#teaching/technology-course ## The Modernist Vision - What Modernism is staking: - Beauty is not “added on” but emerges when [[you solve]] functional problems cleanly. - Strong version: if [[the design]] task is truly _purely_ functional, beauty should “fall out” automatically. - [[Why this matters]] for students: - Tests whether _aesthetic labour_ is dispensable in design. - Sets up the lecture’s two pressure points: (i) function underdetermines form; (ii) [[the nature]] of beauty is itself contested. - Use this to frame the session: - Promise to separate the historical slogan from the philosophical claim. - Emphasise that “form follows function” can be read as _design method_ or as _aesthetic thesis_—the lecture tests the latter. > “The Modernist concurs that good Design must be aesthetically appealing, but holds that beauty … is to be cultivated simply though the pursuit of functionality… [[the idea]] – that when ‘Form follows Function’ [[the result]] will be beauty – has been hotly disputed….” --- ## Can Form Follow Function? - The Modernist implication to scrutinise: - If function alone suffices, then functional analysis uniquely fixes form. - Philosophical pushback: functions are multiply realisable; form is _underdetermined_. - Clarify “underdetermination”: - Many non-equivalent geometries, materials, and surface treatments can realise the same use-profile. - Even when mechanics constrain shape, variables like colour remain free. > “Consideration of function alone is enough to determine a solution… [But] it has been objected that functional considerations alone are not enough to determine form… its function always underdetermines its form.” --- ## Form Cannot Simply Follow Function - Sharpen the core objection: - _If_ form followed function, then for any function there’d be a single best (or small set of) forms. - In practice, viable designs for the same function vary widely—so Modernism’s strong reading fails. - Preview responses we’ll test later: - “But designers optimise _user-facing_ function (ergonomics, safety, affordances), not internal guts.” - We’ll see that even there, multiplicity persists. > “Another way to put the point is to say that an object's form cannot simply follow from its function: rather, its function always underdetermines its form.” --- ## [[The Machine]] Age Inspiration - Historical lure of machinery: - Locomotives [[look like]] pure function: components exposed; visible causal necessity. - Early Modernists extrapolated from this _manifest_ functionality. - Why extrapolation falters: - Many product categories separate _inner functional core_ from _outer shell_. - Once guts hide behind a casing, form freedoms explode. > “[[The machine]] aesthetic … applied to a simple wooden chair or a silver teapot [better] than to a vacuum cleaner or a radio… [whose] inner structural components [are] concealed… The body-shell principle… proved much more appropriate… however much it negated functionalist principles.” (Sparke 2004, 89) --- ## When [[the Machine]] Aesthetic Fails - Use Sparke diagnostically: - Type-1 objects: outer surface ≈ functional mechanism (chairs, teapots). - Type-2 objects: functional core hidden; outer “form” decouples (radios, consumer electronics). - Teaching move: show a sequence of radios/cameras with wildly different casings for identical internals. - Drives home “gap” between function and form. > “In these cases, we see the failure of [[the idea]] that function determines form.” --- ## [[The Designer]]’s Domain (Modernist reply) - Steel-man the reply: - Design = user interface; relevant function is _use_, not circuitry. - Outer shell can be functionally loaded (grip, reachability, safety). - But the worry persists: - Even user-facing constraints admit many equally functional layouts; therefore, still no unique form. > “The functionality that concerns them is… the employment of [[the object]] by the user… This aspect… is manifest in [[the objects]]’ ‘outer shell’… Worries… are not so easily sidestepped, however.” --- ## Function Never Determines Form (Pye) - State the strong thesis: - The shape of useful things is not imposed by external necessity; designers choose under broad latitude. - Limits are economic or elective, not physical. - Use Pye pedagogically: - Ceiling example: flatness isn’t _functionally_ required; it’s extra “useless work” for aesthetic or conventional reasons. - Generalises to chairs, coffee pots, doors—huge design spaces remain. > “When any useful thing is designed, the shape of it is in no way imposed on [[the designer]]….” (Pye 1978, 14) --- ## When Physics Constrains Form (possible exceptions) - Acknowledge real constraints: - Hulls, wings, propulsors face viscous/pressure regimes that penalise deviation—streamlining narrows options. - Good to flag _domain-specific_ necessity. - But note the scope: - Such cases are exceptional; most products lack strong physical fields that hard-fix outer form. - Even then, colours/surfaces remain open. > “As every swimmer knows, any departure from a streamlined shape… results in costly drag… [Yet] most cases… are not of this sort… color [is] left undetermined.” --- ## Squaring Function and Aesthetic Value - Transition to “what is beauty?”: - Even if function doesn’t fix form, could functionality still be a route to beauty? - We need a theory of beauty to answer. - Promise the plan: - Survey popular ideas (indefinable vs. rule-based), then more serious theories (attitude, experience, realism), then Kant’s _dependent beauty_. > “Perhaps Designs that are functional will thereby have beauty… [But] what is beauty, or aesthetic value?” --- ## Popular Conceptions of Beauty - Lay out the two folk poles: - “Beauty as specific characteristics” (proportions, golden section). - “Beauty as indefinable” (je-ne-sais-quoi). - Use the dialectic: - Rule-based accounts overreach; mystery accounts explain too little. - Motivation to look for a _third path_. > “In common thought we can identify two main ideas about beauty… beauty is indefinable, and beauty consists in certain specific characteristics.” --- ## Beauty as a Way of Engaging: The Aesthetic Attitude (Stolnitz) - Define the move: - Beauty as the output of a special stance—_disinterestedness_—attending to the object apart from practical aims. - Design friction: - Everyday design is engaged _practically_; isolating objects from use contexts distorts the category. - Museum-ification of kettles ≠ design appreciation in situ. > “To appreciate an object aesthetically… one attends to the object without any concern for its relation to one’s practical goals…” --- ## The Practical Attitude Problem (Stolnitz vs design practice) - Explain the dilemma: - If aesthetic attention excludes practical concerns, design objects would need de-contextualising to be appreciated—counterintuitive. - Students should see this as a reductio of using _pure_ disinterestedness for design. > “We typically engage with Design objects in a transient way…” (context: why Beardsley also struggles for design) --- ## Dismantling the Aesthetic Attitude (Dickie) - Dickie’s correction: - “Disinterestedness” tracks _motivation_, not a special kind of attention. - Practical and aesthetic attention can coincide; the theory confuses _focus_ with _detachment_. - Consequence for design: - Opens the door to appreciating aesthetic features _through_ practical engagement. - But then: what tells us _which_ features matter? (Enter conventions and categories later.) > “[Disinterestedness] doesn’t describe special attention… The ‘aesthetic attitude’ theory is a confused attempt to say: pay attention… don’t be distracted.” --- ## Conventions Determine Relevance / Artworld vs Designworld - Why artworld conventions help in art: - They tell us which features are aesthetically germane (colour, composition vs. resale value). - Why design is trickier: - No shared “designworld” canon; functional categories need doing the work of setting expectations. - Bridge to Walton-style categories and “looking fit” later. > “Artworld conventions tell us what matters… [For design] no equivalent ‘Designworld’…” --- ## Monroe Beardsley’s Aesthetic Experience (and its limits for design) - Beardsley’s test (intense, unified, complex) is great for art; poor for kettles and door handles. - Design encounters are brief, intermittent, and purpose-driven—yet still aesthetically salient. - Pedagogical pivot: - This motivates _aesthetic realism_ and then _dependent beauty_ as more promising frameworks. > “Aesthetic Experience Characterised as: Intense, Unified, Complex… [but] design engagement typically brief, practical.” --- ## Kant’s Contribution: The Disinterestedness Dilemma → Free vs Dependent Beauty - Set up Kant cleanly: - Pure taste seems to exclude purposes, which would doom design aesthetics. - Section 16 rescues us with _dependent beauty_—beauty that presupposes a concept of what the thing ought to be. - Why this is promising: - For chairs and churches, the concept/function legitimately enters the aesthetic judgement. - This licenses functional considerations _within_ aesthetic evaluation. > “Free beauty ‘presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be,’ [whereas] dependent beauty ‘does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance with it’.” --- ## Dependent Beauty v.1 – Guyer: Function as Negative Constraint - State the reading: - Purpose constrains what can count as beautiful; function doesn’t _make_ beauty, it _rules out_ forms. - Beauty remains “free” within those constraints. - Consequence for Modernism: - Bad news—function doesn’t generate beauty; it only blocks inapt ornament. > “One would be able to add much to a building that would be pleasing… if only it were not supposed to be a church.” (Kant, cited by Guyer) --- ## Dependent Beauty v.2 – Wicks: Function as Active Participant - Key pivot: - Form is _contingent_ with respect to purpose; we appreciate how _this_ form realises function among many possibles. - Why Modernists like it: - Underdetermination becomes a _source_ of beauty—beauty arises in the fit between form and function. > “The defined purpose of the object is an abstract concept… [and] can therefore never fully determine every contingent detail of its concrete instantiation.” (Wicks) --- ## The Imaginative Process (and problems for Wicks) - Wicks’s mechanism: - We compare the given form to imagined alternatives; beauty = appreciation of contingency. - Two objections to press in class: - Psychological: no “mental slideshow” in ordinary design appreciation (Guyer’s point). - Over-generation: if contingency suffices, then _everything_ designed is beautiful. > “When we experience a bowl, a car or a household appliance as beautiful, it doesn’t seem that we have a ‘mental slideshow’ of alternative forms…” --- ## From Contingency to Simplicity/Elegance (Wicks refined) - Extract the real engine: - What actually moves us is not mere contingency but _economy_—simplicity and elegance relative to function. - Teaching angle: - Use examples where minimalist form defies expectation yet works superbly—surprise + aptness = aesthetic bump. - Note conceptual snag: “simplicity” is itself contested (few parts vs. fewer steps vs. thrift of material). > “We ‘appreciate how a mathematical theorem is simple and elegant only with respect to other possible ways to complete the proof’… [So] it is dependently beautiful because… it has a particularly simple or elegant form.”