3D digital recreation of Erhard Schön’s 1538 print “Fünf Figuren in einem Gebäude” (2018) courtesy of Simone Niquille.

Creator of the design and research practice Technoflesh, Simone Niquille draws from her background in graphic design, photography, and branding to demystify the processes behind the digitization of the body. Currently working in Amsterdam, Niquille received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.A. in Visual Strategies from the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam. While currently teaching Design Research at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, Niquille continues to produce research, graphic work, films, and installations internationally, most recently as a commissioned contributor to the Dutch Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale entitled Work, Body, Leisure.

Wielding her knowledge of contemporary design tools, Niquille’s visual work investigates the mechanics by which graphical user interfaces create and also reinforce historical standards for the body. Covering an array of applications and disciplines, Niquille implements and manipulates these software to demonstrate how normative calculations of the human form get cast into the sphere of digital media but also how those then dictate further designs for the body to live and to work. In this interview, we discuss the impetus behind Niquille’s work, her research into anthropomorphic standards, and her contribution to last year’s Venice Biennale [this article was originally published in 2019 Ed.].

Much of your work endeavors to uncover the normative standards so deeply embedded within anthropometric design. Part of the problem you identify is that the normative function of design––as it relates to biometric data––is that it often disguises itself; whether it be through the projection of these standards as “scientific” fact, or through a particular software interface. We’d like to begin by asking you how you yourself became both aware of and interested in interrogating the exclusion and violence of these kinds of standards. How do you conceive of your work as intervening in or responding to this practice?

My background is in photography and graphic design. I’ve worked in branding and identity strategy previous to my practice Technoflesh. This mixture evolved into what I explore with my practice: the digitization of corporeality, its consequences, and opportunities. Branding is an exercise of representational politics and identity construction. In my practice, this takes the form of an inquiry into capture technology and identity strategy. Capture technology has evolved from traditional photography towards various forms of computation, whereas with identity strategy, the application of the acquired body data is imagined or challenged. My design process is a way to use, investigate, and challenge tools, modes, and mechanisms by participation. My practice is a design studio. This is a conscious identification with the field of (graphic) design to challenge what a practice of branding or identity strategy entails. Arguing that it does not only take place through the use of design software but already within the code of the software itself. As a designer, I am part of the processes I challenge as both user and interrogator.

Jeff Raskin’s book The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems, published in 2000, proposes various design rules towards a human-centric machine interaction, critiquing current interface design as setting the user up to fail through misplaced transparency, complex choice architecture, and obscure icons. Some of these suggestions are absorbed in contemporary software interfaces, for example macOS’ graphical user interface, which by simplifying options obscures complex internal mechanisms. The graphical user interface takes on the role of sleek cladding mounted to a building’s facade to cover messy infrastructure. Rayner Banham’s critique of domestic infrastructure “A Home is not a House” could be paraphrased as “An interface is not a software.” This particularly applies to proprietary software where an interface allows access to functionality but restricts the user’s ability to the workflow dictated by the interface.

Architecture cannot be avoided when dealing with these questions, as it is a spatial reflection of some of the constructed assumptions that exist around identities, bodies, and representation.

Architecture cannot be avoided when dealing with these questions, as it is a spatial reflection of some of the constructed assumptions that exist around identities, bodies, and representation. Much like architecture, interface design, or user experience design (UX), is modeled with a specific subject in mind.

With parametric design processes becoming prevalent in many practices and industries, a challenging and understanding of the tools at use and their built-in defaults, a radical software archaeology, is paramount.

As you often cite Le Corbusier’s Modulor, it is clear that there is a concatenation of historical precedents for establishing standards from the human form––Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man being another prominent example. Do you think the digital harnessing of this practice has aggravated or intensified the persistence of these norms in contemporary design? 

What differs in contemporary design practices as opposed to analogue norms such as Modular Man, is the ubiquity and scale at which design software is distributed and used. These “tools” are often proprietary software whose parameters are hermetically sealed. Functionality, and thus accessibility, of mechanisms is determined by the graphical user interface. As such, parameters built into the software code are distributed and applied by default without user input or possibly even knowledge thereof.

What differs in contemporary design practices as opposed to analogue norms such as Modular Man, is the ubiquity and scale at which design software is distributed and used.

These historical precedents are important to reference however, as I believe that a certain pictorial language and understanding of representation has been formed in Europe during the 1500s that can be detected in contemporary computational tools. Understanding the reach of today’s tools of creation, an investigation into the origins of certain assumptions is critical. What defaults are built into Adobe Systems’ software suite, or Autodesk’s portfolio?

The defaults I speak about are often so ubiquitous it seems banal to point them out: In 3D software, a “floor” is by default a plane along the x and y-axes. It requires additional labor to transform the plane into a bumpy floor, a grated floor, or anything else. Of course, this is part of the creation process, but regardless, one does not start with a blank space but with a plane or a geometric solid that then gets manipulated into the desired shape. The consequences of such inbuilt parameters might be more apparent on a default in-software scale figure––what body does it represent?

You mention in your essay “What does the Graphical User Interface Want?” that contemporary parametric design tools embed normative standards of the human body as modeling guidelines. Unlike SketchUp, where there is an explicit inclusion of a body––a scale figure––in the design interface, parametric technologies inform a standard of a normative body more implicitly, where the image of a body is excluded from view. It would seem that the obfuscation of the body within parametric software actually operates at a more insidious level. While it does not present visually a kind of ideal standard for an architectural subject––white, male, etc.––the numeric representation of this figure quietly enforces this standard in a more pervasive way. Perhaps you could expand a bit more on how this actually operates within parametric design tools, what kinds of anthropometric standards are present within the software, and what are the implications? 

In my recent work, I’ve investigated anthropometric measurements used for ergonomic simulation software and how such body data is the origin of digital human representation. The first digital human model, created at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s by a team led by Norman Badler, informed current CGI animation software, as well as scientific computation. This very first model called “Jack” has been spun out of the University into an ergonomic simulation software startup and has, through a series of acquisitions, become part of Siemens’s software portfolio. The software’s visuals look like a kind of Sims computer game for engineering. Avatars, according to body measurement data, are posed to perform tasks at workstations or interact with a product. The interaction data is then to answer questions such as: Can this handle be reached? Does this sitting position create back stress?

In this case, anthropometric data simulates a future user to assess a product or workstation’s usability. Aggregating a body measurement database encompassing enough subject data to be relevant for such surveys requires large resources. Multiple measurements are recorded per subject, up to 100+ landmarks per body. This used to be done by hand until the CAESAR survey in 2000 commissioned the first whole body 3D scanner by Cyberware in California. The company previously produced scanners for Hollywood, famously used for special effects in Star Trek and Terminator. The addition of a digital capture method makes the CAESAR database incredibly valuable for various research initiatives. Not only is body measurement data collected, but meshes of the subjects are scanned as well. This led to the database’s use in various research projects on digital human modelling. As a result, the database’s influence can be traced in different contemporary software, from ergonomic simulation to animation, and modelling. The scanned subjects have, due to lack of other resources, become the go-to benchmark of digital bodies.

The first digital human model Jack, mentioned earlier, was based on an anthropometric database called ANSUR, conducted by the US Army for airplane cockpit and gas mask designs in the 1980s. This database was produced for a specific intent, a design to be used by the Army personnel. However, the collected data only represents this very specific group at that specific time. The database, however, is still accessible today via a drop-down menu in the Siemens software. Jack has since been updated to encompass other available databases, however, the options remain scarce and, as such, necessarily omit certain bodies.

Furthermore, translation of corporeality into computable data requires reduction into categories for later filtering and analysis. This reinforces reductive classifications such as gender and race. Once part of the software, this data is selected via a graphic user interface that is based on these labels. As a software user, one would then compile a digital human model to assess a design according to these (limited) attributes: female, 179 cm, 65 kg, Japanese_2006.

Speaking to Allison Stephens, the former technical lead ergonomist at Ford for factory workstations, it is clear that for her practice such software is just one tool of many for ergonomic assessment. In Ford’s case, the data describing the numeral body in the software is collected internally at the company. But what parametric design promises is a solution rather than one version of many outcomes. As such, body data selected by a drop-down menu is political. How would a user know what data is behind the database ‘German’, ‘Korean_2003’, ‘NA_AUTO’? Whose data is collected by whom, and classified with which label?

Following up on this last question, what might be the agency of the user to possibly alter these variables?

To remain skeptical and refuse computational technology as a singular answer, a silicon solutionism, and instead regard it as one of many.

Several of the design programs you are researching are implemented, among other functions, for the study of bodies in various workplace conditions––it appears mainly as regards to manufacturing. The function of these programs appears often to be presented as a tool for safeguarding the human body from workplace actions and activities that might cause it harm or stress. Of course, the recording and calculating of the limits and efficiencies of bodily function in the workplace also speaks to a motivation towards economizing the body. As you often refer to the language or structure of these design programs as masking the underlying violence of anthropometric design and biometric data, do you see them also masking a more economic incentive?

Measurement and quantification of the body cannot be separated from economic incentives. This also holds true for anthropometric data. Motion studies performed at Ford Motor Company’s newly introduced assembly line were intended to optimize the weakest link in the otherwise efficient automation, the human worker. 

By attaching lights on workers hands and taking long exposure photos, the motion path invisible to the eye was rendered visible on photographic film. This visual analysis allowed movement optimization by identifying and eliminating any unnecessary motion. Technical advances in seeing technologies have played a huge part in the body politics of today. Which isn’t to say that prior to machine vision, biometric data collection, or the invention of the mug shot in the 18th century, there wasn’t any “reading” and scrutiny of the body, but computational vision systems have introduced a presumed objectivity of the “seer”. By replacing the one who is looking with an object, a code, a gadget, or an algorithm, the creator’s subjectivity is obscured.

This subjectivity can and often is driven by the market of a given product. Speaking to a developer of a popular motion capture system about the functionality of the systems calibration––the process in which a physical body wearing a motion capture suit is aligned with a digital double on screen––a systemic bias influenced by the product’s demand revealed itself. Calibration for a white male body was incredibly smooth, the only data necessary by the suit’s wearer was the shoe size. The remaining body measurements were guesstimated based on the large user base of the product. Were the suit’s wearer of another race or gender, manual measurements would have had to be input for a successful calibration. The product is popular in the video game and special effects industries, and its functionality is made most accessible for its prime user.

Measurement and quantification of the body cannot be separated from economic incentives. This also holds true for anthropometric data.

Corporeal data does not execute violence on a body by simply existing, but its mechanism is intertwined with economic incentives of optimization and safety. In the case of ergonomic simulation software, as described previously, worker safety plays a large factor in insurance policies and as such is an economic interest beyond production efficiency.

You participated in the Dutch Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture, which interrogated contemporary discourses around labor and automation. Could you tell us about your contribution?

“Safety Measures” is a commission by Het Nieuwe Instituut for this year’s Dutch Pavilion. The work is an investigation into body measurement data as it is used in ergonomic simulation software, its origin, and consequences. Such software is used in analysis of factory workstations as well as in product design. The US military is developing an ergonomic simulation for the evaluation of a soldier’s carry-load, for example. In industrial applications, the software is used to answer a set of questions about a design before it goes into physical production. In this way, the software is economically relevant as it saves the cost of building 1:1 prototypes as the testing is done virtually by digital human models. These avatars simulate whole populations, age groups, etc. The data used is taken from anthropometric databases. The recent, most extensive survey of body measurements collected data of a few thousand subjects in the US, Italy, and The Netherlands to create an average of all the NATO countries. In the survey’s documentation, it is noted that Italy had been chosen because its citizens are the shortest and The Netherlands’ the tallest. This geographic blanket capture thus was intended to generate a representative spectrum by collecting the extremes. “Safety Measures” is a work into the mechanisms of this anthropometric data which still serves as a backbone to most ergonomic simulation software, as well as the history of such digital human representation.

A print by German draughtsman Erhard Schön from 1538, “Fünf Figuren in einem Gebäude”, serves as the template for the pavilion’s physical installation. Schön’s work is an elaboration on the “invention of perspective” that completely changed two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional space. Schön extended Dürer’s method of tracing the physical through a grid to create a “realistic” spatial representation to the human form. By encasing the corporeal in geometric solids, he was able to position, scale, and rotate the figures in a drawing at will. His work, despite having been created almost 500 years ago, echoes in contemporary 3D software.

We are living in renaissance times mediated by computation.

The drawing “Fünf Figuren in einem Gebäude” suspiciously looks like a low-resolution render, the figure’s mesh reduced to a minimal polygon count. When Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar Animation Studios, created the first animation of a human hand in 1972 as a student at Utah University, he employed a similar technique: by drawing a network of polygons on a gypsum cast of his own hand, he was able to transfer the grid’s coordinates into the computer to recreate a digital copy of the physical.

The installation is a recreation of Erhard Schön’s print as a three dimensional, “life-sized” inflatable jumping castle. Visitors can sit on it and recline with one of the five figures to watch an ergonomic simulation of the original Jack digital human model assessing the inflatable 3D model. The process to create the inflatable challenges the reality implied in Schön’s drawing: first, the original print was re-created in the Blender 3D software. With the use of virtual cameras, different perspectives could be observed than the viewpoint of Schön’s original drawing. Here the construct of Schön’s reality revealed itself. To achieve a rendered image similar to Schön’s drawing, the five figures had to be of varying size, even though the original image implies a multiplication of the same figure in different poses. For the figure in the front to resemble the one in Schön’s drawing, it had to be scaled by 130%, for example.

In my practice, I use CGI software to re-create visuals and interrogate images by reconstruction and virtual cameras. The synthetic construction is a revealing process. As a next step, the digital model was 3D printed. The scale model is necessary to drape sheets of paper over the form to trace a two-dimensional pattern, similar to pattern making in clothing. This flat pattern is then sewn together to create the inflatable. Once inflated, the two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional, yet again. This back-and-forth translation of the original drawing through several dimensions was ultimately not only a production process but also revealing the construction behind parametric representation. We are living in renaissance times mediated by computation. Contemporary software and its method of representation is, at its core, not much advanced from the assumptions of the 15th century. Rather than a Futurist, I’d like to practice being a Medievalist, looking into the past and tracing its remnants in the sleek surface of the present. If the tools which we use contain visions of the past, what future is being built?

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