Date
December 2018
Type
PublicationContexte
Article coécrit avec Alexandre Saint-Jevin et publié dans la revue de recherche Reel-Virtuel.com, no 6 « Les normes du numérique ».
Résumé
Dans le champ universitaire, la construction et la transmission des savoirs est encore trop souvent ralentie (voire empêchée) par des enjeux commerciaux et/ou par une méconnaissance des enjeux de la culture du libre issue du champ informatique. Des chercheurs peuvent ainsi se voir dépossédés de leurs travaux à cause de contrats d’édition abusifs, ou même être condamnés à de lourdes peines pour avoir partagé des contenus sous copyrights. Mais, au-delà des problèmes légaux, que peuvent faire les chercheurs et designers pour favoriser la libération des connaissances ? Quelles pratiques de publication, de contribution et de valorisation inventer pour répondre à ces enjeux ? La culture libre et les pratiques de design pourraient-elles libérer la recherche de la prégnance des enjeux capitalistes ?
Notions
Personnes citées
Objets mentionnés
Date
November 2021
Type
PublicationContexte
Paper written with Guillaume Helleu for the research journal Multitudes, which appeared in November 2021. Translated from French by Aviva Cashmira Kakar.
Résumé
This paper explores the issues concerning blockchain technologies within the realm of the creative (art, design, video games, etc.), which have arisen since the development of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) in 2015. NFTs are essentially the production of a decentralized digital certificate that is impossible to forge, which is then linked to a numerical or tangible entity. NFTs have emerged into the mainstream since the beginning of 2021 due to a massive surge in sales and the development of specified marketplaces. NFTs have brought to the fore a variety of issues concerning value, circulation, and the exposure of artistic and cultural productions.
Notions
Date
September 2022
Type
PublicationContexte
Paper written with Guillaume Helleu for the journal AOC, which appeared in September 2022. Translated from French by Aviva Cashmira Kakar.
Résumé
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) appeared in 2017. They are tamper-proof decentralized digital certificates which have gained fame because of their appropriation by the art world. NFTs have attracted a great deal of controversy, and are frequently accused of being speculative, useless and polluting. We propose to examine these polemics, founded for the most part, in order to show that other approaches are possible. In fact, artistic applications are merely one link in the chain, and NFTs cannot be reduced to their mere visible aspect, they require a wider examination of their value systems, distribution chains, and methods of governance.
Date
January 2026
Type
PublicationContexte
Article de recherche co-écrit avec Saul Pandelakis et Dominika Čupková dans le cadre du projet Fucking Tech! (2024-2027) et publié dans INC Longform (Institute of Network Cultures) en janvier 2026.
Résumé
À partir d’une semaine d’expérimentation avec onze applications d’« AI Girlfriends », ce texte examine ces services comme des artefacts culturels toucahnt aux notions de genre, de plaisir, d’amour et de psychologie. Appliquant une méthode de « recherche hypersituée », les auteurs décrivent leurs interactions avec des chatbots dédiés à la romance et à la sexualité pour en analyser les promesses (personnalisation, disponibilité permanente, absence de censure) et leurs angles morts (consentement automatisé, biais cishetéronormatifs, incohérences entre texte et image générée). Ils concluent sur la nécessité de repenser ces interfaces au-delà des imaginaires normatifs.
Notions
Personnes citées
Objets mentionnés
Date
April 2014
Type
PublicationContexte
Anthony Masure, «Graphisme et numérique: entre certitudes et incertitudes», Paris, CNAP, Graphisme en France, no 20, p. 65-76
Résumé
« Dans mes moments d’euphorie les plus intenses, c’est comme si le logiciel surgissait des profondeurs de l’ordinateur. Une fois finalisé dans mon esprit, j’avais le sentiment qu’il siégeait dans la machine, n’attendant plus que l’instant de sa libération. Dans cette optique, ne pas fermer l’œil de la nuit me semblait un prix à payer bien dérisoire pour lui donner sa liberté, pour que mes idées prennent forme. — Bill Joy, «Why the Future doesn’t need us», Wired, avril 2000 » Cofondateur de Sun Microsystems 1 Fondée en 1982 et rachetée en 2008 par Oracle, Sun Microsystems a progressivement délaissé la production de serveurs et de postes de travail pour développer Java (un langage de programmation orienté objet), ainsi que My SQL (un système de gestion de bases de données). et coauteur du langage de programmation Java 2 On appelle «langage de programmation» une bibliothèque d’instructions univoques interprétables par une machine, constituées d’un vocabulaire et d’une syntaxe définis. Le plus ancien est le FORTRAN (1954)., Bill Joy semblait être l’exemple parfait du développeur informatique accompli. C’est pourtant depuis sa pratique des codes sources 3 Le code source désigne l’ensemble des instructions et des fonctions constituant un programme (logiciel, page Web, etc.)., qu’il écrit, au début des années 2000, une mise en garde adressée à ses pairs: «Pourquoi le futur n’a pas besoin de nous 4 Bill Joy, «Why the Future doesn’t need us», Wired, avril 2000..» Rejouant les thèses développées par Günther Anders dès les années 1950 dans L’Obsolescence de l’homme 5 Günther Anders, L’Obsolescence de l’homme (1956), Paris, Ivrea, 2002. (sans les mentionner explicitement), Bill Joy en arrive, par sa pratique de codeur, à prophétiser lui aussi «un monde sans hommes». Comme Günther Anders, il se base sur le traumatisme de la bombe atomique. Bill Joy entrevoit la poursuite de cet évènement paradigmatique dans le développement des ordinateurs, du génie génétique, de la robotique et des nanotechnologies. Selon lui, ces recherches «représentent une menace différente des technologies antérieures» et menacent directement notre survie ici-bas. C’est l’ivresse résultant de la quête du savoir qui aveugle les scientifiques: «Happé dans le vortex d’une transformation, sans doute est-il toujours difficile d’entrevoir le réel impact des choses. […] Le progrès à l’origine de technologies toujours plus innovantes et toujours plus puissantes peut nous échapper et déclencher un processus autonome.» L’émancipation euphorisante permise par les programmes 6 Un programme est généralement conçu pour faire exécuter une tâche précise à une machine (afficher une couleur à l’écran, connecter un ordinateur à une adresse Web, etc.). Un logiciel comprend donc plusieurs programmes permettant de traiter des données. numériques masquerait-elle une catastrophe inéluctable ? À travers l’exemple de Bill Joy, nous pouvons donc distinguer deux attitudes possibles face à la technique: se laisser griser par ses infinies possibilités ou travailler contre elle. L’hypothèse que nous souhaitons étudier ici est que le design ne relève d’aucune des deux. Tel que nous pouvons le soutenir, le design est un processus conscient et inconscient «d’authentification» des techniques nouvelles 7 Sur ces notions rapidement abordées ici, il conviendra de se référer aux travaux de Pierre-Damien Huyghe. Voir par exemple: «L’outil et la méthode», Milieux, n o 33, 1988, p. 64-69.. Le designer travaille dans la marge séparant la certitude de l’incertitude. Il a pour tâche de révéler ce qui, parmi nous, est recouvert de nos habitudes culturelles. Afin de donner forme à ce changement 8 Günther Anders, ibid.: «Il ne suffit pas de changer le monde. Nous le changeons de toute façon. Il change même considérablement sans notre intervention. Nous devons aussi interpréter ce changement pour pouvoir le changer à son tour. Afin que le monde ne continue pas ainsi à changer sans nous. Et que nous ne nous retrouvions pas à la fin dans un monde sans hommes.», le designer ne doit pas se laisser «happer dans le vortex» séparant une époque d’une autre. La vigilance qu’il exerce vis-à-vis des avancées techniques ne va donc pas de soi. Dans le champ du numérique, le graphiste est souvent confiné à n’être qu’un utilisateur des systèmes techniques. Pourtant, il a, tout comme le développeur, un rôle à jouer dans les directions soutenables ou nuisibles que peuvent prendre les programmes. Plus encore, nous pensons que le designer graphique, par sa culture du projet, apporte des éléments de réflexion qui concernent, au sens large, le rapport de l’homme aux inventions techniques. Cet article sera ainsi l’occasion d’examiner quatre situations de controverse autour des rapports entre design graphique et culture numérique. Ces analyses sont dans le prolongement des articles parus ces vingt dernières années au sein de la revue Graphisme en France. Forcément incomplètes, ces lectures croisées explorent des façons de faire du design qui ne présument pas d’avance sur ce qui peut être trouvé, et espèrent ouvrir des «perspectives […] aussi excitantes qu’incertaines 9 Michel Wlassikoff, «Graphisme et informatique, rapide bilan d’une liaison durable», Graphisme en France 1998, Paris, CNAP, 1998.». Révolution informatique / culture numérique Écrit en 1998, l’article «Graphisme et informatique, rapide bilan d’une liaison durable» de l’historien Michel Wlassikoff 10 Michel Wlassikoff est historien du graphisme et de la typographie, diplômé en histoire de l’EHESS. Il enseigne au sein de plusieurs écoles d’art et de design en France et à l’étranger. expose les mutations historiques et esthétiques des logiciels de création. La «décennie prodigieuse» du design graphique déroulée par Wlassikoff nous renseigne à propos de la réception française des technologies dites nouvelles. La conclusion de son texte fait ressortir deux types de rapport à l’ordinateur: la crainte d’une homogénéisation de la création et le développement d’esthétiques nouvelles, «radicalement différentes». Dans son livre Le Monde du computationnel 11 Jean-Michel Salanskis, Le Monde du computationnel, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2011., Jean-Michel Salanskis tente de penser le numérique au-delà de la promesse d’une «révolution». Selon lui, le numérique rassemble une multitude d’objets contradictoires, qu’il est délicat d’englober sous une même appellation. En effet, le rapport utilitaire aux objets techniques empêche que cette problématique «révolution» soit tout à fait la nôtre, car ce qu’ils ont d’inédit est souvent parasité par d’anciens modèles de pensée. Le dévoilement de l’ordinateur dans sa puissance de nouveauté commence par le jeu, activité libre et exploratoire. C’est pourquoi il importe que les «systèmes d’exploitation» ne ferment pas à tout jamais la «visite des entrailles 12 Ibid., p. 75.» de nos machines. Grotesk, caractère numérique de Frank Adebiaye pour la fonderie Velvetyne. Première publication sur velvetyne.typepad.com, le 26 juin 2010, sous le nom de Mercandieu, renommé en 2011 en Grotesk, fonte numérique sous licence Open Font License. © F. Adebiaye, 2010-2011, certains droits réservés. Le travail du typographe Frank Adebiaye de la fonderie Velvetyne (VTF) 13 velvetyne.fr va dans ce sens. Distribuées sous la SIL Open Font License (OFL), ses fontes sont accessibles librement 14 VTF, «Manifeste posttypographique, ou l’appel des formidables»: «Nous, VTF, rejetons intrépides de la génération Postscript, nous poursuivons, à la vitesse de l’électron, cet illustre cortège. Tel Spartacus, nous libérons les caractères du joug des règlements iniques et des conventions arbitraires (…).» au designer graphique, au relecteur ou à l’imprimeur, ce qui simplifie le process d’édition. Dans un même registre, Frank Adebiaye poursuit actuellement des recherches autour de la génération automatisée de contenus destinés à l’impression. Référents non référents 15 Frank Adebiaye, Référents non référents, Paris, Forthcome, 2013, coll. «Hoplites», (En ligne), forthcome.fr/hoplites/ref_non_ref/ref_non_ref.html., son dernier livre, est un recueil de textes poétiques écrits entre 2006 et 2013. L’ouvrage est réalisé en XML 16 Le XML est un langage de «balisage» qui facilite l’échange de données complexes par sa grande flexibilité., et interprété par un navigateur Web type Firefox HTML 5 17 Initié en 2009, le langage HTML 5 permet une structuration plus fine des contenus. La gestion des médias est également simplifiée par les balises audio et vidéo.. Le passage du numérique à l’imprimé s’effectue ici par un usage savant des nouvelles possibilités techniques du Web: Responsive Web Design (RWD, site Web adaptable à plusieurs résolutions d’écran), ancres (liens internes) aléatoires, fontes Web hintées (optimisées pour la lecture à l’écran) via le service en ligne Cloud Typography de Hoefler & Frere-Jones 18 typography.com/cloud, etc. Ce type de démarche est partagé par des designers pour qui le travail de la programmation numérique («ce qui ne supporte pas l’inexactitude 19 Ibid., p. 65.») se fait dans l’acceptation d’une certaine marge d’incertitude. Artisanat numérique / conscience industrielle Beaucoup de produits ont pour finalité de disparaître à l’usage. Dans le champ du design graphique, les outils numériques informent directement les pratiques. Il en est ainsi, par exemple, des logiciels propriétaires dits de création, dont les conditionnements pernicieux ont aussi marqué la dernière décennie du design graphique francophone. Ces programmes ne sont pas des interfaces transparentes, mais bien des vecteurs d’idées voire d’idéologies. 20 Pour en savoir plus sur ce point, voir Kévin Donnot, «Code = Design», Graphisme en France 2012, Paris, CNAP, 2012, p.5-12. Cela n’empêche pas certains designers de jouer avec les codes de leurs environnements de travail, telle Danielle Aubert, qui compose des tableaux dans le tableur Microsoft Excel 21 Danielle Aubert, 58 Days Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel as Rendered for Web and Animated Daily Excel Drawings, 2005 – 2006, (En ligne), (link: https://danielleaubert.com/print/exceldrawings_book.. Danielle Aubert, Sixteen Months Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel, extrait, 3 avril 2005. © D. Aubert Selon Annick Lantenois, depuis 1990, le développement des programmes a été progressivement confié aux ingénieurs, le designer se retrouvant dès lors relégué au statut de simple usager. Comme le dit Florian Cramer: «Ce modèle impose un retour à un mode de travail artisanal qui exclut les artistes et les designers des évolutions des médias de masse électroniques 22 Annick Lantenois cite Florian Cramer dans: «Ouvrir des chemins», Graphisme en France 2012, Paris, CNAP, 2012, p. 15. […].» Une telle expression réactualise des débats très anciens sur la constitution du design comme champ autonome de l’artisanat. L’histoire d’un mouvement précurseur comme le Deutscher Werkbund 23 Lucius Burckhardt, Le Werkbund: Allemagne, Autriche, Suisse (1977), Paris, Centre d’études et de prévisions, 1981. est ainsi jalonnée de prises de position contradictoires sur le rapport à l’industrie – travail manuel et production de masse. Dans la synthèse qu’en donne Walter Gropius au Bauhaus, il y aurait «design» quand les artistes cessent de s’opposer à l’industrie et travaillent avec elle, en tension – Art et Industrie 24 «Kunst und Technik – eine neue Einheit», Walter Gropius, 1923.. Si la place nous manque pour développer ce dernier point, et pour en revenir aux rapports entre design graphique et culture numérique, nous noterons tout de même qu’elle implique la possibilité d’une «esthétique avec la mécanisation 25 Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Art et Industrie. Philosophie du Bauhaus, Belval, Circé, 1999, p.41.». Le retour au mode de vie médiéval de la communauté artistique avait déjà été expérimenté à l’orée du Bauhaus. Est-ce que le design graphique, dans les conditions techniques actuelles, gagnerait à revenir à un modèle où les notions de production en série et de standardisation ne posaient pas problème ? Ne risquerait-on pas alors, en réaction à des craintes similaires à celles de Bill Joy, de basculer dans une attitude antitechnique ? Superscript 2, affiche pour l’exposition Lettres Type, My Monkey, Nancy, novembre 2011. 80 × 120 cm. © Superscript 2 Superscript 2, Opération Graffiti, affiche réalisée pour le Festival international de l’affiche et du graphisme de Chaumont, 2013. Interprétation graphique d’une opération militaire. 80 × 120 cm. © Superscript 2 À l’opposé de ce retour à une tradition révolue, les travaux du studio Superscript 2 jouent ainsi avec les codes graphiques de la production en série, hésitant ironiquement entre travail manuel et automatisation complète du processus créatif (le «super script»). Ce qui est en jeu ici, c’est la fondamentale marge de liberté qui fait de toute vie authentiquement humaine une singularité non reproductible. L’enjeu du design serait alors de permettre le développement des techniques, sans qu’elles nous portent atteinte. Dire cela ne revient donc pas à accepter toute forme de production en série, mais bien au contraire à la choisir et à la transformer. À la lumière de ces quelques intuitions, nous pouvons relire ce que disait Michel Wlassikoff des «logiciels [qui] se sont ainsi inspirés des habitudes professionnelles et ont pris en compte les propositions des graphistes, ce qui a assuré leur adoption rapide et leur constante adaptation». Ce mélange d’habitudes et de renouvellements définit bien la réalité du designer, pris dans une zone de confort qu’il cherche continuellement à dépasser. Ordonner le monde / donner forme à la technique Dans « Ce que nous pourrions penser», article visionnaire publié dans le contexte de la bombe atomique de 1945, Vannevar Bush 26 Vannevar Bush, «As We May Think», The Atlantic Monthly, volume 176, n o 1, juillet 1945, p. 101-108. Trad. de l’auteur., chef de la recherche scientifique étasunienne, développe l’idée d’un réseau d’informations à échelle mondiale. Plus précisément, il invente sur le papier la notion d’hypertexte, qui ne sera réalisée techniquement qu’une trentaine d’années plus tard. Son concept de «memex» vise à résoudre le problème de la dispersion des articles scientifiques, dont les meilleurs tombent dans l’oubli. Sa visée plus large est d’éviter qu’un nouveau conflit mondial ne se produise. Cet article, écrit comme celui de Bill Joy depuis une pratique des systèmes d’informations, interroge la façon d’organiser le savoir humain à l’époque des calculateurs. Pour Vannevar Bush, il y a un enjeu décisif à choisir ce qui doit être rendu public (partageable) dans une masse d’informations. L’hypertexte ouvre la possibilité de structurer un flux afin d’isoler ce qui est pertinent de ce qui ne l’est pas. Si l’humanité n’est plus en mesure de transformer l’information en connaissance, alors cette indistinction deviendra indigestion, «infobésité», absence de communication, conflit, bombe. L’éthique de l’ingénieur développée par Vannevar Bush est aussi celle du designer: la technique doit servir l’homme pour lutter contre ses insuffisances. Rationalisé et rendu disponible, le savoir humain doit pénétrer toutes les couches de la société pour l’éclairer de ses vertus. Cette pensée se prolonge aujourd’hui, avec d’importantes nuances, dans des systèmes dont l’ambition ne serait plus seulement d’organiser le monde, mais de le recouvrir de leurs ordonnancements. On pourra penser ici à l’ambition de Google «d’organiser toute l’information du monde 27 Larry Page, à propos de Google: «Notre ambition est d’organiser toute l’information du monde, pas juste une partie», Paris, Le Monde, 21 mai 2010.». Par là, on remarque que le monde n’est pour Google qu’une matière dont la finalité serait de produire des éléments signifiants, c’est-à-dire des connaissances pouvant faire l’objet d’un rendement. Dans cette configuration, nul espace n’est supposé échapper à la trame informationnelle 28 Paul N. Edwards, Un monde clos. L’ordinateur, la bombe et le discours politique de la Guerre froide (1996), Paris, B2, coll. Territoires, 2013. qui se tisse autour de nos existences, réduites progressivement à des entités calculables. Avec le recul dont nous disposons désormais, nous pouvons dire que «l’informatique» dont parlait Michel Wlassikoff s’est constituée en culture numérique. On retrouve l’origine française du mot «ordinateur», dans une lettre de 1955 adressée au président d’IBM: «Cher Monsieur, écrivit Jacques Perret, que diriez-vous d’ordinateur ? C’est un mot correctement formé, qui se trouve même dans le Littré comme adjectif désignant Dieu qui met de l’ordre dans le monde 29 Éric Hazan, «16 avril 1955: que diriez-vous d’ordinateur ?», Paris, Le Monde, 15 avril 2005..» Cette traduction maximaliste du terme «computer» substitue ainsi à la puissance de calcul l’idéal religieux d’un ordonnancement du monde. Il y a aussi dans l’ordonnancement, au sens testamentaire, l’idée d’instaurer et de prendre des dispositions, c’est-à-dire des décisions. N’est-ce pas aller trop loin, au risque du contresens, que d’attribuer de telles propriétés aux machines à calculer ? Au-delà de ces promesses, un champ de recherche pour les designers graphiques consisterait à faire apparaître les systèmes techniques qui disparaissent habituellement derrière des interfaces «transparentes». Il ne s’agit donc plus simplement d’organiser le monde, mais avant tout de donner à le comprendre 30 «(Notre époque) se raidit pour atteindre l’absolu et l’empire, elle veut transfigurer le monde avant de l’avoir épuisé, l’ordonner avant de l’avoir compris.» Albert Camus, «L’Exil d’Hélène», dans: L’Été, Essais, Paris, La Pléiade, 1963, p. 856.. Dans les projets de design qui nous intéressent, la technique n’est pas abordée dans sa dimension fabuleuse, mais révélée dans sa puissance de nouveauté. Il en est ainsi de l’affiche Specimen de Fanette Mellier, réalisée dans le cadre d’une exposition au pôle graphique de Chaumont en 2009. Ce projet ne cherche pas à «faire image», mais affirme son statut d’objet imprimé, appréciable à une échelle déterminée. Le recto est rempli des trames et gammes colorées servant au calibrage des machines d’impression. Ce motif obsessionnel sature la page d’éléments géométriques non symboliques, faisant de ce qui n’est habituellement pas vu l’endroit d’une expérience sensible. Le verso de l’affiche contient des éléments informatifs conventionnels. Une fois pliée, l’affiche joue du contraste entre ces deux modes d’approche du design graphique: manifester une technique ou délivrer un message. Fanette Mellier, Specimen, affiche pour un programme d’expositions sur le graphisme éditorial, pôle graphisme de Chaumont, 2009. Impression offset recto-verso. 120 × 176 cm. Le titre apparaît avec le pli. © F. Mellier Datavisualisation / transformation de données Les dizaines de millions de fiches individuelles accumulées par John Edgard Hoover au sein du FBI n’auront pas suffi à nous réveiller. Le scandale déclenché par les révélations d’Edward Snowden sur les pratiques de la NSA a de nouveau mis en lumière les liens profonds existant entre les gouvernements occidentaux et les grands groupes de télécommunication. Même si nous pouvions nous en douter, ces preuves à charge jettent le trouble sur un système n’ayant plus grand-chose à voir avec des préoccupations citoyennes. Au début des années 2000, le Web 2.0 31 Tim O’Reilly, «What Is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software», conférence du 30 septembre 2005. aura été, sous couvert de partage et d’ouverture des possibilités techniques, l’endroit d’un recentrement problématique. La «facebookisation» du Web est celle de sa progressive transformation en télévision. Par exemple, la récente fonction autoplay des vidéos des flux Facebook 32 Josh Constine, «Facebook Puts Its Web Feed In Motion With Auto-Playing Videos», Techcrunch.com, 11 décembre 2013, (En ligne), techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/facebook-autoplay-video vise à réduire le degré d’interaction avec le contenu, pour proposer un modèle de consommation passive. Comme l’écrivait en 1987 le critique de cinéma Serge Daney: «L’affaire Médiamétrie […] et ce qu’on sait sur les techniques à venir du contrôle du téléspectateur vont toutes dans le même sens: l’écran du téléviseur n’est plus une frontière qui – comme tout écran – sépare et réunit des êtres anonymes mais un miroir dans lequel, idéalement, l’émetteur et le récepteur se comptent et se voient 33 Serge Daney, Le Salaire du zappeur, Paris, P.O.L, 1987, p. 11..» Le modèle télévisuel apprend aux gens à vendre leurs expériences – finalité bien éloignée des utopies des pionniers d’Internet 34 Fred Turner, Aux sources de l’utopie numérique. De la contre-culture à la cyberculture, Stewart Brand, un homme d’influence (2006), Caen, C&F, 2012.. Dans cette calculabilité des existences, la multiplication des informations interroge le designer sur son rôle d’organisateur. Le mythe des données «brutes» est battu en brèche par l’étude du «travail des données 35 Hubert Guillaud, «Travail et travailleurs de la donnée», Internet Actu, 13 décembre 2013, (En ligne), internetactu.net/2013/12/13/travail-et-travailleurs-de-la-donnee », qui montre que celles-ci sont toujours biaisées et soumises à interprétation. Dès lors, on comprendra que le rôle du designer graphique est central dans la compréhension des données. Son travail tient davantage de la «transformation 36 Marie Neurath, Robin Kinross, Le Transformateur, Paris, B42, 2013.» que d’une illusoire objectivation. Non seulement les données sont visibles avant le travail du designer graphique, mais celui-ci produit un travail d’interprétation voire de production du sens qu’il serait difficile de nier. Par exemple, en mettant en tension l’impersonnalité des diagrammes à des éléments illustratifs et narratifs, le design du rapport d’activité 2012 du CNAP réalisé par The Shelf Company (Morgane Rébulard et Colin Caradec) se joue ainsi des conventions graphiques. The Shelf Company: Morgane Rébulard et Colin Caradec, Rapport d’activité du CNAP, 2012, p. 63. © The Shelf Company, 2013 Afin de «faire société» dans ce déluge de données «obtenues 37 Bruno Latour, «Que la bataille se livre au moins à armes égales», postface à Controverses climatiques, Sciences et Politiques, Paris, Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2012, p. 6.», le médialab de Sciences Po (initié par Bruno Latour) mène depuis quelques années des recherches autour de leurs modalités de présentation à l’écran. Comme il est possible de faire dire n’importe quoi à des chiffres, il ne suffit pas de démontrer l’ensemble du traitement statistique. Il faut également expliquer comment on est parvenu à l’image finale, en laissant à l’utilisateur la possibilité de remonter dans le processus d’abstraction. Ces interfaces recourent ainsi à ce que l’on pourrait appeler une «chaîne de transformation 38 «(…) la production de savoir est un cheminement, une trajectoire, une chaîne de transformations (…).» Bruno Latour, «La connaissance est-elle un mode d’existence ?», dans: Vie et Expérimentation. Peirce, James, Dewey, Paris, Vrin, 2007, p. 13.», pour désigner la présentation cohérente de l’ensemble du cheminement intellectuel. Comme le dit Bruno Latour: «Propriété essentielle, cette chaîne doit rester réversible. La traçabilité des étapes doit permettre […] de la parcourir dans les deux sens. Qu’on l’interrompe en n’importe quel point et voilà qu’elle cesse de transporter le vrai, de le produire, de le construire, de le conduire 39 Bruno Latour, «Sol amazonien et circulation de la référence» (1993), dans: L’Espoir de Pandore. Pour une version réaliste de l’activité scientifique, Paris, La Découverte, 2007, p. 74..» En ouvrant des marges entre la collecte et l’abstraction, de telles démarches cherchent à comprendre plus qu’à ordonner 40 Karl Marx, Thèses sur Feuerbach, XI, 1888: «Les philosophes n’ont fait qu’interpréter le monde de différentes manières, ce qui importe, c’est de le transformer.» ; elles laissent de la place à l’autre. Figure de Bruno Latour: «Pour chacune des étapes que traverse la référence, la transformation peut être représentée comme un compromis entre ce qui est gagné [amplification] et ce qui est perdu [réduction] à chaque étape de la production d’information.» Extrait de «Sol amazonien et circulation de la référence» [1993], dans: L’Espoir de Pandore. Pour une version réaliste de l’activité scientifique, Paris, La Découverte, 2007. Penser en numérique Le développement des logiciels libres 41 Le logiciel «libre» vise à respecter la liberté essentielle de l’utilisateur (liberté d’utiliser, de modifier et de redistribuer des copies d’un programme). L’open source voit dans la mise à disposition du code source la meilleure façon de favoriser l’innovation logicielle. a permis à des machines hétéroclites de dialoguer ensemble. Nous réalisons chaque jour que cette idée est fondamentale, afin que le Web (et le numérique en général) ne se referme pas définitivement. Pour cette raison, il est important que les logiciels libres développent de nouvelles «méthodes d’approche 42 László Moholy-Nagy, «Nouvelle méthode d’approche – Le design pour la vie» (1947), dans: Peinture, photographie, film et autres écrits sur la photographie, Paris, Folio, 2007.», au lieu de se contenter d’imiter des logiques propriétaires. Nous pouvons nous référer ici à la ligne de recherche Design by Numbers, initiée par John Maeda dans les années 1990 43 John Maeda, Design by Numbers, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001.. Créé par Ben Fry et Casey Reas en 2001, le logiciel Processing 44 processing.org est directement issu de ces explorations. En permettant de tracer et d’animer des formes au moyen d’une syntaxe 45 Dans le contexte du code, la syntaxe permet d’articuler des instructions pour les rendre compréhensibles par la machine. simplifiée, ce type de programme permet de dépasser les interfaces à base d’icônes et de menus déroulants. Plus encore, le succès de Processing nous dit, s’il en était besoin, que l’évolution des supports modifie profondément les champs d’action du design graphique. Les médias animés, sonores, tactiles, etc. font partie de notre quotidien depuis déjà de nombreuses années, et cette réalité doit être prise en compte par les designers. Murmur, du studio Chevalvert 46 m-u-r-m-u-r.me. Projet réalisé en collaboration avec 2R oqs, Polygraphik et Splank. Technologies employées : OpenFrameworks, Javascript, bandes LED. Processing avait été utilisé pour les premiers prototypes de Murmur., incarne cette transversalité des supports, où le projet s’enrichit des expériences passées. Ici, une prothèse architecturale permet la communication entre une personne et un mur sur lequel elle est connectée. Ce type de démarche excède toujours un peu l’idée initiale, les codes sources pouvant être réinvestis dans d’autres contextes et/ou redistribués librement. Murmur, un projet de Chevalvert, 2R oqs, Polygraphik et Splank, vue de la projection dans le cadre de «nuit numérique #10X-L ight», Centre culturel Saint-Exupéry, Reims, 25 mai 2012. ©D.R. Les logiciels sont généralement plus intéressants quand ils sont employés pour des usages qui n’étaient pas prévus initialement. Utilisé dans le projet Murmur, Processing permet aux designers d’inventer de nouveaux environnements de travail. À la recherche d’une esthétique pertinente pour leur «journal de recherche», les designers de NORMALS ont développé dans Processing une interface de création de bande dessinée vectorielle. La forme est directement issue du code, et non d’une logique analogique. Une fonction de leur programme Polyrotor connecte ainsi les nouveaux points placés sur l’écran à ceux qui sont les plus proches 47 «Delineating the Future – an interview with NORMALS», Creative Applications Network, 6 décembre 2013, (En ligne), creativeapplications.net/theory/delineating-the-future-an-interview-with-n-o-r-m-a-l-s. Cette façon de faire du graphisme en numérique invente des formes qui ne sont pas totalement anticipables par l’imagination. Les formes polygonales dessinent un futur où le réalisme de l’image est mis en doute au profit d’hypothèses et de fictions transversales. Sans même connaître les processus de création, le lecteur comprend qu’il a affaire à un dialogue stéréoscopique entre l’homme et la machine. NORMALS: Cédric Flazinksi & Aurélien Michon, programme Polyrotor, capture d’écran, janvier 2014. Cédric Flazinksi, Aurélien Michon, NORMALS, ouvrage autoédité, Paris, mars 2014. Réalisé à l’origine sous Processing, l’interface de création typographique Prototypo 48 Yannick Mathey et Louis-Rémi Babé, prototypo.io, travail en cours de réalisation. Prototypo est désormais développé en HTML5 Angular JS et SVG. Dans le même registre, voir aussi les expérimentations du studio LettError. de Yannick Mathey s’émancipe d’une construction lettre par lettre de la fonte. L’utilisation d’algorithmes permet de manipuler en temps réel des formes dynamiques, les changements formels étant répercutés sur l’ensemble de l’alphabet. Le programme permet également d’indiquer des «limites» aux bonnes règles typographiques, sans que celles-ci ne freinent la création. Depuis des dizaines d’années, les apports du numérique au champ de la typographie ont été fructueux. Il reste beaucoup à apprendre d’initiatives comme l’Unified Font Object ou Metafont 49 David Vallance a présenté, aux Rencontres internationales de Lure 2013, le travail de découverte et d’appropriation du programme Metafont, qu’il a mené dans le cadre de son diplôme national d’Art et technique à l’Ésad Grenoble-Valence.. Yannick Mathey et Louis-Rémi Babé, programme Prototypo, captures d’écran, janvier 2014. © Y. Mathé, L.-R. Babé Désirer l’incertitude À l’issue de ces quelques exemples et relectures croisées, nous pouvons appréhender d’une nouvelle manière les craintes de Bill Joy. Il nous semble périlleux d’envisager a priori les inventions techniques sous l’angle de la «menace», car au nom de quoi critiquerions-nous une nouvelle technique, si ce n’est suivant son rapport à la tradition ? En n’acceptant pas que le monde puisse changer, un tel parti pris se retranche dans ses convictions. Le développement des systèmes de prévision en tous genres (sondages, assurances, contrats, etc.) semble faire de nos existences des entités dociles et réglables, de moins en moins aptes à prendre des décisions. Pour échapper à cette programmatique, il faut que le designer participe à l’élaboration d’une société qui ne fonde pas sa marche sur le calcul. Le fait que les designers graphiques investissent de plus en plus la conception des programmes numériques nous ouvre de nouvelles façons de faire, basées sur la compréhension sensible des spécificités techniques. Le designer peut ainsi choisir de conduire la technique dans des directions qui ne portent pas atteinte à la liberté humaine. Son travail hésite entre certitudes et incertitudes: d’un côté les habitudes professionnelles et culturelles, de l’autre la confrontation à l’inconnu 50 Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Modernes sans modernité. Éloge des mondes sans style, Paris, Lignes, 2009, p. 123. La modernité s’inscrit dans un «mouvement qui ne fait pas de l’émission d’un sens le but unique des conduites techniques […]».. «Apprendre et désapprendre», disait Catherine de Smet 51 Catherine de Smet, «Apprendre et désapprendre», Graphisme en France 2008, Paris, Cnap, 2008.. Afin que la prochaine décennie ne soit pas déjà écrite, à nous de désirer l’incertitude.
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May 2021
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Contribution au dossier « Globalisations esthétiques » du 82e numéro de la revue Multitudes, dirigé par Nathalie Blanc et David Christoffel.
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À rebours d’un progrès technique consistant à voir les logiciels de CAO/PAO (« Conception/Publication Assistée par Ordinateur ») comme une « augmentation » mécanique des possibilités créatives, nous proposons de considérer ce processus comme une accélération – voire comme une automatisation – de façons de faire traditionnelles. Alors que les designers utilisent au quotidien les mêmes logiciels, ont-ils pleinement conscience de leur histoire et de leurs implications ? Comment cette tendance à la normalisation s’inscrit-elle dans l’histoire des transformations techniques induites par le développement de la computation ? Pour traiter ces enjeux, nous invitons à parcourir sous forme de courtes notices une série d’objets techniques (logiciels de création, machines, etc.), classés du plus standardisant au plus ouvert. Chacun de ces items comprend trois sous-parties : une description de son caractère standardisant, une critique des valeurs qu’il embarque, et des contre-emplois (antérieurs ou postérieurs) en art et en design.
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April 2019
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PublicationContexte
Introduction et coordination avec Yves Citton du dossier « Vilém Flusser : vivre dans les programmes », Multitudes, no 74.
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Encore mal connue, l’ampleur des travaux du chercheur Vilém Flusser est pourtant d’une grande importance pour appréhender la situation contemporaine d’un monde numérique risquant d’aboutir à une société automatisée. Analysant la notion de programme depuis des réflexions sur les mutations de la photographie et de l’écriture, Flusser montre, au contraire, comment les artistes pourraient œuvrer au développement d’un « techno-imaginaire » capable de donner du sens à nos « vies artificielles ».
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May 2021
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Contribution à l’ouvrage collectif Shaping the Digital Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities, dir. Virginia Kuhn et Anke Finger, éditions OpenBook.
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How do these publication practices of online PhD thesis, which are not yet widespread in the conduct of a thesis doctorate, modify the relationship between the direction and the writing of the thesis? How can they open up new research directions while taking into account current standards? What dissemination and communication opportunities do they provide? How do they change the way research is done?
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December 2022
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Texte pour un ouvrage d’hommage à Lysianne Léchot Hirt, Genève, MétisPresses.
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On doit à Lysianne Léchot Hirt d’avoir initié l’analyse des caractéristiques de la « recherche-création » en design dans le paysage franco-suisse à une époque, dès 2007, où celle-ci ne faisait guère l’objet de débats et de tentatives de modélisation qu’au Canada ou au Royaume-Uni. Financée sur 18 mois par le fonds stratégique (RCDAV) de la HES-SO, cette étude, intitulée « CreaSearch 1 Équipe de recherche HEAD – Genève et Ecal (Lausanne) : Magdalena Gerber, Lysianne Léchot Hirt, Florence Marguerat, Manon Mello, Laurent Soldini. », avait pour objectif « l’élaboration de méthodologies et de modèles pour une activité de recherche basée sur les processus de création en design et en art ». Réunies dans un un ouvrage-bilan publié en 2010 2 Lysianne Léchot Hirt (dir.), Recherche-création en design. Modèles pour une pratique expérimentale, Genève, MétisPresses, 2010. et reprenant dans son sous-titre l’idée des « sciences expérimentales » (où les résultats découlent d’une série d’expérimentations explicitée en amont et en aval), les conclusions de ce projet permettent d’éclairer un certain nombre de questions toujours pertinentes à plus de dix ans d’écart. S’attachant à partir de pratiques notamment développées dans les écoles d’art et de design en Suisse (HES) suite aux Accords de Bologne (1999) 3 Acté par le processus de Bologne en 1999, le lissage des cursus académiques à l’échelle européenne (LMD pour Licence, Master, Doctorat) a eu pour effet leur mise en concurrence à l’échelle internationale., Lysianne Léchot Hirt démontre que la recherche-création ne saurait se réduire au romantisme d’une création sans méthode, mais qu’il est possible, et souhaitable, d’en tracer une modélisation non normative pour exercer un jugement critique sur les projets se réclamant de cette appellation.
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Depuis le développement de l’informatique personnelle au tournant des années 1980, le design graphique a connu de profondes mutations au contact des technologies numériques et des pratiques afférentes. Quelles sont les grandes catégories et les enjeux de ce rapprochement ? À quels nouveaux défis pourraient être confrontés les designers graphiques ces dix prochaines années ?
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December 2018
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ConférenceContexte
Communication dans le cadre des journées d’étude « Objectivité et design graphique : l’interdisciplinarité entre art, image et science », dir. Anne-Lyse Renon et Catherine Allamel-Raffin, université de Strasbourg.
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Cette communication propose de resituer dans l’histoire de la cartographie topographique du 18e siècle l’émergence, au 19e siècle, de l’objectivité scientifique. Prolongée efficacement au 20e siècle dans la « sémiologie graphique » de Jacques Bertin, cette rationalité du visible influencera largement le champ de la visualisation de données. Cette prise de recul nous permettra d’analyser le récent domaine des Cultural Analytics, qui ambitionne de modéliser les productions culturelles humaines par l’analyse de grands jeux de données. Nous nous demanderons ainsi jusqu’où cette volonté de mathématisation du visible est-elle tenable.
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July 2019
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ConférenceContexte
Communication dans le cadre du colloque International Cartographic Conference (ICC), Chair T33, « Design and visual variables: Rethinking Jacques Bertin », dir. Anne-Lyse Renon, Tokyo
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Cette communication se donne pour objet d’étudier l’héritage de la Sémiologie Graphique de Jacques Bertin dans les visualisations de données contemporaines, et plus précisément dans le champ des Cultural Analytics de Lev Manovich.
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October 2019
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ConférenceContexte
Conférence au colloque international « L’art tout contre la machine », Paris, Collège des Bernardins
Résumé
L’histoire du design est traversée de tensions entre l’économie de marché et la recherche de dimensions échappant à la rentabilité et à l’utilité. Deux voies possibles s’ouvrent au designer : ignorer les mutations techniques et se laisser conduire par elles, ou y prendre part et avérer ces « poussées techniques » (Pierre-Damien Huyghe) dans des directions qui lui sembleront soutenables. Comment penser un rapport à la machine qui ne soit pas seulement de l’ordre du « par » ou du « contre », mais qui invite à « avec » ?
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Date
December 2019
Type
ConférenceContexte
Communication au colloque « Le Mystère de la culture », Paris, Ensad.
Résumé
Sous couvert de rationalité, le code informatique recouvre des valeurs voire des idéologies par des couches d’abstraction chaque jour plus complexes à déplier. Si l’on entend sous le nom de culture une part de mystère, d’inexplicable pour la raison humaine, en quoi la rationalité énigmatique du code pourrait-elle menacer la possibilité même de faire culture ? Comment faire pour que l’opacité du code ne se transforme pas en gnose, en entité fermée à toute extériorité – soit donc tout le contraire d’une culture ?
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January 2023
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ConférenceContexte
Conférence donnée dans le cadre du cycle de conférences sur le design dirigé par Catherine Chomarat-Ruiz, session « Contribution du design et des technologies numériques pour la recherche sur le patrimoine scientifique » à l’initiative de Anne-Lyse Renon, Paris, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
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Le projet DESIGNSHS, financé par l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche (2021-2025), réalise la première étude d’envergure portant sur les relations entre design graphique et recherche en sciences humaines et sociales, des années 1950 à nos jours. Le Laboratoire de graphique de Jacques Bertin a été un acteur historique majeur de ce mouvement au croisement de l’innovation graphique numérique et des sciences humaines et sociales, en France notamment dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle. Nous présenterons les enjeux méthodologiques et scientifiques du projet et la manière dont le design et les humanités numériques y répondent. Nous explorerons aussi les rayonnements de ce projet tant sur le plan historique qu’épistémologique.
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December 2019
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Version enriched with a chapter of the essay Design and digital humanities (2017), translation from French by Jesse Cohn], Berlin, Interface Critique, dir. Florian Hadler, Daniel Irrgang, Alice Soiné, no 2, “Navigating the Human”
Résumé
Télécharger l’article en PDF Voir l’article [En ligne « Human, All Too Human is the monument to a crisis. It calls itself a book for free spirits: almost every sentence is the manifestation of a victory – I used it to liberate myself from things that did not belong to my nature. Idealism is one of them: the title says “where you see ideal things, I see – human, oh, only all too human!”… I know people better. The term “free spirit” does not want to be understood in any other way: a spirit that has become free, that has taken hold of itself again. — Friedrich Nietzsche 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo [1888], in: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (Cambridge, England 2005), pp. 115–116. In this seemingly autobiographical fragment, Nietzsche refers back to his book Human, All Too Human [1876-1878]. In current discussions of “interface design,” catchphrases such as “user-centered design,” “the user experience,” and by extension, “experience design” might not, at first glance, seem to draw scrutiny. After all, isn’t the purpose of design to create ‘useful’ things based on the users’ needs, ‘centered’ on them and on the improvement of their ‘experience’? However, if one looks at these concepts more closely, one might wonder what these methods engage as conceptions of design, and more broadly as an understanding of human relations and human-machine relations. Indeed, it is not unproblematic to presuppose that “we” are users first and foremost, i.e. beings solely concerned with relations of utility. What are we to think, then, of terms such as “user-centered design (UCD) 2 Shawn Lawton Henry, Justin Thorp, Notes on User Centered Design Process (UCD). W3C.org (March 2004), http://www.w3.org/WAI/redesign/ucd, access: July, 1, 10:00pm., ” “human-centered design (HCD) 3 Human-Centered Design Toolkit. Ideo (2009), http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit, access: July, 1, 10:00pm.,” “activity-centered design (ACD)4 See Geraldine Gay, Helene Hembrooke, Activity-Centered Design. An Ecological Approach to Designing Smart Tools and Usable Systems (Cambridge, MA 2004).,” or “people-centered design (PCD)5 Hugh Graham, People-Centered Design. hughgrahamcreative.com, http://hughgrahamcreative.com/people-centered-design, access: July, 1, 10:00pm.”? Why must design be “centered” on something? More broadly, aren’t there some aspects of human life that can’t be replaced by the “experiences” generated by “user-centered” design? In order to critique the engineering of design and the reduction of the designer’s task to normative and even quantitative methodologies, I propose, as a research method, to bring together an historical study of the concepts to be questioned with technical analyses and the related discourses surrounding them. More precisely, I could synthesize this text’s research method in the following way 6 Here, I borrow the useful summary provided by Alexandre Saint-Jevin in his review of the essay Design et humanités numérique s: Alexandre Saint-Jevin, Sur la trace de l’humain dans les « objets » de design. Non-Fiction (2018),: 1 . To analyze the concept determining the process by which design issues were constructed in order to draw out the underlying philosophical concepts. 2 . To retrace the genealogy of this concept, connecting the technical reality of the products of design with the discourses of all entities being at the origin of the project (originators, designers, contractors, communicators, marketers, etc.) regarding these products. 3 . To synthesize the history and the discourses of these entities concerning matters of design more broadly in order to draw out the philosophical issues entailed in them. 4 . To connect the philosophical issues revealed by the analysis of the discourses of the entities with those of the original concept to show how these come to condition and determine the technical reality. This is thus not a matter of constructing a model of design activity in the form of logical sequences (diagrams, schemata, timelines, etc): rather than trying to tell designers what they should do, this analysis is intended to provide them with critical tools allowing them to analyze, in their own process, what they have already made or are still working on. In order to open up possibilities for making interfaces other than the behavioral scripts of experiential design, I will begin my analysis by turning back to the history of the first graphic interfaces. How do the values embedded within these technological strata infuse and even limit our relations to technology? Xerox Star’s “conceptual model of the user” The expression “user interface” correlates temporally with the development of microcomputers at the end of the 1960s. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart presented the result of the research undertaken at Xerox PARC at the time of an event retrospectively called the “mother of all demos”, where were first showcased videoconferencing, teleconferencing, email, the hypertext navigation system, and the interface modeled on the “office metaphor” based on “windows,” “folders,” the “trash,” etc. Partially realized in the 1973 Xerox Alto 7 Only 1500 units were produced: 1000 for employees of Xerox and the remainder for universities and public institutions. computer, this first form of graphic user interface (GUI) was included in the 1981 Xerox Star. Moreover, the latter was accompanied by network access, email capabilities, a mouse, and a WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) printing system precise enough to make what is seen on the screen coincide with a paper output. In order to specify the origin of the conceptual model used as a basis for a design explicitly asserting needs of “users,” it is important to reconsider the founding principles of the Xerox Star. In an article dating from 1982, five former employees of Xerox Corporation explain their comprehension of the human-machine relations, and more precisely their methodology of interface design: “We have learned from Star the importance of formulating the fundamental concepts (the user’s conceptual model) before software is written, rather than tacking on a user interface afterward. […] It was designed before the functionality of the system was fully decided. It was even designed before the computer hardware was built. We worked for two years before we wrote a single line of actual product software.” 8 David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank, and Eric Harslem, Designing the Star User Interface. Byte 4 (1982), p. 246. Reprinted online: Contemporary readers, used to design being relegated to the end of a process, dependent on a multitude of external parameters, will certainly wonder at the attribution of such importance to design “before” the material specifications are even formulated. In the case of the Star, it was much more a question of introducing the market to “radically new concepts”9 Ibid.p. 242. than of seeking to apply an “order” issued from above. By dedicating a quantity of memory to the screen display, the originators of the Star were able to create a visual interface functioning in tandem with the mouse (also used on Xerox Alto), defined in the 1982 text as “a way to quickly point to items on the screen 10 Ibid. p. 246.” more effective than the cursors activated by the keyboard. It is particularly interesting to study how the Xerox teams developed a project methodology linked to what is today called “user-centered design.” The development of an interface poses many problems indeed: taking into account the variety of languages in which the users address their commands to the computer, the design of on-screen representations displaying the state of the system to the user, and other abstract problems that can affect the understanding of the system’s behavior. According to the Star teams, these problems are highly subjective, and can be solved only on a case-by-case basis. The method employed thus consisted in focusing on what should precede any design of a successful interface, namely “task analysis”: ” The current task description, with its breakdown of the information objects and methods presently employed, offers a starting point for the definition of a corresponding set of objects and methods to be provided by the computer system [including programs and peripherals]. The idea behind this phase of design is to build up a new task environment for the user, in which he can work to accomplish the same goals as before, surrounded now by a different set of objects, and employing new methods.11 Ibid.p. 248. “ For Xerox, the user is an entity centrally dedicated to carrying out tasks in order to achieve objectives. One finds here the common definition of an algorithm, namely, a set of instructions intended to accomplish a given action. In other words, isn’t this understanding of what a user is derived from the “program” (an algorithm written in machine language) as a model of thought? Isn’t it odd that, in order to improve human-machine relations, human beings are to be imagined on the model of the machines? In this sense, what one would call a “user” in the data-processing context would often be merely a logical reduction of human subjectivity, consequently able to hold a dialogue with “extra-human” programs 12 I borrow this expression from the exhibition Haunted By Algorithms, a research project directed by Jeff Guess and Gwenola Wagon, Paris, ENSAPC / YGREC, January 21, 2017 – March 5, 2017.. Just as some see design as a discipline capable of becoming a science 13 See Anthony Masure, Pour une recherche en design sans modèle, in: Design et humanités numériques, ed. Anthony Masure (Paris 2, here it is a matter of constructing “models of behavior” in order to improve the effectiveness of the “tasks.” The etymology of the French noun “tâche” (“task”) can be traced back to the Latin verb “taxare” (“to tax»), indicating “a determinate work that one is obliged to perform, together with a concept of ‘remuneration’ [or] moral duty 14 Alain Rey (dir.), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris, Le Robert, 2010. p. 9620–9621.”. The French verb “tâcher” (“to try to do”), in turn, expresses the idea of striving, sometimes accompanied by the idea of a degree of painful exertion in order to comply with the imperative to “try to do” something. If the user is a being whose objectives, to be realized, necessarily pass by a series of tasks to achieve, wouldn’t this make us “tâcherons” (“drudges”), i.e. “person[s] performing work on command [emphasis by the author/s] without much intelligence”? 15 Ibid.p. 248–249. In the case of the Xerox Star, nevertheless, things are more complicated. The fact of starting from a “user-model” comprised of a small set of design principles makes it possible to ensure an overall coherence, since “the user experience [acquired in] in one area… [can] apply in others 16 David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank, and Eric Harslem, Designing the Star User Interface. Byte 4 (1982), p. 242: “The Star user interface adheres rigorously to a small set of design principles. These principles make the system seem familiar and friendly, simplify the human-machine interaction, […] and allow user experience in one area to apply in others.” Emphasis mine.,” thus reducing the cognitive load involved in the use of the computer system. Another aspect discussed in the article – connected with the concept of coherence – pertains to the concept of “familiarity” (the “Familiar User’s Conceptual Model”): “A user’s conceptual model is the set of concepts a person gradually acquires to explain the behavior of a system […] The first task for a system designer is to decide what model is preferable for users […]. This extremely important step is often neglected or done poorly. The [Xerox] Star designers devoted several work-years […] [to] evolving […] an appropriate model for an office information system: the metaphor of a physical office.”17 Ibid.p. 252. The Xerox Star interface was thus constructed on the basis of the users’ current universe, namely, the hierarchical model of the office. It was important to produce a “familiar” interface in order to reduce sources of friction, making the “user experience” seamless. Thus, users find in the machine their customary division, organization, and management of tasks. For example, the pile of paper messages on the physical desk of office-worker users is translated, in their computer, into a pictogram of an envelope indicating when a new email has been received. It is interesting to specify that the metaphorical model defined in advance of the actual development of the program de facto modifies the functions of this program: the design is not approached as a matter of mere presentation. Taking the example of the emails once again, typing a “send mail” command can thus be avoided by manipulating the icons. A last important aspect of the Star interface pertains to the personalization of the interface, as the movable icons make it possible to configure the work environment. Summarizing the overall principles of the Xerox Star, what is indicated here by the term “user” is in fact a succession of goal-directed “tasks” from which the designers construct a “conceptual model” as a basis for the developing of the computer system and ensuring its metaphorical coherence. By providing users with a “familiar” and “friendly” environment, the interface thus developed is intended to increase their productivity by developing “human-machine synergism.” However, the Xerox Star’s “friendly” interface reveals its limitations in certain functions where the office metaphor is inoperative: “One of the raisons d’être for Star is that physical objects do not provide people with enough power to manage the increasing complexity of the “information age.” For example, we can take advantage of the computer’s ability to search rapidly by providing a search function for its electronic file drawers, thus helping to solve the long-standing problem of lost files.” 18 Ibid.p. 282. The 1982 article concludes on an intriguing note, observing that it is difficult to choose between several models of interfaces while relying on stable (scientific) criteria: “User-interface design is still an art, not a science.” 19 Ibid. : « User-interface design is still an art, not a science. » Although the Xerox Star text ultimately pleads for the establishment of a “more rigorous process” for the development of interfaces, such an assertion must elicit the contemporary reader’s curiosity. The emergence of “rationalized” graphic operating systems In spite of the commercial failure of Xerox Star, these design methods will be a success, definitively changing our relations with electronic machines. A precursor of the research conducted to Xerox PARC, Jef Raskin’s thesis in computer science, Quick-Draw Graphic System, published in 1967 (i.e., 6 years before the Xerox Alto 20 At the beginning of the Seventies, the IBM Usability lab was solely concerned with ergonomics. The Psychology of Computer Programming was published by Gerald Marvin Weinberg in 1971, and the work of Stuart K. Card, Allen Newell and Thomas P. Moran was only made known to the general public after the publication of The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction in 1983.), argued for a data-processing environment in which the graphic interface would hold a dominant place. Such an idea was not at all self-evident at the end of the 1960s: “The most heretical statement I made […] was that my work was based on a “design and implementation philosophy which demanded generality and human usability over execution speed and efficiency.” This at a time when the main aim of computer science courses was to teach you to make programs run fast and use as little memory as possible.” 21 Dr. Bob, Articles from Jef Raskin about the history of the Macintosh. Dr Bob Tech Blog (2013), https://drbobtechblog.com/articles-from-jef-raskin-about-the-history-of-the-macintosh/, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. After contacts with Xerox concerning the development of the mouse, Jef Raskin was hired by Apple in 1978. It is under his impetus and that of Bill Atkinson 22 The title of Jef Raskin’s thesis (A Hardware-Independent Computer Drawing System Using List-Structured Modeling: The Quick-Draw Graphics System, Pennsylvania State University, 1967) was echoed when Bill Atkinson named the Macintosh’s graphics package. that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak took note of the research conducted by Xerox PARC on graphic interfaces. Everyone of us knows the rest of the story. In 1979, the CEO of Apple Inc., Steve Jobs, age 24, visited the Xerox facility. In a 1995 documentary, he recalls the shock which this event constituted for him: “They [Xerox] showed me […] three things. […]. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming […]. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system [of a hundred computers] […]. I didn’t even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing […] which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete […] [But, at the time,] within […] ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.” 23 Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. Documentation. PBS.org (1996), http://www.pbs.org/nerds, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. Following this presentation, obtained in exchange for shares in Apple Inc., Steve Jobs launched the Apple LISA micro-computer, which took the principles of the mouse and the graphic interface from Xerox Star, in 1982. With a price that was too high ($10,000 at the time, or $24,000 today), the LISA was replaced by the much more financially accessible Macintosh, released in 1984. While many still think that Steve Jobs did little more than “steal” the key principles of the Xerox Alto, the history is more complicated than that. The leaders of Xerox had not yet recognized the decisive consequences of what they had discovered, leaving their prospective vision in the hands of the sales and marketing teams, which were focused on photocopiers, the core of the brand, and not on the new market for computers 24 For a detailed history of the Xerox company, see: Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (New York 1988).. Bill Atkinson would have to rewrite and improve the quantity of functions in order for the LISA, and then the Macintosh, to take advantage of a “superior” graphic interface (with the addition of scrolling menus, the opening of windows with a double-click, the trash icon, etc). No line of code was “copied and pasted,” strictly speaking 25 Christoph Dernbach, Did Steve Jobs steal everything from Xerox PARC? Mac History (February 2012), http://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2012-03-22/apple-and-xerox-parc, access: July, 1, 10:00pm.. In order to bolster the supply of software for Apple machines, at the beginning of the 1980s, Steve Jobs invited Microsoft to publish programs for the Macintosh. In spite of Jobs’ request to Bill Gates (then CEO of Microsoft) not to use a mouse-controlled graphic interface before the Macintosh (1984) had been on sale for a year, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing the operating system Windows 1.0 in 1983 26 Windows 1.0 was not yet a complete operating system, but rather a “graphic shell” that could be used by third-party software. , although it would only make its official debut in 1985. When Jobs, furious, accused Bill Gates of having betrayed him, Gates replied that they had both stolen from their “rich neighbor, Xerox.”27 Andy Hertzfeld, A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox. Folklore.org (November 1983), https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. See also : Andy Hertzfeld, How the Mac was born, and other tales. Conversation with Scott Ard. CNET (January 2005), http://news.cnet.com/How-the-Mac-was-born%2C-and-other-tales/2100-1082_3-5529081.html, access: July, 1, 10:00pm.. The suit brought against Microsoft by Apple in 1988 was unsuccessful in the courts. Don Norman: the limits of the “user experience” After the release of Microsoft Windows, the design methods used in interface design were structured around scientific disciplines connected with this field. In addition to the expressions “human usability” and “user interface,” that of “user experience” (often shortened to “UX”) then achieved a notable success. The latter seems to appear for the first time in 1986 28 For a detailed chronology of the history of this term, see: Peter Merholz, Whither “User Experience”? Peterme.com (November 1998), http://www.peterme.com/index112498.html, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. in a book co-edited with Donald Norman (a cognitive science researcher), titled User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction 29 Donald A. Norman and Stephen W. Draper, User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (San Diego 1986).. After a consideration of the impossibility of arriving at a univocal meaning by means of standardized images (pictograms), this quotation follows: “Direct Engagement occurs when a user experiences direct interaction with the objects in a domain. Here, there is a feeling of involvement directly with a world of objects rather than of communicating with an intermediary. The interactions are much like interacting with objects in the physical world. […] [T]he interface and the computer become invisible. Although we believe this feeling of direct engagement to be of critical importance […] we know little about the actual requirements for producing it.”30 Edwin L. Hutchins, James D. Hollan, and Donald A. Norman, Direct Manipulation Interfaces, in: User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction, ed. Donald A. Norman and Stephen W. Draper (San Diego 1986), pp. 114-115. “User experience” can thus be understood as a will to export the Xerox Star design model to fields other than that of screen interfaces and computers which can disappear, becoming “invisible.” Frequently cited as the originator of this expression, Don Norman defined it as follows in 1998: “I invented the term [user experience] because I thought Human Interface and usability 31 The concept of “usability” that Don Norman judges insufficient, was addressed by its proponents, Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell, in these terms: “when a product or service is truly usable, the user can do what he or she wants to do the way he or she expects to be able to do it, without hindrance, hesitation, or questions.” Source: Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell, Handbook of Usability Testing. Second Edition. How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests (Indianapolis 2008 [1994]), p. 4. were too narrow: I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.” 32 Don Norman, quoted in: Peter Merholz, Whither ‘User Experience’? This broader aspect of “user experience” was then refined in the “canonical” version formulated by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman: “User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer […]. We should also distinguish UX and usability: According to the definition of usability, it is a quality attribute of the UI, covering whether the system is easy to learn, efficient to use, pleasant, and so forth. Again, this is very important, and again total user experience is an even broader concept.” 33 Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, The Definition of User Experience. Nielsen Norman Group, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. “Experience design” and the myth of “invisible” data processing This interest, from then on focusing on the user rather than the technological apparatus (the interface), is even more explicit in the phrase “user-centered design” (“UCD”), which consists in basing the whole methodology of design on the central point that is the user. This design methodology enjoyed considerable success, perhaps because of the bond it helped establish between the marketing services tasked with studying consumers and the teams tasked with designing the products. However, by the admission of its own proponent, Don Norman, the term “user” has shown its limitations. In a 2006 article titled “Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users,” Don Norman admitted: “We depersonalize the people we study by calling them “users.” Both terms are derogatory. They take us away from our primary mission: to help people. […] People are rich, complex beings. […] A label such as customer, consumer or user ignores [their] […] social structures. […] It is time to wipe words such as consumer, customer, and user from our vocabulary. Time to speak of people. Power to the people.”34 Don Norman, Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users. jnd.org (2008), http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/words_matter_talk_a.html, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. In the same way, in 2008: “One of the horrible words we use is “users.” I am on a crusade to get rid of the word “users.” I would prefer to call them “people.” […] We design for people, we don’t design for users.” 35 Don Norman at UX Week 2008, Adaptive Path. YouTube, https://youtu.be/WgJcUHC3qJ8, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. Let us summarize these points. The methodology of “user-centered design” consists in designing so as to treat each human being as a user, as a person dedicated to maintaining with companies only relations “centered” on his or her “exact needs,”36 Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, The Definition of User Experience. Nielsen Norman Group, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. concerning which there should be no “hindrance[s], hesitation[s], or questions.”37 Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell, Handbook of Usability Testing. How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests (New York 2008), p. 4. This current of thought results from a scientific modeling of the principles that governed the design of the Xerox Star in order to make it a “personal” machine, optimizing the tasks to be performed by the user. Retrospectively, the performative texts of Don Norman speaking in praise of the study of “needs,” by the admission of their author, led to a dead end, because the human being cannot be reduced to a specific role 38 This idea was inscribed within the ISO standards, which propose replacing the expression “user-centered experience” with “human-centred design.” See: ISO 9241-210: 2010. Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. Iso.org (March 2010), https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/en/#iso:std:iso:9241:-210:ed-1:v1:en, access: July, 1, 10:00pm.. Such a reversal of thought might be amusing. However, on closer inspection, wouldn’t one also have to interpret these contradictory injunctions as the sign of a power belonging not to the “people,” but to those who make these speeches? In other words, isn’t this an indictment of those who are constantly getting richer (in the banal sense of the term) by controlling the circulation of the design methodologies that are to be gotten rid of by this “crusade”? More than a plea in favor of taking complexity into account in design, this “appeal to the human,” for Don Norman, provides a rationale for gradually eliminating “interfaces” in the name of an “invisible” computing 39 Donald A. Norman, The Invisible Computer. Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution (Cambridge MA, 1998)., the products of which would be “human-centered.”40 Chapter 2 of The Invisible Computer is titled “Growing up: Moving from technology-centered to human-centered products.” This prediction of invisibility, passing under the guise of a change in vocabulary, a priori innocent, was so absorbed so thoroughly by the corporations that in 2012, Apple made it into a selling point: “We believe technology is at its very best when it’s invisible, when you’re conscious only of what you’re doing, not the device you’re doing it with. An iPad is the perfect expression of that idea. It’s just this magical pane of glass. It can become anything you want it to be […] It’s a more personal experience with technology than people have ever had.” 41 Official Apple (New) iPad Trailer. YouTube (March 2012), https://youtu.be/RQieoqCLWDo , access: July, 1, 10:00pm. However, Don Norman’s big picture does not mean that his idea of “invisible” computing is viable. The important term here is “experience,” which goes hand in hand with that of “magic.” What could be more magical, indeed, than experiencing an “invisible” technology? The artist Olia Lialina, in a critical article on the study of the concept of user, does not join in the chorus: “This is why Interface Design starts to rename itself to Experience Design — whose primary goal is to make users forget that computers and interfaces exist. With Experience Design there is only you and your emotions to feel, goals to achieve, tasks to complete. ” 42 Olia Lialina, Turing Complete User (2012), http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. A world without experience In the conclusion of her article studying the limitations of an exclusion of the term user of the methods of interface design, Olia Lialina proposes to return to foundations predating the Xerox Star, namely those developed by the computer scientist Ted Nelson in his 1974 work Computer Lib/Dream Machine: “COMPUTING HAS ALWAYS BEEN PERSONAL. By this I mean that if you weren’t intensely involved in it, sometimes with every fiber in your mind atwitch, you weren’t doing computers, you were just a user. If you get involved, it involves all of you: your heart and mind and way of doing things and your image of yourself. A whole way of life.” 43 Theodor Holm Nelson, Computer Lib. You can and must understand computers now (self-published, revised edition 1987 [1974]), p. 3. The argument is strong. Nelson’s denunciation of a “naïve” use points to the risk of a loss of contact with the computer, which, from Xerox Star to the iPad, presupposes that everything “real” (real life, creativity, etc) is external to the machine. However, in spite of the ascendancy of tactile interfaces (without mouses), in spite of the emergence of gestural interfaces (without buttons) and sound interfaces (without screens), and in spite of the return of command-line interfaces (without icons), it is clear that the great principles of the graphic interfaces created at Xerox PARC at the beginning of the 1970s are still the main ones governing our relations with electronic machines – which are not yet “invisible,” far from it. Take, for example, the “Apple Human Interface Guidelines” 44 See for example: “Designing for Yosemite: […] A great OS X app integrates seamlessly into this environment, while at the same time providing custom functionality and a unique user experience.” Human Interface Guidelines, developer.apple.com, https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. and Google’s “Material Design,” 45 Google Material Design, material.io (first version published June 2014), https://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. which, in the 2010s, are the recommended readings – with the proviso of reading critically – for anyone interested in interface design. In spite of its widespread acceptance, the cognitive model of an interface coupled with an idealized user (understood as a bundle of habits) has its limitations. Since Jef Raskin’s 1967 text associating “human usability” with efficient task completion 46 See Jef Raskin, A Hardware-Independent Computer Using List-Structured Modeling: The Quick-Draw Graphics System (Pennsylvania, 1967)., the will to create a graphic interface to procure for the “user” a new work environment and new methods “to accomplish the same goals as before” 47 David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank, and Eric Harslem, Designing the Star User Interface, p. 248. has consisted in envisaging electronic media as “problem solvers” rather than as powers of transformation and invention. However, as the humanities specialist Yves Citton perceptively notes: “The invention of communication technologies […] takes place within a vast nebula of hopes, anxieties, dreams, tinkerings, parallel knowledges, subversive appropriations and reappropriations, crossing many traditional disciplinary fields […]. Indeed, our media cannot be reduced to mere instruments for the transmission of forms and contents: it functions, first and foremost, in just the same way as the mediums who fascinate us, delude us, hypnotize us and stimulate us via simulations that penetrate our senses.” 48 Yves Citton, Gestes d’humanités. Anthropologie sauvage de nos expériences esthétiques (Paris, 2012), pp. 21–22. Taking into consideration these foundational design texts of the computer age, it is obvious that electronic machines raise questions that did not exist before. But perhaps it is precisely against these innovations that methodologies of design were themselves designed with an eye to preserving the powers and knowledges already in place. In spite of its undeniably advanced technology, the Xerox Star did not have the full support of the corporate leaders, who preferred to focus on the photocopier business, more in phase with the “uses” of the time. In this history of “user-centered design,” an expression originating after the Xerox Star, it is indeed a matter of a concern about forgetting the “useful,” the utility of the object. But is this really possible in a world in which marketing services, for example, constantly seek to anticipate consumers’ “needs ” by statistical processes linked to observation protocols? Another factor suggesting a design constructing against technological innovations – i.e., for habits – is this history of the “center,” a term which should now be examined. This twofold suffix coupled with design could have been the subject of variations. Why does one never speak, for example, of “form-centered” design, for example, or of “practice-centered” design? Perhaps is this because these two concepts (there could be others) resist the idea of a “center,” of delimitation. If one considers the concept of form, it is notable that this, historically, was related to design – according to the formula of the architect Louis Sullivan, according to which “form ever follows function.” As a canny observer of a history that sometimes “tramples” (in which the issues are sometimes obscured, sometimes rediscovered), the philosopher Pierre-Damien Huyghe notes that the concept of form expresses the “artistic interest” of design: “It was not only a question of creating potentially functional objects. The concern for making form is absolutely essential to the design. We may note here that the Latin forma can be translated as “beauty.””49 Pierre-Damien Huyghe, On appelle beaucoup trop de choses ‘design’. Interview with Julie Delem. Naja21 (April 2015), http://www.naja21.com/fr/espace-journal/pierre-damien-huyghe-on-appelle-beaucoup-trop-de-choses-design, access: July, 1, 10:00pm. In a more general way, design, in so far as it encompasses the capacity to transform the world, cannot “center” on anything. Design is only of any interest if it is derived from tensions, polarities, contradictions – in other words, the opposite of a center. Olia Lialina, in the conclusion of her article, also refuses to let herself be reduced to a label: “We, general purpose users — not hackers and not people — who are challenging, consciously or subconsciously, what we can do and what computers can do, are the ultimate participants of man-computer symbiosis.” 50 Olia Lialina, Turing Complete User. One must then reconsider the fact that the conceptual model of the 1981 Xerox Star interface was decided “before” the material (hardware) existed, “two years before we wrote a single line of actual product software.” 51 David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank, and Eric Harslem, Designing the Star User Interface, p. 246. Retrospectively, this account can be understood as that of a missed encounter with the otherness of the machines, since it is, in effect, a matter of subordinating the digital technology (hardware and software) to a “model,” i.e., to something anticipated and stabilized. This progressive distancing of the concept of the “General Purpose User” 52 Olia Lialina, Turing Complete User.op. cit (active and polyvalent) has made possible the expressions “human-centered design” and “experience design”, which incarnate the promise of a world in which one could “do whatever one wishes,” immediately, as if by “magic.” But which kind of “doing” are we talking about when invisibility becomes the ideal for the machines? This myth of the invisibility of technological innovations in fact already existed in a nascent form at the dawn of personal computing. In a 1979 commercial for the Xerox Alto intended to demonstrate the power of the “office of the future,” an office worker (Bill) arrives at work and greets his colleagues, coffee in hand. When he arrives at his station, he turns on his Alto computer and addresses it verbally: “Hello, Fred.” The computer answers him: “Hello, Bill.” After a series of tasks, easily solved by the machine, comes the final dialogue: Bill (tired): “Anything else?” Fred: A richly detailed bouquet of daisies spreads across the screen. Bill (puzzled): “Flowers? What flowers?” Fred: “Your anniversary is tonight.” Bill (chagrined): “My anniversary. I forgot.” Fred: “It’s okay. We’re only human.” 53 Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future, (Indiana, 1999), p. 20. What such initiatives describe, paradoxically, is a world without experience [un monde sans expérience] 54 The French word expérience can mean “experience” or “experiment.” (Translator’s note.), in the sense in which experience/experimentation can take place only within a field of possibilities open to uncertainty: Economic power is what the socialization of experiences implements. However, if this implementation augments shared experience and perception day by day, it does not appear authentically. Most often, it borrows the forms of habit, it slips mimetically into experience. 55 Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Faire place, in: Qu’est-ce que l’art domestique ?, ed. Richard Conte and Sandrine Morsillo (Paris, 2006), p. 29. Symptomatic of an era when “apparatuses” 56 The apparatus is defined by Pierre-Damien Huyghe as “a technological method distinct from the tool and the machine [which produces] within us a power of perception, a particular form of sensibility.” See: Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Introduction au dossier “Temps et appareils”. Plastik 3 (2003), p. 4. are no longer objects worthy of interest, human-machine relations are increasingly marked (branded) by the registers of utility, output, or time-saving. The human experience of “experience design” is often reduced to an experimental situation, that of a rat seeking the way out of a labyrinth. Even if it is “friendly” or “invisible,” this technological medium is no less a straightjacket, a controlled situation in which any exchange is anticipated and preprogrammed. When we are mirrored in the form of the “human, all too human” computer, we “ordinary people” are the ones who stand to lose sight of our complex and infinite possibilities.
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Date
December 2019
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PublicationContexte
Article publié dans la revue Cités, Paris, Puf, no 80, dossier « L’intelligence artificielle : enjeux éthiques et politiques » dirigé par Vanessa Nurock.
Résumé
Le regain d’intérêt pour l’intelligence artificielle (IA) des années 2010 engendre des programmes « auto-apprenants », ceux des techniques du deep learning, dont les logiques de fonctionnement sont structurellement inintelligibles (principe de la « boîte noire »). Ces IA investissent progressivement les capacités d’invention et d’imagination, et tendent donc à se substituer aux tâches communément attribuées aux designers. Le risque est alors que le design ne devienne qu’une puissance de production de marchandises et de motifs automatisés. Face au formatage des expériences humaines dans ce qu’elles ont de plus singulier, quelles marges de manœuvre peut-on inventer ? Des contre-pouvoirs sont-ils encore envisageables ?
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Date
November 2018
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Article publié dans la revue de recherche Sciences du Design, Paris, Puf, no 8, novembre 2018, p. 67-78
Résumé
Selon le philosophe Jacques Derrida, la distinction métaphysique entre l’écriture et la parole (logos) entraîne une dépréciation de l’écriture et interroge par extension la prétention d’une « pure » pensée à exister séparément de sa représentation graphique. Nous proposons de mettre en résonance l’analyse de ce « logocentrisme » avec le champ des publications numériques de recherche, où la forme demeure majoritairement impensée. En montrant au travers de l’étude de deux publications en ligne (GAM3R 7H30RY et Haunted by Algorithms) comment certaines pratiques de design graphique permettent de dépasser l’opposition forme/contenu, nous soutenons que la prise en compte de la dimension esthétique de l’écriture peut contribuer à dérouter et à renouveler les pratiques de recherche communément installées.
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Date
March 2019
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« Overall Technology », introduction de section coécrite avec Océane Ragoucy, dans : Catherine Geel, Clément Gaillard (dir.), Extended French Theory & The Design Field… On Nature and Ecology: A Reader, Paris, T&P Work UNiT
Résumé
Book published on the occasion of reflections adapted within the framework of the French Section, From thought to the visible. Design as large ring, XXIIth Milan Triennale, Broken Nature, March 1 st to March 1 st sup > september 2019. In the common vision of things, ecology, understood as the management of natural resources, is de facto opposed to technique: it is assumed that modernist logic has pushed technological progress to a crisis point where that progress would collapse under the finite nature of its growth. Technique as know-how or the capacity to change one’s environment is understood here, then, in its contemporary sense of “technology”: a series of technical articulations (logos) embodied in consumable artefacts. Now, the texts that follow show that ecology is multiple, just as technique should be. This plurality of life environments, a concern at the heart of the fields of art and design, dovetails with some incisive texts by the philosopher Félix Guattari. His notion of “ecosophy” (global ecology) also encourages us not to think about ecology separately from aesthetics: « To bring into being other worlds beyond those of purely abstract information, to engender Universes of reference and existential Territories where singularity and finitude are taken into consideration […] to confront the vertiginous Cosmos so as to make it inhabitable; these are the tangled paths of the tri-ecological vision [of environments, social relations and subjectivities]. 1 Félix Guattari, The three ecologies, (Paris, Galilée, 1989), 70.. » Today, gaining a clearer idea of the relations between ecology and technique implies taking a look at texts written from the 1970s onwards in the context of the Cold War and the effective development of so-called “personal” computing. The philosophy of technique, or technics, which already had a rich history, had been enjoying a tremendous period of international growth for some forty years. Because it is articulated with aesthetic and ecological issues, in France this field has been echoed in some singular ways. That is what this selection of texts sets out to explore. There is one domain, the archaeology of media, which offers a powerful counterweight to the sometimes-frightening promises of effectiveness made by these digital technologies. It does so by jolting together heterogeneous technical layers, whether of history, hardware, or software. A precursor of this field is the nomadic philosopher Vilém Flusser, whose essay Vampyroteuthis infernalis 2 Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis infernalis [1981-1987], trans. C. Lucchese, (Bruxelles: Zones sensibles, 2015). sets out a bestiary derived from squids and octopuses implicitly revealing the unthought implications of the proliferation of electronic information machines. Taking different approaches, the philosophers of French Theory and their contemporary heirs (Bernard Stiegler, Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, Madeleine Akrich, etc.) have engaged acutely with the profound consequences of technological mutations. Inspired by the idea of thinking about technique beyond human actors and/or its subservience to principle of efficacy, these authors – although they do not necessarily invoke this notion – interrogate an overly limited understanding of ecology. While they are not (all) contemporaries of the massification of the use of digital technologies, the fact that these writings are still widely studied bears witness to an obvious fact: in research, there are times when notions of novelty and progress simply do not apply. In This Progress, a participative performance (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2016) 3 This Progress* ( Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2006) is replayed at the Palais de Tokyo, (Paris, October 12, 2016 – December 18, 2016): “Carte blanche to Tino Sehgal”, curated by Rebecca Lamarche Vadel., the German-British artist Tino Sehgal shakes up the notion of progress by activating its dimensions: personal, shared and trans-generational. One visitor’s account relates this surprising experience based on the human voice, bodily movement and social interaction: “As we moved forward alone into a big empty space, a twelve year-old child came up to us and suddenly asked, ‘What is progress?’” Let us recall elements of the historical context: the emergence of mass-market computers was to a major extent based on a cognitivist understanding of the cybernetic model. 4 For a broader understanding of cybernetics, see: Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics and society. The human use of human beings [1954], trans. P.-Y. Mistoulon, (Paris: Point, 2014).. This paradigm of understanding, which still informs to a large extent the interfaces of the digital apparatus (dispositifs) 5 Giorgio Agamben, Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif ? [2006], trans. M. Rueff, (Paris: Payot & Rivages, 2007). » that we use every day, developed, economically, in a hidden way – covered by waves of objects renewed at a quick rate and installed among us without negotiation and unprepared by any civic reflection. In other words: we lack perspective for understanding what the digital media are doing to us, doing with us, or doing against us. The artists’ collective RYBN undermines the idea of progress and technological neutrality. By hybridising computer rationality with modes of thought based on mythology or belief, the esoteric forms of their work betray the “haunted” character of electronic machines. Their Data Ghost project 6 RYBN, Data Ghost 1, installation presented at the “Media Mediums” exhibition, curated by Jeff Guess and Gwenola Wagon, Paris, Ygrec, (April 4-May 31, 2014) (galerie Ygrec, Paris, 2014) tirelessly scans the background noises of digital data flows and detects “phantom” messages there. The internet then becomes the echo chamber of retro-inter-active ghostsspectres. Some thirty years since the writings of Félix Guattari, these reflections on the desubjectification of individuals resonate with dispositifs that are invisible (because encoded) and yet infiltrate most human activities. This is what researcher Evgeny Morozov calls “algorithmic regulation”, 7 Evgeny Morozov. “The power of data and the death of politics”. Trans. P. Jorion, August 2014. https://www.pauljorion.com/blog/2014/08/25/la-prise-de-pouvoir-par-les-donnees-et-la-mort-de-la-politique -by-evgeny-morozov/, that is, a pernicious form of social control effected by non-human agents. At the turn of the 2010s, there was no avoiding the realisation that information networks had not created a global village”. The power of “platform capitalism” 9 Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism. The hegemony of the digital economy [2016], trans. P. Blouin, (Montreal: Lux, 2018). – that of GAFAM and BATX – is increasingly a threat to citizens’ capacity to invent their own way of lifemodes of existence. Amassing value from the sampling of “data”, digital devices are also redoubtable machines for polluting the mind, the moment one starts to surf without a filter. In this opposition between an invasive technology and the capacity of the social body to organise its conditions of existence, ecology here acquires a psychic dimension. Since technique is constitutive of humanity, however, there can be no question of going back to a golden age that never existed. In this sense, designer Ezio Manzini pleads for an “ecology of the artificial environment” 10 Ezio Manzini, Artifacts. Towards an ecology of the artificial environment [1990], trans. Adriana Pilia, (Paris: Center Georges Pompidou, CCI, 1991). » – a “second nature” formed by the technical tissue, which to a large extent still has to be invented. As of the early 1990s, he warned of the risk that information overload would turn into “noise”: “We are living amidst a growing mass of ‘semiotic waste’ – in other words, messages, texts and used codes that we cannot get rid of. […] By their uncontrolled proliferation, the greatest variety of forms, colours and textures can result in the greyest of worlds.” 11 Ezio Manzini, Artifacts. Towards an ecology of the artificial environment [1990], trans. Adriana Pilia, (Paris: Center Georges Pompidou, CCI, 1991), 36-37. ), 36-37. ». Counter to the “attention deficit” supposedly engendered by the behavioural retroaction loops of the dominant digital “services” – that is, the economic exploitation of behaviours, affects and desires – researcher Yves Citton thus invites us to imagine the conditions of an “ecology of attention” 12 Yves Citton, For an ecology of attention, (Paris: Seuil, 2014). » going hand in hand with a reorientation of media policies. The philosopher of technologies Gilbert Simondon noted at the end of the 1950s, when reflecting on this loss of intelligibility, that “what is missing is the essential; the active centre of the technical operation remains veiled.” 13 Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques [1958], (Paris: Aubier, 2012).». Technical advances have continually heightened this opacity and multiplied the “black boxes”. Who today really understands, for example, how blockchain protocols work, or the self-developing codes of deep learning ? In the video Rare Earthenware (exhibited at ZKM in Karlsruhe as part of the Reset Modernity! exhibition (2016, directed by sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour), the design studio Unknown Field Divisions documented the trajectory of the rare metals needed to construct three telecommunications objects: a mobile phone, an ultra-thin laptop computer and a chip for an “intelligent” car battery. The quantity of toxic waste required to produce them was then assembled in the form of traditional Ming vases. Inseparable from the conception of many technological objects, “civil wars” cast a veil over the environmentally and humanly damaging nature of mining operations and make the supply process invisible. At stake in an ecology of digital techniques, from a psychic point of view, would be interrogating the claim of technologies to “solve” 14 Evgeny Morozov, To solve everything, click here. The aberration of technological solutionism [2013], trans. M-C. Braud, (Limoges: Fyp, 2014). » all the world’s problems. Not only do digital technologies not always save time, but they cause a proliferation of new problems. In order for the digital to benefit the masses and not just a handful of investors, we need to stand back from the idea that problems linked to technologies can simply be solved with more technology. We are indeed confronted with two gave ecological questions: environmental and human. There is, now, a third, at the other end of the chain. It concerns the user and is – in the broad sense — a disjunction between a “technical milieu” 15 André Leroi-Gourhan, Évolution et techniques. Milieu et techniques, (Paris: Albin Michel, 1973). » and the “actors” 16 Actor network theory (AnT) was developed in the 1990s by researchers Bruno Latour, Madeleine Akrich and Michel Callon. » inhabiting it. To treat persons as “users” comes down to introducing a dissymmetry between the conceivers of objects, of digital programmes, etc., and those who can only use them. Via ecology, then, we can prise open other dimensions than the reduction of technique to its technological and digital assignation: imagination, spirituality, memory, etc. In the French context, for example, it is interesting to study a genealogy that runs through the work of palaeontologist André Leroi-Gourhan, of the philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, and of philosopher Bernard Stiegler on digital mutations. For Leroi-Gourhan, the notion of the tool takes an almost biological turn. The tool is that whereby a living being accedes to existence by developing gesture and speech. The relation to the milieu is always a dynamic, and never something that is acquired for good and could be stabilised: human existence is a progressive and continuous detachment from its initial conditions. Simondon approaches technical objects as “lineages” that can be compared to organic configurations and reconfigurations. His later writings on imagination and invention in techniques take an almost spiritual direction. The subject is to be understood within a constant evolution. More precisely, the individual is conceived in relation to a “pre-individual” tending towards a “transindividual”. These reflections on “individuation” and technique have been extensively taken up by Bernard Stiegler, who places them in the context of a period when the combination of neoliberalism and marketing (via behavioural sciences) is massively heightening the risk of the subjection of human beings. For Stiegler, ecology is to be understood as living beings’ relation to their milieu, relations that are threatened by capitalism (industrial, financial, cognitive, etc.). Thus, in addition to necessary actions and reflections on the ecology of resources (the exhaustion of capacities of subsistence), rethinking the ecology of the spirit (exhaustion of the psyche and of desire) is emerging as an increasingly urgent task.
Date
July 2021
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PublicationContexte
Article coécrit avec Victor Petit, contribution au dossier « Flusser et la France » du 31e numéro de la revue Flusser Studies dirigé par Rainer Guldin, Marc Lenot et Anthony Masure.
Résumé
Dans ses « Considérations écologiques », un article inédit rédigé en français en 1984-1985, le théoricien des médias Vilém Flusser montre les limites d’une opposition tranchée entre nature et culture, et soutient l’hypothèse provocante d’une naturalisation de la technique prenant la forme d’une « circularité de la production ». Les notions d’objet et de déchet deviennent les pôles d’une critique de la consommation, que Flusser relie au développement des programmes numériques et des théories de l’information. Examiner ce texte, à près de 40 ans d’écart, permet de prendre du recul sur les débats et controverses relatifs au champ de l’éco-design. Il montre qu’un design radicalement circulaire ne changerait pas seulement la production, ni même la consommation, mais la définition même du design.
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Date
May 2023
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PublicationContexte
Anthony Masure, Guillaume Helleu, “The improvised economics to the Web3,” LSD, no 3, May 2023, pp. 175-183
Résumé
Emerging in 2017, NFT s (Non Fungible Tokens), are un-forgeable, decentralised certificates that have become famous through their use in the art world. While this usage is what has brought them media attention, they actually are simply one part of a far wider technological movement often marketed as “Web3” 1 Appeared with Ethereum as a response to the Web 2.0 of the GAFAM, the Web3 proposes an all-in-one ecosystem: a monetary system (Bitcoin) within an economic system (DeFi) to exchange digital assets (NFT s), the whole managed by a governance system (DAO) using digital identities (DID s).. Web3, or the new order of Web To understand the workings of this new iteration of the Web based on decentralised blockchain 2 The term blockchain refers to a distributed ledger for storing, certifying and sharing information in a decentralised manner. The data is replicated in multiple storage spaces, forming a public chain secured by the addition of the various nodes of the network. This chain is designed to make information unalterable and transactions unfalsifiable. technologies, first we have to review its predecessors. Invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at the Cern, the Web - which later came to be called Web 1.0 - brought the promise of a utopia where all the world’s scientific knowledge could be shared through simplified publication proto-cols. However, as it turned out, it was too technically complex for use by the general public. This “read-only mode” allowing for nothing more than the consulta-fion of documents gave rise to corresponding marketing strategies for devices such as the laptops, smartphones and modems that occupy such a central place in our daily lives and yet were not conceived as servers suitable to function as Web sites able to store and manage information. This problem of access was addressed by the Web 2.0 that arose in the 2000s with the development of participative platforms such as social media (Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) where anyone can create an account and share information on a mass scale. The main problem with the “platformisation” of the Web paradigm that predominates today resides in the non-distribution of the value produced by Web users and its increasing centralisation. Reacting against the hegemony of the GAFAM s 3 The term blockchain refers to a distributed ledger for storing, certifying and sharing information in a decentralised manner. The data is replicated in multiple storage spaces, forming a public chain secured by the addition of the various nodes of the network. This chain is designed to make information unalterable and transactions unfalsifiable. (and their Asian avatars), the renewed promise of decentralisation raised by the Web3 could restore ownership and control over their data to ordinary Web users. Five key principles will mark this historic shift: 1 – A monetary system Bitcoin 4 Bitcoin (฿, 2009) is a decentralised digital protocol that allows transactions of monetary values independently of traditional financial institutions and fat currencies. It was invented by a person, or group of anonymous people, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. (2009) and other cryptocurrencies will play a key role. 2 – An economic system D e F i (Decentralised Finance) can be defined as a financial transaction environment that no longer requires traditional intermediaries such as brokers, exchanges and banks. Various D e F i protocols like Compound (2019) and Uniswap (2018) create gateways between traditional and decentralised economies through the introduction of “stablecoins” (Tether, 2014; Dai, 2017; Binance USD, 2018), value tokens 5 A token, or authentication token, is a digital representation of a value (currency, social share, artwork, etc.) verified in a blockchain. based on Fiat 6 The value of a fat currency is imposed by a state in an identified territory, and its management is entrusted to a central bank. For example, the value and distribution of the Euro is managed by the European Central Bank (ECB), while the dollar is managed by the United States Federal Reserve (FED). The word fiat is determinist. It comes from Latin and means, in the imperative mode, “Let it be done.” currencies. They make it possible to exchange these state-issued currencies without going through traditional channels (SWIFT), and they function almost instantaneously. Working 24/7 and almost impossible to stop, by January 2022 D e F i represented a market worth more than 200 billion dollars. 3 – A property system NFT s can transform any digital entity into merchandise. In the field of art, the best-known example is CryptoPunks, 10,000 files containing images (originally 24 × 24 pixels) distributed without charge over the Ethereum 7 Ethereum (2015) is a decentralised, collaborative exchange platform, originally envisioned by Vitalik Buterin as an upgrade to Bitcoin. Ethereum extends the principles of Bitcoin to move from a currency to a configurable value system, particularly via the use of smart contracts. network. Thanks to blockchain technology, there can be thousands of copies of a single CryptoPunk 8 CryptoPunks (2017) are a famous collection of NFT s representing computer-generated pixelated characters. meme, but only one of them contains a digital signature and thus has value. 4 – A governance system A project launched in April 2016 called the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) marked the appearance of new kinds of governance that prevent fraud and corruption through previously-established rules and smart contracts 9 Smart contracts enable value to be programmed by automating the triggering of actions within a blockchain and recording the results.. While DAO s make governmental processes such as voting and the approval and execution of decisions more fluid, they raise possible concerns insofar as they can become substitutes for traditional state functions, regulatory bodies and so on justice systems, associations, unions, etc.). 5 – An identity system DID s (Decentralised Identifiers) are sure to become a major issue in the coming decades. In a world where the concept of identity has never been so much brought into question and the profiling carried out by GAFAMs so problematic, the need for a new system of identity has become obvious. Web 1.0’s traditional authentif-cation mechanisms (email and password) have been replaced, to some degree, bysociallogins (Facebook Connect, 2008; Google Sign In, 2015; Sign in with Apple, 2019), all of which entrain the problems inherent in Web 2.0 (targeted advertising, data capture, dependence on private actors, etc.). In contrast, Web3 offers new forms of online authentification through the use of wallets such as MetaMask 10 MetaMask (2016) is a digital wallet of cryptocurrencies and tokens that allows interaction with many decentralised applications and environments. (2016). These kinds of decentralised and user-owned protocols provide for a better interoperability of data while allowing users to control what they want to share. Their possible integration into Instagram and Twitter shows that we are in a transitional phase between Web 2.0 and Web3, with no guarantee, at this point, that the problems Web3 is supposed to solve will not be replaced by even more serious risks. Towards improvised economies? ? In contrast to the traditional economy where only sovereign states (or central banks) are authorised to issue currency, Web3 technologies make it possible for anyone (with the necessary technical skills) to not only create digital spaces, but even program value systems and thus economic models based on the principles of already-existing innovations like local currencies, SCOPS (Cooperative and Participative Societies) and participative financing (crowdfunding). The latter has been updated through the use of NFT s, with initiatives like Stoner Cats (2021) - an animated multi-episode entertainment series with access limited to owners of special tokens, and Hamlet Within (2022) - a documentary by the British avantgarde filmmaker Ken McMullen sold as an NFT on the Cineverse network and divided into several “unique” parts only available to token buy-ers. As McMullen explains, the artistic model (of movies) will become totally participative, thus changing the aesthetic vocabulary of the twenty-first century so that game thinking becomes predominate. In this respect, the still unstable “play-to-earn” paradigm pop-ularised by video games like Axie Infinity (2018) gives players back most of the rewards earned by the sale of in-game collectables. More generally speaking, Web3 creates new ways to use these technologies, greater economic creativity and even a kind of legal design 11 Legal design is a practice that aims to introduce and facilitate the understanding of law to all. User-centered, legal design is by definition multidisciplinary and collaborative.. Smart contracts, for example, are NFT-associated scripts that offer, among other things, the automatic distribution of the initial gains and profits from future resales, accruing either to the artist or the designer thus updating the concept of artist resale rights), or for donations to institutions such as NGO s as well as foundations that produce open-source applications like those found on the NFT platform Teia.art. These smart contracts can also serve unexpected purposes, such as allowing a piece of property to be divided into multiple fragments, setting a ceiling on resale prices, and bringing about a process of deflation based on time lapsed or external factors. Here we are approaching the farthest frontiers of the art world where artworks are produced according to rules governing the relations between humans and non-human entities. For instance, Nouns DAO (2021) is a treasury financed by the number of daily sales of an NFT. Owners can vote to use this money to support all sorts of projects. Botto (2021) is an art robot whose taste is conditioned by community members’ weekly votes. The result of this AI heuristics is automatically put up for sale as an NFT. In light of all these examples, it’s probable that the next few years will provide opportunities to study the tensions between long-standing capitalist logics (which readily appropriated the anarchist logic of Bitcoin) and new “improvised economies” that, while still embryonic, may yield more redistributive outcomes.
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Date
January 2025
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PublicationContexte
Article publié sur le site de Swissnex San Francisco en janvier 2025, dans le cadre de l’exposition « Assembling Intelligence: Hybrid Strategies for AI, Art, and Design » (août-novembre 2024).
Résumé
Cet article revient sur les enjeux soulevés par les technologies d’IA générative dans les champs du design et de la création. À partir de l’essai Artificial Design (HEAD – Publishing, 2023) et de projets de recherche menés à la HEAD – Genève, il propose de dépasser la polarisation homme/machine pour explorer des voies créatives alternatives.
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Date
November 2022
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PublicationContexte
Article rédigé avec Alexandre Saint-Jevin pour l’ouvrage collectif Les devenirs numériques des patrimoines, Paris, UDPN, 2022.
Résumé
En déniant à la recherche ses dimensions esthétiques, les chercheur·euses pensent se protéger d’une capitalisation du savoir et de sa spéculation financière. Or l’impensé des enjeux esthétiques de leurs travaux ne fait que renforcer ces problèmes. L’analyse de plusieurs cas d’étude entre design et science met en évidence que la dimension critico-créative que le design apporte aux sciences n’annule pas la dimension critico-discursive que les sciences apportent au design. Ainsi, le format n’a pas pour fatalité de (seulement) formater mais peut aussi « former » les savoirs : il s’agit de dépasser l’idée réductrice d’une « science du design » au profit d’un « design des sciences ».
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It’s been a few years since I wanted to apply for a French research grant from the Cnap – Centre national des arts plastiques. The funding aims to help researchers in the art and design fields to conduct free projects. The grant (between 4000-8000€) is directly awarded to the researcher, which is great as it avoids any administrative mishap. The project must be achieved within 18 months, and be summarized in a short written document. So what is my topic about? Well, since my Design Ph.D. defended in November 2013, I haven’t stopped to investigate the relationships between design and digital. The last chapter of my Ph.D. was a little bit prospective about the implications of the digital in the fields of interaction and graphic design (type design, OS design, etc.). Then, after my Ph.D., I started to teach undergraduate graphic and web design classes near Paris. I made a small focus on the culture and the history of the digital by asking my students to design a small website (their first website) about the book From Counterculture to Cyberculture from Fred Turner (2006), translated in French in 2012 by C&F editions. It was one of the only good books available at that time about digital culture. The student productions were good, but we lacked time to go further. In fact, I couldn’t advise any reads in French about the relationships between graphic design and digital practices. There were indeed some technical resources/manuals or online news blogs, but none of this was relevant to the understanding of the digital and its consequences. As the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA, Montreal, QC) recently said: not only what, but “when is the digital?” In 2015, I started to analyze this subject as we launched Back Office, a research journal, dedicated to these topics. Then, with the great help of my colleagues Kévin Donnot and Élise Gay (E+K), we released the first issue in February 2017 – but that’s another story! During my Design Ph.D., I’ve explored the English field of the “software studies” (Lev Manovich, Matthew Fuller, etc.), but I didn’t know much, at the time, about digital humanities and media archæology. Thanks to the mentoring of French researcher Yves Citton, I started browsing a broader corpus of English books that I tried to connect with some French theory (Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, etc.). Apart from Back Office, I wrote a book titled Design and Digital humanities between 2015 and 2016, that will be published before the end of 2017. So, when I applied for the research grant from the Cnap, it was evident for me to think about something deeply connected to my research fields. I gave a lecture in 2016 in Strasbourg (France) about the evolutions of graphical user interfaces (GUI), which tend to be “invisible” (such as voice controlled smart objects). On the other hand, I wanted to go further into the history of digital graphic design. How and when did graphic designers start using computers? The last step to complete the grant application was to find some archive/research centers to open my investigations outside of the french settings. I was lucky to discover the Herb Lubalin Study Center (NYC) in 2013, which holds a great collection of famous graphic designers, such as Herb Lubalin, Otl Aicher, Karl Gerstner, etc. – so it was a no-brainer to go back there. The CCA (Montreal) can also be seen as a hotspot for the reasons explained above. Another interesting place I’m planning to visit is the Vilém Flusser Archive (Berlin), which owns numerous papers, books, etc. of the Czech-born philosopher (1920-1991). With these places in mind, I tried to elaborate a kind of “multi-cultural” research- studying how the digital was received and defined in various contexts, both historical and geographical. A good example is the book French Theory. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze et Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux États-Unis (2003) of the American studies professor François Cusset. In that book, Cusset analyzed the links between the new continental French philosophy, and its reception both inside and outside its homeland. Would it be possible to connect this methodology to design studies? I applied to the grant in late 2016, and received a positive response in March 2017 for an amount of 6000€ (mostly for travel costs). Here is the summary of my project: Shapes of the invisible. Graphic archæology of digital design By studying the progressive merging of graphic design practices with the emergence of personal computing in the early 1980s, and by linking them with contemporary works, this research project studies different ways of working with the “invisible” nature of the digital. For a decade, design dealt with the rise of algorithmic and automatic creative processes (shapes, layout, colorimetry, etc.). Which lessons can we learn from pioneering approaches today? If the digital was born out of computation, how can graphic design help making these invisible operations visible? The full application project, in French, can be found there.
Date
August 2019
Type
ConférenceContexte
Conférence-performance au Marseille Octopus Worldwide 2019 / Festival du Poulpe, Marseille, piscine naturelle du Vallon des Auffes
Résumé
Anthony Masure et Élise Rigot sont deux chercheurs en design. Ils sont allés au fond des abysses pêcher un étrange ouvrage de fiction philosophique, le Vampyroteuthis Infernalis. Cet étrange récit date du début des années 1980 : il a été écrit en Provence par le philosophe Vilém Flusser, et illustré par l’artiste paranaturaliste Louis Bec. Animal des enfers, l’octopode y devient le miroir des médias et de notre humanité. Afin de suivre en image le récit qui sera proposé, un site Web mobile, créé pour l’occasion, sera accessible le jour J pour les visiteurs.
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Date
March 2021
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ConférenceContexte
Communication au colloque « Deep City: Climate Crisis, Democracy and the Digital », Lausanne, EPFL, 25 mars 2021
Résumé
Deep learning artificial intelligence (AIs) works by comparing and aligning “raw” or “labeled” data sets. This mimetic paradigm (remix of “data sets”) makes it difficult to discern “generated” copy of original. Therefore, the question of acceptance of a world shaped by AIs arises less in terms of replacement than in terms of recovery: an environment in which one could not distinguish what is produced, or not, with AIs. Another challenge, with the demand of ecological sobriety, is the increase of algorithmic rationality with generated shapes optimized to structural constraints. What about social and aesthetic dimensions of shaping? How can AIs be open to invention and curiosity?
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