Creative Synthesis

It is often difficult to capture the kind of conversations we have here at at the collaborative. This is an attempt to do that, in a quasi journalistic style. It does fail to capture the somewhat bohemian atmosphere that pervades these discussions but it does give us all an opportunity to hear a little bit about Leonardo’s work.

Tell us a little about product tattoos. What kind of work is this and what are you trying to accomplish?

i’m a product designer, and i’m sick of making cosmetic improvements to things - anyhow today everything is already designed, pretty, usable. i wanted to make a difference and do something useful, something meaningful. but designers today only work on the skin of an object, usually designing plastic boxes, or metal ones, with maybe some glass. so i started to look under the skin and try to find out what today’s products are really about. it turns out that the least interesting part of a product is the way it looks: today’s objects are the product of amazing global supply chains and manufacturing methods with far-ranging impact that touches the lives of tons of people on every continent. turns out, these gadgets and throwaways are just the tip of the iceberg and they have long, fascinating lives. so instead of wrapping them in some meaningless envelope, i though they deserved tattoos to serve as badges of honor for what they’ve been through. and at the same time, i want the consumer to know just how much went into these products. i want them to know what they’re buying into, for better or for worse. so i researched, and i etched the most important parts of each object i chose right onto their skins with a laser.

You say that its natural that people who spend so much on something should care about what goes in to a product and how that product is made. There is an emerging culture that does care but I would imagine that a majority of consumers don’t. Why should they? Is it important to understand a product in terms of more than what it does or its role as a status symbol?

of course, people care the most about cost and function when they buy things. but this only matters so long as there is sufficient technological differentiation. the amazing success of apple’s expensive, limited-use consumer electronics demonstrates that mass consumers can care about the metaphysics behind products - in this case, the minimalist design aesthetic and the ability to identify with a certain culture and class. and as everyone shifts towards a design-focused approach to products, we are starting to see the attractiveness of ‘green’ design, the growing concern for sustainability and ecological footprint. this is coming about in part because we are starting to realize the impact that our lifestyle has on global politics and the environment. the products we make and buy and throw away mediate our relationship with each other and with the planet. i hope that by making the ‘roots’ of products visible as part of their ‘design’ people will own the ethical and ecological footprint together with the product.

One thing you address in product tattoos as the idea that recycling reinforces a notion of disposability rather than ownership and reuse. The idea that materials and objects are disposable is a very modern notion, and the idea that we chemically recycle these materials is more modern still. Are we moving away from how we should really be treating products? Do you think ideas about tattooing as narrating the product lifecycle (even after purchase) can change that?

packaging industry executives came up with the idea of ‘recycling’ to avoid taking responsibility for selling disposable packaging - and to avoid government restrictions on their wasteful practices. since then, consumers have been under the impression that they are responsible for keeping industry clean - not the other way around. products almost never need to be disposable, but lots of public service announcements and recycling subsidies have created a convenient vehicle for disposing of and then buying more packaging. to fix this would require a radical change in practice, one that lies outside the options provided by the packaging industry. of course, we should not make single-use anything, especially since most single-use products can be used over and over again. just like real tattoos, these ones are rebellious - they go against the stated aims of their maker. take my tattoo of the disposable food container - i’ve etched the molecular structure of polypropylene, the plastic it’s made of, to show the extent of work that has gone into making this synthetic molecule. it implies the oil drilling and refining and polymer synthesis and the work of thousands of engineers and laborers. it implies that it should never be thrown away, and in fact it should be treasured. instead of the misleading ‘recycling’ symbols printed onto products, there should be more symbols like this, packages that say ‘don’t throw me away’ and ‘re-use me.’

Much of your work seem to have a message of transparency. The dishmaker, for example, also looks more artistically at the manufacturing process and recycling. Product tattoos address the supply path more literally. Why is this idea of transparency so important?

products are marketed to consumers in dishonest ways, especially when appealing to their moral sense. we now know that cigarettes were marketed through lies, but how can we know if ethanol is better than gasoline, or hybrids better than normal cars? in my career as a designer, it’s become apparent that people aren’t going to buy into things that scold them or annoy them into being responsible. so my work always tries to provide some added benefit, while at the same time making visible the conversion of energy into matter (as in the dishmaker) or the global supply chain behind a laptop (as in the product tattoos). we can’t change behavior if people don’t see for themselves the causes and effects. that’s the danger of global warming: it’s invisible, it will take decades to observe - but if you wear a dust mask in the city you can see the black build up, right here, right now.

The kind of approach you are taking with product tattoos is a very physical one. What role does the digital world play here, in particular the idea of the web as information enabler? Is there something more powerful about using the physical object as a canvas, as opposed to linking it? It seems that there is a lot of magic in the act of buying something. We see a product on a store shelf, beautiful presented and packaged, how divorced are we from the reality of how things are actually made and brought here?

good question. on the one hand the digital world is the best place where information about product traceability can be created, maintained and read (that’s where i found it). on the other hand, buying a product brings you no closer to any of that information - right now - except for the rare ethical company that advertises its standards. most of design is actually about hiding the truth - hiding the dirty, delicate, clumsy parts and shoddy assembly behind a perfect veneer. i’m trying to bridge that gap a little - between the endless information of the web and the opacity of product design - by at least taking advantage of the real estate on a product itself. turns out, you can tell quite a long story on a few square inches of surface: my 2×4 tattoo actually contains instructions for building an entire wood-frame house. and you can’t escape it: it’s as indelible as a real tattoo. and it can be beautifully done: the tattoo on my food package and the one on my laptop always elicit oohs and aahs as people stroke them. but ideally this work will be hybrid: we need a constantly updated, community-generated online database to keep tabs on companies and products while more and more of that information will start to leak onto the packaging, the instructions and maybe even the products themselves.

There are an awful lot of things that push things towards a transparent stream of information. Services like twitter and facebook are constantly pushing personal updates. How much of this information is really meaningful? As consumers is it more meaningful to have our products talk to us?

these up-to-the-minute interfaces demonstrate that we have an infinite capacity for absorbing information if it makes us feel more connected with the world. if you look at the evolution of yahoo’s webpage, for example, you can see how much more information there is and how much faster it changes today. and that’s just what product tattoos seeks to do: to stretch how much we can expect to learn about an object, its social and environmental context.

One of the more exciting uses for the tattoos is as instructional guides. The idea that a product can communicate with you here is very direct. A 2×4 can tell you what do with it. This seems more direct and more enabling than a manual have their own aesthetic appeal. Thinking about this archeologically, hieroglyphics like this would seem to give a very interesting message to the future. How far can these go?

i’m inspired by the etchings that were sent into space with the pioneer and voyager spacecraft in the seventies - they had no direct function: these plaques served to communicate the existence of their creators to future aliens. by etching wood-framing diagrams onto 2×4s, they lose their disposable commodity status and become more valuable, like the egyptian tomb paintings that told the tale of pyramid construction. these diagrams are only superficially about instructions, they are really about making the lumberyard employee and the carpenter proud of their roles in creating the built environment.

Where do ideas like product tattoos go? What are you working on now that you can tell us about?

now i am working on ways for product designers and manufacturers to add rich narratives to objects. turns out, most of the people involved with a product are proud and have lots to share about their intentions and dreams. these are the stories i want to make visible - physically and digitally - in the products of the future.

What does design mean to you now? Is it still about making things pretty or do you think there is room for useful and meaningful design today. Is this more or less the case than in previous years?

my idea of design has changed radically in the last few months. i still can’t help but make things beautiful, but now i do it in order to convey their significance - to give them meaning. with all of the information accessible to us now, i hope that consumers will care more about substance than form.

Do you see yourself on a clear path from your previous work? What’s the relationship between ideas like product tattoos and the other things you’ve done like dishmaker, heatsink, gurgle and possessed products?

it turns out, all along i’ve been interested in investing inanimate substances with a new value while at the same time giving users with a sense of responsibility and pride for everyday actions. the sink and fountain were all about the preciousness of water, while the possessed products embodied ethical and environmental cost of existing objects. the dishmaker becomes more relevant to me today, because it offers an alternative type of product, one where the entire life cycle is visible and controllable by the consumer. with my new work i hope to be able to invest even complex products with the same kind of significance and control.

So when are you going to tattoo my Macbook (and everyone’s else’s stuff?)

just like real tattoos, these are painstaking works of art and each one is unique. that said, i’d be glad to work with each interested individual in producing a tattoo they and i can be proud of.

Leonardo Bonanni is a collaborative who researches in the MIT Media Lab in the Tangible Media Group. His personal work is at leo.media.mit.edu and you can find his blog posts on hyperexperience, or here as well.