Dorfles, Gillo

Temes de Disseny

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Gillo Dorfles
mas prerrogativas: la de ser un «creador de objetos»,
que es una de las capacidades que más lo diferencian
de los animales. Bienvenidas sean, pues, las innovacio-
nes tecnológicas que permitan al hombre mejorar su
modus vivendi, pero a condición de que no oscurezcan
su capacidad ancestral de crear objetos ex-novo, al
igual que la Divinidad o el Azar han creado siempre
«objetos naturales».
Design: between the natural
and the artificial object
Without the need of referring to known psychological
«perceptivist» theories, there is a phenomenon which
should be evident to anyone: the fact that we are driv-
en to distinguish —within the undifferentiated web of
infinite visual calls that hammer us— determined con-
figurations —let's call them pure Gestalten— which
prevail over many others.
Anyone who has ever paid a minimum of attention
to the modes of their visual perception will have no-
ticed that they are pushed to select some objects in the
panorama that surrounds them, be it a room, an of-
fice, or a rural or displaced metropolitan landscape.
When we say «object», we naturally mean: pencil,
watch, chair, telephone; but also a polished stone, a
termite, a nest, etc. In other words, there is a world of
objects (quite different from that «Système des objets»
of which Baudrillard spoke in his time), constituted of
that set of natural and artificial, industrial and artisan
elements without which our own existence would lack
meaning because it would not have a «point of refer-
ence», and even —individually— the satisfaction of
considering ourselves in our turn a «creator of ob-
jects», like the Divinity or Chance.
The fact that, afterwards, the identification of these
«perceptive groupings» to which we attribute the dig-
nity of objects depends on an exclusively utilitarian
reason or a personal esthetic preference, is not some-
thing I mean to investigate in this work. That which I
need to express is that, on first examination, the dis-
tinction between a human-created object and one
which nature has put at their disposal is not clear: for
which reason we could say —adopting Goethe's cele-
brated phrase «auch das Unnaturlichste ist Natur»
even what is most unnatural is nature. That is to say,
we are forced to make many artificial products enter a
natural context; in the same measure, I would add,
that we are willing to consider artificial, that is to say,
as if they were created by us, many formations which
are totally natural: termites, nests, crystals, water-pol-
ished stones... in a word, everything that in a certain
sense is differentiated from the «chaotic» element, and
in some way nears a principle of «formal coherence».
Looked at this way, it is exactly the coherence that
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Design: between the natural and the artificial object
induces us to select formations we consider «objects»;
and it is possibly just the incoherence that which occa-
sionally characterizes some «artistic objects» that can
be non-functional, «superfluous», but intrinsically del-
icate configurations.
Consequently, we live among objects, we feel es-
thetically —and sentimentally— attracted by them,
and above all, we often transform them into symbolic
elements —memory receptacles, vehicles of passions,
or even, oftener than we think, endow them with
«magical» potential: propitiatory or apotrocaic.
I believe that for any up-to-date analysis of the ob-
ject universe that surrounds us and which is obviously
made up above all of objects serially and industrially
produced, and which has also involved —from Du-
champ on, passing through pop art, arte povera, con-
ceptualism— a good part of the artistic panorama, it is
imperative to return somehow to the origins of this
world of objects, without drawing a chrono-history
(which would be completely impossible in this con-
text), but at least indicating its essential points of de-
parture and arrival.
The fact that many primitive implements created
(or found) by humanity —silex, obsidian arrow-heads,
etc.— should have, apart from the specific function of
cutting, boring, killing, a function that we cannot but
define as esthetic and symbolic, brings about that this
double or triple function of the object, as natural as, in
a second term, «artificial», becomes indispensable and
must be considered with great attention. This also ex-
plains why, even nowadays, a superstitious sacraliza-
tion of certain familiar objects (perhaps inherited from
parents or grandparents) takes place, perhaps for af-
fective reasons or from a kind of ancestral collection-
ism. Many of these domestic objects can thus be invest-
ed with a particular power —constituted by the set of
traditions and ceremonies hallowed by use— and thus
avoid the loss by those who possess them of the capaci-
ty to use them in the best way as did those who long
ago possessed the work implements, the arms, or the
magical simulacra.
According to some anthropologists (for example
Robert Layton in Antropologia dell'arte, 1984) it is
necessary to recognize the artistic value of this kind of
objects, as a will to «beautification» is never absent,
not even in more primitive cultures (Australian aborig-
ines, for example).
Today, in an era in which the industrial object is
evidently in crisis, not only because of the esthetic and
technical obsolescence of many industrial products but
also beacause of the peculiar situation of passage of
our civilization from a «mechanical» phase to an
«electronic» one (it is easy to watch the constant dis-
appearance of many manufactured products and arti-
cles which are substituted by «signs», «signals», but-
tons, etc., and which, therefore lose their consistency
as objects and on the contrary gain a «semantic or sig-
nalized consistency»).
Another phenomenon typical of the latest years
that incides deeply on the structuring and valuation of
the panorama of industrial objects is the incessant min-
iaturization of many of the products of industry (think
of the fusion and conglomeration of objects that had
been separate and are today consistent: telephones, tel-
egraph machines, faxes, microphones, dictaphones,
etc.) so that there is an increasing urgency for a redis-
covery of the identity of the object which must be
traced to where the fusion or miniaturization which
have led it to disappear has not taken place.
This «return to the object», as it obviously cannot
be carried out with those products that have found a
different structure, will eventually invade other sectors
where the possibility of an independent «formal» ex-
istence still exists. In this sense we see, and will proba-
bly continue to see in the future, a recovery of some
forms of artisan work, apparently agonic or that had
not found their exact use. Therefore, the absolute pre-
eminence of the industrially created object will be sub-
stituted by a new artisan phase, partly linked more to
artistic factors, partly begun by the rediscovery of nat-
ural materials forgotten in the recent past but newly
usable. And not only this, but we will also see a recov-
ery of symbolic and mytho-poetic factors present in
other times in many objects of the far and more recent
past.
I have stated that it would be opportune to restore
symbolic value to the object; this means, once more,
taking one step back and one forward: if we look at
the artifacts of antiquity —prehistoric but also histor-
ic— we immediately realize that many of them were
invested with a potent magical charge, as I have al-
ready affirmed and as any good anthropologist (from
Franz Boas to Lévy-Bruhl, from Gilbert Durand to V.
Turner) has confirmed. Can we say the same of those
pertaining to the object universe that surrounds us?
Almost always, the answer is no. It is true that «status
symbols» are often mentioned, that is to say, a value
that symbolizes a socio-economic situation (reffering
138
Gillo Dorfles
to powerful competition machines, high-category mo-
tor launches, jewels, horses, etc.) but it is easy to real-
ize that this is not the symbolism to which I wish to
allude. It would literally be degrading the profound
value of the term «symbol» if we applied it to the vul-
gar exhibitionism of riches and power. However, an
authentic symbolic-mythic value still lurks in many
objects that we use every day, even though we are not
conscious of it. Let us look at some foods —converted
into objects— such as bread, wine, honey; at fruit such
as apples, figs, bananas; furniture such as chairs,
lights, pantries; object-architecture such as towers,
pyramids, etc. In all these cases the metaphoric value is
as strong as the real and everyday value.
But an analogous principle also acts on many prod-
ucts of recent creation: how can we not recognize the
symbolic value of a telephone, a PC, a Swatch watch,
of many domestic machines?
It is certainly not casual that many of the best-
known design products have been christened with
names such as Penguin, Yeti, Turtle, Vespa (wasp), Bee,
Bat, or others even more fantastic but always related
to a certain formal assonance: Hypotenuse, Eclipse, Ir-
idescence, Snail, for lamps, and Nympheas, Lace,
Comet, Asteroid, etc. for sofas.
Many of these names —invented by the designer,
the marketing people, the publicists— often coincide,
and not superficially, with the nature of their respec-
tive products and end up assuming an analogic and
metaphoric role of which, without a doubt, no-one
was conscious at the beginning.
We realize every day, watching a «flock» of planes
on an airport runway, so similar to real birds; the jun-
gle of computers at an employee's desk, like an army
of imps at the service of no-one but themselves; the tel-
evisions turned on in living rooms in the evening, true
magicians reciting their bewitching litanies... we real-
ize, I was saying, that humanity has become , in good
measure, a slave of the objects it has created, no less
than in the time of «savage thought», totem masks,
animal taboos, talismans and fetishes that surround-
ed it.
If, later, we pass from an extrinsic slavery to an in-
trinsic one, that is, to the the intervention of those in-
struments that allow us to insert ourselves into so-
called «virtual realities», we realize that the distinction
between artifice and nature, between natural and arti-
ficial objects, becomes more difficult and ambiguous.
As is well known, by means of certain optical, tactile,
and special auditive «prostheses» (glasses, the data-
glove, the data-suit) (see the work of J. F. Foley, S. R.
Ellis, R. Manzini, Tomàs Maldonado) we are able to
penetrate spaces, dimensions and «objectual realities»
that are totally fictitious and illusory, but that have the
«perceptual» aspect of authentic nature. Even though
we have exaggerated valuing positively or negatively
the impact of this false reality, there is no doubt that at
this moment it must be taken into account, above all
to clear up where the division between natural and ar-
tificial lies.
We can unreservedly aver that with the advent of
new electronic means, and even from the first televi-
sion artifacts (like the mixer or the chroma-key) and
even the diverse types of «simulators» created in the
U.S. for simulating space and cosmonaut's cabins, a
new era has opened up in our way of facing the reality
(or irreality) of nature. This also cannot avoid influ-
encing object design itself and its esthetic aspects.
Obviously, I hope that this possibility of creating
inexistent and fictitious realities, and also of acting on
the esthetic plane through new electronic systems (vid-
eo-art and computer art), will not corner effective ar-
tistic inventions («manual» production of paintings
and sculpture) and those of design and architecture
—even though these are only partly artistic. It would
be a grave danger which would end up depriving hu-
manity (and the child even more, for whom «manual
creativity» and neokinetics are essential for the awak-
ening of esthetic impulses) of one of its maximum pre-
rogatives: that of being an «object creator» —one of
the capacities that most distinguish it from the animal.
Welcome, then, the technological innovations that per-
mit humanity to better its modus vivendi, but with the
condition that they not overpower its ancestral capac-
ity to create objects ex novo in the same way as the
Divinity and Chance have always created «natural ob-
jects».
139


Design: between the natural and the artificial object

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