D-Crit, the graduate program in design criticism at School
of Visual Arts, has just minted their third class of MFA students. “Eventually Everything,”
a half-day conference featuring talks by the students and invited design
professionals took place this past Wednesday. Unfortunately, I was unable to
attend for work reasons. I was able to live-stream the last hour or so which
was terrific, but not quite the same as being there in person.
In Tara Gupta’s critique of health club design she analysed
the “you are being watched” décor of nonstop mirrors and glass as reminiscent
of the philosophy behind the panopticon prison design. And that’s not the only thing
prison-like about health clubs. Turns out the exercise machines have more to do
with torture devices than mere looks. Treadmills were popular in early
Victorian era British prisons. Inmates walked for hours as enforced labor to
power mills, and the mind-numbing monotony was thought to be a most effective
form of punishment.
I was astonished to learn in Barbara Eldredge’s “Missing the
Modern Gun: Object Ethics in Collections of Design,” that while we have enough
guns in this country to arm every man, woman, and child, NOT ONE single design
museum in the U.S. has a modern gun in its collection. Talk about denial!!!
You can read summaries of the talks here, and the videos should
be available for viewing sometime in the next two weeks. You can view video of
the 2011 and 2010 conferences there as well.
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