[academixml]
[collection]
[hiromi]

When Kyoto University of the Arts (Kyoto Zokei Geijutsu Daigaku) first approached me to give a lecture on ‘Critical Design’ to their 100 young students in summer 2009, I was terrified.  I was exposed to Critical Design through my tutors Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, but I had no clue how I could possibly communicate its idea of ‘using designed artifacts as an embodied critique on existing values and practices in a culture’ to a group of generally completely uncritical and happy-go-lucky Japanese 20-year olds.  I knew (as an attention-deficit 24 year old J-pop musician) that if I explained the concept of Critical Design in a straight manner, they would fall asleep. They would just not get it.  I knew the students had all the amazingly sophisticated animes, mangas and computer games to worry about before starting to think about critiquing anything.

Since examples of Critical Design by Dunne & Raby and others are more generally founded on western issues and humor, I had to first discover something which the students can easily relate to in their own culture, to make them aware of what this ‘critical’ thinking might be for them.  I thought hard… very hard… and after some struggling, I realized there was a critical designer the students all loved and knew about: Doraemon!!

Doraemon as a Critical Designer

Doraemon, Nobita and his friends

Doraemon is an anime series about a blue robotic cat from the future, who brings out many ‘future inventions’ from his pocket to save the forever unlucky and untalented Nobita from his troubles. Each episode features a designed object from the future which Nobita somewhat misuses to cheat in his tests, take revenge or peek into his crush Shizuka’s shower room, etc. The design objects are almost always critical as well as being playful about the future – most episodes end with a conclusion that lets viewers learn from Nobita’s mistakes and reflect on existing social values.  For example, ‘Dokodemo Door’ is a future invention which allows you to go to any space you wish by going through the door.  This sounds like a great idea to Nobita, but he soon realizes the product’s immense privacy problems when he finds himself warped inside Shizuka’s bathroom (See illustration below).  Environmental issues such as deforestation, pollution and endangered animals are also featured in many Doraemon episodes.

The Doraemon series have been loved in Japan and Asia for more than 40 years since its beginning in 1969, raising generations of scientists and artists influenced by “The Doraemon Dream”.  I’m a Doraemon Fan myself, and I’ve personally discovered many influential Japanese media artists including Maywa Denki, Ryota Kuwakubo and Kazuhiko Hachiya to share the same passion. They swear by the book “Doraemon Himitsu Dougu Kanzen Daijiten” (Doraemon Products Complete Encyclopedia – Shougakkan, 1994) as their important source of inspiration.

Doradical and Critical

So for the Kyoto University lecture I decided to put forth “Doradical Design” as a possible mode of thinking in Critical Design. The word “Doradical Design” is a mixture of

1. Radical Design : as a reference to the Italian Radical Design movement in 1960s and 70s which was highly critical of prevailing social values and design ideologies.

2. Doraemon : as a reference to the blue robotic cat which brings out many future inventions that make viewers reflect on existing values, society and environmental issues.

A Doradical Design Product: Dokodemo Door (Everywhere Door) and its implication on privacy.

Doradical Design is essentially critical design, but the attitude in which the work originates from is very different. If existing examples categorized in ‘Critical Design’ tend to critique with skepticism or dark humor about existing culture, Doradical Designs rather embrace, exploit, celebrate or extend the existing culture as a medium of critique.  In other words, if many existing critical design objects emerge from countercultural or subcultral energies, Doradical design is a branch of critical design more closely associated with ‘surculture’ ([knowledge_object_id:33])

Critical designs make commentaries about the existing culture, but Doradical Designs subvert into the existing culture.  This can be observed from how Doradically Designed products in futuristic animes have been very influential on Japan’s development history of robot and hardware technologies.  For example Sekai Camera, an augmented reality platform recently launched on iPhone, has almost exactly the same feature as the product ‘Dennou Megane’ in anime ‘Dennou Coil’ (and of course, Sekai Camera director Iguchi is a big fan)

In conclusion, even though it’s a young concept I found introducing Doradical Design as a starting point for critical thinking in Kyoto was a huge success.  Doradical ideas encouraged the students to engage with critical thinking using their own youth culture and language, which I feel is crucial when you want to make commentaries about anything at all.

Examples often clarify a definition more than words – so I’ve listed works which I categorize as ‘Doradical’ in [knowledge_object_id:34]

[/hiromi]
[/collection]

#collection [id:32, creator:"Hiromi Ozaki", time:"2009-09-29T01.39.38.0Z", tag:"Doradical Design, Critical Design, Doraemon, Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby"]

#hiromi [creator:"Hiromi Ozaki", time:"2009-09-29T01.39.38.0Z", tag:"Doradical Design, Critical Design, Doraemon, Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby"]
[/academixml]