On prototypes, part I

It might be helpful to start a series on the prototyping theme.
Both the theoretical aspects, existing research institutions and relevant realizations should be considered. And as with everything, further suggestions will be added.

I'll start with recycling a text I've written a few months ago:


Prototypes, studios, the construction industry

Prototypes have emerged as multivalent pathways of exploration in recent academic experiments and achievements. They seem to be envisioned as “machines that could be used only once” (J. Bragança de Miranda), therefore never perfect, resisting idealization. As a machine, a prototype performs. It actively embodies the technical contingencies that coalesce into its fabrication. That is, the constitutive difference between the prototype, and other design media that involve making, is in the former’s implied concoction of disparate procedures and techniques (electronic and otherwise) into something that distinguishes itself by what it does.

(the full text is, for the moment, at http://indigestiblemorfogen.blogspot.com/ a temporary blog for all thick, indigestible or obscure theoretical texts that don´t fit here)