ARC 597 | On Speed Situated Technologies Intellectual Domain Seminar, Fall 2014

I faced with this question: why the aesthetic taste for us is different from our previous generation? They were interested in more ornament as we see they really took care of the artworks with more decorations but they did not pay attention to the conservation of more simple ones. Here are some elements in production which were remained unchanged; the performance, the users, the quality of the material and the appearance. What has changed in the nature of human that makes this tendency for becoming more interested in pure geometries shape? The replacement of function through the psychological aspect of objects in my opinion plays effective role in this process. In comparison of Bugatti and Buick it should be mentioned that the earlier have not considered the effect life of the car and tried to design in a way that will be beautiful forever; however, the later one try to have some meaningful relation between the beauty and life of the car. Recent trend is mass production because of the society needs however in Bugatti’s view aesthetic quality is more important than quantity of cars.

This transition makes us think about the ways to get rid of undesirable products around us and understanding the effect of this procedure on our lives. I think in addition to the technical issues of remove something from our life, there is an emotional feeling that happens for us. It is not so easy for us to see our grandmother’s building which we have millions of memories there is suddenly demolishing at less than a minute. there are some factors that make the man-thing relationship more and more temporary and ephemeral and growing technology has significant effects on the reducing it. For example, these day people are more interested in renting a furnished home rather than buy everything for it. In the past the goal was to use each product as long as possible but today the current procedure is going to reduce the average life of goods. Why obsolescence happens? Why we want to get rid of something that is still working? I remember that I used my cellphone for than more 7 years. But right now I do not like to use my new I-phone which I bought couple of months ago after seeing the new version which has more capability. Or if I broke my cellphone, it is more easy and cheap for me to buy to new one instead of repairing it. Why? Because in mass production creating everything in large number is much more easy and cheaper while inspecting the problem of each product case by case is very time consuming and needs more human resources and so it will be more expensive.