{"id":739,"date":"2009-12-01T09:38:56","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T17:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jedbrubaker.com\/?p=739"},"modified":"2009-12-01T09:38:56","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T17:38:56","slug":"objectified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/01\/objectified\/","title":{"rendered":"Objectified"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"Line<\/a><\/p>\n

“Why do we feel like we need to keep visiting the archetype over and over and over again?” asks Karim Rashid, a New York designer. The camera, for example, which since digital photography’s complete obliteration of film has absolutely no reason to remain a metal rectangle.<\/p>\n

Flying back from Chicago last night (and admittedly procrastinating a certain final paper), I threw open on of my favorite archetypes (the laptop) and watched the documentary Objectified<\/a>. I had missed the chance to see it when it was screened at the Corcoran last summer (tickets were scarce, even for Steve) but decided to make up for lost time.<\/p>\n

Objectified considers, well, our objects. It covers the gamut from industrial design, to interaction design, and even touches on the contemporary issues of sustainability and cross-cultural design. Slap it up there with its sibling Helvetica, the designer’s chick-flick where you know the cast of characters, and more or less how it will end. It gets thumbs up from me, but I’ll admit I am a sucker for seeing large pieces of scary machinery pop out friendly-looking industrial designs while listening to smart people talking about the things that they love.<\/p>\n

And the love abounds. The documentary features an impressive collection of designers. Some of the favorites, including Moggridge, Ive, and Fukasawa, as well as some with whom I am less familiar.<\/p>\n

Like Karim Rashid, who’s perspective was so fresh yet familiar, and for all the wrong reasons; I found myself watching his interview again and again. Rashid describes his work as speaking to a “techno-organic” world and as a “physical interpretation of the digital age.” In his interview he speaks about this relationship through our insistence on frequently expired forms.<\/p>\n

We have advanced technologically so far, and yet somehow is almost some sort of paranoia where we’re afraid to really say ‘We live in the third technological revolution.’ I have an iPod in my pocket, I have a mobile phone, I have a laptop, but then somehow I end up going home and sitting on wood spindle… chairs. So in a way you could argue that we’re building all these kind of really kitsch stage sets that have absolutely nothing to do with the age in which we live in…<\/p>\n

I find it… extremely perverse…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Watching this movie, you can’t help but think about the objects that fill your daily life and the work that went into creating them. However, I am also left wondering about the future of the product, consumerism, and the role of the “designer.”<\/p>\n

Paola Antonelli, Design Curator for the MOMA, has one idea that is both optimistic and probable. Teasing the French for turning to philosophers as the arbiters of culture, she lauds designers for their expertise in converting complex ideas into something more comprehensible. The result?<\/p>\n

“I… envision [designers] as the culture generators of the future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Why do we feel like we need to keep visiting the archetype over and over and over again?” asks Karim Rashid, a New York designer. The camera, for example, which since digital photography’s complete obliteration of film has absolutely no reason to remain a metal rectangle. Flying back from Chicago last night (and admittedly procrastinating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[448,457,458,459,452,447,460],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-design","tag-designers","tag-documentary","tag-industrial","tag-karim-rashid","tag-objectified","tag-objects"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pJP4m-bV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whatknows.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}