Provocative Technology

I recently reread some writing I’d produced about the term ‘provocative technology’ in the first year or two of my PhD, reproduced below. Supported by other references to the term, I define provocative technology as an object or tool which has functions for the user but that also challenges the contexts of its use, and provokes questions and debate in wider audiences.

At one point I was going to make my PhD about provocative technology, identifying examples across disciplines and contexts and defining its principles. This turned out to be too broad a topic, and I shifted my attention to analysing examples in the field of ‘design for development’, the field which seemed to have perhaps the most real world impact, using perspectives from other disciplines where I’d identified provocative technologies, such as critical design and interventionist art, and science and technology studies.

The term sunk into the background of my PhD, but I still kept it as a useful term to refer to a set of characteristics across a range of practices (and as a particular way of looking at objects). I used the term again recently for a course I taught at the Cologne International Institute of Design (KISD) in 2012. I used it to describe my selection of objects (as ‘Political Art and Provocative Technology’) for my exhibition ‘Sideshow‘ at the Nextwave Festival in Melbourne, Australia in 2006. And I’m working on an idea for an exhibition at the moment that will explore it further.

From my notes:

Provocative Technology 2007 (redux 2013)

The subject of my research is ‘provocative technology’; in business, the term can refer to technologies which have the potential to be ‘disruptive’, overturning incumbent technologies and systems; for certain designers, academics and technology producers it describes a type of tool or technology which intervenes in, interrogates and communicates the social, political or economic contexts of its use. This purpose can be intentionally designed for, or read into objects.

Etymology:

In order to define the term ‘Provocative Technology’ for my research, I searched for and analysed documented uses of the phrase as applying to a field of practice. The result is this ‘etymology’ of the term.

The term ‘provocative’ is sometimes used in business and technology contexts to describe a technology with the potential to significantly impact markets or existing technologies[1], or colloquially in broader public contexts to indicate the possibly disruptive social or ethical implications of a new technology[2]. While retaining some of these meanings,  ‘Provocative Technology’ is also used in a narrower way to describe a specific, emerging field of practice. These instances of use include:

Professor Krzysztof Wodiczko refers to the the mobile shelter for homeless people he designed as a ‘provocative technology’ in an interview in ‘The Interventionists’ (2003, MIT Press). Professor  Wodiczko is the director and founder of the Interrogative Design Group (IDG) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His definition of ‘interrogative design’, his field of practice since the mid-1980s, contributes to a definition of provocative technology. In the IDG’s ‘Statement of Purpose’, he imagines a tool or technology which reveals the circumstances that necessitate its use:

A bandage covers and treats the wound while at the same time exposing its presence. Its presence signifies both the experience of pain and the hope of recovery. Is it possible to further develop such a bandage as equipment that will communicate, interrogate, and articulate the circumstances and the experiences of the injury? Could such a transformed bandage address the ills of the outside world as perceived by the wounded? To see the world as seen by the wound! [3]

Rebecca Hansson and Tobias Skog of the PLAY Research Group, Interactive Institute in Sweden stated their intention in 2001 to produce concepts and prototypes under the title ‘Provocative Technology’, in which their ambition was to “create artefacts which can be used as a starting point when discussing, for instance, ethical and moral issues regarding the design and use of information technology. We also want to provoke users of those artefacts to reflect upon and become aware of certain issues, and perhaps to persuade them to change their views or feelings.”[4]

A term also used by Hansen and Skog is ‘persuasive technology’. Stanford University advances the term through their Persuasive Technology Lab which “creates insight into how computing products — from websites to mobile phone software — can be designed to change what people believe and what they do”[5].

Provocative technologies are more open-endedly informative or communicative than specifically persuasive, and are not limited to human-computer interaction (HCI). Their mode of action can be antagonistic, as alluded to in the next text.

Brooke Foucault, Pheobe Sengers, Helene M. Mentis and Devon Welles explored “the potential usefulness of disturbing, uncomfortable systems, demonstrating that provocative technology can have a positive effect on social relationships” in their paper ‘Provoking Sociability’, presented at CHI 2007. They wrote:

For obvious reasons, HCI design has primarily focused on the goal of creating systems that are comfortable and pleasing for human users. The recent push into emotion in HCI, likewise, has focused on enhancing positive affect and reducing negative affect. Nevertheless, some researchers are questioning the focus on the positive and pleasing, suggesting that this leaves out important dimensions of human experience that HCI needs to take into account or perhaps even support.

One of the most influential arguments for this new focus stems from Dunne and Raby’s formulation of design noir. They suggest that electronic product design has been focused too exclusively on sanitized versions of human life and behavior and argue for the inclusion of “darker,” more genuine human needs in the design of technology. As they elaborate, “an occasional glance through almost any newspaper reveals a view of everyday life where complex emotions, desires and needs are played out through the misuse and abuse of electronic products and systems.” Yet, “the range of emotions offered through most electronic products is pathetically narrow.”[6]

Dunne and Raby are Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, designers and academics (with the Computer Related Design (CRD) Research Studio at the Royal College of Art, London). Their description of their use of “products and services as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technologies”[7] contributes to our definition of provocative technology, as does the idea that technologies could be designed to antagonise our social-technological terrain in order to reveal valuable information about it. [At this stage, in 2007, I don’t think I’d yet read much of Dunne and Raby’s work. I ended up referring to it quite extensively in my thesis after reading ‘Hertzian Tales’ and ‘Design Noir’ – RB 2013]

William J. Mitchell., Alan S. Inouye, and Marjorie S. Blumenthal edited the book ‘Beyond Productivity’ (2003) for the National Academy of Sciences, USA. In the chapter titled ‘The influence of Art and Design on Computer Science and Development’, the term ‘provocative technology’ is used in the description of a project to “confront users with negative aspects of technology” (surveillance), though “users who saw the “product” demonstrated in an ostensibly commercial presentation were surprisingly enthusiastic”.[8]

The chapter describes a field of practice they term ‘information arts’, a cross-disciplinary art and science collaboration which uses “artistic practice to manage and interpret information at the cusp of technological and scientific research.”[9] Information Technology and Creative Practices (ITCP) looks to the artist as a mediator, between the science and technology establishment and the public, for example. This management, interpretation and communication of information around technological and scientific research we can also define as a possible feature of provocative technology practice. The role of the artist in provocative technology is expanded on later in this report.

The Disruptive Design Team (DDT), the research group within the department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Trinity College of which [was] a member, has referred to ‘Provocative Technologies’ as one of the topics members focus on since the group’s inception in 2003:

The focus of the research group is to challenge traditional ideas of connectivity, connection, communication and sociability through the creation of installations and applications that subvert uses of technologies and create situations for questioning. The research students are engaged in a wide range of projects that focus on topics such as Urban Public Space Art, Provocative Technologies & Interactive Spaces, Urban Wearables, Urban Narratives and New Media & Feminist Methodologies. A multi-disciplinary approach to these topics is taken. There is an emphasis both on developing theoretical ideas and on creating and building work to progress ideas.[10]

Creating ‘situations for questions’ is a feature of provocative technology as a design practice; as is the challenging of traditional ideas about the use or meaning of technology through creating work.


[1] ‘Fed-Watcher Extraordinaire David Gitlitz Joins MetaMarkets Think Tank’, Business Wire, July 17, 2000

[2] ‘Stem cell research: Breakthroughs and controversies’, in The Jewish Standard http://www.jstandard.com/articlerss/cat/23/

[3] The Interrogative Design Group, MIT http://web.mit.edu/idg/, 2002 (now changed)

[4] ‘Provocative Technology’, http://www.tii.se/play/projects/provocative/

[5] Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University http://captology.stanford.edu/

[6] ‘Provoking Sociability’, CHI 2007 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1240624.1240860

[8] Mitchell, W. J., Inouye A. S., Blumenthal M. S., Ed. (2003) Beyond Productivity: Information technology, Innovation and Creativity. USA: The National Academies Press Chapter 4, p.9

[9] Mitchell, W. J., Inouye A. S., Blumenthal M. S., Ed. (2003) Beyond Productivity: Information technology, Innovation and Creativity. USA: The National Academies Press, p.2 Chapter 4, p.9

[10] Disruptive Design Team website, http://www.mee.tcd.ie/~ledoyle/DDT/DDT.htm

Peter Morgan receives award

C-type pump

Dr Peter Morgan with a prototype for the C-type Zimbabwe Bush Pump in his garden in Harare, 2010

Zimbabwean scientist Dr. Peter Morgan, whom I interviewed for my PhD research, has been awarded the Stockholm Water Prize. Dr. Morgan redesigned the appropriate technology icon the Zimbabwe Bush Pump, and was celebrated as ‘a feminist
dream of an ideal man’ by Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol in their seminal science and technology studies paper on the Bushpump, ‘The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology‘ (2000). You’ll have to read their paper to contexualise that remark!

Article below from http://www.voazimbabwe.com/ (thanks Dad!)

Ray Choto
03.06.2013

WASHINGTON, DC — A Zimbabwean scientist is this year’s Stockholm Water Prize
recipient for his innovations in safe sanitation and clean water supplies.

Dr. Peter Morgan, a former civil servant with the Ministry of Health, will
receive his prize of $150 thousand and a crystal sculpture at a ceremony in
Stockholm during World Water Week in September.

Some of Dr. Morgan’s innovations adapted by the Zimbabwe government include
the Bush Water Pump, the Blair Ventilated Pit Latrine and the upgraded
family well, used mainly by rural communities. The 70-year old researcher
says the technologies he designed are also being used in other African
countries. For each of his technologies, Dr. Morgan says he developed a wide
range of training and educational materials to help communities install and
maintain them without expert supervision.

Dr. Morgan calls the award an “honour” not only for him, but for all the
people of Zimbabwe.

“I think it means the recognition to me personally,” Morgan said. “It means
the recognition of perhaps most of my lifetime’s work, which has been
dedicated to this area. For the country I think it’s important to many of
my colleagues here within the [inaudible] community and within the
government have told me that it means a lot to Zimbabwe, as well, to be
recognized for the work that we have done in this country to actually push
the state of the art forward.”

Dr. Morgan is a naturalized Zimbabwean. He was born in 1943 and educated in
England where he graduated with a Ph.D. in marine biology. He worked as a
chief research officer at the Ministry of Health’s Blair Research Institute
in Harare, now called the National Institute of Health Research. In 1991,
he was awarded member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Dr. Morgan
has received many other awards and distinctions, including the International
Inventors Award, the AMCOW Africasan Award for Technical Innovation in
Sanitation, and the Rural Water Supply Network Award for Lifetime Services
to Rural Water Supply.

The Sweden-based Stockholm prize committee, which has selected a winner
every year since 1991, says Dr. Morgan was chosen for what they called his
“unwavering commitment to inventing low-cost practical solutions to provide
access to safe sanitation and clean water to millions of people worldwide.”
The Director of the Stockholm Water Prize, Mr. Jens Berggren, says making
the selection was not easy, but Morgan’s work was special because its
beneficiaries were the poor.

“I think the [inaudible] nomination committee was really impressed that he
has done over the past 40 years,” said Mr. Berggren, “sort of effortlessly
supporting the lives of poor people out there by designing and inventing new
solutions for—especially poor people’s—access to good sanitation and good,
clean drinking water.”

According to the committee’s website, the purpose of the award is to
recognize what it calls the world’s most visionary minds for driving “water
development forward.”

District Six on the Fringe

District 6 on the Fringe

The District Six Homecoming Centre, while we were still setting up. By the time we started it was standing room only – thanks everyone who attended!

The PublicCulture CityLab at the African Centre for Cities hosted a public event last Wednesday night with the District Six Museum, titled ‘District Six on the Fringe: The absence of memory in design-led urban regeneration‘. A series of presentations, followed by Q + A with the audience, looked at issues around the development of the East City as the ‘The Fringe Innovation District‘. My colleague at the ACC, Ismail Farouk, and the District Six Museum delivered the keynote addresses, and I chaired the event. Opening presentations were made by the artist Andrew Putter and visiting Cologne International School of Design student Kai Berthold.

From our invitation to the event:

The area designated as ‘The Fringe’ is intertwined with District Six and yet that history of the space, with its memory of forced removals, has not figured significantly in the ‘cultural regeneration’ plans for the East City. What place is there for memory and history within culture-led urban development? What risk is there that contemporary stylizations of Cape Town might serve to obliterate local histories and entrench the status quo? What of District Six, not only as symbol and museum, but as marker of the pasts that haunt the present?

The event was informed in part by a public document authored by the District Six Museum as a critique of the Fringe Innovation District draft framework, which they spoke to on the night, and you can download here: The Fringe: Draft Framework – District Six Museum comments 4 March 2013. The text of Ismail Farouk’s presentation can be downloaded here: Conflicting rationalities – Post-apartheid spatial legacies and the Creative City.

This is the full programme of speakers and presentations on the night:

Kai Berthold  Exploring gentrification in cities around the world

Kai Berthold is a visiting student from Koln International School of Design (KISD) in Germany. He is part of a project called The Gentrification Relay that worked with Cape Town students to investigate and address issues around gentrification and the East City.

Andrew Putter Harrington Square for the neighbourhood

The artist Andrew Putter is working for the Cape Town Partnership to facilitate the public involvement in the unfolding of Harrington Square as a public place.

Bonita Bennett  District Six Museum Statement: Erasure of memory in the remaking of the East City

The District Six Museum as a cultural institution promotes innovative curatorial practices in addressing issues of memory and dislocation. In considering the place-making strategies for developing the East City, what place is there for understanding the politics of erasure?

Ismail Farouk Conflicting rationalities: Post-apartheid spatial legacies and the Creative City

Ismail Farouk presents some of the results of his long-term investigation into understanding the precinct development in the East City. His work explores the tensions and challenges in redressing historical inequalities in Cape Town through ‘design’.

(UPDATE 17/6/2013 – an article about the event on Africa is a Country)