An interview with Franca Lopez Barbera
To begin with, I would like to focus on my conversation with Argentinian product designer and researcher, Franca Lopez Barbera, which took place in June 2023. We exchanged ideas around our shared interest in exploring dematerialisation as a cultural and social phenomenon and its connection to the production of knowledge. Franca’s own practice explores the discourse of the material object and how the design of objects can shape us in return, also known as ontological design. As a product designer, she brought up the idea of material language as a language in itself, and we started to question how my investigation could evolve into interrogating what happens when there is a translation between the material and the digital realm, exploring what elements are lost and what elements are gained through these iterative transitions.
Discussing my current line of enquiry with a practitioner who is addressing similar questions, but from a different angle, has been instrumental. At this stage of the project, it was tempting to leap to conclusions and to start making big claims about my findings, but Franca encouraged me to consider how my questions fit within the current wider discourse regarding dematerialisation and invited me to test my assumptions through visually experimenting by applying my operation as the driving element of my research.
She prompted me to think about the significance of the process, or what she calls “operation” of researching a subject by exploring the boundaries of material and digital translations. This, I would consider a method aligned to my critical line of enquiry at this stage. We concluded that a rigorous approach to visual research was taking shape within my practice, as a way to explore the process of de- and re- materialisation of objects through visually translating different dimensions of the object beyond form (such as tracings) and considering other aspects such as sound, texture, colour, etc. This would potentially help me to develop my investigation process further and play within the realms of material and immaterial in the quest to find out what is lost in translation.
Throughout our conversation, we identified the need to find focus and narrow down my ideas to something deep and insightful, and this is something that has been driving my research over the summer term. As Franca introduced me to the notion of ontological design, or the potential nature of designed objects/interfaces in shaping us as humans, my interest has grown and sharpened. I am keen to explore not just the concept of dematerialisation but also the tangible effects of this process on our daily lives. I’m intrigued by how this imminent transition from material to digital is reshaping our modes of thought, our interactions, our learning processes, and in a nutshell, our cognition. Our conversation helped me to reflect on the purpose of my enquiry, to widen my context, and to consider the implications of my research beyond the brief.