The curators expanded the concept from there. This is from the museum's description of the show:
In the age of stylistic pluralism, it seems impossible to establish definitive criteria of "good" or "bad" taste. But a closer look reveals, first, that Pazaurek's categories are applicable without amendment to countless contemporary objects, bringing to light a design practice that is both ludicrous and ironic, and second, that moral criteria are becoming pertinent again in conjunction with a new consumer consciousness. The "crimes" of today's objects, however, are not evident prima facie, because they are manifested not in the design, the material or the decoration, but in the social, economic and ecological context. For this reason, new categories must be added to Pazaurek's catalogue of mistakes.Sadly they don't list the criteria in the description, and I was forgot to write them down while I was there.
I left the show buoyed by the idea that one could invent a system that would allow us to rule out objects, to serve as another layer of defense against the onslaught of objects, and the various ways industrial designers try to get us to accept more stuff into our lives. Designers seemed like the enemy from that point of view, yet in the film Objectified, which I write about in the column, they tend to present themselves as the moral heroes of our age, practicing their holy arts to simplify the use of things, so that our lives can be completely subsumed in them. Their smug paternalism seems built into the career -- we make objects that make decisions for you about how to use them; we make them point the way to what is proper. User friendliness is conceived as a kind of moral victory; convenience is next to godliness. I appreciated the Evil Objects show because it wanted to return the power of moral judgment to the consumers of objects, not their commercial-minded makers.
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