Hertzian Tales, a PhD by project, explores how critical responses to the ideological nature of design can inform the development of aesthetic possibilities for electronic products. It focuses on the role electronic products play in shaping our aesthetic experience of inhabiting the ‘electrosphere’ . It looks beyond the quality of our relationship with objects themselves to the social, psychological and cultural experiences they mediate.

This thesis consists of six essays and a commentary on five conceptual design proposals produced as part of the research.

The essays discuss: existing theoretical perspectives and design approaches for developing the aesthetic possibilities of electronic objects; a role for different degrees of user-unfriendliness such as estrangement and alienation in the design of electronic objects; the design of function to provide new types of aesthetic experience; behaviour as a narrative experience determined by objects, and how the embodiment of unusual psychological needs and desires in electronic objects can encourage the user to experience new narrative situations as a protagonist; how artists and designers have made links between the invisible environment of electromagnetic radiation and the material culture of objects; and systems of presentation and consumption for ideas which, unlikely to be mass-produced or even prototyped, exploit the conceptual status of objects as ideas.

The five conceptual design proposals are: ‘Thief of Affections’, ‘Electroclimates’, ‘When Objects Dream ...’, ‘Tunable Cities’, and ‘Faraday Chair’. They are not necessarily illustrations of the ideas discussed in the essays, nor are the essays an explanation of these proposals. They evolved simultaneously and are part of the same design process.

The outcome of the project is a design approach for producing conceptual electronic products that encourage complex and meaningful reflection on inhabitation of a ubiquitous, dematerialising and intelligent artificial environment.

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