where we are today and I'm greatful for the revolution and I'm greatful for the designs that have come to pass but is it really relevant today? Is it relevant to ask us, new students, the next working generation, to delve back into the past? Should we not be looking forward for new inovations for new technology, new ideas that can relate to the people today? I think I'm going to have to think about this further...
posted by Ceara Nissa @ 1:59 pm
6 Comments:
Those are good questions, but if I thought the only reason to do 'design history' was to show you stuff from the past, I wouldn't get up in the morning!
We're living in something of a new industrial revolution now, and I think the questions to ask yourself that are relevant to you now are, how did the industrial revolution affect people? How did people respond? What was it that made something 'new' into something so acceptable that it's taken for granted?
Those are questions that are important to think of because they crop up with each new technology. Take the web: I was a graphic designer when the web was invented and tried to get the company I worked for interested in the potential. But directors said it was a fad, they didn't understand it, and to be honest most of our customers didn't get it either. But some did, and started asking 'where's your website?'
The process was the same as for the railways, canals etc.
The same has been true of digital TV and digital radio, MP3 players, video and DVD...
You won't hear my lecture on friday but you'd see that I don't study the past to be awed by great design, but to understand society and behaviour.
Maybe that's the answer? What do you think...
So what your point is, correct me if i've interpretted wrong, that the point of studying the industrial revolution and such things is not so much to study what was invented but how it came about? How people interpretted the newness and development of the world around them and how this affected...well almost how it affected society and culture. From an almost psychology point of view?
I guess if you put it that way...if you look at kids nowadays they are so much more aware of technology and software than when even I was a child. I remember having one computer in primary school that you all took turns at and it had to be one of the slowest things around, yet it was still so new! Whereas kids today most of them have their own 'kids laptops' like the leapfrog type things. The web, computers etc has all become a huge part of society. To 'google' something is now everyday language.
I guess if you think about what happened in the industrial revolution like that, like the things that are now a 'given' in society....
Now my question is why do these things become accepted? Is it down to simply out needs? But how do you know you need something if you have something else that does that job e.g. how did the web become so popular when technically a library a phone and other older technology can do all those jobs? How do these things become accepted....
You've got me asking a lot more questions now. But I do see your point on the revolution and history talks, maybe they are worthwhile, although a tad boring, if you look at them in the sense of the public and not just items and designers...
Essentially there are different approaches to history, and the one I've advocated is what's known as a 'Marxist' approach, because Marx believed history should be about what happened to ordinary people, not kings and queens.
Different lecturers have different approaches, and there are different traditions in teaching design history, but it sounds like what I call (it's not my term) the 'dead white men' approach doesn't appeal to you. The Marxist approach probably does.
Bet you didn't think you were a Marxist, did you?!
Glad you're asking those questions - let's see a new post in which you put them in to words! :-)
There are a few books on technology out there that might interest you, incidentally, that look at how things get accepted. Issues such as cost are involved, and ease of access.
The web used to be extremely complicated to access. When Apple launched the iMac the adverts sold the idea of 'three steps to getting connected' with the third step being 'there is no step three' - it did the trick.
I recommend Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" - great book, easy to read, really interesting - as it focuses on what makes things go from being fads to being popular. Well worth £6.99!
Ok I have ordered a few books off amazon thanks to your reccomendations. I shall read and then post what I think. Thanks for that :)
So I'm a Marxist? I must look into his theories he was spoken of a little today...I will reply to that soon.
I meant to say 'Longitude' by Dava Sobel as well, about the creation of... a pocket watch! Fascinating tale, well told by the author.
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