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EDITORIAL

The Computer and DesignCharlie Breindahl, University of Copenhagen and IT University of Copenhagen,

Ida Engholm, Center for Design Research, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen,

Judith Gregory, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology,Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, School of Informatics

1

2007 | Volume I, Issue 1 | Pages 11

When we first discussed creating the journal that

became Artifact, we simply could not believe that

it had not been created already by somebody,

somewhere. In little more than a quarter of a

century, the computer had changed every aspect

of design. The design process had changed with

the introduction of AutoCAD and PageMaker, the

manufacturing process had been automated, the formof the resulting products had changed, the computer

software itself had become a design object, and the

functions of physical designed objects increasingly

relied on built-in computer intelligence. We kept

looking for the international, academic journal that

recorded all this in vain.

Moreover, it seemed obvious that the importance

of design was increasing rapidly. In the global

marketplace, the fierce competition on price and

quality continues to drive down the price of consumergoods. Saturated with material goods, consumers

look for experiences instead. Such experiences must

be designed. Also, the proliferation of computers

and Internet access brings a growing demand for

software architects and game designers to shape the

virtual world beyond the screen. In our professional

lives, we sensed a global trend towards incorporating

the education of designers and architects into

academe, and a growing pressure on lecturers

to publish in academic form. Design research isincreasingly becoming an academic field and no

academic field can exist without journals.

Finally we saw a need to create closer contact

between research and industry by providing

researchers, practitioners, and people from industry

with the possibility to publish their results and

exchange ideas on specific areas and issues.

Creating a journal to record and analyze the

fascinating combination of computer and design just

seemed to be the right thing to do.

In its content, the journal will embrace experimental

research approaches to design with a basis in

applied design practice. It will capture and utilize

the knowledge that is produced in the varied

transitional zones that characterize design practice

today. The journal will feature articles based on

historical, cultural, and philosophical studies that do

not spring directly from applied design practice, butwhich make qualified contributions to the field in the

shape of insights, concepts, and ideas. Assuming

an attitude of openness, we shall strive to promote

transdisciplinary design research and prepare the

ground for cross-fertilization, interconnections,

and crossbreeding among different scientific and

practice- oriented disciplines.

When we began to ask the best people we knew

whether they would join us in our effor ts, we were

surprised again by the warm reception given ourfledgling venture. We are deeply grateful to our

Advisory Board who individually and collectively

represent what we wish Artifact to stand for and to

our publisher, Routledge/Danish Centre for Design

Research Group.

Gradually, we have come to understand who an

academic journal belongs to. Like the many virtual

communities on the Internet, it belongs to no

single person or entity, but to those who decide tocontribute their time and efforts. With grati tude, we

welcome yours: Our readers and, it is hoped, future

contributors.

Published online 2006-04-21

ISSN 1749-34 63 print/ ISSN 1749-3471

DOI: 10.1080/17493460600658342

2007 Danish Centre for Design Research

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Object Artifacts, Image Artifacts and Conceptual Artifacts:Beyond the Object Into the Eventby Owen F. Smith, University of Maine

2


Keywords:Art, Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Creativity,

Fluxus, HCI, Language, Mediation, New media, Perfomance

When asked to respond to the question what is an

artifact? I initially had several divergent responses.

Because of my varied background and current

position, I responded to thisquestion in three related

but different ways: as an anthropologist (the area ofmy initial graduate training), as an art historian (the

area of my Ph.D.), and as a professor of new media

(my current position).

To an anthropologist,what comes to mind

is a general category of things that certain

anthropologists study, specifically, any object that

was created, modified, or used by a human being.

Anthropologists also refer to artifacts as material

remains, and generally they are portable objects

rather than structures or buildings.

To an art historian, artifacts are foundational on two

contradictory levels. As George Dickey states, the

status of artifactuality can be seen as a defining

characteristic of all works of art. Nevertheless,

artifactuality is not sufficient as a condition in and of

itself to trigger art status. Put another way, artifacts

are objects that are not works of art, and they are

not the primary focus of art historical investigation.

This is particularly the case when aesthetics is aprimary concern.

To a new media professor, the word artifact has

two primary associations. The first is at the core

of a developing field of study centered on human-

computer interaction (HCI). In this field, discussions

of artifacts center on both the computer and the

application, and their use in relation to concerns

drawn from cognitive science. The second is much

more common and seemingly mundane. An artifact

is the result of a computational error. The most

common of these is an image artifact, which is any

feature that appears in an image that is not present

in the original imaged object. An image artifact,

such as a compression artifact, is a particular

class of data error that is usually the consequence

of quantization in loss-heavy data compression.

Through the lens of my own background, then, we

can see the glimmer of four definitions of the natureand/or function of an artifact:

1. An object produced or modified by human

agency, especially a tool or ornament.

2. A creation of human conception or agency

rather than an inherent element.

3. An erroneous effect, observation, or result,

especially one generated from the technology

used or from experimental error.

4. A structure or feature not normally present but

visible because of an external agent or action.

More significant than any one of these definitional

aspects of the term artifact are the oddly

interconnected uses of this term as a means of

demarcating a particular quality or presence.

Artifactuality, in all forms, is central to determining

the nature and significance of a given element,especially in relation to human cognition or agency.

An artifact is both a residue of making, an object

such as a dish, and the process by which humans

make the world. Our artifacts and tools are more

than just those objects that we use to perform

certain tasks. In the end, theyare change agents.

The interrelationship between the generating task

and the resulting artifact or tool is one of cyclical

change, rather than a simple need-response

relationship. In the essay The TaskAr tifact Cycle

Carroll, Kellogg, and Rosson (1991) argue that:

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Artifact | 2007 | Volume I, Issue 1 | Pages 25 3

. . . a task implicitly sets requirements for

the development of artifacts to support it ; an

artifact suggests possibilities and introduces

constraints that often radically redefine

the task for which theartifact was originally

developed. (p. 79)

As the art ifact suggests new possibilities and

manifests its limitations, these relations generatenew possibilities. Our artifacts in this way make us

as much as we use them to make other things. This

characteristic leads some to suggest that artifacts

are objectified, humanknowledge and practice.

Artifacts are more than things. In essence,they form

a cognitive frame through which wegive meaning

and functionality to what we experience or perceive.

Anthropologists and historians have long held that

we can tell much about a given culture and peopleby considering their artifacts. This is not simply

becausethese materials are part of the historical

record. More importantly, they form thephysical

trace of a peoples mindset, beliefs,attitudes, cultural

structures, and values. Thisis in part possible

because the physical properties of any given artifact

are references to the people who made and used it.

Others have suggested, I believe rightly, that an

artifact is a theory that can in turn be abstracted

from the artifact itself. (Or possibly, they statetheories through their physical being.) For this

reason, although many definitions give primacy

to the physicality of an art ifact, the nature of

artifact as an idea is the most rich and of the

greatest interest to me.

In developing our understanding of HCI, cognitive

psychology has been one of the most significant

influences. This role, however, has primarily been

limited to a consideration of the storage andprocessing of symbolic information, drawing an

analogy between general human functions and how

computers might perform similar functions. Under

the influence of such assumptions, their users have

largely construed HCI as the science of designing

systems to support problem-solving activities. This

is often referred to as cognitive ergonomics. The

resulting systems are termed cognitive artifacts, and

they supposedly improve the quality and function of

human thinking.Although there has been a recent

move away from this focus on cognitive artifacts,

this view is still dominant.What all of this misses,

however, is creativity.

Traditional views of cognitive artifacts cannot

account for creativity. Neither can they address

the role and function of the most human aspects of

experience: emotion, imagination, and creativity.

What I propose, however, is that the other form ofdigital artifactuality, the result of a computation error,

accounts for aspects of creativity. Moreover, this is

the process most closely aligned with creativity. How

can this be?

What I propose is that creativity, defined simply as

divergent thought for imagining what might be, is an

artifact. In relation to the normal cause-and-effect

operation of computational systems as reasoned

thought, creative associations are flaws. Theunexpected associations, relations, and possibilities

that are at the heart of much creative output are

neither logical nor predetermined. When we think

outside the box, we generate artifacts things that

are not to be found in the simple additive result of

information input.

The invitation to consider the nature of artifactuality

has led me to an interesting insight into my own field

of inquiry: contemporary instructional-based art

works, sometimes referred to as scores. If we lookat the particular form of instruction works known

as event scores, historically associated with the

group Fluxus, we find an interesting contradiction.

They are at the same time specific and generalizing.

They tell the reader or performer what to do, and

they simultaneously escape the limitations of those

same instructions. Let us consider a few examples of

classic Fluxus event scores to get a general sense of

their form and the broader possibilities they imply:

Eric Andersen

Opus 9

Let a person talk about his/her idea(s).

1961

George Brecht

Three Window Events

opening a closed window

closing an open window

1961

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Ken Friedman

Websters Dictionary

A series of dictionary definitions inscribed on

sidewalks and walls in public places.

1965

Alison Knowles

Variation #1 on Proposition

Make a soup.1964

Sometimes described as neo-haiku theater these

forms of performance scores are minimal in their

physical presence, but they possess a quality that

enables them to break from both these minimal

instructions as well as from our expectations.

They do this much as the major grammatical break

in traditional haiku (kire) events act to shif t our

understanding of both life and art.

But to return to our subject, that of the nature of

an artifact, what I realized in thinking about the

question what is an artifact? is that events are

a form of artifact. I mean this not in their physical

state as marks on paper or even as language, but as

a conceptual frame, a tool and most importantly, as

a mediating force. More directly, what I realized is

that all instructional works, and events in particular,

are artifacts. They are structures that act to control

or make an action (or thing) into a cognitiveframe. They change what we do from what might be

described as an action (life), whether it is simple or

complex, into a mediated act (art). Within the context

of the human-with-artifact system, such instructional

works expand the functional and cognitive capacity

of both the performer and the audience. Soup is no

longer just soup, or an idea just an idea, but they

are all part of the view we hold and what we see

and feel about the lives we are living. The simple act/

instruction as an artifact acts to replace the originaltask (making art) with a different one (performing an

action), one that has the potential to have a radically

different cognitive frame and uses radically different

cognitive capacities from the initiating instruction. In

this way, instructional works change the way we think

and act, much like those suggested by D. A. Norman in

his essay Cognitive Artifacts (Norman 1991).

Normans description of the manner in which

artifacts change the ways tasks get done can be

simplified as follows:

Distribute actions across time

(precomputation)

Distribute actions across people (distributed

cognition)

Change the actions required of the individuals

doing the activity.

Scores or instructions allow the text to contain

action, or at least the potential for action, thus

distributing it across time and people. Scores do

not so much change the action required as they

change more significantly our thinking about

the action. They alter our perception.We see thingsin a new way and scores help us to question such

distinctions as the dichotomies of significant and

insignificant or valuable and worthless.

Artifacts are the result of forces brought to bear on

the mediated boundary between given realit y and

the imposition of human cognition on the material

existence that the given reality establishes. (There

is, of course, a debate concerning the nature of

reality and whether reality exists. For now I will

propose that reality does exist.)

Artifacts, in this case scores and instructions, are

human thought made physical. They are mediating

factors between actions and the resulting changes

to the world. In execution and perception, the

artifactuality of event works is brought to a head

by the seemingly contradictory possibilities of the

physical world and the score itself as awork of art or

creative expression.

Some suggest that artifacts are like language.

Humans create them, but they act independently

nonetheless to mediate relations between humans

and the world. Human beings mediate their

activities by art ifacts. When we are introduced

to a certain act ivity, we come to know it through

artifacts.

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Artifacts are also a product of our activities.As

such, we constantly change artifacts in the act of

using them. This mediation is essential to the ways

we can and should understand artifacts. We cannot

study artifacts as things. Rather, we must consider

how they mediate use. We must understand or look

at the artifact in use to see properly what it is or

what it suggests.

Artifacts have no significant value in isolation.

They come to possess meaning in cultural terms

and in relation to social praxis. Creatively speaking,

artifacts are those ideas that change our perception

of the world. We see this as creative, not as

something else. By redefining our perspectives,

artifacts enable humans to engage in activi ties,

develop ideas, and develop cultural practices

previously unknown to them. The results of such

engagements are known through use and they areknown as a kind of relational aesthetic.

Alison Knowles sums up the process of artifactual

mediation in an elegant and disruptive way in her

event score, Performance Piece #8(1965):

Divide a variety of objects into two groups. Each

group is labeled everything. These groups

may include several people. There is a third

division of the stage, empty of objects, labeled

nothing. Each of the objects is something.One performer combines and activates the

objects as follows for any desired duration of

time:

1. Something with everything

2. Something with nothing

3. Something with something

4. Everything with everything

5. Everything with nothing

6. Nothing with nothing

REFERENCESCarroll, J. M., Kellogg, W. A., & Rosson, M. B.(1991). The Task-

Artifact-Cycle. In J. M. Carroll (Ed.), Designing interaction,psychology at the human-computer interface(pp. 74102).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Norman, D. A.(1991) Cognitive Artifacts. In: J. M. Carroll, (ed.),Designing interaction, psychology at the human-computer

interface(pp. 1738). Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

The Free Dictionary(n.d.).Available: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/artifact

CORRESPONDENCE:

Dr Owen F. Smith, New Media Program,

404 Chadbourne Hall,

University of Maine,

Orono, ME 04469, USA.

E-mail: [email protected]


ISSN 1749-34 63 print/ ISSN 1749-3471

DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610707


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Behavioral Artifacts:What is an Artifact? Or Who Does it?by Ken Friedman, Swinburne University of Technology

6


Keywords:Art, Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Creativity,

Fluxus, HCI, Language, Mediation, New media, Perfomance

The word artifact comes from two Latin words. The

first, arte, means by skill, from ars, skill. The

second, factum, is the past participle of facere, to

do or to make.

The word dates back to the early 1800s, meaning

something created by humans usually for a

practical purpose; especially: an object remaining

from a particular period and something

characteristic of or resulting from a particular

human institution, period, trend, or individual

(Merriam-Webster, 1990, p. 105). Most definitions

focus on the quality of artifacts as things,

speaking of objects and remains rather than

process or production. Typical definitions are

anything made by human art and workmanship;an artificial product. In archeology, applied to

the rude products of aboriginal workmanship as

distinguished from natural remains, a product of

human art or workmanship, any object made by

human beings (Oxford English Dictionary, 2006,

n.p.; Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993, p.

120; Wordsmyth, 2006, n.p.).

I am as interested in the artifacts of doing as in

the art ifacts of making. Many ar tifacts exist onlyin human behavior, individual and social. These are

the focus of this essay.

While the philosopher Mario Bunge (1999,

p. 23) defines an artifact as a man-made

object, he uses the word object in the wide

sense of anything we can create, including

symbols, machines, industrial processes, social

organizations, social movements.

In this sense, an artifact is anything that we can

design in the very large sense of the word design,

defined as [devising] courses of action aimed at

changing existing situations into preferred ones

(Simon, 1982, p. 129).

The interesting challenge we face in the new journal

Artifactinvolves finding a vocabulary that allowsus to focus on the wide range of artifacts, those

made by doing that never take physical form as well

as those that are made in physical form, including

remains.

One reason for the emphasis on physical artifacts

may simply be their durability. An act or a word

vanishes. An object in the common sense of the

word does not. Historian Arnold Toynbee (1934,

p. 156) captures this nicely where he writes, It is a

mere accident . . . that the material tools which Manhas made for himself should have a greater capacity

to survive . . . than Mans psychic artifacts.

This historians distinction emphasizes a paradox.

Historians study what human beings do and what

they have done. They do so through the remains and

traces of action captured in physical artifacts.

The language that helps us to capture one range

of meanings seems always to withhold or deferanother. As we bring ideas into one focus, we lose

the focus that would help us to capture another set

of ideas.

The words we use for different kinds of artifacts

are also shaped by our history in using them. When

way we speak of interfaces, for example, we think of

human-computer interaction and not shoes or cups.

Despite this fact, shoes and cups are interfaces of a

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Art ifact | 2007 | Volume I, Issue 1 | Pages 610 7

kind a dif ferent kind, but interfaces nevertheless.

When we speak of products and process, we

generally do not think of things digital but a

software package is as much a product as a block of

cheese, and we produce the system that allows us

to manage lines of customers at a bank.

It is as though we lack a holistic vocabulary that

allows us to speak of what we wish withoutexcluding what we also wish to speak of. While

this has always been the case, the advent of new

digital media focuses our attention on the virtual

and immaterial, emphasizing this challenge.

Describing the subtleties we seek requires the

right prepositions and verbs to give voice to the

nouns we choose, compound noun-preposition-

verb phrases that do not fit easily into the mental

habits of an English language that took shape

in Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Thisproblem arises in different ways and shapes in

all languages whether it involves a German

theologian speaking through the language of

Luthers Bible, a Japanese engineer who lives in

the language once shaped by Hakuin Zenji, or an

Indian mathematician thinking through a language

that crafted the Vedas.

The science fiction writer A. A. Attanasio (1989)

collapsed the distinction between beings and

their doings in a science fiction novel that positedhuman action as a physical force embedded in and

leaving behind an energy trail, much as a television

broadcast radiates signals outward from a source.

In Attanasios imagined world, everyone who

has ever lived can be reconstructed resurrected

from their traces, much as we could still capture

and watch the original broadcast of I Love Lucy

or Wagon Trainif only we could get out ahead of

the signal with a sufficiently sensitive television

antenna.

In thinking about artifacts, I want to capture the

concept and dimensions of behavioral artifacts. The

behavioral dimension of physical artifacts is clear

to most of us. We conceptualize our understanding

of this dimension in such terms as affordance

and interface, and we realize it in the way that

we organize our working habits and living patterns

around the artifacts we use.

It is this sense of the idea that Winston Churchill

evoked in his 1943 speech on whether and how

to rebuild the House of Commons: We shape our

buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

Nevertheless, there is another behavioral

dimension in the designed world, hidden in plain

sight. It unfolds before us. We walk through it ,

embedded in it as we shape it around us. It arriveswith each moment of time and vanishes as time

passes by. This is the enacted world that we

experience and capture partially in memory. We

can document behavior, describe it, plan it, and

represent it , but we only realize it in the living web

of action and interaction. We experience behavior

as we enact it, and then it vanishes. After the fact,

it becomes an account, a memory of some kind, or

perhaps the story of a memory.

As we move through time, we lose the traces of

this world. In some cases, the importance of these

lost worlds is greater than we realize. Consider, for

example, the role of improvisation in Mozart s work.

Through improvisation, Mozart shaped a tangible

experiential world that played out daily through

the duration of his life, vanishing when he died in a

way that must surely influence anyone who thinks

deeply on Mozarts music. Theologian Karl Barth

(200 3, p. 40) evokes the sense of this world: the

number of Mozarts preserved works is enormous.But probably even greater is the number of all those

works of which we are deprived and destined to

remain so. We know that at all periods of his life

he loved to improvise, i.e., to freely create and play

for himself within public concerts or hours on end

to only a small audience. What he did this way was

not writ ten down a whole Mozartean world that

sounded once and then faded away forever. What

we hear is Mozarts legacy, his nachlass, and his

remains. The living Mozart shaped his music in dailypractice. This was not the practice of practicing

scales or the practice of realizing a written

composition. Rather, it is practice as an expert

physician practices medicine or a lawyer argues

law, practice brought to life in behavior.

Amadeusby Peter Shaffer (2001, pp. 3036, 120121;

see also Forman 2002, Scene 7) captures this

experience in the scene where Mozart memorizes

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Salieris March of Welcomeon one listening. In the

motion picture version of Amadeus, Mozart sits at

the piano to work with the music as a pot ter works

with clay. He transforms the tune effortlessly as

he thinks and talks, shifting it from a somewhat

wooden march into the well-known passage it will

become in The Marriage of Figaro.

This is a behavioral artifact. It comes and vanishesin experienced time. We will never experience

this Mozart for ourselves except in imagined

reconstructions.

Even in this age of excellent recordings, we must

inevitably miss experiences. One cause is the

difficulty of capturing the quality of live presence

in even the best recording. Many reports on music,

theater, and art describe this. The recent death of

soprano Birgit Nilsson offers an example, whereAnthony Tommasini (2006: n.p.) wri tes, it is almost

impossible to convey what it was like to hear her

in person. Even her recordings, many of them

landmarks in the discography, do not do full justice

to her singing. . . . It was not just the sheer size

of her voice that overwhelmed recording studio

microphones. It was the almost physical presence of

her shimmering sound that made it so distinctive.

For many, the physical presence of Nilssons voice

was unique. The ability to project a powerful sound

through diaphragm control rather than volumemeant that she could sing her words clearly to

every part of a theater, rising over the orchestra

and chorus in a way that listeners perceived as

charismatic in power and subtle in musical mastery.

Another reason, even more common, is the fact that

many experienced moments are not recorded. Peter

Shaffer (2001, pp. xxviiixxix) laments the facts

that the revised Amadeusof 1998 was not filmed at

Lincoln Center, as the first Broadway production ofAmadeushad been two decades earlier.

The idea of musicality embodies the tension

between the behavioral artifacts of live

performance and the objects that instruct, record,

or document performance.

The concept of musicality refers to works designed

as scores for any medium, works that can be realized

by artists other than the creator (see Friedman 1991,

1998-b). In this sense, any listener can experience

Mozart simply by listening to an orchestra play one

of Mozart s scores. Perhaps another orchestra or

Mozart himself might have given a better rendition,

but it is still Mozarts work. Other kinds of works can

be realized in the same way, including theater, rituals,

performed art, and even physical works created to be

realized from a score.

The issue of musicality has fascinating implications.The mind and intention of the creator are the key

element in the work. The issue of the hand is only

germane insofar as the skill of rendition affects the

work: in some conceptual works, even this is not an

issue. Musicality is linked to experimentalism and

the scientific method. Experiments must operate

in the same manner. Any scientist must be able to

reproduce the work of any other scientist for an

experiment to remain valid.

Nevertheless, the radical interpretation of musicality

that emerged in the instruction work and intermedia

ethos of the 1960s raises interesting problems. The

generous opening to the world that scored work

made possible engages the action and behavior of the

performer who realizes the work while dislocating

the work from the productive behavior of its creator.

(For a deeper discussion of these issues, see

Friedman 1991, 1998-b, 2002; see also Owen Smiths

contribution to this issue of Artifact.)

Musicality suggests that the same work may be

realized several times, and in each state it may

be the same work, even though it is a dif ferent

realization of the same work. At the same time, the

particularity, the unique quality of each realization

depends on human context. It emerges once, in a

radical sense, never to exist again.

Consider, for example, conductors who have

given us great interpretations of past work, say acomplete Beethoven cycle or a series of Brahms

concertos, then, a decade or two later, gave a

dramatically different, yet equally rich interpretation

of the same work.

Oddly, the quality of difference that arises over

time is linked to a specific contemporary definition

of the term artifact. This definition involves the

unplanned results of human agency as well as

the planned ones. This even includes unplanned

results in the form of spurious scientific results or

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We see the behavioral artifacts around us in the

everyday life of individual behavior and the structured

social relations that constituted the empirical

foundation of Erving Goffmans micro-sociology (See,

e.g., Goffman, 1959, 1971, 1974). The organizational

memory that gives rise to group behavior and

organizational process is another case. So, for that

matter, are the behaviors that actors use to shape

the reality of theatergoers, or, as theologian DitteMauritzon Friedman (2005, p.: 4) notes, the craft of

a filmmaker in creating and sustaining a symbolic

universe for those who watch a film.

Shakespeares grand vision of the theater rests

upon this understanding, where words and action

summon a reality that spectators embrace to eke

out the performance with each mind.

It is useful to remember, as we celebrate the birth ofa journal on the Artifact, that artifacts constitute the

twin relationship between doing and making found in

the Latin facere.

As the editorial board joined in dialogue to reflect

on what this journal could be and mean a tune ran

through my mind. It is a revised version of the 1945

Disney classic, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah from the film

Song of the South.

I play the revised role of Uncle Remus, while a coupleof bluebirds and a squirrel give me the eye and sing:

Its the truth, i ts natural:

Everything is Artifactual.

REFERENCES

Attanasio, A. A.(1989). The last legends of Earth. New York:Doubleday.

Barth, Karl(200 3/1956). Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Eugene, OE:Wipf & Stock Publishers (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich)

Bunge, Mario(1999). The dictionary of philosophy. Amherst,NY: Prometheus Books.

Forman, Milos(2002 /1984). Amadeus. Directors cut. Burbank,CA: Warner Brothers, Warner Home Video.

Friedman, Ditte Mauritzon(2005). Spiritual symbols incontemporary film. Unpublished research note. Lund,Sweden: Centrum fr Teologi och Religionsvetenskap.

Friedman, Ken(1991). The Belgrade Text. Ballade, No. 1 [Oslo:Universitetsforlaget], pp. 52 57.

Friedman, Ken(1998-a). Building cyberspace: Information,place, and policy. Built Environironment, 24(2/3), pp. 83103.

Friedman, Ken(1998 -b). Fluxus and Company. In Ken Friedman(Ed.), The Fluxus reader(pp. 23 7253). London: AcademyPress/Wiley.

Friedman, Ken (2002). Working with event scores: A personalhistory. Performance Research, 7(3), pp. 124128.

Goffman, Erving(1959). The presentation of self in everyday life.Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.

Goffman, Erving(1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of thepublic order. London: Allen Lane/Penguin.

Goffman, Erving(1974). Frame analysis: an essay on theorganization of experience. New York: Harper.

Merriam-Webster(1990). Merriam-Websters CollegiateDictionary(9th ed.). Springfield, MA: Author.

Oxford English Dictionary(20 06). OED Online. Oxford EnglishDictionary(J. A. Simpson, & E. S. C. Weiner, Eds.) [2nd ed.,1989]. Ox ford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press.Available: http://dictionary.oed.com/ (accessed 12 January2006).

Shaffer, Peter(2001). Amadeus. New York: HarperCollins.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary(1993). The New Shorter

Oxford English Dictionary(Lesley Brown, Ed.). Oxford:Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press.

Simon, Herbert (1982). The sciences of the artificial.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tommasini, Anthony(2006). Nilsson in person: The glory ofthe power. New York Times. Online. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/200 6/01/14/arts/music/14nils.html (accessed15 January, 2006.

Toynbee, Arnold(1934). A study of history(Vol. 3). Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Wordsmyth (2006). The Wordsmyth Educational Dictionary-Thesaurus

[WEDT

] (Robert Parks, Ed.). Chicago: WordsmythCollaboratory. Available: http://w ww.wordsmyth.net/Accessed: 2006 January 12.

Young, La Monte(Ed.). (1963). An anthology. New York:Jackson Mac Low and La Monte Young.

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Young, La Monte(1990). Lecture 1960. In Ubi Fluxus, Ibi Motus(pp. 1982 04) (Achille Bonita Oliva, Gino Di Maggio, & GianniSassi, Eds.) . Venice and Milan: La Biennnale di Venezia andMazzotta Editore. 11

CORRESPONDENCE:

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, Dean,

Faculty of Design,

Swinburne University of Technology,

Melbourne, Australia.



ISSN 1749-34 63 print/ ISSN 1749-3471

DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610764


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In Search of a Unit of Analysis for Designing Instrumentsby Pascal Bguin, CNAM, Paris

11


A welcome topic of the new journal Artifact

is to promote as a distinct academic field the

transdisciplinary approaches centered on

design research. One of the conditions for such

a transdisciplinary approach is that the different

actors recognize the specificity of the contributions

of other actors and the complementary nature of

their respective productions. In this essay, I willargue that the different contributions of experts in

design must be completed by users constructive

activity. More particularly, my focus is to search

for a unit of analysis that helps to build shared

references between users and designers. I will

proceed in two steps. In the first, I will suggest

that an instrument cannot be confused with an

artifact, and that it is the user or the worker who

gives to an artifact the status of an instrument. In a

second step I will describe the design process as

a dialogical process in the Bakhtinien sense. I will

conclude with comments on what is an artifact?

Keywords:Instrument, Instrumental Genesis, dialogism

ARTIFACT AND INSTRUMENT

Work initially developed by L. S. Vygotsky and

others in Soviet psychology supplies a rich and

fertile approach to apprehend activities with

artifacts. As an activity consists in acting through

an instrument (Bdker, 1989), artifacts must not onlybe analyzed as things but in the manner in which

they mediate usage. We have Vygotsky to thank for

emphasizing the importance of mediation, which he

considers as the central fact of psychology.

The basic structure of human cognition that results

from mediation is often pictured as a triangle, as

in Figure 1. So artifacts must not only be analyzed

as things, but in the manner in which they mediate

action.

But, in this well-known picture, the terms

computer, tool, artifact are used

interchangeably. And apparently, no particular

ontological or epistemological problems exist. Yet if

the purpose is to make a contribution to the design

of technical devices, we need to be able to describe

more accurately what allows mediation to take place.

I will suggest that we have to make a distinctionbetween artifacts and instruments.

From artifact to instrument

An instrument cannot be reduced to a physical or

symbolic artifact, nor can it be confused with one.

For example, a hammer is not an instrument in itself.

A hammer is an artifact. To be an instrument, the

subject (the users or the workers) must associate

an organized form of psychological and motor

operations with the artifact. So, we can define an

instrument as a mixed entity (Bguin & Rabardel,2000; Rabardel & Bguin, 2005), made up of two

types of components. First , a psychological and

motor one that comes from the subject, and which

has individual, social and cultural dimensions.

Second, an artifactual part (an artifact, part of an

artifact, or a set of artifacts), which may be material

or symbolic (Figure 2).

Each side of the instrument is a conceptual

minefield. Rabardel (1995) proposed toconceptualize the subject side of the instrument

as a scheme, in the sense of Piaget (Piaget &

Beth, 1961), and more accurately as a utilization

scheme. A utilization scheme is an active

structure into which past experiences are

incorporated and organized, in such a way that it

becomes a reference for interpreting new data. As

such, a scheme is a structure with a history, one

that changes as it is adapted to an expanding range

of situations and is contingent upon the meanings

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granted to the situations by the individual. However,

and because it is not possible to fully discuss

these points, I will use the terms subject side

and artifact side of an instrument (see Figure

2), and I will come back later on the status of the

artifact side. An important consequence of such anapproach is that an artifact is not an instrumental

component in itself (even when it was initially

designed as such). The instrumental position of the

artifact is relative to its status within the action.

More extensively, the artifact part of an instrument

is any stuff one associates with the action in order

to perform a task, to reach a goal, or to realize a

motive. We all have examples in mind such as the

association of the scheme striking with a wrench,

which turns the wrench into an instrument that

has the same function as a hammer. In this smallexample it is the subject who gives to the artifact

the status of resource to achieve the goals of his/

her finalized action, who institutes an artifact as an

instrument.

From instrument to instrumental genesis

To continue the previous example, using a wrench

as part of a hammer is a catachresis. The term

catachresis is borrowed from linguistics. It

refers to the use of a word in place of another. Forexample, using the word arm for speaking about

the arm of a chair is a catachresis. This term

can be extended to the field of instrumentation.

Catachresis is a way to name things without an

available word, or to do something without technical

resources at hand. In this sense, it is testimony to

the inventiveness of users or workers who seek

to exploi t their environment and enroll i t in the

service of action, in order to increase the capacity

to act in the environment . One must not think that

catachresis would be in decline in the presence

of modern technology. It is not the case. During

preparation for landing for example, we have

observed that aircraft pilots who are not satisfied

with the descent speed proposed by the on-board

computer may enter false information (for instance,

they may specify that there is a tail wind whenno such wind exists) so that the computer will

define a landing speed that fits with their desires.

This example shows that even with automated

technologies, users may attempt to regain control as

long they have an entry point into the system (in our

example, the entry point is the input data the pilot

must supply because the computer cannot acquire it

on its own).

Catachresis results from a process that may be

relatively elementary (as in using the art ifactwrench as a hammer), or from largescale

processes that develop over a longer period on the

floor or in fieldwork. In order to grasp this process,

we speak of instrumental genesis. Because the

instrument is a mixed entity, instrumental genesis

is a process that encompasses the evolution of

both the artifact and subject sides. Let us call

these two processes instrumentation and

instrumentalization.

Instrumentalization is the attribution of a function

to an art ifact, which extends the artifacts initial

design and enriches the properties of the artifact.

It is based on the artifacts initial attributes

and properties, and confers on them a status in

accordance with the current action and situation

(in the example of the wrench that replaces the

hammer, the initial properties are its heaviness,

hardness, and graspable-ness). At the lowest level,

instrumentalization is local; it is related to a single

action and to the specific circumstances under

Figure 1.The basic structure of human cognition.

Figure 2.An instrument is a composite entity made up of subject andartifact components.

Subject Object

Artefact

Subject Object

(Subject side+Artefact side)Instrument

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Figure 3.The instrumental proposal and the instrumental genesisindialogue.

which that action occurred. At the highest level,

the artifact is modified physically. The constituted

functions become an integral part of the artifact

itself, by way of a modification in how it works or is

structured.

Instrumentation concerns the genesis of the

human side of the instrument. At the lower level it

concerns the utilization scheme. When a personuses a wrench as part of a hammer, there is a

direct assimilation of the artifact in the constituted

scheme. But more often there is an adaptation

of the scheme (for an example of such a process

with an automatic truck gearbox see Rabardel &

Bguin, 2005). In the larger case, the development

of the human side leads to a deeper reorganization

of the human side of the instrument. For example,

introducing CAD in a new setting leads to the

development of new utilization schemes, but also toa new conceptualization and new forms of collective

action.

Instrumentation and instrumentalization help to

analyze a particular instrumental genesis. But they

are intertwined in the same constructive process.

Indeed, instrumental genesis may have sources

that are external to the subject. For example, an

insufficiently elaborated design that does not

sufficiently consider the users requirement or

practice causes a gap (Thomas & Kellogg, 1989)for which the user must compensate. But even if

the artifact is well designed, an instrument is not

finished when an artifact is specified. The argument

there is that the development of an instrument

requires the users or workers to develop their own

resources for action. Therefore both designers and

users contribute to the design of an instrument,

based on their diversity.

Designing an instrumentOne way to resume what was previously said is

that an instrument is a coupling between the

subject and the artifact. But this coupling is far from

what is described by the concept of affordance,

where it is argued that anyone immediately and

directly perceives the signification and function of

an object. These concepts create difficulty when

used to clarify relations between the given and

the created (Bguin & Clot, 2004). During design

this coupling is not tuneful. And behind the art ifact

there is a designer. The term catachresis I evoked

previously is traditionally regarded as using a word

to denote something radically different from its

normal meaning, and by extension the deviant

uses of an object. Such a meaning takes for granted

the functions intended or imagined by the designers,

and institutes them as the norm or the reference.But, an interpretation in terms of deviation is

not the only one, and not even a desirable one.

Instrumental genesis is the users contribution to

the development of an instrument.

However, we have to take into account the fact

that in designing an ar tifact the designers imagine

a function, with the objective of orienting the

workers activity (see for example Vicente, 1999,

for a theoretical argumentation on this position).

But this is at best an instrumental proposal madeby the designers. There will be a response during

instrumental genesis. Consequently, the unit of

analysis must be extended in order to give greater

importance to the collective.

If we agree with the idea that the aim of the design

process is to design an instrument (and not only an

artifact), and if we consider instrumental genesis

as a contribution made by the user to the design

of an instrument, then we can define the designprocess as a dialogical process in the Bakhtinian

sense. By dialogicality, Bakhtin refers to a process

where someone takes something that belongs to

others, and makes it his/her own. Because words

are half-ours and half-someone elses . . . one is

invited to take the internal word as a thinking

device, or as a starting point for a response that

may incorporate and change the form or meaning

of what was originally said (Wertsch, 1998, p. 67).

In the design process, the someone elses half

(the artifact for the user) is associated with ones

Designers

Subject Object

Instrument

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own-half to bring about instrumental genesis,

producing a response that changes the form and

meaning of what was originally said. Typically,

instrumental genesis is a response that changes the

form and meaning of the artifact initially proposed

by the designers. But note that the reverse is also

true: instrumentalization made by users can lead to

a response by the designers. So, the challenge is to

organize a cyclical and dialogical process (Figure 3),where the result of one persons activity, designer

and worker, constitutes a source and a resource for

the activity of others (Bguin, 2003).

In speaking of a dialogical process, my goal is not

to argue that there is no dif ference between design

and communication, or between sign and artifact. I

do not think that artifacts are like books we have to

read (Tilley, 1990). My argument is that language is

simply one of the possible dialogical forms, but notthe only one. Design is another: we have to grasp in

its specificity. Let me give some brief arguments.

One feature of a dialogical design process is that it

must articulate a cyclical process, between nomos

and praxis. On one hand the design is initially a

concept, an intention, a will relative to the future,

or an order to happen. On the other hand, these

orders and intentions have to be concretely realized

to occur in action. But action will meet resistances,

sett ing the initial ideas in motion. We have toinscribe instrumental genesis in this cycle, in order

to bring back into play the result of the designer s

activity after having confronted it with the workers

or users activity or practices.

To design is to use media (technical or digital

drawing, scale models, mock-ups, etc.) for

projecting a representation and reflecting on it. But

these media play a role in the contex t of exchange

between actors (Vinck, 2001). In a dialogicalprocess, the media must support these individual

and collective dimensions. And due to the necessity

to articulate the relationship between theoretical

concepts and practice, a prototype is probably

the best medium. However, it is only at the end of

the design process that designers can produce a

prototype, after numerous decisions have been

made. So, it is often too late: changes can appear

much too expensive. What are the projective

methods that can be used, and the benefit and risks

of using one medum or another?

In using the medium as vehicle for dialogue, divergence

surfaces legitimately. These disagreements are

the real source and the engine of dialogicality. But

during the design process they can be solved in

two extreme ways. The first is design: modifying

the characteristics of the object currently being

designed, changing the criteria for at taining the goal,

etc. The second is conflict, for example authority

or the exclusion of certain actors whose goalsappear too contradictory. What is specific to design

is that the disagreements are solved at the level of

the object of the design process, the intention or

the solution. During conflict, on the other hand, the

purpose of the design process loses its centrality,

leaving the actors in a situation of face-to-face

contention where the difficulties are ascribed

to others. So, it is of the utmost importance to

verbalize and to legitimize the rationales and possible

consequences in regard to the users or workersperspectives. Otherwise, exchange between users

and designers would easily become conflict-ridden,

with the risk of leading to poorer and lower quality

outcomes.

Users and designers have their own points of view,

their own cri teria, their own concepts, and finally

different ways of grasping the same situation.

But, simultaneously, the actors are engaged in an

interdependent process. So what is specific to one

actor, and what needs to be shared? Instrumentalgenesis can appear as nonsense for the designers.

But, as outlined by Leont ev (1978), that which does

not have meaning may still have a signification.

Something may be a non-sense, but it is not

without signification. During dialogical design, an

important amount of t ime must be spent on building

the signification of the events: we have observed

something. What lessons can be drawn from it ;

what decisions should we make accordingly?

What is an artifact?

In this essay, I argue that the aim of the design

process is to design an instrument, and not only

an artifact. But asking what is an artifact? is a

useful question. In defining the design process as

a dialogical process, I argue that an artifact could

be defined as a sort of bridge laid down between

heterogeneous actors, with different points of view

and perspectives. But based on what has been said

previously, I would suggest two additional criteria

that go over a dialogical design process.

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First , an artifact can be defined by its structural

properties (and not its materiality a symbolic

artifact can also be defined by its structural

constraints), which are also constraints. In

Rabardel & Bguin (2005) we distinguish three

types of constraints. One can use a wrench as

part of a hammer due to its graspable-ness and

heaviness. It is the existence modality constraint.

The artifact also carries constraints concerningthe nature of the objects of activity (in the sense

of activity theory). A metal lathe, for instance, can

only perform transformations of matter through

the removal of turnings. We call these constraints

finalization constraints. Finally, the artifact

carries more or less explicit action pre-structuring

constraints. De Terssac (1992) stressed for

example that expert systems involve a positioning

of the operator and a more or less explicit form of

regulation of his actions and activity, which tend toreduce his own regulating possibilities. Probably

other constraints could appear, for example at

the collective level. The general idea is that an

instrumental proposal made by the designers

crystallizes in the artifact a representation of

the activity of the user, and conveys it in a set ting.

But when this crystallization is of bad quality, it is

a source of problem for users or workers. This is

why the designer must be able to apprehend the

subjects (or subjects) construction that is already

available in a situation.

Second, an artifact can be defined by its plasticity. I

have argued previously that instrumental genesis is

testimony to the inventiveness of users or workers

who seek to exploit their environment and enroll

it in the service of action, in order to increase

the capacity to act in the environment. From my

point of view, it is particularly important to give

a status to instrumental genesis during design.

But instrumental genesis is a living movement,which goes beyond the fixed chronology of one

design process. Plasticity consists in designing

artifacts that allow or facilitate the constructive

and developmental process of instrumental genesis.

It can be, for example, that the artifact can be

modifiable (Henderson & Kyng, 1991). But identifying

the properties that allow plasticity remains a

requirement of future research attention.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented in

September 2005 at a symposium organized by L.

Norros at the first ISCAR Congress (Sevilla). The

author would like to thank L. Norros and B. Nardi,

and special thanks are offered to C. Owen, who

made helpful comments on the latter version.

REFERENCESBguin, P., & Clot, Y.(2004). Situated action in the development

of activity. @ctivits, (1)2: 2749.Available: http://www.activites.org/ v1n2/beguin.fr.pdf(accessed 15 January 2006).

Bguin, P.(2003). Design as a mutual learning processbetween users and designers. Interacting with Computers,15, 709730.

Bguin, P., & Rabardel, P.(2000). Designing for instrumentmediated activity. Scandinavian Journal of informationSystems, 12, 173190.

Bdker, S.(1989). A human activity approach to userinterfaces. Human Computer Interaction, 4, 171195.

Henderson, A., & Kyng, M.(1991). There is no place like home:Continuing design in use. In J. Greenbaum, & M Kyng. (Eds.),Design at work: cooperative design of computer systems(pp.145167). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Leontev, A.(1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Piaget, J., & Beth, E.(1961). Epistmologie mathmatique etphychologie. Essai sur les relations entre la logique formelle

et la pense relles. PUF, Paris: Etudes dpistmologie

gntique N8 14.Rabardel, P.(1995). Les hommes et les technologies, une

approche cognitive des instruments contemporains[Peopleand technology, a cognitive approach to contemporaryinstruments]. Paris: Armand Colin.

Rabardel, P., & Bguin, P.(200 5). Instrument mediated activity:from subject development to anthropocentric design.Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Sciences, 6, 4294 61.

Terssac, G. de, (1992). Autonomie dans le travail[Autonomy atwork]. Paris: PUF (Collection sociologie).

Tilley, C.(Ed.) (1990). Reading material culture: Structuralism,hermeneutics and post-structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Thomas, J., & Kellogg, W.(1989). Minimizing ecological gaps inuser interface design. IEEE Software, 6, 7886.

Vinck, D.(Ed.). (2001). Engineers in day-to-day life: Ethnographyof design and innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vincente, K. J.(1999). Cognitive work analysis: toward safe,productive, and healthy computerbased works. London:Lawrence Eralbum Associates Publishers.

Wertsch, J. V.(1998). Mind as action. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

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CORRESPONDENCE

Pascal Bguin,

Laboratoire dErgonomie du CNAM,

Paris, France.



ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471

DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610830 2007 Danish Centre for Design Research

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An Exploration of Artificialityby Klaus Krippendorff, University of Pennsylvania

17


Keywords:Design, meaning, virtual, transitional, interface,

narrative

INTRODUCTION

The following explores the artificiality of human

artifacts. To talk of artifacts, we must avoid

ontologizing. Ontology ignores human participation

in its construction and describing artifacts as if theirdescriptions had nothing to do with i t contradicts

the idea of their artificialit y. Instead, I will explore

the nature of artifacts from the perspective of

human-centered design and with culture-sensitive

conceptions in mind. Exploring artifacts from this

perspective of fers scholars and practitioners a

fascinating field of inquiry. To follow are six closely

connected mini essays on artifacts, starting with

the use of the word artifact and ending with the

virtual worlds that artifacts can bring forth.

WE DEFINE ARTIFACTS IN

THE STORIES OF THEIR MAKING

By dictionary definitions, art-i-factis a noun,

composed ofart=Latin for skill +factum=made; a

product of skillful human activity. Thus, when we

call something an artifact, we are not concerned

with its materiality or how it works but with its

human origin and we search for stories to tell

how, by whom, and why something was made. It

is the presumption of such stories that renderssomething as an artifact. The natural sciences are

not concerned with stories, of course, and therefore

cannot possibly say anything about artificiality.

Natural scientists are concerned with products

of nature, with explaining observed phenomena

in terms of physical causes, chemical reactions,

or biological processes, which are not at issue as

far as artificiality goes. By contrast, archeology,

a discipline that searches for artifacts of past

cultures in order to understand what life was like

in these cultures, is fundamentally concerned with

the validity of the stories of their makers. To decide

whether such stories are warranted, archeologists

employ well-established decision criteria. They

start by testing for the natural origin of their finds.

Only when natural explanations fail do they consider

themselves justified to search for narratives of their

human origin. Their criterion has it right. Artificiality

begins where physics stops. Explanations of thehuman origin of artifacts are cultural. The definition

of the word artifact, and only that, leaves us to

conclude that artifacts cannot exist outside a story

of their making, however simple this story may be.

Since stories rely on their tellers use of language,

the art ificiality of artifacts cannot be separated

from the language used to describe it.

WE EXPERIENCE PRESENT

ARTIFACTS AS INTERFACES

Clearly, artifacts have always been and still aredesigned for use. However, designing, inventing,

and producing artifacts is one thing, using them

is quite another. The two activities involve very

different kinds of understandings. The makers of

artifacts know how to shape them, assemble them

from available parts, and bring them to where they

are needed. The users of artifacts may have a sense

of their origin and knowing their makers intentions

may well inform users of what to do with them in

ways natural objects cannot but, to be able to usean artifact, there is no compelling reason for users

to understand its histor y, material composition, and

inner workings save for trivial artifacts, such as

drinking glasses or scissors, whose mechanisms

are trivial. The make-up of non-trivial machines like

computers, electronic artifacts like browsers in the

Internet, and large social artifacts like governments

typically escapes their users understanding,

without, however, impeding their use. In use, the

distinction between artifacts and objects of nature

is not relevant.

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In use, artifacts become interfaces. Interfaces

arise when users enact their conception and

what they are facing tolerates these conceptions.

Interfaces should not be confused with the

components of artifacts that support them: handles,

computer screens, or keyboards, for example. Such

components participate in an interface, but so do

their users. Inter faces reside betweenartifacts and

their users. They consist of interactions and theyplay out dynamic relationships.

Interfaces are artifacts in their own right , viable

where human participants understanding is

interactively sustained, and non-viable where

their understanding does not work out and the

interface breaks down. From a user-centered

perspective, designers cannot limit themselves to

considerations of the materiality, functionality, and

form of artifacts. They must assure that interfacesare possible, effective, and fun. From the design

of human computer interfaces, we have learned

that users conceptions of what they are interacting

with may have litt le to do with the mechanism that

supports these interactions. There is no need to

force users to know what designers know about an

artifact, but there are good reasons for designers to

know the conceptions that users have available to

approach the artifact they are asked to design.

THE ARTIFACTS WE DESIGN

INCREASINGLY BECOME LANGUAGE LIKE

The history of design started with the design of

industrial products for mass production, distribution,

use, consumption, or entertainment. Advances in

technology digitalization changes in the way

artifacts are dispersed by market mechanisms

and the growing confidence in design thinking

our prevailing belief in being able to shapevirtually all aspects of our world have encouraged

designers to broaden the range of artifacts from that

conceived during the industrial era. To make these

challenges transparent, I proposed a trajectory

of artificiality (Krippendorff, 1997) that leads us

into new empirical domains and the adoption of

appropriate design criteria.

I am suggesting that the original preoccupation of

designers with functional, utili tarian, and universallyattractive products describes only a fraction of

what designers must face today and that the design

criteria of the industrial era prevent us from moving

on to more challenging design tasks. Let me briefly

follow this trajectory:

By definition, productsare the end products

of processes of production, and equating

artifacts with products limits product design to

industrially manufactured art ifacts.

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Artifact | 2007 | Volume I, Issue 1 | Pages 1722

Goods, services, and corporate or individual

identities, by contrast, are artifacts that are

designed for sales, to have social significance,

or to create consumption. Such artifacts are

not entirely physical. They constitutively

involve individual minds in ways products do

not: memories or at titudes favoring particular

service providers, for example, or brands.

The advent of styling and marketing made thecreation of exchange values a priority and a

universalist aesthetics had to be abandoned

in favor of statistically distributed local

preferences.

As suggested above, interfacesare artifacts

that reside between humans and machines

including objects of nature. They consist of

interactions, rudimentarily resembling human

dialogue, not dead matter. Designing interfacesinvolves criteria that relate users interactive

understanding to what art ifacts can afford.

The artifacts residing in multiuser systems

tend to be even more dematerialized: books,

e-mails, electronic files, web pages, Internet

discussion groups, computer simulations, and

electronic money. Typically, such artifacts

must survive in a medium that many people

can access, and their reality depends on the

coordinated practices of their users: creating,sharing, storing, modifying, or discarding

them, of ten in view of other users. Trusting

and authenticity are the major issues in the

use of multiuser systems, which shows their

embeddedness in cultural contingencies.

Projectsare primarily social artifacts. They

involve people as stakeholders who cooperate

in bringing something of joint interest to

fruition. To the extent that projects are self-organizing, they are not entirely controllable

from their outside. Designers may influence

a project by participation. They may enroll

stakeholders in their vision. But they may not

be able to control how projects proceed and

determine their outcome.

Evidentially, the artifacts in this trajectory

can be seen to become progressively more

virtual, more fluid, more dependent on humans

to keep them alive, more interactive, and

more language like. Naturally, the final kind of

artifact in the trajectory is:

Discourse, institutionalized communication, a

constrained way of languaging. In discourse,

particular ways of languaging dominate reality

constructions and direct the practices of

the members of a discourse community. Wecan distinguish public discourse, scientific

discourse, legal discourse, and design

discourse, among many, by the distinct

vocabularies they employ in accounting for the

realities they respectively construct. Inventing

productive metaphors, introducing new

vocabularies, and star ting to talk differently

are ways to direct the social construction of

alternative worlds and the artifacts therein.

These are fascinating artifacts.

ALL ARTIFACTS GROW

IN A WEB OF PRIOR ARTIFACTS

When designers speak of what they are designing,

they tend to give the impression of being the sole

source of a product. Such accounts are unfortunate

as they fail to give credit to the stakeholders

in a design who will have to bring it to fruition.

Designers rarely ever produce what they say

they are designing. They produce designs, i.e.drawings, models, computer representations, slide

presentations, and arguments, all of which are to

convince others of the virtues of their ideas. These

intermediate forms unquestionably are artifacts

in that they are made, not found, and can be seen,

touched, played with, and discussed without,

however, being confused with what designers

hope ultimately to achieve. Designs are rhetorical

devices, proposals, that, ideally, compel interested

stakeholders to act in ways called for by the design.As a proposal, a design must be understood,

actionable, realizable in concrete stages, have

virtue, and enroll stakeholders to proceed. So

conceived, a design is but one albeit intermediate

form of what a proposed artifact could become.

In our current culture, all, even rather simple

artifacts, must be able to turn up in diverse

intermediate forms. A meal ordered in a restaurant,

for example, may need to appear on a menu, in the

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form of a chefs recipe, on the order written by

the waiter, in the practices of the cooks, served

on the table appetizing/tasty/palatable and

result in a monetary transaction. Each of these

forms is handled differently, by different kinds of

stakeholders. Jointly, they account for what is being

realized not only the meal. What is a final product

to one stakeholder may be an intermediate arti fact

for another. Intermediacy and finality are relative towhere one stands.

Virtually all artifacts emerge in transitions from

one form to another. A designers computer model

may be followed by a clients feasibility study, an

engineers production drawings, a manufacturers

assembly line setup, a sales persons promotional

material, a shipping companys boxes on a delivery

truck, a buyers conversat ion piece, a users

interface, a repair persons headache, a recyclersopportunity for scavenging valuable components,

and perhaps, finally, a post-design report of how the

design traveled through all of its intermediate forms.

Cultures organize the production of their artifacts

in different ways. In our own culture the customary

web of artifacts has become institutionalized. It

involves a system of professional differentiations

the design profession being part of it with

conventions, codes, and laws governing the

transit ions from one form to another. Whatdesigners may have targeted as the final artifact

typically re-enters the web of intermediate artifacts

and changes it. Digitalization, for example, has

speeded up the transitions from one artifact to the

next and radically changed how these artifacts hang

together. This web of art ifacts is constructed by

what we call technology; an always-growing logic

of coordinated techniques for creating artifacts that

operates in this web and expands it.

The point of these observations is that art ifacts

cannot emerge in isolation from each other. They

appear distributed over variously connected forms

and are supported by a network of specialized

stakeholders. One may liken the transitions through

such a web to the travels of chain letters. Receivers

contribute what they know, erase what is irrelevant,

replace what can be improved upon, rearticulate

it in terms that successors can understand, and

pass it on to those believed to have the ability and

interest to keep something of it in circulation. The

artifacts that designers tend to propose are at

the tip of an iceberg, the result of the illusion that

the art ifacts they say they are conceptualizing as

final are all that matter, while it is that web of prior

artifacts that designers must set in motion, change

with each new design.

BY CONCEIVING ARTIFACTS IN STABLE

CATEGORIES, WE BLIND OURSELVESTO THEIR DYNAMICS

Contrary to the above observation that arti facts are

always in processes of being rearticulated from one

form to another, we tend to conceptualize artifacts,

once realized, as tangible objects, enduring entities,

of stable materiality, composition, and function, and

as indisputable members of linguistic categories.

The artifacts that archeologists dig up seem to

encourage the conception of their durability and

in everyday life we expect our tools to remainworkable for an indefinite length of time. But what

survives in time is only the above-mentioned tip of

the iceberg, the more durable products of a culture.

Archeologists typically scramble to create plausible

stories concerning the origins and uses of their

finds, largely because the intermediate art ifacts that

can be assumed to have supported them have not

endured.

One can say that all artifacts, from the moment they

are created, are always en route to their retirement,changing their category along the way. At least five

processes may account for this:

The statistical version of the second law of

thermodynamics has it that all matter decays

in time when unattended. Paper disintegrates,

causing old newsprint to crumble and books

to fall apart. Noise enters a communication

channel, corrupting the signal. Cities decay

and their houses become first empty shells,then ruins, heaps of rubble, and ultimately sand

and dirt made indistinguishable by vegetation

growing over it think of what happened to the

ancient Mayan cities.

Wear, tear, and accidental breakage while

in use can render artifacts increasingly

dysfunctional. Cars have accidents or are

driven to the point at which they are no longer

repairable whereupon they end up in junkyards

or in a shredded form ready for recycling.

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Artifact | 2007 | Volume I, Issue 1 | Pages 1722

The context in which artifacts were designed

to function no longer exists, has changed,

perhaps surreptitiously, forcing that artifact

to become something of a dif ferent kind. The

mask that an African dancer wore during a

ritual now becomes a decoration in the home

of a traveler, or the armor of a medieval knight,

used in tournaments, sequentially becomes

an heirloom, a trophy, an antique, and amuseum piece that is admired (i.e. used) for its

typicality by visi tors (Krippendorrf, in press).

Consumption amounts to an intended

decomposition of one kind of artifact into

another, burning coal to ashes, converting food

into waste products, taking medication that

is absorbed, and on a larger scale, using our

natural oil reserves to construct a desirable

but not sustainable world, not addressingthe unintended consequences of such

decompositions.

Artifacts may also go out of fashion and be

superseded by better ones.

The first of these processes demonstrates how

nature undermines human categorizations.

Physics theorizes the direction of decay, from a

more organized to a less organized state, but it

cannot determine when and how the categoryof an artifact changes, say, from a useful tool to

one that can no longer serve that function. While

the increase of entropy proceeds separately from

human involvement, the human use of artifacts can

speed up the process.Wear, tear, and breakage are

unintended as well, but can change the category of

artifacts faster than by natural decay. Only anti-

entropic (neg-entropic) human efforts can prevent

artifacts from leaving a desirable category. Some

such efforts are simple, like sharpening a knife;others are enormous, like maintaining a citys

constantly decaying infrastructure. The third kind

of change may well be deliberate, taking an artifact

from where it was into a perhaps more appealing

context. Whether deliberately or by default,

recontextualizations tend to go against designers

intentions. What ends up in museums was not made

to be there. A knight s armor was not manufactured

to become a trophy. When artifacts are consumed/

transformed, we take advantage of their change

in category, for example, of the energy generated

by transforming fuel into waste. Their unintended

side effects, by definition not addressed by design,

hound us later as new categories of problems to

be solved by new kinds of artifacts. The fifth and

final process listed above, individually sensible and

deliberate, accounts for the collective advances in

technology, including the growth and refinement of

technological complexes, like that of the automobile

with i ts system of roads, refineries, and gasstations, institutions for licensing drivers. Replacing

artifacts by better ones creates an ecology of

cooperating or competing species of artifacts that a

user culture keeps in motion.

The point is that art ifacts are far from stable, as

popular conceptions of tangible objects have it.

Artifacts change, sometimes within the conceptual

categories of their users, often and ultimately into

other categories, mostly useless or problematicones. The underlying dynamics inevitable

destiny, problematic breakdowns, or unintended

consequences are not addressed when designers

focus their attention on designing final artifacts of a

certain kind or category. We see artifacts in vir tual

worlds

Artifacts are tied to their past through stories of

their human origins but their present meanings link

them to not yet existing futures. This is because

artifacts are always designed to enable their usersto bring for th something otherwise unobtainable

and make a difference in their lives. This is not to

deny that artifacts can provide room for play and

sheer enjoyment but, for artifacts to be purposefully

employed, the differences they can make in the

lives of their users need to be anticipated by their

users. Designing artifacts that users can read for

what they enable and that guide them through

enjoyable interfaces is the aim of design semantics

(Krippendorff, 2006). Semantics is the study ofmeaning and design semantics aids the design of

artifacts that are meaningful to their users.

What do artifacts mean when in use? Market

researchers take meanings to be what their users

value(Karamasin, 1997) in the art ifacts they face

what it is they are willing to pay for. Intermediate

artifacts, such as designs, might be valued for their

ideas, the information they provide, or the permission

they grant to producers. Artifacts conceived of

as final might be valued for what their users can

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accomplish with them (extrinsic motivation), or the

pleasures they generate (intrinsic motivation). James

J. Gibson writes of meanings in terms of affordances

(Gibson, 1979), the totality of human actions that

the artifact can support, what it enables the user

to do. Ludwig Wittgenstein, speaking of words,

equates meaning with use(Wittgenstein, 1953), the

role they play in their users lives. I have argued for

equating the meanings of artifacts with the set oftheir possible uses, both imaginable by someone and

afforded by the artifacts (Krippendorff, 2006). So,

what we call a chair affords sitting, obviously, but it

also affords storing objects on its surface, stepping

up on it to reach for something otherwise beyond

reach, being stacked to save space, preventing

the casual use of a door, not to enumerate the very

imaginative uses that children tend to engage chairs

in, together with blankets and toys. In language,

artifacts mean everything that their users can tell usabout them, about their past as well as about their

futures. In practice, artifacts mean everything one

can imagine doing with them, or fears could happen.

For observers, artifacts mean the set of all contexts

in which they are seen to work.

To be sure, artifacts are real only in the present, as

concrete experiences, and at any one moment of

interfacing with them. But what we respond to is the

meanings they have for us, what they permit us to do

with them, the paths they lay out in front of us, andthe possibilities they of fer us. Artifacts are of human

origin, reside in the present, but , most importantly,

they let us control a not yet existing future. So, what

matters most in the design and use of artifacts is

their vir tuality vir tual in the dual sense of not yet

real, pregnant with a future, and having virtues.

The meaning of the word virtual originally

pretending something to be real when it is not

is shifting due to the popularity of socalledvirtual reality technologies. These are computer

simulations of artifacts (airplanes to be piloted,

surgery to be performed, or architectural spaces

to be visited) that respond to human actions with

digitally generated multisensory stimuli that

closely resemble real environments. Virtual reality

technologies have revolutionized training where

errors can have expensive consequences. They

also enable explorations of proposed artifacts in

dimensions that are not readily observable, and, when

used in design, before they are realized. However,

digital imagery is not the only source of virtuality. I

am suggesting that all artifacts tangible, digital,

interactive, informative, and aesthetic to the extent

they allow us to anticipate their or our own futures,

entail virtuality, a future that has not yet arrived but

can be expected to be brought forth.

Designers are always entangled in a double

virtuality: Creating inspiring proposals for art ifactsthey envision as mere possibili ty, and finding

ways to assure the users of these artifacts that

the realit ies they could bring forth with them are

desirable, have unquestionable virtues for them.

Design can succeed only if these two conditions are

satisfied. A design that is not inspiring is not a viable

proposal, and an artifact whose possibilities cannot

be recognized has no meaning. The virtual worlds

we come to see in artifacts should not be pretended

but realizable and virtuous.

REFERENCESGibson, James, J.(1979). The ecological approach to visual

perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Karamasin, Helene(1997). Cultural theory. Vienna, Austria:Linde.

Krippendorff, Klaus(1997). A trajectory of artificiality andnew principles of design for the information age. In K.Krippendorff (Ed.), Design in the age of information: Areport to the National Science Foundation (NSF)(pp.

9196). Raleigh, NC: School of Design, North Carolina StateUniversity.

Krippendorff, Klaus(2006). The semantic turn: A newfoundation for design. Boca Raton, FL: Danish Centre forDesign Research.

Krippendorff, Klaus(in press) The dialogical reality of meaning.American Journal of SEMIOTICS, 18(4).

Wit tgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philos

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