Design Writing Class: Robots!?

Our assignment in Leslie Robert's Design Writing class is to write a proposal for a robot to aid in species conservation at the Presidio National Park here in San Francisco. Yes, a robot! At first I was totally turned off by this assignment. While I'm definitely a scifi buff, I just don't believe that most of our big, hairy social problems—including species conservaton—will/can be solved with hyperexpensive technological silver bullets such as robots.

But... as we began discussing the project more in class, my attitude shifted and now I'm really excited about working on my proposal.

As our class's description explains, "the goal of this writing course is to narrow the gap between what we aspire to create as designers and how we discuss our work, and the work of others, in writing as well as in class discussion. The course will emphasize writing praxis." Which means that the purpose of this project is not so much about our idea for a robot but about documenting our design process and honing our ability to sell our ideas.

We are researching the Presidio, which is not only a beautiful park, but also has a rich history and a unique mandate—it is the only national park with a mandate to be financially self sufficient by 2013. Our groundwork will include a half-day fieldtrip to the park next week (I'll post photos to the blog afterward).

In addition to the location-specific visit, we are reading two books in tandem with this project—Alone Together by Sherry Turkle and The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson. I've only read the introductions and first couple of chapters of these books, but already these authors' ideas have been colliding and merging in my mind in interesting ways.

In our first class, we spent the good part of an hour just discussing how we determine if a thing even is a robot. Is a thermostat a robot? Is a Roomba vacuum cleaner a robot? What about a chess-playing computer game or a Furbie? Does a robot need to be 'smart'? Does is need to move or be anthropomorphic? It was a fun debate with some of us arguing for the 'robot-ness' one thing but not of another and sometimes recanting and switching sides.

We were also asked to watch this TED video by Rodney Brooks.

Form Study Class: Unexpected architectural inspiration

On the way in to the studio today, I saw some gorgeous work tacked up on the walls of the main building. (Sadly, I forgot my iPhone at home so I could not take any photos!)

Architecture students created the work, and from what I could glean from the output, the assignment consisted of photographing a simple action—hitting a tennis ball, kicking a ball, doing a backflip—in about 11 sequential frames and from two different perspectives. The students then mapped changes in position in an abstracted way—representing joints as circles and limbs as lines, or mapping the negative space between the subject's legs and arms, for instance—for each frame and for both perspectives. In the final step, both the photographic set of images are superimposed onto themselves and the abstracted set of images are superimposed onto themselves. I'm not sure what purpose of the assignment served for the architecture students, but the exercise produced many stand-alone 2D forms that were both visually complex and aesthetically stunning.

It's a difficult to explain what these drawings looked like. If you can, imagine a blend of the frozen figures in Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending Staircase and in the photographic locomotion studies of Eadweard J. Muybridge, with the more abstract lines of Jules Marey's man in black velvet.

Although CCA's Design MFA is touted as a 'transdisciplinary' program, time pressures and structural constraints inevitably keep disciplines apart. But today, because the building's main 'knave' is used by many departments for critiques, I was lucky to be able to catch a glimpse of something from another field that I can incorporate into my work.

Here are some additional (loosely related) links:
Men of the Enlightenment
Chronophotography
Cubism and Futurism
Beautiful—Then-Gone by Martin Venezky

Brenda Laurel: Keynote at IXDA (Interaction Design Association)

A fascinating trip through Laurel's long career in interaction and game design. She currently serves as professor and chair of the Graduate Program in Design at California College of Arts.


Brenda Laurel: Keynote from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.