Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Material - Shiny, heavy, moving, growing - a new way of thinking about materiality in design

Throughout the history of Western culture, the material dimension of design has had a central significance. The material’s aesthetic qualities were accompanied by additional values ​​that stemmed not only from the material’s physical properties but also from the cultural values ​​with which it was charged over the years. Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, with the first computers and under the influence of scientific theories that developed in that period (such as Cybernetics, Information Theory, and later DNA research), material lost its unique position. It was replaced by information that was perceived as the new era’s economic, scientific, and cultural engine. The devaluation of the material’s unique status was also reflected in the development of new technologies in the field of materials engineering. They made it possible to replace natural raw materials with cheap synthetic materials that perform ‘planned obsolescence’, which aligns with the interests of the “capitalist machine”. In parallel with the development of computer graphical interfaces, the design also moved to the virtual space where the material gained ontology. Material qualities formulated by code and represented through their simulations on screens granted objects with features that do not necessarily exist in the physical material world.

At the beginning of the 21st century, with the recognition of the intensity of the ecological crisis and the raising of awareness of the heavy prices (human and environmental) involved in the mining, production and usage of various materials, ethical aspects of the use of materials were started to be questioned. The “material turn” that this recognition led generated a discourse around “new materialism” and an understanding that objects and their material qualities have an agency in the world. As a result, the validity of the traditional divisions between nature and society, the human and the inhuman and between the material and the immaterial, was undermined. A new approach to materiality was developed, seeing it not only as a fixed entity embodied in an object but also as one with changing behaviours and manifestations. In the design field, this approach is reflected in the adoption of biological materials and processes alongside using different types of “smart” and programmable materials. Indeed, developments in nanotechnology and biotechnology and a deepening understanding of biological processes have led to high capabilities of manipulating existing materials and creating new materials that have greatly enriched the designers’ scope of activity.

The opening lecture of the “Material” conference examined the relationship between the physical and the virtual aspects of the material in light of the changes this concept has undergone in recent years and argued that the relationship between the real and the virtual is not dichotomous. Furthermore, in the new evolving reality in which material is changing many of its basic characteristics, the material and the virtual are becoming increasingly intertwined.