Knowledge is design, and design generates knowledge.
Digital technologies have led to major changes in how we perceive and in what we know. They permeate our processes of design to an ever greater degree: setting parameters, guiding and structuring our own actions, and shaping and influencing our knowledge of both the physical and virtual worlds. Thus far, however, we have failed to realize the extent to which the objects themselves—formed by human, technical, or natural means—actively model and help shape the very knowledge that they bring forth.
 
This catalog, which covers multiple disciplines and eras, examines the demands that scientific, technical, and social developments place on design. Its essays explore artistic, natural, scientific, and engineering processes in addition to formative processes in society and politics.
 
How do the materials and tools of design leave their mark on the processes and results of scientific research? How do they change our ways of thinking? And how do they influence the shaping of both the environment and humans themselves? In short: what agencies do images and objects, materials and forces develop? These are the fundamental questions addressed by the essays in this book.