Critical Diagrams

The first concept of Ease was explored through Vilém Flusser's "On the term Design." They explore words and their roots for example, "In English the word “design” means (among other things) a “sinister scheme, a secret project, an aggressive intention, a plot, an evil purpose.”" And, "Greek “mechos” means a contrivance for the purpose of cheating, a machination." The concept form the writing I explored was this idea of cheating, how can I get this falling ball from one side of the void to the other?

For Cause & Effect I explored the idea of Plato's Allegory of the Cave from Ignacio Balero's "The Design Cave: Notes for a Prehistory of Graphic Design History." The chained humans in the cave live in a shadowy world where they only know of these shadows but just beyond this realm is that of form and ideas.

The theme for mass was explored in Latour, B. (as Johnson, J.) (1988). Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of a door- closer where he explores the interaction between humans and non-humans. The idea of anthropomorphism is brought up when we as humans are "projecting" human behavior onto "...a non human cold technical object, one by nature impervious to any feeling."(p.303) He spends much of the writing exploring the idea of a door closer, from a human whos job is to close a door to a spring that closes the door behind you. I wanted to touch on another non-human, a hammer and its relationship as a non-human and how it interacts as a human with mass.

One of the most interesting topics that Weihong explores in the Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China is his break down of the term "Medium." He goes on to clarify the distinction between medium and media because they have been interchangeable. He brakes down the singular form medium into three unique conceptual models: "...(1) a linear model of the medium as a directional transmission of a message, (2) an intermediary model that conceives medium as the interface and intervening entity facilitating the two-way exchange between the subject and the objective world, and (3) a spherical model that understands the medium as an immediate environment or field that encompasses a variety of media and constitutes a shared space of experience."(p.8) Here there is the principle Exaggerate being explored through drops of water as a linear model of a medium.

Lastly, I explored Lorna Roth's "Looking at Shirley, the ultimate norm: Colour balance, image technologies, and cognitive equity" as I referenced that of a Shirley Card to showcase the principle of Follow Through.