The Significance Of Signature
Author: Deanna Herst
Research Lecturer WdKA, PhD researcher Open Design
What are the ramifications of (online) sharing, disseminating knowledge and creating open products or processes for artists and designers? The Open Design program investigates this new kind of “open authorship” through projects where artists/designers and participants meet. We are not exploring Open Design exclusively in an instrumental way (like designing for “social innovation”), but we intend to do this more fundamentally, by questioning its definition, critically investigating its possibilities and defining its significance for artists, designers and people that use the design.
Designing for ‘openness’, participation or user appropriation opens up questions regarding the designer’s ‘signature’ and the space for experiment or artistic expression. Designing for this kind of uncertainty is often associated with losing artistic control and authorship. Within this context, and because WdKA educates designers and artists (and not social workers or administrators), we explicitly investigate the yet underexposed aesthetic perspective on Open Design (open form, Umberto Eco), besides its roots in technology (open source, digital fabrication) and participatory design (Pelle Ehn). The program’s questions include: what is openness in art and design? Can an open product or process leave room for expression by both designer and user? What are artistic participatory strategies within the context of sharing, participation and user iteration? How could you secure the goal of an open project and take care of Open Design’s ‘orphans’, the many online open products without any afterlife?
This year’s minor was titled “A Collection and Compendium of Unusual Knowledge”. Starting point was a project in V2, Rotterdam (curator: Michelle Kasprzak) titled ‘the ‘Non Expert – Expert’: an ‘amateur’ who has developed into a professional in one unique field, like giant pumpkins or DIY radio. Their unusual yet valuable knowledge often remains unknown for a wider audience. Students opened up the "non-expert expert’s" skills to let the world benefit from their knowledge. They explored a wide range of communities resulting in a broad spectrum of subject areas: from detainees to wheel chair users, from beekeepers to road kill experts, from mini vegetable lovers to survivalists, from oscillator experts to open knitting enthusiasts and from refugees-as-passionate professionals to amateur storm chasers.
This variety was also reflected in their interpretations of openness. ‘Wheelshare’, by advertising student Wietske Lutgendorff, focused on wheel chair users as experts of obstacles in their environment. She provided them with a DIY toolkit for a 3D printed smart phone holder. This tool enabled them to film their inaccessible environment and share it on an online platform (www.wheelshare.nl). Designed to show a kaleidoscopic collage of the different views and camera angles, this platform represented the community’s diverse identity. Another online repository is ‘Exchange Knitting’, by fashion student Yvonne Swiers. In this project, knitting experts shared their unique techniques online. Yvonne asked them as well to send her these samples, which she then used as the basis for her collection. Though in their individual ways, both designers embraced and worked with the uncertainty of the community’s contributions, which is an aspect that embodies the essence of Open Design. They showed that designing for the unknown can lead to unexpected collective collections; new design territories where the designer’s signature faces the user’s needs, fears and fantasies.