Design Rockism

[imomus]

My latest article for AIGA Voice magazine is Design Rockism. Trace design's topsy-turvy path from Josef Muller-Brockmann's 'Grid Systems' to the Groovisions Brockmann doll!

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, you sound very holistic and New Age. The problem with metaphysics, though, is that it requires us to honour a reality which is at once very important and totally absent. One of the reasons I love Japan so much is that it shows what can be achieved when you love and accept the here and now, and forget the metaphysics of a putatively absent reality. To love the actual and the tangible, and to be present in the moment, is the greatest happiness. Someone who has learned to do that will never dismiss form, or say that it can be separated from content.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I don't know what those terms mean either (never studied holistic/new age books).

Did I say that form should be dismissed or separated from content? That was not my intention. What I meant was that form appears to be secondary or, perhaps more accurately, subsequent to content (function/purpose/primary cause), i.e., it happens as a *result* of the purpose. Something is concieved as an immmaterial 'thing' (idea) and then becomes physical - some things more immediately than others. I don't believe that anything is made without a primary purpose. If the designer is an honest or honourable person, the purpose/function will be to benefit other people; if not, the purpose/function will be to achieve some benefit for him/herself alone, e.g., appear shocking, innovative, arty, unique, etc. The natural world - I mean the world where decisions and designs are made by something other than human beings - shows that it is possible to fulfil a function without *ever* losing originality. No human face, for example, is the same as the next.

When you talk about metaphysics, again I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean things that cannot be perceived with one or more of the five senses? If so, then I would ask you to consider those things that cannot be perceived materially but which can be perceived through the power of reason. The existence of light, for example, can be deduced through its effect on physical objects (illumination) but cannot itself be stored or quantified. Magnetism is similar. Today's scientists cannot explain what magnetism is because they try to block out anything that is not material. Luckily for them they cannot do it completely: take the origin of the heartbeat - scientists have traced it to an area on the physical organ but they cannot say where it came from before that, i.e., what caused it. Don't the Japanese (Shinto) accept that there is an immaterial world (that is part and parcel of our general existence)?

PS the electricity in your computer is another example of an immaterial entity whose existence is apparent through its effects. A true materialist will never pay his/her bills (or switch the light on) ;-)

PPS S B G McKinney gives, in my view, a useful model for understanding the sequential interrelationship of immaterial and material entities [my comments]:

"The final cause is the purpose for which a thing is designed [in the case of a boat: travel dry upon water]. The formal cause is the ideal or form existing in the mind before embodiment [vision of a floating object]. The material cause is the substance which embodies the form [e.g., wood]. The efficient cause is the agency employed to perform the work of construction [boatbuilder, tools]." (From Origin and Nature of Man, 1907)

Typo

[(Anonymous)]

"Do you mean things that cannot be perceived with one or more of the five senses?"

should read

"Do you mean things that cannot be perceived unless through one or more of the five senses?"

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When you talk about metaphysics, again I'm not sure what you mean.

The simplest definition of metaphysics for me is 'the belief that there is an absent reality more important than present realities'.

Something is concieved as an immmaterial 'thing' (idea) and then becomes physical

You're a Platonist, and I'm not. It's really as simple as that.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

"You're a Platonist, and I'm not. It's really as simple as that."

This is really a brilliant rebuttal to most any religionist assertions about "reality." The person above seems to be obsessed with the "purpose" of various objects and/or features found in nature -- ignoring that the random processes which manifest to us as apparent "order" are simply reflections of our own desire to seek patterns in the chaos.

It's like when people look at a power outlet and see a human face.

[(Anonymous)]

"...ignoring that the random processes which manifest to us as apparent "order" are simply reflections of our own desire to seek patterns in the chaos"

How did you work out that these processes which appear ordered are random?

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

How did you work out that they're not?

If you read carefully, what I'm saying here is that the order we perceive is reliant on our perceptive ability. This is actually a "randomness agnostic," relativistic view, in spite of my clumsy phrasing. Events may well not be random, but lacking a workable epistimology to the contrary, that is the shorthand we use to describe their progression. It would seem that concepts such as "meaning" require a base set of assumptions to work from. Without that, chaos can only be chaos.

To posit some objective "order" begs that you can provide empirical support for your assumptions. So where do we start? What are the First Principles?

[(Anonymous)]

The first principle which shows that the world is ordered is the fact that when you were born you didn't have to dig for you lunch or make it out of some super-duper chemical but you could get it from your mother's breast. A newborn child, left to its own devices, will actually *crawl* up his mother's tummy and find the nipple himself. If that is not a demonstration of the ordered nature of the world then I don't know what is.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

"If that is not a demonstration of the ordered nature of the world then I don't know what is."

Oh, I would concur.

[(Anonymous)]

"'the belief that there is an absent reality more important than present realities'."

By this definition, metaphysicism does not stand to reason since a) the 'absent reality' is clearly present - in some cases more obviously than others (e.g., magnetism, electricity, gravity, the vital force in organisms) and b) the immaterial and material appear to be integral parts of a whole, although the immaterial is definitely prior. If you look at a human being, the immaterial 'part' consists of the will and the intellect, which represent the purpose and work out how best to achieve it. The material 'part' is the means of implementing the decisions made by this level. Hence disease and its tendency to appear on the most external physical part first (place of least sacrifice - protects the overall man) and then rises higher if suppression takes place (eczema --> asthma). If man has no overriding purpose, what is the use of disease? If you look at VD, it should be clear that disease has a vital purpose - albeit contrary to our habitual desires.

(BTW: If you want to think about the 'importance' of content over form/immaterial over material, why does a person spend £20,000 on dental work then have the results burnt or thrown in a hole when he dies? Seems illogical. The part which departs when a person dies appears to render the physical corpse useless, although it was essential during the life as a means of performing the man's purpose. This departed interior - which cannot be quantified by weighing the body before and after death - is something which materialist science cannot comprehend, let alone 'reproduce'.)

Platonist? Again, I cannot say. I'm sure he must have had some grasp of the truth, since longevity is its surest test.

If one really believes that the physical world gives rise to the immaterial (as doctors would have us believe when they say that mental illness is a result of 'chemical imbalance in the brain' or that the pain felt by a child when he injures himself is due to a 'naughty' chair or similar), then life should be easy to create. Just get some earth and water and start mixing. That is certainly what happens when it rains on a desert. Scientists are quiet on this point.