About quality before and after use #textual #use #reflection

This text is a personal reflection as part of the project “Cutlery Set – immaterial recycling”.

The individual pieces of cutlery were originally designed for different contexts and purposes and manufactured accordingly. The interesting thing is that after being purchased separately and put into use, they took a kind of detour by being used together from then on – they were recontextualized into a new unit that is not formal-aesthetic in nature, but presumably practical.

What would be the “normal” way? This type of cutlery is mass-produced. The ornamentation on the spoon and fork is not hand-engraved, but stamped in a machine that hits a piece of sheet metal with several tons of pressure until it is deformed in the way that was planned. Whether a cutlery set is made conventionally and still partly by hand, or whether a robot or a fully automated production facility does all the work, it doesn’t change the fact that both are mass production with the goal of producing as many identical cutlery sets as possible in the shortest possible time. In the end, the soulless cutlery rolls off the assembly line. It is untouched – in the truest sense of the word, if you don’t count the touch of the machine arm.

Another possible common use for this cutlery set could have been to retain the individual planned contextual use of each piece of cutlery and to dispose of it by throwing it away, melting it down, or possibly even reproducing it with the same stamping tools in order to restore “its former glory.”

In an article by Melanie Jaeger-Erben in the book “Planned Obsolescence – Behind the Scenes of Product Development,” it is stated that a consumer good “… only becomes an object of consumption and a utility item in the course of its use. Consumer goods are “neither finished nor inviolable forms after production and purchase, but unfold continuously as part of and shaped by a continuous stream of consumption practices” […] When designing a product, certain uses and, to a certain extent, its performance capabilities are “inscribed” into the object (»inscription«, Akrich 1992), but it is only through use that the object is constituted or “described” (»description«, Akrich 1992) in terms of how it is applied and whether the planned uses and performance capabilities are actually realized. In this interpretation, product designers and users are therefore connected; their knowledge, expectations, contexts of action, and practices interact indirectly with each other via the consumer object. [OBS p. 174, translated into English by the author himself]

As a designer, how can I then know which tools other people should use to eat? Of course, I can learn from experts and professionals when it comes to specific cutlery for a specific context. Ultimately, this cutlery will probably be very functional and ergonomically designed, going beyond purely formal aesthetic design. Above all, however, when it comes to everyday cutlery, differences usually only occur on a formal aesthetic level. How about if my family member’s cutlery set were also seen as an authentic alternative to other cutlery that could also be useful to other people? When I think about this question, I quickly wonder whether other people would like it. Interestingly, I don’t ask myself this question to the same extent when choosing a spoon or fork on a daily basis. Perhaps it is the non-uniform design in terms of formal aesthetics that suddenly makes me question very critically whether this is really the right cutlery set for me, or whether I would prefer a more inconspicuous and nondescript one, whose right to exist I do not question.

In this case, I wondered what significance individual stories and habits could have in the design process for cutlery. One interesting thought keeps coming back to me: Even if “the industry,” in its “obsession with efficiency,” has no interest in who uses the cutlery that is mass-produced and “rolls off the assembly line,” as long as it sells well, it nevertheless produces, probably unintentionally, many stories with the soulless cutlery that is brought to life after purchase!

This refers not only to the shine in which one sees oneself reflected in the store and finds one’s self in it, but also to the process of this sober industrial production method, which, after production, gives the cutlery nothing more than a concept of “perfect repeatability” and the promise of being able to produce exactly the same thing again if one wishes.

I would like to conclude this reflection with a quote from Cradle to Cradle: “This virgin product is mine, I am the first. […] Once I (I, who am so special, so unique) have used it, it has no value for others. It is ‘history’ (as they say in the US). Industry designs and plans according to this idea.” It continues: “What would have happened, we sometimes ask ourselves, if the industrial revolution had taken place in societies where the community was valued more highly than the individual, and where people did not believe in a life cycle from cradle to grave, but in reincarnation?” [C2C pp. 134-135, translated into English by the author himself]

Sources

[OBS] Melanie Jaeger-Erben, „Eine Frage der Kultur? Gesellschaftliche Treiber von Obsoleszenz“, in: Erik Poppe, Jörg Longmuss (Hg.), „Geplante Obsoleszenz, Hinter den Kulissen der Produktentwicklung“, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2019.

[C2C] Michael Braungart und William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle – einfach intelligent produzieren, München: Piper Verlag GmbH 2021.