What counts is the genuine

Today when we consider design we no longer think just about attractive things but about their attractive use, their meaning. And meaning is alive: it moves and changes with the times.

In the eighties design developed into the mere aesthetics of appearance. Objects were like computer graphics. They consisted solely of infinitesimally thin surfaces. These objects boasted with their owners.

Now a new quality of substance has come on the scene: virtuality. Things used to be simpler. Substance was material. To take an example, a brief history of the modern era can be gleaned from looking at the design of knobs on equipment. In the sixties pressing a knob on a radio set meant exerting physical force against mechanical resistance. For the first time something like a feeling of tenderness for machines appeared in the form of smooth, scalable knobs. In the eighties control knobs became sentimental replicas of real knobs. They were flat, tiny and soft. Now, in the nineties, we mainly operate virtual knobs, like the buttons beneath the glass skin of computer screens.

We are closer to things, especially machines, than ever before and at the same time more distant than ever. Remoteness is the sentiment of the times. We experience nearness as reality, of course; but it is cast in a peculiar paleness. It is not the senses that liberate us but dreams. We have a new aesthetics of appearance (virtuality). This new aesthetics transforms the worthlessness of superficiality into a central value. On the computer screen superficiality is all there is. It is the essence.

Today status is no longer conferred by the mere possession of things but by the way things are used. In an information society status and self-assurance are not derived from clothing or the power of computers but from the efficiency with

which one can navigate and make oneself be understood in a sea of information: communication, in a nutshell. In the nineties work as such has also become a status symbol.

Aesthetics now follows the development of shapes that allow people to live leisurely in a fast-moving world.

Our Western culture suffers from a lack of mystery. The creation of virtual reality has brought some of that mystery back. The unknown has returned. And it is not imaginary. This unknown consists of the absolute opposite of mystery, namely information.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20