Reflection on Foucault and Dona Haraway.
No matter how design paradigm changes, designer’s understanding of the validity or invalidity of design is always relying on its beautifulness (it units and even transcends aesthetics, function, cost, productivity, efficiency, etc.). However, beautifulness is always relative, contextual, and reflective. In other words, one and another always has different validation of beautifulness; what is considered beautiful is only validated at the very moment and context; what is thought as beautiful can be soon invalid after one listen to other’s opinion, or engage in other activities. This may be similar to the production of knowledge, as Foucault says in The order of things.
So, if the conceiving of beautifulness is so unstable, why can it be a valid parameter for thousands of years to assist decision-making in crafting artifacts? There must be some truth lies in it. But when we talk about parameter, we have to be aware this parameter of beautifulness is highly temporal and interdependent. It does not survive on its own. It is constructed in the sociocultural context. It depends on individual senses, at least one to a few combinations of eye / vision, body / touch, nose / smell, ear / hearing, tongue / taste, brain / mind. It also depends on a collective continuousness. It is innately ontological.
The construction of beautifulness is the becoming and being of a designer, and always a combination of logical and emotional consideration. The training of senses, is also a process to reconstruct one’s identity, one’s definition of self and her/his relationship to the world.
