Six Modes for Digital Media in Design

Abstract

As a point of departure, through the use of Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium, I would like to establish a framework for my own research, teaching, and practice in terms of digital media and its role in design processes and productions. Calvino's six memos are Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, and Consistency.1 It is through these memos, [which I would like to term modes], that I propose to investigate digital media and design within a critical framework for research, teaching, and practice. Through this rigorous yet potentially unbounded framework I will attempt to provide for a continuous reworking and redefining of the understanding of the role of digital media in design. Hopefully this strategy will develop a multiplicity of potential lines of inquiry in terms of increasing creative and agile use of digital media in design. For this particular presentation I will refer to examples of digital media in design teaching and practice that I feel exemplify these modes explicitly as well as implicitly and help to further this particular investigation, although not to propose a particular teleological condition. It is through these modes, Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, and Consistency that I intend to develop a poetics of digital media and design. Below I have formulated a working definition of the term mode in terms of quality and operation which I use instead of memo. This formulation is intended to locate ‘mode' more specifically within the context of this particular investigation, as well as enable the investigation to move back and forth between all three terms. Quality - "An attribute, a property, a special feature or characteristic. A manner, a style.”2 Operation - "An action. Exertion of force or influence; working, activity.”3 Mode - "A way or manner in which something is done or takes place; a method of procedure; a means.”4 Quality + Operation = Mode