Johannes Lang studied philosophy and art history at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Leicester and the University of Potsdam.

From 2011 to 2014 he was a research associate at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits”, where he worked on a research project about the aesthetics of ecological product design, which resulted in the book Prozessästhetik. Eine ästhetische Erfahrungstheorie des ökologischen Designspublished by Birkhäuser in 2015.

He currently teaches as a research associate Design Theory at the Weimar Bauhaus University and is working on his doctorate about the “Aesthetics of Functioning”.

Abstract

Aesthetics as Key Category for Psychological Longevity

The useful life of products has central impact on consumption of resources as well as energy and is the classic starting point for growth-driven sales strategies. Until about the 1960s “longevity” was understood as the material durability and comparatively functioning of objects. Since then “longevity” has been extended to the psychological relationship of the user to the object. Strategies for long-lasting psychological product relationships argue either for resistant forms which are not subject to change in taste, or vice versa for interpretative open forms that remain interesting or for customizable forms in which the user can express himself. All those strategies have in common that the product itself, in its concrete context of reality is irrelevant and does not appear. The talk attempts to show why all these strategies do not produce durable product relationships and which understanding of product aesthetics is instead necessary for psychological longevity.