Prasad (Assistant Professor at ASU) talks about "Design/Dermatology: The Sensual, Fleeting Skins of Objects"

"when you change your smart skin, you change your identity."
-- from /www.smartskins.com/

As a follow-up and in contrast to Stuart's talk, Prasad begins by saying that the opposite of enduring is fleeting. His talk addresses this through the topic of skin -- aesthetic manipulation, skin and surface, the external superficial appearance of things, and relationships between the inside and the outside. The skin is what we interact with -- what we encounter -- what we come across.

His talk discusses various types of skins -- rigid, translucent, permeable, elastic, and flexible -- in material, symbolic and cultural terms.

"If our task is to create enduring design, such manipulation of object-skins relegates design to cosmetic dermatology. Aesthetic modification of objects through design activity is akin to molting; as the skin ages, it becomes obsolete and no longer trendy, and is unceremoniously exfoliated. According to Marx and Baudrilland, the skin of the object, in such cases, becomes the receptacle for its exchange-value and sign-value rather than its use-value." -p.b.