The Unknown in Design, Art, and Technology

Contributions to a Philosophy of Making

Today, we not only design and produce artifacts, but also subjective experiences, life models and social change. This active shaping of our life circumstances is usually seen as a plannable and methodical activity. However, practice shows that a multitude of uncertainties, non-conceptualizable actions and forms of not-knowing are involved in these processes. The contributions in this volume are dedicated to dealing with the unknown in design, art, and technology.

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Content:

Introduction to the Unknown in Design, Art, and Technology. Contributions to a philosophy of making (…) With this book we bring together a series of essays highlighting individual ways of dealing with the unknown in various design situations. The ‘poetic stance’ outlined in the Introduction above – which has its roots in philosophy – forms the background for the very different points of departure in teaching, research, art, technology, everyday life, and even military policy. In contrast to scientific reflection, in which the material side of a topic is regarded as insignificant and pushed as far into the background as possible in favor of the conceptual side, we are striving for poietic reflection here. Although the scientific text refers to something outside itself, it claims to be conclusive and contain everything essential. It is based on logic and rationality and aims at secure knowledge that is repeatable and universal and can predict future events. On the other hand, poietic reflection is based on the inseparability of action and notion and refers to habitual knowledge and experience. It is aware that texts, i.e., linguistically formulated reflection, cannot replace vibrant experience and our sensual being in the world. Since they are texts in a book, the articles presented here therefore necessarily contain only one side of the coin, namely the reflection of the absent other side. At the same time, language is a very powerful tool to depict the knowledge that arises when we reflect on our experiences and actions. These reflections do not have to be strictly rational and logical – as in purely scientific representations – but refer to research oriented towards action and embodiment, which only brings about the event that it reports through its own actions. This inevitably means that the contributions do not deal with current issues of industrial design processes but instead focus on experimental approaches to design challenges in academic environments. In this sense, the articles are to be seen more as contributions towards a yet-to-be-developed philosophy of making than as the presentation of building blocks for a design theory.	Georg Trogemann, Page 9
Dialogues with the Unknown. Exploring the role of the unexpected in design processes through generative AI tools The article is based on the observation that the current wave of generative AI tools is fundamentally reshaping the world of work in many industries, and consequently also changing the way in which designers work. In their contribution to this book, Steffen Mitschelen and Natalie Weinmann raise the question of how working with these new and yet unknown tools will transform the design discipline. The authors report on a workshop they have conducted with design students to address the question of which skills are necessary to navigate an uncertain future in which outcomes can increasingly be generated automatically. The article comprises two parts, each written by one of the authors. The first part reports on the workshop’s setup and procedure, investigating the role of interpretation in dealing with the unexpected generated results by finding suitable applications for them. The second part explores how the students’ experiences with unfamiliar tools and approaches are shaped by their knowledge, past experiences, and expectations, influencing their actions.	Steffen Mitschelen and Natalie Weinmann, Page 31
Dionysian Tendencies in Design. How references work in complex situations Zahra M. Ganjee discusses the complexity of design projects, highlighting ambiguity, uncertainty, and the impossibility of knowing all of the fields involved as key characteristics of complex problems. She argues that purely scientific research is unable to fully recognize the implications of acting in a space of uncertainty. Therefore, as already mentioned above, the ‘knowledge base position’ should be complemented by an ‘unknowledge base position.’ In this context, primary generators in design (references and precedents) become important. Therefore, by comparing the two, she attempts to clarify the relationship between the use of references and the notion of not-knowing in the design process. In other words, the article discusses how the design process can commence from a state of not-knowing. It also addresses three existing approaches to facilitate complexity and interact with uncertainty in design: the transformation designer’s co-evolutionary approach, Andrew Pickering’s doing-without-science approach, and Donald Schön’s interactive approach. Each one of their methods assists designers in dealing with ambiguity, unpredictability, and unknowns in complex situations.	Zahra M.Ganjee, Page 71
What Is It Like to Create a Bow? Poiesis as research Christian Rust’s study explores the process of creating a violin bow through an autoethnographic approach. He aims to unravel the unknowns surrounding the question of what it is like to engage in this form of craftwork through the only route considered viable. The reflection upon the experiences and findings in this process leads to the proposition of a framework for research into artifacts centered around the three interconnected and interdependent key elements of skill, experience and knowledge. While the focus in this article is placed on experimental creation, it is believed that the threefold framework can be applied broadly to other forms of artifactual research.	Christian Rust, Page 103
Forgetting. An approach to encountering the complexity of otherness Somayyeh Shahhoseiny addresses one of the challenges in designing dwelling places for migrants in host societies. Populations forced to migrate as a result of war, natural disasters, or economic and political pressures often lose their ability to ‘dwell,’ exercise agency, and form a sense of identity in the host country due to unfamiliarity with the new situation. Her article defines the home as an objective and tangible extension of the self (body) and even a symbol of the self. To address this issue, she utilizes the concept of forgetting as a form of not-knowing, which plays a crucial role in alleviating the fear of the unknown and serves as a path toward dwelling in a new environment. Here, moments of forgetting are referred to as moments of insight.	Somayyeh Shahhoseiny, Page 129
Ndinguwe. Dealing with unfamiliar experiences in virtual worlds Tobias Bieseke investigates the interplay of narration and interaction in extended realities. He is particularly interested in the individual experience of participants when confronted with unknown or unfamiliar forms of perception. An essential part of his research is the experience of participants as altered self-representations in the form of avatars, haptic feedback, and their behavior in mixed reality environments. The central research question concerning how actors integrate unfamiliar perceptual forms into their personal experience space is particularly important because unfamiliar experiences enable thought processes that lead to transformative sense-making.	Tobias Bieseke, Page 151
As Far as I Don’t Know. Aesthetic experience as diffraction apparatus Mattis Kuhn draws parallels between the ontology and epistemology of agential realism and aesthetic experiences to show that an essential characteristic of art is excluded from agential realism: the purposeful production of things of which we do not know what they are. The framework of agential realism takes the position that things have neither inherent properties nor clear boundaries. Instead, these emerge in “intra-actions” of agencies. Many of these agencies are constructed by us, i.e., through designed tools or structures. The article proposes works of art — “calculated alienation” — as »diffraction apparatuses« par excellence to question our ways of perceiving, thinking, and shaping the world.	Mattis Kuhn, Page 181
The Duty to Prevent Political security concepts – such as pre-emptive security policy – ask for technologies that are able to anticipate the future as precisely as possible. However, these policies can only be enforced by giving the concept of prevention an absolute character. A “collective acceptance of the future as a threat” is required for the resulting measures to be widely accepted. Christian Heck’s article explores recent, data-driven prediction methods as tools to anticipate and proactively prevent future crises, conflicts, crimes, and terrorist threats, along with broader military and security service trends aimed at controlling and stabilizing the future. For this purpose, he questions the ethical and legal basis for such measures and discusses the implications for the rule of law, international law, and human rights. It is essential to understand the cultural and social consequences as well as the limits of these prevention systems to preserve social freedom and participation in democratic processes.	Christian Heck, Page 197
Software and Magic. Or an attempt to re-enchant the world The article by Georg Trogemann discusses two completely different strategies for dealing with the unknown in the digital world: the chronos paradigm and the kairos paradigm. The chronos paradigm desires understanding, security, and predictability. The intention here is the targeted design of our open future, for which the unknown must be avoided and systematically eliminated. On the other hand, the kairos paradigm draws from the unknown. It creates open spaces of action and looks for surprise and aesthetic experience within them. This openness and the search for the hidden makes it a suitable paradigm for engaging creatively and aesthetically with the digital.	Georg Trogemann, Page 225