Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Since the 1920s, the inner workings of our technologies have receded from view. When someone looked at a technology from the early-1920s (from vacuum cleaners to automobiles; from tractors to clothes irons) they could easily identify what it is capable of, what we would call the tool’s “affordances.” Users could see the affordances visibly on the surface of the technology itself. While affordances have carried over from early technological eras, and have come to shape the very notion of what makes good design, the “how” of interacting with technologies remains largely a mystery for the everyday user. Affordances have become disconnected from the thing they refer to; that is, a button works simply because it has become an archetype instead of being visually connected to an obvious system that makes it work. This paper connects industrial design and art from the early-20th century to contemporary digital design to consider the ethical implications of the disappearance of affordances behind streamlined surfaces. It bridges the fields of industrial design, art history, cultural studies, and gender studies to argue that the surface aesthetics of our technologies have largely removed the body from the affordances of our technologies. As such, the human agency connected to the perception of affordances (i.e., our ability to make informed decisions based on “how” a technology works) has disappeared along with the affordances that are hidden behind the surface of technologies.