Literature and Theory
May 24, 2020
As always, I had quite a wild ride when going into literature and theory. Here is a brief overview of the fields I went into. It was mainly through scientific papers and articles in journals or on established web-plattforms.
- Thing Theory
- New Materialism
- Posthumanism
- Speculative Design
- Animism in Design
- Anthropological discourses about animism
- Research on smartphones
- Discourses about repair, brokenness, maintenance
- Philosophical dicourses on ontology
- Research into Shintoism
- Actor-network-theory
- Anthropology of capitalist relations
- Decolonizing design
Reading is always my big problem. I like it to much. That is also a reason, why I want to do the reading theory course at the Y Institute next semester. I need to improve my reading workflow to be more selective and make better use of what I’m reading.
This and the last semster I tried to find a language that I could use to express what the project is about. It is crucial to know which concepts one is referencing and why. Especially since I’m working with a, at least for us, foreign concept, an act of translation is important. I think I managed for now, but I believe that I can refine it in the coming month.
I was most fascinated by one paper in particular, in which they researched the effects of the witnessing of the repair of a smartphone on the client. The way it was written, the simple and effective setup, the discussion of results was perfect. I’d like to aspire to that paper.
All over all, after all this reading, I believe it’s safe to say, that there are strands or a background-noise of animism in western culture, but we don’t know how to express it. That is a hypothesis for now. I also found some grounds onto which I can put the importance of my approach especially Anna-Marie Willis notion of ontological design (@willisOntologicalDesigning2006).
#research-log #website