There is a Chasidic teaching about the Mezuzah, a small container which encloses a parchment upon which several passages of the Torah are written. The Mezuzah is placed on the door posts of houses and gates. The teaching expands on the placement of the Mezuzah, a place between the inside and the outside. There is a moment when you are no longer inside, but not yet outside. In this in between state, you are gathered up into the G-d Head, the Ain Sof, and made anew. The philosophers in the mystical tradition explore this notion, and consider similar moments, such as when an egg contains a being that is no longer an egg and not yet a chicken. Here again, the Rabbis suggest that this is the moment that the being is brought into the Ain Sof, the Source of Undifferentiated Being, and reformed. According to this teaching, this gathering up may occur at the threshold between any set of polarities, any set of dualities (Omer-man, 2002).
Between the moment an idea for a new invention is conceived and the moment a manufactured product comes off the production line, all work done in design engineering is done through the agency of representation. Representation in the field of engineering design encompasses a broad range of media, including rough sketches, physical prototypes, photographs, engineering drawings, stories, lists, charts, descriptions, and numeric digital files. Given representations central role in design, it would seem that successful development of an engineered product may be largely due dependent on the careful management of the “media cascades” which drive the design process. What does a media cascade look like? What are the characteristics of an effective media cascade? What work, so to speak, does a media cascade do for a design engineer?
The work of the design engineer is to bring concepts into being. A design engineer begins with a notion of something with the potential of existing, and reaches a point when the thing actually exists. Thus, the design engineer plays between the poles of the potential and the actual. Contemporary design theory offers a useful analysis of making representations of the potential and the actual in the design process.
C.K. Theory (Hatchuel and Weil 2002) posits a set of dualities, Concepts and Knowledge in an attempt to fashion a unified Design theory, based on Set Theory. A “Concept” is defined as, “a notion or proposition without logical status”. A piece of “Knowledge” is “a proposition with a logical status for the designer of the person receiving the design.” By logical status, the authors mean something that exists.
Furthermore, Hatchuel and Weil posit a fundamental proposition “design reasoning must always make a distinction between two related spaces: the space of concepts and the space of knowledge.” These spaces are made in relation to one another; K is the precondition of C, and the contents of C can expand the set of K.
How does a design engineer cross the space in between C and K? What happens in the moments when the designer traverses the threshold between Concept space and Knowledge space?
The road to understanding what occurs in this space has several markers. The first I will consider is to be found in the science studies of Bruno Latour. In his seminal “We Have Never Been Modern”, Latour suggests that the quest of Modernism is the distillation of phenomena into dualities, the paradigm of which is seen in Kant’s model of the gulf between “things in themselves” and the “transcendental ego”. Language and objects are likewise separated by an un-bridgeable chasm, which keeps knowing and the objects of knowing at bay. Latour explains that we have never been modern, because we are actually in the work of making “hybrids”, entities which lay between the poles of duality. Our problem, Latour suggests, is that we either fool ourselves into thinking hybrids don’t exist, or we are seduced into believing our real work is the work of purification, that is to say making dualities (Latour, 1993).
(Circulating Reference cf. Latour 1999:73)
Latour’s circulating reference sheds light on the design process. Products are not born completely formed, as Athena was born from Zeus’s head. Instead, designers make many transits on the journey. There are many small gaps in the method states of the design process. The means of conveyance on the journey between potential and actual are representations. It is between the poles of idea and manufactured product that the work of mediation, that is to say making representations or proxies, occurs.
In engineering design, the use of representation holds both the transitive and intransitive meanings of “mediation”. As an intransitive verb, mediation can mean “to form a connecting link or a transitional stage between”. The transitive meaning of the word is “to be the medium for bringing about (a result) or conveying (a gift, etc)”. When a design engineer embodies an idea in media, he or she may be said to be “mediating”. Both the transitive and intransitive actions of the verb are at work in mediating. We see the intransitive meaning at work in the implementation of successive models, which form a bridge between an idea and a manufactured product, as well as the bridge between team members. The transitive form of mediation speaks to the work of a representation when it brings about a result or conveys the idea.
I will raise the question again this time from a slightly different perspective. How do design engineers negotiate the many small gaps between Concept space and Knowledge space? Do they follow the linked path of circulating reference, starting with phenomena and ending with knowledge, which scientists follow? Or do they make a different path?
Engineering Design is in the business of making new things, which differentiates this practice from the practices about which Latour speaks. The path from idea to a manufactured object seems to resist the type of linear path that Latour uncovers. If Hatchuel and Weil are correct in their observation that the Concept space is characterized by propositions lacking logical status, then the gaps between the steps in and around the Concept space may not be so rational as those outlined by Latour. Nonetheless, Latour’s methodology provides a model for looking at the process of Engineering Design.
While the dualistic purifications of concept space and knowledge space are useful notions, the work of the design engineer is precisely situated in the space between. The work of the design engineer is neither a pure concept, nor pure knowledge, but consists in making something new out of the movement between concepts and knowledge. The outcome may be called a “hybrid”, though that word assumes two truly distinct realms. I suggest that for the design engineer, in practice, the pure realms are touch stones for exploration and development. What the design engineer does is shift perspective between these poles in order to give birth to a new product. To do this, the design engineer mobilizes different media, and implements these media through use of a grammar that embodies the implications of C-space and K-space.
I would like to push the notions of C and K even farther apart than what Hatchuel and Weil suggest, in order to make a greater space between C and K. The notion of Knowledge in C-K Theory is limited to that which exists. In engineering design, the bar is far higher than Hatchuel and Weil let on. As we shall see, kind of knowing necessary for a successful product includes rigorous scientific knowing, kin to the knowing that Latour posits in “Pandora’s Hope”. To expand the space between C and K, I will turn to Archeology.
Archaeology and Design are kissing cousins, so to speak, and benefit can be gained from appropriating the discourse of one to the other. In the most straight forward sense, archaeology can be seen as “the study of things”, often to gain insight into the experiences of those who used the things. Design can be seen as the “creation of things”, often to impart an experience to those who would use the things. Investigations into the role of media in archaeology being done by Timothy Webmoor, Christopher Witmore, and Michael Shanks at Stanford’s Metamedia Laboratory have expanded and deepened McCluhan’s pioneering work in media studies, often summed up by McCluhan’s dictum, “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1964).
Continue reading Between C and K: Archaeological Practices of Mediation in Engineering Design.
References
-Brereton, Margot 1999 “The Role of Hardware in Learning Engineering Fundamentals” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
-Eames Office Resources: http://www.eamesoffice.com/index2.php?mod=photography
-Edelman, Jonathan, Karanian, Barbara, Skogstad, Philipp, Heikkinen, Miika, and Repokari, Lauri 2008 “Fuzzy Versus Technical Prototypes in Design Decision Making Process” Center for -Design Research Informatics Laboratory
-Eris, Ozgur 2002 “Perceiving, Comprehending and Measuring Design Activity through the Questions Asked while Designing”, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
-Hatchuel, Armand and Weil, Benoît 2002 “C-K Theory: Notions and Applications of a Unified Design Theory” Proceedings of the Herbert Simon International Conference on « Design Sciences »Lyon.
-Hankins, Thomas and Robert Silverman 1995 “Instruments and the Imagination”. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
-Hankins, Thomas 2006 Lecture for Visualizing Knowledge Seminar, Stanford University
-Hockney, David 2006 “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters” London: Thames & Hudson.
-Ingold, Tim 2000 “The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill” London, New York: Routledge
-Lande, Micah 2008 Personal Communication
-Latour, Bruno 1986 “Visualization and cognition: thinking with eyes and hands,” in Knowledge and Society: studies in the sociology of culture past and present. Edited by H. and E. Long Kuklick, pp. 1-40.
-Latour, Bruno 1993 We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-Latour, Bruno 1999 Pandora’s Hope: essays on the reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-Manovich, Lev 2001 The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-Manovich, Lev 2006 “Visual technologies as cognitive prostheses: A short history of the externalization of the mind”, in M. Smith and J. Morra (ed.) The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman to a Biocultural Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-McLuhan, Marshall 1964 Understanding Media: the extension of man. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press.
-McLucas, Clifford 2006 in Traumwerk: http://documents.stanford.edu/MichaelShanks/51
-Omer-man, Rabbi Jonathan 2002 Personal Communication
-Pearson, Mike and Shanks, Michael 2001 Theatre/Archaeology Routledge
-Shanks, Michael 1997 “Photography and archaeology”, in B.L. Molyneaux (ed) The cultural life of images: visual representation in archaeology, London: Routledge.
-Steward, Jan and Kent, Corita 1992 “Learning by Heart: Teachings to free the creative spirit” New York, Bantam Books.
-Webmoor, Timothy 2005 “Mediational techniques and conceptual frameworks in archaeology: a model in mapwork at Teotihuacan, Mexico”, Journal of Social Archaeology 5(1):52-84.
-Witmore, Christopher 2006 “Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time. Symmetrical Approaches to the Mediation of the Material World”, Journal of Material Culture 11(3):267-292.
The opening e.g. of the limen or threshold is provocative. A prominent anthropological example was the theory of rituals by Arnold van Gennep (1910-Les rites de passage): a cross-cultural (influences of Carl Jung; van Gennep in turn influencing the neo-Jungian Joseph Campbell) generalization that all ritual involves 3 basic stages – an initiatory phase, a final rebirth or renewal phase, and the second being an in-between, liminal phase where the mystery or profound realizations take place. This is where/when the work of the sacred actually happens. The entire oeuvre of another great anthropologist, Victor Turner, is based upon his insight into the importance of “liminality’. I like the linking of this idea of the Mezuzah or interim ‘object’, which is profound precisely because it indexes (as an object) ambiguity, to the process of mediation. The in-between of representation – between Latour’s poles of world and word or C-K’s Theory poles of concept and knowledge. I would not push these analogies too far though, for fear of taking this tripartite scheme, which is meant to be a heuristic with Latour, to be the latest, fashionable mode of ‘dichotomous’/’trichotomous?’ thought – which has us convinced we are Latour’s moderns. I get the sense that the ‘in between’ for Latour is actually more the normal state of affairs – with temporary stabilizations in products, papers and patents the fleeting achievements. While he does not develop this idea of inverting the ‘stable’ for the ‘transient’ (The “Politics of Nature” goes some way with this), it would be an interesting line to pursue in further work – so, for instance, in archaeology the notion of an ever-transforming site resisting the modernist desire of preserving or freezing heritage. Ruins become stable and in fact the curated museum exhibits and touristed, archaeological sites become – contrary to appearance – the transient and fluid.
Nice discussion of graph paper and especially of photowork, the work of Charles and Ray Eames and your linking of these ideas to activities at the Product Realization Lab. Also, Carter’s work seems very interesting – another testament to the usefulness of ‘mixed media’ to get at what we do in the practice of design or documentation. I like your drawing out of it as a ‘generative tool’ and the affinity – though different in the goals of the practitioners – with Latour’s example in the Amazon. Is there a link to any of her work on-line?
I think you’ve made an interesting connection between design engineering and archaeology – cognate fields which bookend, in a sense, the entire concern with what media can do for us. I’m sure that much more will be made of the connection b/w design studies – esp. information design – and archaeological practices in the coming years.