The metaphor of ... (anything) can never be frivolous. Our very lives are lived according to the mechanics of metaphor, and poetry, music and the (generally accepted) aesthetics of human endeavour should be present in some form or another at the back of each and every design decision, whether that presence is overt or not. The very act of "seeking inspiration and turning it into some kind of reality for another to ponder" gains momentum though the use of metaphor. We cannot communicate (enthusiastically, feelingly, penetratingly) without the use of metaphor. We cannot teach without ...ditto, in some form or another: teaching design without referencing is impossible, and metaphor allows the ultimate in referencing. Teaching with metaphor provides the bridging material for creativity.
The young designers Glen mentions seem like many university students who know a lot of theory and no practice ( I read of American engineering students who could not figure out how a lever worked), while a lot of our technikon (your former polytechnic?) students know a lot of practice but precious little theory. Surely it has been established by now that the ideal is a balance between theory and practice? This issue should not even be open for debate any more, otherwise some off the conferences on design and theory v. practice would have been for show only. I agree with Glen about the sketch work - we feel the same: this work becomes vacuous because Sapir & Whorf said it would. If we do not have the words in our vocabulary we cannot express ourselves. "I'm a poet and I didn't know it" might sound trite, but not frivolous - it works for design students (the proverbial light bulb starts flashing: I have seen it). Of course I don't normally even mention the word or concept of poetry - but that is what it amounts to when I scratch my students' surfaces to see what makes them bleed. And, no, I don't agree with Keith (perhaps wilfully misunderstanding him) that poets should politely deliver their stuff - because very often, in the context of a hard-nosed client-wants-it-now economy, the "poetic" off-the-wall suggestion is the one to shake the accepted notion of this-is-how-it-is-done (that's ruling hegemony for you) and provide the fresh solution or way of looking.
Norm is correct, I think, in believing that emergence theories support what can only be described as a moment of surprise in the process of creativity - this is what The Thought-Fox described so well. And yes, it does deserve reverence rather than definition, if only for the fact that creativity cannot be scientifically defined, refined, quantified or otherwise pinned down. Or, in the case of trying to teach others to be "creative", follow Schon's advice and create the circumstances wherein you will neither be predictable nor wholly be surprised, but achieve an ideal compromise between the two extremes, depending, as always, on the practical/social context.
I appreciate his comments on discourse analysis, because this notion has a bearing on design theory evolution: design is a discourse. The question of rational v. irrational in design differs somewhat to when this dichotomy is discussed in a social and political context. 'Out there' in social political land you often have the irrational usurping the rational position (Popper), as when Rushdie says "The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they don't know what it means." In this context the view of hegemony/leadership is "normal" in being what keeps social structures intact, without the 'outside'/irrational dismantling it, only to replace the hegemony critiqued with an even harsher one = this is "reality". In design this "power struggle' should be encouraged, because this creation of tension is what supports the possibility of "creativity". Both Schon and Polanyi endorse the notion of moving between the opposite extremes of rational/irrational, reason /innovation, analysis/creativity (cf. my paper The Innovative Principle of a Design Language, Design (plus) Research conference, May 2000). We should continuously try to break free of the boundaries of context, while realizing that we are, still, within a defined social context. At the risk of being too repetitive, metaphor allows you to explore the possibilities inherent in irrational relations (what happened to Archimedes was poetically "irrational"), and this path of exploration can lead to an understanding of the "generative and emergent properties of life", the generative and emergent properties of a metaphoric moment of creation = not wholly a surprise because you had "control" over the inputs/influences, but not quite predictable either because of the newly generated and emergent properties of and in the specified complexity of life.
Seen in this light creativity does not equate with simple problem solving but with "exploration and generation and then solution /problem matching." This is essentially what Protagoras means by the fitness of a conceptual system. This is neither subjective nor objective, but rather a measure of success, a measure of fitness, or as Norm says, a matter of solution/problem matching. Whichever solution fits the problem in this context is probably the "correct" solution.
Regards
Johann
Johann van der Merwe
Faculty of Art and Design, Port Elizabeth Technikon
P/Bag X6011 Port Elizabeth 6000
Phone +27 41 504 3682 Fax +27 41 504 3529
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