The Machinery of Design: Playing with Brecht, the Surrealists, and Provocative Images

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Through narrative, interruption, and collage, this paper proposes a way of understanding design using Brecht’s style of epic theater and the Surrealists’ affection for paradox and irrationality. I analyze how we can interpret existing design in terms of Brecht’s belief that the nature of reality is economic, and how designers can adapt his techniques, along with those of the Surrealists, to create – or re-create – works that generate a unique response. Brecht used techniques to remind theater audiences that they were watching a play rather than observing a representation of reality. He found that the machinery of theater, opera, and the press is no longer “a means of furthering output but has become an obstacle to output, and specifically to [intellectuals’] own output as soon as it follows a new and original course which the apparatus finds awkward or opposed to its new aims.” I apply this theory to design and discuss how the “machinery” that generates design affects its output and how unveiling that machinery for the reader/audience creates new meaning.

Using the Surrealists’ irreverent methods of production simultaneously with Brecht’s techniques provides a unique way of seeing design.

Stream: Social Policy, Culture and Welfare

Paper: , Machinery of Design, The,

I'm an Assistant Professor of Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and teach upper-level courses in the Communication Program, such as Visual Design, Environmental Communication, and Web Publishing. I hold a PhD (Texts & Technology) and M.A. (Creative Writing), in English from the University of Central Florida. I just completed and defended my dissertation outlining a methodology for reframing problems by analyzing the artifacts produced by medical imaging technologies. The text is a rhetorical study that uses methodologies adapted from surrealist, literary, and theatre theories, with a focus on fragmentation of texts. In it, I also address how digital medical technologies affect the way patients and physicians interact and the broader effect of this technology on how we view illness and the human body. In the past, I've worked in the legal field and for a financial services technology consulting firm in public relations and marketing. I've researched and reported on technology for trade publications, developed marketing literature, and worked with consultants on document design, technical manuals, and reports.