The Invention of the Pedestrian, or an Introduction to the Design of Wearable Means of Transportation
Julijonas Urbonas 2011
Full essay is published in: Texts on design: Lithuanian and international contexts, edited by Karolina Jakaite (Vilnius: Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, 2011, pp. 155-167)
Abstract
This experimental essay – a hybrid of a manifesto, fiction and phenomenological analysis – introduces the unique choreographic power of things and the material environment to affect our movements, to ‘dance’ our bodies; in other words, the notion of design choreography. Shifting the creative attention from conventional design goals such as usability, visual appearance, semantics, economy, ecology and safety to the conditions and effects of design choreography, the author proposes an alternative dancing-experience-oriented design approach.
Keywords: interdisciplinary design, choreography, fiction, phenomenology
Intro
This experimental essay – a hybrid of a manifesto, fiction and phenomenological analysis – introduces the unique choreographic power of things and the material environment to affect our movements, to ‘dance’ our bodies; in other words, the notion of design choreography. Shifting the creative attention from conventional design goals such as usability visual appearance, semantics, economy, ecology and safety to the conditions and effects of design choreography, I propose an alternative and dancing-experience-oriented design approach. Design choreography does not deal merely with the organisation of gesticulating and dangling human bodies and their parts; rather, it is concerned with the experiences – both sensual and sociocultural – that are produced by the movements and ‘dances’ triggered by this kind of design.
This design approach is unique, and the present text may be considered the inaugural event, although it does not seek to be an extensive and rigorous primer. Questioning and challenging the status quo of design (in terms of both design writing and the very definition of the discipline of design), it is more of a brief experiment that aims to broaden the understanding of the potential of design, bring together creative approaches hitherto seen as incongruous, and provide inspiration to design or art practitioners.
Some conceptual links and ideas related to this design approach and its experiential insights can be traced in phenomenological writings by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James Gibson, who demonstrate the primacy and impact of bodily motility, movement and locomotion over perception, and in more recent phenomenological studies of technology by such theorists as Paul Virilio, Tim Ingold and Don Ihde, who show how (embodied) technologies that alter our bodily movements and orientation simultaneously choreograph our perception and experience of the surrounding space and ourselves.
The text mates fashion design, vehicle engineering, architecture, prosthetics and pharmaceutics, bringing these disciplines together on the basis of commonly applicable choreographic design principles and close relationship with the human body. The latter insight has a direct (or the closest, in terms of physical proximity) association with fashion design, thus the discussed design approach is analysed by invoking both the creative/technical and the experiential/phenomenological vocabulary of wearable design. Another, equally close association is with vehicle engineering, which is based on the body’s primacy, its possibilities and the limits of mobility and motility, manifested as various technological amplifications of bodily mobility. (Although humans have been using their legs to move around for a million years, it was the invention of the pedestrian, a fleshy means of transportation, that introduced the human as a bipedal vehicle. Contrasting first with the equestrian, later with the motorist, the pilot and the astronaut, the walker, a superior bio-vehicle, has been serving as a reference point for the design of ‘prostheses’ and ‘orthoses’ facilitating mobility, such as shoes, roller skates, cars, aircrafts, etc.)
The narrative of the text is fictional, yet the technologies mentioned here are genuine and exist in reality – some are already available in the design market, others are prototypes used in lab research. However, their familiar definitions or preconceptions are distorted by interpreting them from the perspective of wearable vehicles, design choreography, etc. In this way, the footpath here becomes a wearable dance partner, the automobile – clothed-in choreography, the shoes – a leg-toting prosthesis, while, for instance, anabolic steroids are treated as swallowable or injectable means of transportation.
Julijonas Urbonas 2011
Full essay is published in: Texts on design: Lithuanian and international contexts, edited by Karolina Jakaite (Vilnius: Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, 2011, pp. 155-167)
Abstract
This experimental essay – a hybrid of a manifesto, fiction and phenomenological analysis – introduces the unique choreographic power of things and the material environment to affect our movements, to ‘dance’ our bodies; in other words, the notion of design choreography. Shifting the creative attention from conventional design goals such as usability, visual appearance, semantics, economy, ecology and safety to the conditions and effects of design choreography, the author proposes an alternative dancing-experience-oriented design approach.
Keywords: interdisciplinary design, choreography, fiction, phenomenology
Intro
This experimental essay – a hybrid of a manifesto, fiction and phenomenological analysis – introduces the unique choreographic power of things and the material environment to affect our movements, to ‘dance’ our bodies; in other words, the notion of design choreography. Shifting the creative attention from conventional design goals such as usability visual appearance, semantics, economy, ecology and safety to the conditions and effects of design choreography, I propose an alternative and dancing-experience-oriented design approach. Design choreography does not deal merely with the organisation of gesticulating and dangling human bodies and their parts; rather, it is concerned with the experiences – both sensual and sociocultural – that are produced by the movements and ‘dances’ triggered by this kind of design.
This design approach is unique, and the present text may be considered the inaugural event, although it does not seek to be an extensive and rigorous primer. Questioning and challenging the status quo of design (in terms of both design writing and the very definition of the discipline of design), it is more of a brief experiment that aims to broaden the understanding of the potential of design, bring together creative approaches hitherto seen as incongruous, and provide inspiration to design or art practitioners.
Some conceptual links and ideas related to this design approach and its experiential insights can be traced in phenomenological writings by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James Gibson, who demonstrate the primacy and impact of bodily motility, movement and locomotion over perception, and in more recent phenomenological studies of technology by such theorists as Paul Virilio, Tim Ingold and Don Ihde, who show how (embodied) technologies that alter our bodily movements and orientation simultaneously choreograph our perception and experience of the surrounding space and ourselves.
The text mates fashion design, vehicle engineering, architecture, prosthetics and pharmaceutics, bringing these disciplines together on the basis of commonly applicable choreographic design principles and close relationship with the human body. The latter insight has a direct (or the closest, in terms of physical proximity) association with fashion design, thus the discussed design approach is analysed by invoking both the creative/technical and the experiential/phenomenological vocabulary of wearable design. Another, equally close association is with vehicle engineering, which is based on the body’s primacy, its possibilities and the limits of mobility and motility, manifested as various technological amplifications of bodily mobility. (Although humans have been using their legs to move around for a million years, it was the invention of the pedestrian, a fleshy means of transportation, that introduced the human as a bipedal vehicle. Contrasting first with the equestrian, later with the motorist, the pilot and the astronaut, the walker, a superior bio-vehicle, has been serving as a reference point for the design of ‘prostheses’ and ‘orthoses’ facilitating mobility, such as shoes, roller skates, cars, aircrafts, etc.)
The narrative of the text is fictional, yet the technologies mentioned here are genuine and exist in reality – some are already available in the design market, others are prototypes used in lab research. However, their familiar definitions or preconceptions are distorted by interpreting them from the perspective of wearable vehicles, design choreography, etc. In this way, the footpath here becomes a wearable dance partner, the automobile – clothed-in choreography, the shoes – a leg-toting prosthesis, while, for instance, anabolic steroids are treated as swallowable or injectable means of transportation.