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Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design
- Author: Dunne, Anthony
- Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
- Binding: Hardcover
- Copyright: 2006
- ISBN-13: 9780262042321
- ISBN-10: 0262042320
As our everyday social and cultural experiences are increasingly mediatedby electronic products--from "intelligent" toasters to iPods--it is the design ofthese products that shapes our experience of the "electrosphere" in which we live.Designers of electronic products, writes Anthony Dunne in Hertzian Tales, must beginto think more broadly about the aesthetic role of electronic products in everydaylife. Industrial design has the potential to enrich our daily lives--to improve thequality of our relationship to the artificial environment of technology, and even, argues Dunne, to be subverted for socially beneficial ends.The cultural speculationsand conceptual design proposals in Hertzian Tales are not utopian visions orblueprints; instead, they embody a critique of present-day practices, "mixingcriticism with optimism." Six essays explore design approaches for developing theaesthetic potential of electronic products outside a commercial context--consideringsuch topics as the post-optimal object and the aesthetics ofuser-unfriendliness--and five proposals offer commentary in the form of objects, videos, and images. These include "Electroclimates," animations on an LCD screenthat register changes in radio frequency; "When Objects Dream...," consumer productsthat "dream" in electromagnetic waves; "Thief of Affection," which steals radiosignals from cardiac pacemakers; "Tuneable Cities," which uses the car as it drivesthrough overlapping radio environments as an interface of hertzian and physicalspace; and the "Faraday Chair: Negative Radio," enclosed in a transparent butradio-opaque shield.Very little has changed in the world of design since HertzianTales was first published by the Royal College of Art in 1999, writes Dunne in hispreface to this MIT Press edition: "Design is not engaging with the social, cultural, and ethical implications of the technologies it makes so sexy andconsumable." His project and proposals challenge it to do so.
Additional Book Description
As our everyday social and cultural experiences are increasingly mediatedby electronic products--from "intelligent" toasters to iPods--it is the design ofthese products that shapes our experience of the "electrosphere" in which we live.Designers of electronic products, writes Anthony Dunne in Hertzian Tales, must beginto think more broadly about the aesthetic role of electronic products in everydaylife. Industrial design has the potential to enrich our daily lives--to improve thequality of our relationship to the artificial environment of technology, and even, argues Dunne, to be subverted for socially beneficial ends.The cultural speculationsand conceptual design proposals in Hertzian Tales are not utopian visions orblueprints; instead, they embody a critique of present-day practices, "mixingcriticism with optimism." Six essays explore design approaches for developing theaesthetic potential of electronic products outside a commercial context--consideringsuch topics as the post-optimal object and the aesthetics ofuser-unfriendliness--and five proposals offer commentary in the form of objects, videos, and images. These include "Electroclimates," animations on an LCD screenthat register changes in radio frequency; "When Objects Dream...," consumer productsthat "dream" in electromagnetic waves; "Thief of Affection," which steals radiosignals from cardiac pacemakers; "Tuneable Cities," which uses the car as it drivesthrough overlapping radio environments as an interface of hertzian and physicalspace; and the "Faraday Chair: Negative Radio," enclosed in a transparent butradio-opaque shield.Very little has changed in the world of design since HertzianTales was first published by the Royal College of Art in 1999, writes Dunne in hispreface to this MIT Press edition: "Design is not engaging with the social, cultural, and ethical implications of the technologies it makes so sexy andconsumable." His project and proposals challenge it to do so.
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