Aca-article: The aesthetics of immateriality in design - Smartphones as digital design artifacts

This paper offers a theoretical discussion of how immateriality can be conceptualized as a matter of aesthetics in the face of the challenge that digital artifacts pose to the role and understanding of materiality in design objects.

Access article here, open access, go to page 139.

Author: Mads Folkmann, Associate Professor in Design History, Syddansk Universitet, Denmark.

Published in Design and Semantics of Form and Movement

ABSTRACT - The paper is a philosophical-theoretical contribution to the conceptualization of the span of material extension and immaterial impact in artifacts employing digital technology. Using the smartphone as an example of a widely distributed type of material artifact that operates with immaterial structures of information, the paper offers a theoretical discussion of how immateriality can be conceptualized as a matter of aesthetics in the face of the challenge that digital artifacts pose to the role and understanding of materiality in design objects.

The paper proposes a framework of aesthetics that describes sensual, conceptual, and cultural levels of meaning in and through the object. Further, the paper discusses how this connects to a notion of possibility in design. Thus, the paper contributes to a discussion of the sensuous character and impact of artifacts that are on the verge of immateriality. The relevance to design practice is motivated through the discussion of central concepts of design ontology and the proposal of a framework of aesthetics that in its discussion and structuring of levels of meaning in design can inform the process of developing design.

Keywords: Aesthetics, materiality, immateriality, design ontology, digital artifacts, smartphones.