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EDITORIAL
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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 shift 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 cognitive
frame. 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 original
task (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).
REFERENCES
Carroll, J. M., Kellogg, W. A., & Rosson, M. B. (1991). The TaskArtifact-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 University
Press.
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: Owen_Smith@umit.maine.edu
Published online 2007-04-21
ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471
DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610707
2007 Danish Centre for Design Research
Behavioral Artifacts:
What is an Artifact? Or Who Does it?
by Ken Friedman, Swinburne University of Technology
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REFERENCES
Attanasio, A. A. (1989). The last legends of Earth. New York:
Doubleday.
Barth, Karl (2003/1956). 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 in
contemporary 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.
CORRESPONDENCE:
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, Dean,
Faculty of Design,
Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia.
E-mail: kenfriedman@groupwise.swin.edu.au
Published online 2006-05-05
ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471
DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610764
2007 Danish Centre for Design Research
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Instrument
Instrument
(Subject
(Subjectside+Artefact
side+Artefactside)
side)
Artefact
Artefact
Subject
Subject
Object
Object
Subject
Subject
Object
Object
Figure 1.
The basic structure of human cognition.
Figure 2.
An instrument is a composite entity made up of subject and
artifact components.
Subjec
Subject
Object
Designers
Instrument
Subject
Object
Figure 3.
The instrumental proposal and the instrumental genesisin
dialogue.
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.
REFERENCES
CORRESPONDENCE
Pascal Bguin,
Laboratoire dErgonomie du CNAM,
Paris, France.
E-mail: beguin@cnam.fr
Published online 2006-04-21
ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471
DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610830
2007 Danish Centre for Design Research
An Exploration of Artificiality
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 their
descriptions had nothing to do with it contradicts
the idea of their artificiality. 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 offers 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-fact is a noun,
composed of art=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 renders
something 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
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REFERENCES
CORRESPONDENCE
Klaus Krippendorff,
Gregory Bateson Term Professor for Cybernetics,
Language, and Culture,
The Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,PA, USA.Email: kkrippendorff@asc.upenn.edu
Published online 2006-04-21
ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471
DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610848
2007 Danish Centre for Design Research
by Johan Redstrm, Center for Design Research, Copenhagen, and Interactive Institute, Gteborg
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REFERENCES
CORRESPONDENCE
Johan Redstrm,
Visiting Associate Professor,
Center for Design Research,
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REFERENCES
CORRESPONDENCE
Susan Hagan, Ph.D. MDes,
Carnegie Mellon University,
245Baker Hall, 5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, USA.
E-mail:susan.hagan@alumni.cmu.edu
Published online 2006-08-18
ISSN 1749-3463 print/ ISSN 1749-3471
DOI: 10.1080/17493460600610855
2007 Danish Centre for Design Research
by Lev Manovich, The Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
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Figure 1.
NIKESCAPE (2005). 200/300 cm.
Collection DAKIS JOANNOU, PARIS.
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