January 21, 2021

Intra-Acting

(Inter-Acting)

“Effective action leads to effective action: it is the cognitive circle that characterizes our becoming, as an expression of our manner of being autonomous living systems.” Maturana and Varela

All we can do is generate explanations, through language, that reveal the mechanism of bringing forth a world.” Maturana and Varela

“ Everything we do is a structural dance in the choreography of coexistence.” Maturana and Varela

Entropy, the reorganization and dispersal of energy in systems, is fundamental to systemic design because it measures the relative availability of materials and energy over time. In design for sustainability, entropy is a pervasive factor in materials specification, resource utilization management, and resource stewardship. In conventional design, entropy is always in play in the form of planned or unplanned obsolescence whether the design team takes it into consideration or not. What if as designers we could reframe entropy as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, and channel it for positive benefit? <Destroying - Creating>

Contrary to popular practice, design does not always have to solve for consistency and universality. Becoming curious about the ways that entropy shows up may highlight the bias that industrial design has for regularity, stability, and durability. The opportunity costs and down-cycling that entropy usually connotes are curiously inverted in Agathonic Design, a methodology especially relevant to attachment theory as it relates design for quality economies and flourishing, sustainable lifestyles. The term “agathonic design” was coined in 2005 (?) by Michael Helms in the course of his doctoral studies in the Design Group of Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford. In conjunction with Professor of Mechanical Engineering Larry Leifer, Helms further describe this high potential design arena and published research elaborating its process criteria in “Designing Objects that Improve With Use” (Helms and Leifer, 2009). By inquiring into the benefits and advantages as opposed to the more familiar downsides of entropy, their research examines the ways that classes of artifacts — whether immaterial or material — may be perceived as improving with use. “The process of directing entropy to a greater good (“toward goodness”) led to the expression “agathonic design”. The word “agathonic” was synthesized from the Greek words for good “agatha”, and the word for earth “chthonic.”” (Helms and Leifer)

How do process interactions influence the bonds we form with our possessions? And how may our environmental bonds influence the persistence or variability of our daily routines? In contrast to predictive, controlling and just-in-time ways of designing, agathonic design cooperates with entropy in co-adaptations that accrue over time in repeated processes of direct interactions, usually customized to the idiosyncrasies of single individuals. Designing in time is a post-postmodern, post-representational interaction design criterion with relevance to mass customization. Agathonic design is a form of meta-designing - or designing about the process of designing — because it takes the entire lifecycle of the design as its scope of consideration and it factors the design team and users as two of many possible reciprocal influences on the overall system constellated by the designed artifact.

My hypothetically perfectly juicy, sweet and succulent peach does not fit the criteria of agathonic. Cultivated produce such as fruits that ripen then steadily decay and eventually rot are not agathonic. Nor are objects whose value increases strictly by virtue of age or rarity rather than as a result of having been used - such as artworks or collectibles - agathonic. Nor do patinas resulting from oxidization over time, nor computer-controlled devices qualify artifacts as agathonic. The term agathonic is reserved for objects and artifacts whose perceived functionality improves by means of use. Iconic examples would include denim blue jeans and performance footwear.

Helms was originally inspired by his observation that his truck engine’s performance self-optimized as a result of being used. This got him curious about what other contexts of performance and utility this value- added phenomenon might apply. As Helms gathered examples, four distinct patterns emerged, including progressive and steady decay with use over time, to progressive perceived improvement with use over time. This progressive perceived improvement was what Helms dubbed an agathonic property of user-object interactions. Helms asserted that in co-adapting to one another through regular interactions, the user and the object co-constitute a higher performing system. This intriguing line of exploration means that although entropy increases through use in the form of disorder and wear, the functional value to the user is paradoxically enhanced in the form of order and decreased entropy.

Drawing on cybernetic theory, agathonic interactions can be seen as analogous to cognition. Constructive evolutionary biologists Maturana and Varela have characterized living as a process of cognition that takes form as effective entity-environment interactions - or structural couplings. “Perhaps we can consider agathonic designs as products that have a cognitive analog, as they receive inputs and generate a response. There is no thinking, in the classic sense, but there is an accumulation of physical interactions that alter the properties of the object — which is able to change in response to user needs.” (Helms and Leifer)

Further research proceeding from a mechanical engineering perspective focused on kinematics, the visual languages of phenomena of physical interaction. Agathonic design is post-representational because it involves direct, indexical, usually physical, registration of the interface between an artifact and its environment, over time. “In the best case of directed entropy, an object wears (moves to a lower energy state) as it is used, but in a predictive manner that increases its functionality and/or value to the user.” (Helms) Helms has identified materials such leather, cloth and wood as being particularly well-suited to agathonic interaction design although the possibilities are unlimited. Interface points having potential to be optimized by means of agathonic approaches are vast - for starters clothing, prosthetics, chairs, floors, tools and utensils, knobs, handles and handgrips. The enormous potential of agathonic design remains under-explored, primarily because it presents fundamental challenges to our ways of being and doing design. In particular, agathonic design principles are instructive in loosening industrial designs biases for stability, uniformity, and order. Much still remains to be researched and explored regarding material and performance properties, product lifecycle, and user experience. Helms encourages further research on questions such as whether agathonic designing requires substance and matter, and how agathonic designing principles might be applied in contexts of virtual or dematerialized interaction.

In The Tree of Knowledge Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela elaborate on the embodied ethics of language acts “Every human act takes place in language. Every act in language brings forth a world created with others in the act of coexistence which gives rise to what is human. Thus every human act has an ethical meaning because it is an act of constitution of the human world. This linkage of human to human is in the final analysis, the groundwork of all ethics as a reflection on the legitimacy of the presence of others.” (Maturana and Varela p. 247) Agathonic designed events are those in which the artifact re-cognizes the Other by means of patterns of interactions. By speaking the language of interaction, agathonic designing practices afford entry points for designing for relations that are less human-centered and more life-centered. Speaking the language of intra-action (Barad), agathonic designs may serve to reveal touch points of ethical relations. As processes of mutuality, agathonic designs may provide opportunities to relax control and to be in dialogue with our surroundings and in so doing, to be changed.

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