Invisible Infrastructure

 

„There is only the observation that there are modes of form making that exceed object form in substantial ways – only the need to point to a project that offers additional artistic pleasures and political powers.“

While reading the text „The Internet of Things“ by Keller Easterling, I started thinking more and more about all the invisible forms of infrastructure that support us in our daily lives. I am not talking about the underground water infrastructure or the electrical network that are a very first base infrastructure that works for us every day. But about a Network of how a Product that I need everyday came to be. This highly designed product are my glasses. The frame was produced in Italy and the glass itself is manufactured in Germany, but they were sold in Switzerland. So only by crossing country boarders it already has become a collaboration of three different political entities that worked together to produce these. But not only that every person involved is highly trained at each a different school, the lived in different political environments and were educated in different environment. All of this was supported by each a different physical and not physical infrastructure of information, politics, transport, education etc. It is less a physical architectural space but more an Idea of a network.
The question of gender can come in at any point of the network. Is there a correlation between the gender of who designed the piece and what comes out at the end? Or since it is a group effort, how does it affect their work? Is there a reason that there are already in the first look 4 men involved but only one woman? And how does that play into the design?
I am not sure about any answers yet and I am pretty sure I’m not gonna be able to give definite ones by the end of the course, but I am looking forward to find out more and more about this network as the course progresses. 

 

Task 1
Michaela Ulmann