Digital Disruptions to Designing in Japan, 1965-85 (Dr. Sarah Teasley) *tomorrow*
Laffin, Christina
With apologies for the short notice, I am posting a talk being held tomorrow which will be held in-person and streaming.
As part of our Japan Studies lecture series we will be hosting Dr. Sarah Teasley presenting on “Digital Disruptions to Designing in Japan, 1965-85.” Please join us!
September 21, 2022, 12:00 – 1:30 pm PDT, Asian Centre 604 and online
Modality: in-person and streaming (not recorded)
For streaming and accessibility: ubcjapan...@gmail.com
Language of event: English
Digital Disruptions to Designing in Japan, 1965-85
Dr. Sarah Teasley, RMIT University
In this paper, I explore the encounters and interactions of professional designers working in Japan – active in automotive, graphic and industrial design – with information and computing technology (ICT) on the shop floor, at the drafting table, and in negotiations with clients between the mid-1960s, when capital-intensive manufacturers like Toyota began integrating ICT into the production process, and the mid-1980s, when some design studios began integrating the Apple Macintosh into workflows. Drawing on personal recollections, reports and conference transcripts, many published in industry periodicals during the period, I identify and assess factors that contributed to how designers responded to the arrival of computers within their everyday practice. Some were men, working in the rarified spaces that afforded encounters with computers: on national projects, in elite research institutions and at companies leading on computers’ manufacturing and integration into workflow. Others were both men and women working in product development and design departments and as consultants for manufacturers and retailers across fashion, electronics and lifestyle goods.
I suggest that as with many ‘old new technologies’, responses depended on actors’ positionality and on existing social relationships within the workplace. Evidence to date suggests that most designers’ experience of computers in Japan in the mid-1960s to mid-1980s was indirect or at least supplementary to their principal working technologies, tools and methods. The greatest impact of computing technology on everyday practice within the design industries came not from individuals’ direct interactions with computers, but from information technologies’ integration into manufacturing and industrial policy more widely.
Sarah Teasley is a social historian of design, technology and making in East Asia. Her research explores new biomaterials/biotech and how power relations shape experience and ecosystems.
Dr. Teasley works across history, design research and social practice, with particular interests in the lived experience of old new biomaterials and biotechnologies in global circulation, and in how human and non-human power relations shape experience, within and as the result of design projects. Her other core research interest lies in transdisciplinary approaches and exchange between academic disciplines and between researchers and diverse industry and social communities, to enable and strengthen capacities for meaningful social and environmental change.
Her publications include Global Design History (Routledge 2011) and Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion 2022), as well as numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Design Issues, The Journal of Design History and The Review of Japanese Society and Culture. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of Design and Culture and Design Issues, and previously served as Associate Editor of Design and Culture and Vice President of the Design Studies Forum.
At RMIT, she serves as Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the School of Design. She teaches onto BA Industrial Design and the Masters in Design Innovation and Technology, and offers HDR supervisions in Design. Prior to joining RMIT in 2020, she was Reader in Design History and Head of Programme for History of Design at the Royal College of Art.