DESMA 104: DESIGN FUTURES
Spring 2015, Tuesdays, 9:00-11:50 PM
Prof. Peter Lunenfeld [lunenfeld@ucla.edu]
Assistants:
Jane Chang Mi [desma104jane@gmail.com]
Kate Parsons [desma104kate@gmail.com]
The Class:
This course offers a critical examination of design practice and theory, incorporating historical as well as
speculative methodologies. We will cover a multitude of disciplines, but maintain an emphasize on
communication design. We will be doing crosscultural and transmedia analyses concentrating on 20th
century highlights of design and 21st century experiments and movements. We willbe considering how
various design practices and techniques related to each other across cultures and media.
The class will be involved in “nowcasting,” a meteorological term that we will appropriate to think about
design and society at the start of the 21st century. There are always more data points about the present
than there are about the future, and that determining what is happening in the middle of a storm is
orders of magnitude more computationally intense than forecasting what the next weather event might
be. As we look at design our interest in nowcasting is less meteorological than it is metaphorical. We
should be able to develop nowcasting as distinct from but related to everything from cool hunting to
surveillance, and use the concept to open new spaces for critical analyses of technology and culture.
The Texts:
John Heskett, Design: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005)
Brenda Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur, design Denise Gonzales Crisp (MIT, 2001)
Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things, design Lorraine Wild (MIT, 2005)
Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Rhythm Science,
design COMA Amsterdam/New York (MIT, 2004)
The Assignments & The Requirements:
1) All assignments must be handed in and sent to the Assistant by email to earn a grade.
2). Take home midterm covering the readings and lectures due April 28th by 9:30 am, any later and it
will be marked down a half point. (30%)
3). Required reports on DMA sponsored public event, lecture, or show. See the Department of Design
Media Arts calendar for details: (10%)
http://dma.ucla.edu/events/calendar.php. The first review is due April 21st, the second is due May 26th
4). Take-home final comprising of a 10-12 page curatorial statement, accompanied by captioned
descriptions of 25-50 images due at 11:00 AM Monday June 8th in Professor Lunenfeld’s office, 4252
Broad Art Center (50%). The course grade, while guided by the percentages, is calculated holistically.
Attendance: Roll will be taken. Two unexcused absences will result in a penalty of one half point, three
or more result in an F.
The Academic Expectations:
Plagiarism of any form is a violation of UCLA Student Conduct Code Section 102.01 Academic
Dishonesty: http://www.deanofstudents.ucla.edu/conduct.html
Wikipedia is an essential contemporary tool, but using it in academic situations is tricky. Here’s a great
Student Wikipedia Use Policy written by Alan Liu from UCSB:
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy-short.html
Week 1 Mar. 31 Bespoke Futures
Covered: the design cluster, nowcasting, bespoke futures and the Mediawork concept
Week 2 Apr. 7 Design Overviews
Required Reading: John Heskett, Design: A Very Short Introduction
Interactive Screening: MoMA’s Design & the Elastic Mind moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/
Covered: movements, styles, and concepts in graphic, motion, industrial, and interface design.
Week 3 Apr. 14 Culture Work
Required Readings: Utopian Entrepreneur
Peter Lunenfeld “Media Design: New and Improved Without the New,” New Media & Society (2004)
Hal Foster, “Design and Crime”, from Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) (2002) and “The ABCs of
Contemporary Design” October 100 (2002)
Denise Gonzales Crisp, Decorational Pamphlet, “Toward a Definition of the Decorational,” 2003
Covered: Technology’s impact on design; business and culture; doing good, doing well; the history of
the culture machine; Web-design; deco-rationalism
Week 4 Apr. 21 Curating & Sensibilty
Assignment Due: 1st Review
Required Readings: Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” from Against Interpretation (1964)
Nicolas Bourriaud, "Relational Form,” from Relational Aesthetics (2002)
Ellen Lupton, "Design and Social Life,” from Bloemink, Hodge, Lupton, McQuaid, Design Life Now (2006)
Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov, “The Blobject Begins to Take Shape” and “The Look and Feel of
Optimism” from Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design (2005)
Abbott Miller, “From Object to Observer” Eye n. 61 v. 16 (Autumn, 2006)
Covered: curating as the expression of a sensibility; how audiences relate to the presence of images and
objects in space
Week 5 Apr 28 FIELD TRIP to LACMA
Assignment Due : Take Home Midterm
From the Archives: Art and Technology at LACMA 1967-1971 with curator Jennie King.
Week 6 May 5 Sound & Source
Required Reading: Rhythm Science
Lawrence Lessig, “Property” from Free Culture (2006)
Covered: the Dj as griot; open source culture; curation as method; the fragmented persona as
contemporary archetype
Week 7 May 12 Things that Think & Talk
Required Readings: Shaping Things
Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public,” The Object Reader (2009)
Covered: spimes, blobjects, gizmos and other new new things; industrial design’s future(s); sustainability
and green design
Week 8 May 19 Diegetic Entrepreneurship: A Visit with Matthew Manos of verynice
Required Readings: Alan C. Kay. “Predicting The Future,” Stanford Engineering, 1(1):1–6, Autumn 1989,
archived at http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm
Covered: Matthew Manos (UCLA BA, Art Center MFA) is a social entrepreneur dedicated to disrupting
the way the design industry operates. http://www.averynicedesignstudio.org/
Week 9 May 26 Motion & Time
Assignment Due: 2nd Review
Required Reading: Lev Manovich, “Media Design,” Software Takes Command (2013), p. 243-328.
http://issuu.com/bloomsburypublishing/docs/9781623566722_web
Covered: design cinema; when collage and montage combine; the primacy of the graphic and the
animation over the photographic and the filmic
Screenings: A curated selection of contemporary motion pieces
Week 10 June 2 The New Aesthetic?
Required Reading: http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/
Bruce Sterling http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/04/an-essay-on-the-new-aesthetic/
Ian Bogost, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-new-aesthetic-needs-to-getweirder/255838/
Andrew Blum, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/new-aesthetic-james-bridle-drones
Taina Bucher, http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/machine-visions-james-bridle-drones-botsand-new-aesthetic
Monday June 8, 12:00 PM, Final due
10-12 page curatorial statement, accompanied by captioned descriptions of 25-50 images due at the
Professor’s office, 4252 Broad or in his mailbox in 2275. It may be turned in early.