Frame of Mine (Beta Version)

I am a forty-year-old mid-career graphic designer expanding into new fields of inquiry. By “new fields,” I mean the grey areas of exploration that are new to me and that exist between design, writing, architecture and art. These explorations take place beyond the day-to-day of my profession yet parallel it in ways that enrich my thinking as a whole. Call it interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary, or a cross-pollinated leap of faith; I’ve been preparing for this transition from specialist to generalist for the past seventeen years.

All in all, I find myself at the beginning again (Of what? I don’t really know.) But, unlike the day I began my career, this time I am equipped with a cohesive set of ideas that provide a new framework for thinking and making.

Here are a few that I am currently exploring:

Everything is Text

My earliest memories of reading involve the Hammond World Atlas, the Encyclopedia Britannica, National Geographic Magazine, The Guinness Book of World Records, and my brothers’ copy of Boy Scout Handbook. I remember being most fascinated by the idea of the book and magazine as containers for worlds of information. The organization of words and images seemed almost magical in that I could not understand how something as ethereal as one’s thoughts materialized onto the plane of a printed page. I was and still am captivated by the ritual gestures of flipping and scanning; that is, the sensate experience of print as a medium. Indeed, it is as much the medium as it is the message that makes the act of reading an act of joy.¹ I am shaped by my early reading habits and all things have become text—artifacts or ideas to be experienced, interpreted and synthesized.

The Medium is the Model²

In his essay ”On the Crisis of Our Models“ philosopher Vilém Flusser states, “Models are tools for orientation in the world. They are meant to facilitate answers to questions of the type: “Where am I and what can I do to go someplace else?”³ According to Flusser, in addition to the human body, models can be technologies that are used to store and interpret information. These include writing, print and electronic media (e. g. film, video and TV). In the same way, historian and philosopher Walter J. Ong argues that technologies restructure human consciousness.⁴ In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Ong describes how the onset of literacy (i. e. writing and print) transformed the worldview of oral cultures.

Both Flusser and Ong deal with moments of transition. While Ong focuses on the historical and psychodynamic effects of these moments, Flusser frames the idea of transition in terms of crisis thereby suggesting a need for a corresponding action or response. In relation to our own temporality, Ong’s observations are useful in terms of developing an awareness of where we are situated in the trajectory of human and technological development. Likewise, despite being published in 1991, Flusser’s essay remains relevant because our traditional models continue to fail us. He argues that we can no longer afford to interpret things in a strictly linear (or writing- and print-biased) fashion. Certainly, his mantra would be that post-industrial⁵ times demand post-industrial models.

It is important to note that in the essay, Flusser referred to film, video and TV as the models of new media. Although our models have changed since then (e. g. we now look toward the Web, PDAs, social media and apps), we have only scratched the surface in terms of understanding them in relation to human consciousness.

In graduate school, a professor repeatedly posed a question that is forever imprinted on my mind: “How do you image a network?”⁶ Looking back now, I believe he was well aware that the medium is the model.

From Text to Context

We have transformed into what sociologist Manuel Castells calls a network society⁷ or network culture⁸ as defined by Kazys Varnelis, Director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Both terms are used to distinguish our contemporary condition from the prior stage of the Information or Digital Age that first introduced the computer into everyday life. We are now witnessing a period in which the broadcast or top-down system of knowledge distribution is being superseded by the network or rhizomatic⁹ system of the Internet. Because of this, information is more readily accessible and user-generated content has become the norm. With the influx of laptops, PDAs, social media and newer technologies like the iPad, we are increasingly being confronted with the problem of information overload or rather, according to writer and New York University professor Clay Shirky, “filter failure.”¹⁰“Whether we see it or not, we’re becoming editors ourselves”¹¹ says Liz Danzico, co-founder and chairperson of the MFA Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. Moreover, like curators we must give context to the available content.

Within the past few years there has been much focus on design thinking,¹² perhaps it is time to instill a new ethos of building and organizing; namely to create alliances between cultural producers (e. g. artists, designers and writers), information specialists (e. g. librarians, archivists and programmers) and lawyers (i. e. in the area of intellectual property and the public domain) who will work together to maintain what Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler refers to as “the networked information economy.”¹³

A Set of Objects, A Sequence of Events

Vilém Flusser pointed out that “the word design is both a noun and a verb.”¹⁴  In this sense, design is a thing and a thing-in-the-making. It is both object and event. Philosopher John Dewey goes further to explain that objects are “events-with-meanings.”¹⁵ In essence, design is an act of becoming or an idea in motion. It is a set of objects or a sequence of events that is sometimes ephemeral and at other times durable. Out of these sets and sequences emerges a set logic applied to the whole. Social-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai feels that, “Our job is to determine how these sets [and sequences] connect to larger sets or systems.¹⁶ He asks, “How do we find proper meanings of objects [or events] and meaningful arrangements?”¹⁷ In short, what it all comes down to is context.

Note: This essay is a work-in-progress. I, too, am a work-in-progress forever in beta mode.

[Slightly modified version of an essay submitted to the Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism, June 2010]

¹ McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Message. Bantam Books/Random House, 1967.

²Ibid.

³ Flusser, Vilém. Writings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

⁴ Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1982.

⁵ Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

⁶Kaplan, Geoff. Masters of Fine Arts in Design program. California College of the Arts. San Francisco, CA. 2004.

⁷Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society (The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1). Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

⁸Varnelis, Kazys. 2007. “The Rise of Network Culture.” Conclusion to Networked Publics [online] cited May 31, 2010. http://varnelis.net/the_rise_of_network_culture

⁹Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

¹⁰Shirky, Clay. 2008. “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” [online] cited May 31, 2010. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10142298-16.html

¹¹Danzico, Liz. “The Art of Editing: The New Old Skills for a Curated Life.” Interactions January/February 2010.

¹²Brown, Tim. Change by Design. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

¹³Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

¹⁴Flusser, Vilém. The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design. London: Reaktion Books, 1999.

¹⁵Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover Publications, 1958.

¹⁶Appadurai, Arjun. “Designer Humanity: How Objects Seek Meaning” (lecture).  Parsons The New School for Design. New York, NY. February 7, 2007.

¹⁷Ibid.

 

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