“Look around your living space. Do you surround yourself with things you really like or things you like only because they are absurd?” asks Christy Wampole, author of the mildly controversial (and much-mocked) New York Times essay, “How to Live Without Irony,” one Princeton University assistant professor’s very earnest criticism of our generation’s unabated use of irony as a safety blanket.
“This generation has little to offer in terms of culture,” she mused, which must be the reason why we choose self-mockery from the outset over having our worthlessness pointed out to us by others. Published in November to the dismay of many a 20-something, moustache-sporting blogger, her column was the perfect bookend to a year that, in fact, began with similar accusations. Despite all of our technological advances, creatively we’re quite worthless, according to Kurt Andersen, whose January Vanity Fair article “You Say You Want a Devolution?” points out the unprecedented similarities of today’s aesthetics with those of 20 years ago. Unlike the vast differences between the ‘50s and ‘70s, or ‘70s and ‘90s, the fashions, musical tastes, and architecture of the moment have gone largely unchanged since the ‘90s. “Our culture’s primary M.O. now consists of promiscuously and sometimes compulsively reviving and rejiggering old forms,” he writes. Ouch.
And in fact, the accusations that we’ve stalled in our creative evolution as a species are difficult to counter given the objects we’ve surrounded ourselves with. A quick survey of recent design (performed this summer, before Wampole’s prompting) revealed that many of the objects with which we live exist for the sake of their own absurdity: Leica-looking cases for our iPhones and gramophones rigged to amplify our iTunes playlists. These goofy inventions also reveal a fondness for pairing our beloved high-tech gadgets with very low-tech companions of days of yore. Fine, Wampole, you’ve got us pegged: our resignation to the idea that everything has already been done means that rather than dare propose anything new, we’d rather look to the past for inspiration (in, like, total gest, of course). We are trapped in our own unbearable echo chamber of invention.
It can’t be nostalgia, the go-to scapegoat for lameness, that’s driving this trend; personally I was not alive to experience the gramophone at the height of its popularity. It must instead be a longing for a long-ago sensation we shed when we became followers of the Church of Apple: Tactility. Texture. Weight. Substance. In the last months, our practice of nostalgic irony has reached its saturation point, and as a result has taken a bizarrely unexpected turn: The current vogue is for objects that are physical but reference our digital past, a past which had been, in turn, already created as skeumorphs to the physical originals. The design ouroboros just caught hold of its own tail.
As a nod to this perplexing year in self-referential design, ARTINFO has gathered a handful of examples of what we're talking about, from the lens you can attach to your camera to make your photos look like they’ve been processed through Instagram, to the game board that allows you to play Words With Friends without a 3G connection — before, of course, you realize it’s just a bad imitation of Scrabble on your coffee table.
To take a tour of five hyper-ironic designs from 2012, click on the slideshow.