Tricky Design: The Ethics of Things - Softcover

Tom Fisher; Lorraine Gamman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350143057 ISBN 13: 9781350143050

Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020

Synopsis

Tricky Design responds to the burgeoning of scholarly interest in the cultural meanings of objects, by addressing the moral complexity of certain designed objects and systems.

The volume brings together leading international designers, scholars and critics to explore some of the ways in which the practice of design and its outcomes can have a dark side, even when the intention is to design for the public good. Considering a range of designed objects and relationships, including guns, eyewear, assisted suicide kits, anti-rape devices, passports and prisons, the contributors offer a view of design as both progressive and problematic, able to propose new material and human relationships, yet also constrained by social norms and ideology.

This contradictory, tricky quality of design is explored in the editors' introduction, which positions the objects, systems, services and 'things' discussed in the book in relation to the idea of the trickster that occurs in anthropological literature, as well as in classical thought, discussing design interventions that have positive and negative ethical consequences. These will include objects, both material and 'immaterial', systems with both local and global scope, and also different processes of designing.

This important new volume brings a fresh perspective to the complex nature of 'things', and makes an original contribution to debates in design ethics, design philosophy and material culture.

About this title

About the Author

Lorraine Gamman is Professor of Design, at Central Saint Martins (CSM) College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts London (UAL), where she has taught design and contextual studies since 1989. She is also currently a Visiting Professor and Research Associate at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Australia. Gamman has published widely on visual culture and design, including co-authored academic books, articles and critical reviews. She now lives in Stoke Newington with her partner and daughter.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350143057
• ISBN 13: 9781350143050
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Lorraine Gamman, Tom Fisher