1998 - Manifesto for a digital bauhaus - Pelle Ehn

Texto

Abstract

In the history of modern society several grand projects have been launched in an attempt to unite the two sides of the Enlightenment project: the hard (technology and natural sciences) with the soft (values, democracy, art and ethics). One remarkable such project was the Bauhaus. It was a great modern success story, but also a failure. Today, in the digital age we can witness newmore post-modern attempts to meetings between 'art' and 'technology'. This emerging 'third culture' of nerds and digerati is promising, but still most immature.

With this background, the paper is formed as a general manifesto for a digital Bauhaus for the twenty-first century, and at the same time an introduction to the attempts to implement this vision of creative and socially useful digital design at the School ofArt and Communication at Malmo University in Sweden.

Keywords: Bauhaus, design, Enlightenment, information technology, third culture

1.All That is Solid Melts into Air

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their own train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air...

(Marx and Engels, 1848)

All that issolidmelts into air. This is howMarx and Engels, more than a century and a half ago, expressed themselves in the best known and most quoted manifesto in our modern time. With this they grasped, maybe more clearly than anyone else, more clearly than they probably could envision themselves, the ironic and dialectical history of modern society, where all development also seems to be pregnant with its opposite2. The history of the humanistic Enlightenment project of modern society, to which Marx doubtless was most supportive, expresses this contradiction painfully clearly. The Enlightenment project has more than fulfilled the 'hard' expectations, the natural science-based technological expectations. The latest example is the digital revolution, the exponentially growing information and commu- nication technology. In contrast, however, the more 'soft' expectations of the Enlightenment project concerning values, art, aesthetic ideals, ethics and politics have in no waybeen met during the last centuries3.

However, in the history of modern society several grand projects have been aunched in attempts to unite the two sides of Enlightenment: the hard (technology and natural sciences) with the soft (values, democ- racy, art and ethics). One remarkable such project was the Bauhaus. Today, in the digital age at the turn of the century, we can witness new attempts at creative and socially useful meetings between 'art' and 'technology' — an emerging 'third culture'4.

1.1 The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus School was founded by the architect Walter Gropius in 1919 in Weimar. Weimar was at that time, just after the war, the centre of the new democratic republic in Germany and Bauhaus was a social and progres- sive experiment full of belief in the future. A major aim of the project became the unification of art and modern technology to create architec- ture and design for the modern free man and woman5. The school was forced to close as the strength of Nazism grow in Germany and the Bauhaus could only continue in exile. The project survived, especially in the US, and became a success story, but not without ironies and paradoxes. As the Bauhaus became celebrated as 'the international style' for the salvation of modern society, it was at the same time diminished to a program of 'hard' regular geometric white shapes in steel, glass and reinforced concrete under the dictum 'architecture or revolution' with the corollary that a revolution could only be avoided if the modern archi- tects and designers were given the freedom and power to change the world6. The social engagement in this version of the Bauhaus had been transformed to anti- democratic professional elitism7. Despite the high moral and aesthetic principles, there was no real feeling insight or vivid realisation of ordinary people's everyday life and conditions. Maybe, the 'soft' ideas of participation and democracy never were a cornerstone of the Bauhaus. All that is solid melts into air ...

1.2 The nerd generation and the third culture

All that issolidmelts into air. This description of modern society can now, by the end of the twentieth century, be given yet another signifi- cant meaning. Digital information and commu- nication technology changes our understanding of time and space. A room is no longer only material and solid, but also virtual and fluid. We inhabit the same space, but not at the same time. The walls are there, but somewhere else. Someone is present, but still absent. Neither does time follow a solid pattern. It is not only cyclical as in a tradition-bound society, nor only

Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus linear as in modern society, but interactive and fluid as in a narrative where the reader, the observer, the consumer and the user participate in its creation.

Furthermore, in relation to the Enlight- enment project, digital technology relates more to the 'soft' side than to the 'hard', since software inherently become codes of values, aesthetic ideals, ethics and politics. At the same time it seems that art has to become 'harder' than ever in an attempt to express fundamen- tal ethical and aesthetic conditions of our life at the end of this millennium8.

While this happens unbelievable resources are invested in new mediating technologies around the world, though functionally and aesthetically the results are still poor. The main reason being that the development is technology driven. New facilities are logical follow-ups of earlier technological innovations rather than results of a deeper understanding of user situations and profound human needs. Knowledge from aesthetic areas such as theatre, film, music, literature, architecture, painting, sculpture and graphical and industrial design have been rarely used so far.

A response to this situation, a new meeting between 'the two cultures' of 'art' and 'science', between the 'soft' and the 'hard' sides of the Enlightenment project, is now emerging in what with varying interpretations has been referred to as a 'third culture'9.

All that is solid melts into air in a digital time where program code is art and architecture, designed by a LEGO generation of nerds, hackers, geeks, techies, digerati and Nintendo kids10. Members of this nerd generation, laboriously designing new tools to explore virtual as well as material 'new worlds', may have the potential to transcend the inability of communication that 'the two cultures' of modern society has repeatedly demonstrated throughout history and, through a practical amalgamation of'art' and 'technology', the soft and the hard, shape the emerging 'third culture'.

This is, however, just as with the Bauhaus, a project full of contradictions and stands the risk of degenerating into an adolescent doctrine of bound- less individualism and technophilic hubris".

2. The Challenge - Creatinga Digital Bauhaus

In trying to reshape conditions for the hard and the soft side of the Enlightenment project to meet in the design of informa- tion and communication technology we are left with a promising but overripe modern Bauhaus tradition in the background and an equally promising but immature postmodern third culture of nerds and digerati in the foreground.

This is a challenge we have accepted at the new School of Art and Communication at Malmo University by trying to create an arena, a meeting place, a school and a research centre for creative and socially useful meetings between 'art' and 'technology' — a digital Bauhaus for the twenty-first century12.

In our version of a digital Bauhaus, nerds and digerati of the emerging third culture will be:

• challenged by established art and the

endeavour of expressing fundamental human conditions, not only as aesthetic theory, but even more in practical projects in co-operation with exhibition halls, art museums and theatres13.

• confronted with the natural science culture

and the search for the truth of universe, not only as formulas and proofs, but even more in development projects in co-operation with engineers and natural science profes- , sionals in IT and media industry14.

• forced to take a stance with respect to the

Enlightenment project and our humanistic heritage, to ideas and controversies on freedom, democracy and human dignity in the modern civilisation process, not only as the history of ideas and cultural theory, but even more in practical dialogue with people in the surrounding society: in open forums, exhibitions, debates and not least in our own 'third culture cafe'15.

What is needed in the design and use of the most postmodern of media and technologies — the information and communication technology — is not a modernism caught in a solidified objectivity through the design of modern objects in steel, glass and concrete, but a comprehensive sensuality in the design of meaningful interac- tive and virtual stories and environments.

What is needed is not the modern praise of new technology, but a critical and creative aesthetic—technical production orientation that unites modern information and communication technology with design, art, culture and society, and at the same time places the development of the new mediating technologies in their real everyday context of changes in lifestyle, work and leisure.

What is needed in the development of the aesthetics of the information and communi- cation technology society is:

• a Scandinavian design that unites a demo-

cratic perspective emphasising open dialogue and active user participation,

• the development of edifying cultural

experiences and the production of useful, interesting, functional and maybe even beautiful and amusing everyday things and experiences for ordinary people. What is needed is humanistic and user- oriented education and research that will develop both a critical stance to information and communication technology, and at the same time competence to design, compose, and tell stories using the new mediating technologies.

What is needed are meetings between:

• constructive knowledge and competence

related to interactive and communicative possibilities and constraints when using the new mediating technologies,

• aesthetic knowledge and competence from

fields such as television, theatre, film, music, literature, architecture, art and design, and

• analytical-critical knowledge and compe-

tence from philosophy, social science, and not least cultural and media studies.

The interplay between these kinds of knowl- edge and competencies will come into play in applications in all sectors of society: media, industry, commerce, education, leisure, art and popular culture. Examples could include interactive television, individually adjusted mass communication, simulation and visuali- sation of industrial processes, virtual workplaces, multimedia for distributed learning, digital interaction tools for the elderly and handicapped, everyday objects with virtual properties, interactive exhibitions, computer games and artistic development in film, theatre, visual art, dance and music.

2.1 The School

2.1.1 The programs As the first steps towards a practical imple- mentation of this digital Bauhaus vision the School of Art and Communication has moved in to a new building and we have started the first six educational programs:

• an aesthetic-practical bachelor program in

material and virtual design and the design of products with material and virtual components, in physical and digital form;

• a technical-constructive bachelor program

in interaction technology with design and construction of software for highly interac- tive and innovative applications;

• an analytical—critical bachelor program

focusing on media and communication studies with a cultural studies perspective on the media society and media production;

• a program in performing arts technology

with focus on work with light, sound, and stage technology for different kinds of set design and presentations;

• an interdisciplinary

Master's program in interaction design and design of interactive digital systems with special focus on usability and quality in use;

• an interdisciplinary

Master's program in technical communication with the purpose to make technical artefacts more comprehensive and usable.

For the next few years we are planning complementary masters and diploma programs directed towards new media producers, curators, and digital artists.

2.1.2 A 'reflective practicum' The pedagogy at the School is grounded in the type of learning that is required. Each year of students will have its own base, a well-equipped 'home room'. The school puts resources at the students' disposal and staff act as advisors and support the students' learning activity. Practical skills will be supported by studio-based supervi- sion. Needs for analysis and critique will be supported as well as help to guide into unknown knowledge territory. But it is the students that learn, and it is the students themselves that have to take responsibility for their own learning. Staff can only help create the problem-based learning environment — a reflective practicum16.

Some characteristics of this environment are the premises that understanding and design of digital media and mediating technologies requires teamwork and many different competencies; that knowledge grows in a spiral of action and reflection where learning by doing, coaching rather than teaching and a dialogue of reciprocal reflec- tion—in—action between coach and student is fundamental; and that knowledge matures in open dialogue. This teamwork and dialogue will also stretch across the programs in common workshops across educational programs, joint projects and interdisciplinary courses.

One example is the introductory half- semester course in cultural history and cultural theory with special focus on design, technology and media that all new students participate in. The purpose is to create a shared platform with tools for analysis of modern cultural products and processes and historic understanding of cultural development during the last centuries.

2.2 The research studios

We are strongly convinced that close interaction with research is a corner stone in an environ- ment for creative studies. Hence, it is most satisfying that the school has been integrated with a network for research into time, space and interactivity. At the InteractiveInstitute we will explore and constructively use new mediating technology to improve people's social interaction capabilities and their interaction with material and virtual environments. This will be sup- ported by critical studies and an integrated artistic program. Research, inspired by the early Bauhaus schools, will be carried out in studios/ workshops through close co-operation between researchers, artists and students. Teachers and students will actively participate in research, including research into education17.

The first two research studios focus on space and virtuality and narrativity and communication.

2.2.1 The space and virtuality studio The boundaries between material space and virtual space are growing increasingly harder to define. Virtual reality is perceived nearly as intensely with all senses as material reality. Material space is becoming permeated with virtual information. What happens to ourselves and our conditions for living and working when fact and fiction blend? This will be investigated in our studio for space and virtuality. The overall scope of the studio is to redirect information technology design from its focus on organised task systems and specialised tools towards the both more humble and more demanding challenge of providing people with 'set-pieces' and 'props' for their continuous construction of ever changing lived-in worlds. We take a constructivist stance towards the notions of space and virtuality. Lived-in space is in our view best conceived as the social con- struction of shared frameworks in which people orient themselves and act. With this conception the conventional geographical notion of space has no predominance or more assured existence than spatial patterns brought to life through people's otherwise mediated interactions.

With this broader notion of 'action space' the studio will 're-visit' well-known professional environments such as process plants, offices and service shops in order to explore how information and communication technology can 'soften' or dissolve rigorous constructs such as 'the control room', 'the individualised clerical desk' or 'the service technician solitude'.

Outside work many people have ambigu- ous feelings towards technology. In recent years this image has undergone change and various sub-cultures are defining themselves through relationships to technology. In the larger picture of shaping everyday technology the studio will address the issue of how information and communication technologies can find their shape and place among the other useful and aesthetically pleasing things that make up our everyday environment.

2.2.2 The narrativity and communication studio Information and communication technology facilitates the development of new and unconventional narrative forms, where narrativity is understood in the broad sense of time—based representation. Contemporary and future narrativity is, however, not to be understood as a product of only new technologies. Several interacting social and cultural changes are and will be influencing the way we tell stories. These are an increasing cultural pluralism, a changing relationship towards concepts of authority, power and nationality as well as the postmodern sense of 'meaning' as something being continuously related and constructed. As a result of information technology closely interacting with these changes we can observe a new set of aesthetic principles emerge. The boundaries between artists and audiences becomes blurred and the significance of the individual artistic fingerprint grows less important, as in sampling and hybridisation. There is also a stronger emphasis on the narratives' different and changing contexts, of the story commenting upon itself. Narrativity and new media become means of creating syntheses in a constantly changing society. Little is yet known about narrative structures in digital media and their quality: how can they be made challenging, exciting, informative, appropriate and maybe even beautiful? This will be investigated in our studio for Narrativity and communication where we will explore interactive storytelling emerging in the blending of information and communication technology with literature, film, television and theatre.

2.2.3 The design studies program An activity across all studios is design studies of third culture creativity. The design of digital media requires technical and artistic as well as social and political skills. New actors are brought into the design process along with a plethora of social and political issues to consider. How can artistic and technological ideas and traditions be combined in the design process? Which new tools can support these processes? How can work practices and roles in the design process be renewed when all that is solid melts into air?

2.2.4 The artists in residence program Just as we are convinced that research is a cornerstone for a creative study environment we are equally convinced that the participation of artists is fundamental to a creative research environment. Hence, artistic development is an integral and fundamental part of the knowledge production at the research centre. Art is a perceptive act, forming and expressing questions about conditions, contradictions and uncertain- ties in modern society. The intention to give people new experiences is an important base for innovation in communication processes. Close co-operation between artists and researchers is necessary for beneficial results in the research studios: researchers get in contact with artistic ways of approaching problems that may result in new solutions, and artists are inspired by new technologies to developing new forms of expression18. To achieve this the already initiated five-year Shift program focusing artistic conceptions and expressions of time, change, human experience and technology will be complemented by artist in residence programs. The first is developed in close co-operation with the Swedish international artist in residence program IASPIS19 and is devoted to artistic development in digital visual media, design and architecture. A similar residence program is planned to address the performing arts.

3. Enlightenment and Digital Design

A manifesto from the first Bauhaus school written for the opening of the first Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar 1923 envisioned how an idealism of activity that embraces, penetrates and unites art, science,and technologyand that influences research, study, and work, will construct the art—edifice of Man (Schlemmer, 1978)

The manifesto ends:

Today we can do no more than toponder the total plan, lay thefoundations, and prepare the building stones. But we exist! We have the will! We are producing!

In this we can only concur, despite our knowledge of the contradictions inherent in the Bauhaus, despite the historical tendencies away from a socially responsible movement towards technology hostile to man, despite a century of obstacles and failures in the attempts to establish the third culture that already the early Bauhaus tried to create.

In spite of all this, but certainly not without ironic distance and postmodern lost innocence, we see no more constructive and practical way to unite the 'hard' scientific and technological sides of the Enlightenment project with the 'soft' ethical and aesthetic sides, than the grand vision from the Bauhaus manifesto put in the hands of a young generation of nerds and digerati. Hence, this is also our vision of an arena, a meeting place, a school, and a research centre for creative and socially useful meetings between 'art' and 'technology'.

However, this vision of a digital Bauhaus can never grow strong isolated in a corner in the far north of Europe. It has to develop in cross- cultural and international dialogue. Fortunately similar activities are going on at several places around the world. What is needed is an international network for creative and socially useful digital Bauhaus design that embraces, penetrates and unites art, science, and technol- ogy and that influences research, study, and work — a third culture in the digital age at the door to the twenty-first century and a new millennium.

Digital Bauhaus designers of all countries, unite!

_____________________________________________________________

Notes

1 The original version of this manifesto was presented in Swedish as an inaugural address to the first students at the opening of the School of Art and Communication, Malmo University, Malmo, Sweden, August 30, 1998. I have made a few revisions in this English version and added footnotes. As the paper now stands it is intended both as a general manifesto for creative and socially useful digital design and an introduction to the practical implementation of this digital Bauhaus vision in our school in Malmo.

2 For such a contemporary analysis of'modernity' see Berman (1982).

3 In Liedman (1998) this is a main theme in the analysis of modernity and the Enlightenment project.

4 The concept was formulated in 1959 by C.P. Snow (1959) in an analysis of the division of the Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus two cultures of the arts and the sciences. Snow- pleaded not without success for the reorganisation of education and the social system, for a 'third culture' where the two could meet.

5 The early Bauhaus project had many socially 'revolutionary' influences and relations. Not only Walter Gropius but also many other influential Bauhaus masters, including the sculptor Gerhard Marcks, were associated with the Working Council for Art and others masters like the painter Lyonel Feininger and the architect Mies van der Rohe were members of the Novembergruppe. Another example is the painter Wassily Kandinsky who joined in 1922. He was one of the driving forces behind RaChN, the Russian interdisciplinary 'academy for art and research. There was also a strong influence from De Stijl and the attempt was made to create 'collectivist solutions'. The interplay between ideas and ideologies were, however, much more complicated than this. One example is the conflict between on the one hand the strong interest in the Mazdaznan sect and the focus on meditation, ritual and a primitive form of racism as expressed by master Johannes Itten and the focus on understanding with industry and the commer- cial outside world, including commissions, as prescribed by Walter Gropius. For more back- ground on the early Bauhaus see e.g. Droste (1998) or Naylor (1985).

6 For a critique of the 'international style' and especially how it was presented by Hitchcock and Johnsson (1932) see Berman (1982).

7 For such an ironic critique of the 'white gods' (Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe et al.) and their 'success' in the US see Wolfe (1982).

8 Like in the art works by Charles Ray where human bodies and human relations are expressed as anti-human hard plastic dolls.

9 Since the analysis that Snow made forty years ago there have been interesting changes and different authors have seen new possibilities for a third culture to emerge. The debate was started again in Brockman (1995), where he argued that a number of scientists now had left the ivory tower and engaged themselves and their scientific knowledge in public discourse concerning fundamental questions about the meaning of our lives. Another way of looking at the 'third culture' is represented by Kevin Kelly (www. edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly/ index.html), the editor of Wired, the life style magazine par excellence for digerati and the nerd generation. He suggests that "technology now has its own culture, the third culture, the possibility culture, the culture of nerds — a culture that is starting to go global and mainstream simultane- ously. The culture of science, so long in the shadow of the culture of art, now has another orientation to contend with, one grown from its own rib. It remains to be seen how the lofty, noble endeavour of science deals with the rogue vernacular of technology, but for the moment, the nerds of the third culture are rising." Other authors discussing the emerging third culture like John Brockman (1995) are more worried that researchers and scientists have replaced the traditional intellectual author with no room left for the poet, as science is telling the story of our time. And still others like the science journalist Tor Norretranders have recognised the grand potential if artists and scientists were to collaborate. He thus initiated the seminar Third Culture Copenhagen in 1996, creating a platform where the two branches could meet.

10 Lifestyle and values of these nerds, digerati, techies and geeks are well captured in Coupland (1995).

11 Just as the Bauhaus was received as the 'white gods' in the US in the thirties, now digirati — new gods with a job description to design the future — stand the risk of hubris, sacrificing the rigors of democratic deliberation for the pleasures of vitalist enthusiasm. Such a warning is raised by Jedediah S. Purdy (1998). In a critique of the lifestyle bible of the nerd generation he suggests that "the Wired temperament is contemptuous of all limits — of law, community, morality, place, even embodiment. The magazines ideal is the unbounded individual who, when something looks good to him, will do it, buy it, invent it, or become it without delay. This temperament seeks comradeship only among its perceived equals in self-invention and world making; rather than scorn the less exalted, it is likely to forget their existence altogether. Boundless individualism, in which law, community, and even activity are radically voluntary, is an adolescent doctrine, a fantasy shopping trip without end. In contrast, liberal democracy at its best starts from a recognition of certain limitations that all have in common. None of us is perfectly wise, good, or fit to rule over others. All of us need help sometimes, from neighbours and from institutions. We are bound by moral obligation to our fellow citizens. We share stewardship of an irreplaceable natural world. This eminently adult temperament is alien to the digerati."

12 The resolution to set up a new university college in Malmo was accepted by the Swedish parliament in December 1996. It was part of the policy to expand education at graduate and postgraduate levels in Sweden by setting up new universities, and the idea of a school and research centre for art and communication emphasising interactive media was a central part of the early plans for the new university in Malmo.

13 Such co-operation has already been initiated with the five year Shift program focusing artistic conceptions and expressions of time, change, human experience and technology. The project initiates and supports collaborations between regional artists from the Sound region (Oresund- Skåne and eastern Sjælland) and students and researchers at the School of Art and Communica- tion. Examples include co-operation with the Music Theatre in Malmo and the Museum for Contemporary Art, Arken, in Copenhagen.

14 Co-operation with companies within the field of interactive media and information technology will be extensive, not least through agreements with the industrial, research and development park located nearby: Soft Center Malmo. In fact, it is interesting to notice that the first 'Software design manifesto' was written by Mitchell Kapor from Lotus Corporation, a most successful leader from the microcomputer industry. In the manifesto that he delivered in 1990 at a gathering with his fellow leaders in the industry he wrote, "The lack of usability and the poor design of programs are the secret shame of the industry ... By training and inclination, people who develop programs haven't been oriented to design issues. This is not to fault the vital work of programmers. It is simply to say that the perspective and skills that are critical to good design are typically absent from the develop- ment process, or, if present, exist only in an underground fashion. We need to take a fresh look at the entire process of creating software — what I call the software design viewpoint. We need to rethink the fundamentals of how software is made." (Kapor, 1996)

15 The 'Third Culture Cafe' is based on the original philosophical cafes emerging in Paris at the end of the eighties, but our focus will be on technical versus philosophical issues: the role of science, technology, the arts and the new media, especially the emergence of cross-fertilisation and hybrids evolving from the encounter between previously separate disciplines.

16 Strong inspiration for the organisation of studies in a 'reflective practicum' are the experiences discussed and concepts developed for design education in Schon (1987). Another inspiration is the idea of legitimate peripheral participation in 'communities-of-practice', see Lave and Wenger (1991).

17 The research work is organised in atelier-like studios. Each studio is be led by a studio director (research professor) with scientific or professional- artistic excellence and involves 1-2 post-doctoral positions and 2-4 PhD students. In the projects they will be assisted by 4-6 master's students. This will be a part of the ordinary masters programs, but the students may also be employed besides the programs paid by project budgets. The studios will also allow undergraduate students to participate in relevant projects. Different kinds of specialists coming from companies could also join the projects in a studio. The ideas and the structure for the research centre and the studios and their themes were developed in the proposal Malmö Interactive Media Studios (Pelle Ehn,, Jonas Löwgren and Peter Ullmark) in April 1997. Now the research centre has become part of the Interactive Institute, a Swedish national research centre focusing on interactive technologies. The plan is to have a network of studios in Sweden. Today the Interactive Institute has four studios. Two in Malmö (in co-operation with the School of Art and Communication), and two in Stockholm (in co-operation with DI (The University College for Film, Theatre, Radio and Television) and CID/ KTH (Centre for user-oriented IT Design/The Royal Institute of Technology).

18 For an excellent overview of artists as researchers and the importance of the art-technology connecion in relation to digital technology see Sommerer & Mignonneau (1998).

19 International Artists' Studio Program Sweden (IASPIS) enables artists from different countries to stay andwork in Sweden and also functions as a forum for dialogue between Swedish and interna- tional artists. It hasstudios in Sweden and abroad Snow C.P. (1959) The TwoCultures andthe Scientific Revolution. Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge. Sommerer, C. and Mignonneau, L. (eds.) (1998) Art@Science. Springer-Verlag, Wien. Wolfe, T. (1982) From Bauhaus toourhouse. Jonathan Cape, Great Britain.

Enlaces

URL: https://wiki.ead.pucv.cl/Manifesto_for_a_digital_bauhaus

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