: Design and Violence
Violence, at least at the beginning of the project, is defined as the manifestation of the power to alter circumstances, against the will of others and to their detriment. Its purpose is to explore the idea of violence in contemporary society using design objects as prompts for wider questions and reflections. Each object will also be accompanied by museum-standard information and a short description, as well as by images and videos. Although designers aim to work toward the betterment of society, it is and has been easy for them to overstep, indulge in temptation, succumb to the dark side of a moral dilemma, or simply err. Most were designed after 2001, a watershed year in the public perception of violence, at least in the United States and other parts of the western world. In a second phase of our project, a Google Earth extension will be added to pinpoint where each object can be physically found in the world--a dispersed exhibition of sorts--so visitors will be able to match their travel whereabouts with traditional exhibition-style viewing of the artifacts. Design and Violence is an experimental online curatorial project that will stretch over several months, maybe years. The curators are inviting experts from fields as diverse as science, philosophy, literature, music, film, journalism, and politics to respond to selected objects from that list, in order to spark a conversation with all readers. The curators have assembled a wide range of design objects, projects, and concepts that have an ambiguous relationship with violence, either masking it while at the same time enabling it; animating it in order to condemn it; or instigating it in order to prevent it.
