Kristina -
I have only just picked up on the 'Timeless' thread - and have not read all of the many replies - but I would like to suggest JEANS to you as timeless.
They are a fascinating product. Every major fashion cult in the 20th century incorporated them into their means of expression. They are worn throughout the world by people who want to express fashion and by those who are anti-fashion. The 'timelessness' of their design allows their use to span many other dichotomies: elite status and democracy, masculine and feminine, formal and casual, work and leisure, youth and maturity. Their life time span matches quite closely that of western industrialisation, and industrial design, where otherwise so much technical and social change has been experienced. It is hard to imagine another product (that is so complex in cultural , social and functional terms) which has remained fundamentally unchanged in its specification for 150 years. Consider the extent of change in other forms of clothing which span this same period !
The aspect I find particularly fascinating about jeans, is that they are timeless in spite of being anachronistic within Design's general evolution: the ongoing push behind contemporary mass clothing design has been towards lightness, easy wash care, stretch, incorporation of technology etc. Using product design futures logic, jeans should have been as dead as dodos about eighty years ago!
Jeans are at once bland and imbued with cultural reference; both uniform and intensely personal. I think they are an example of timeless (and universal) design because people subtly understand them as somehow encompassing both the past and the present. They are objectifications of history and of time : their look and function is about time changing: - they stay the same - but we see them differently. Denim jeans encompass the full range of transactions between people and design - practical, tactile, aesthetic, social, cultural. (Like the baskets)
Admittedly there are new versions on the market now and again, which refresh the concept, but the bulk product remains almost identical to those first made in the 1850's.
I often think that we could keep fashion going with denim alone - as there is a subtle nuance of wearing it for every body, while the basic specification remains unchanged. Mostly it's to do with how (or when) you wear it.
What do you think? Only time will tell if blue denim trousers will still be worn in another 150 years.
Fiona Candy
University of Central Lancashire
>>> Kristina Borjesson <[log in to unmask]> 04/12/02 08:00pm >>>
Hello Klaus (and also Gunnar, Mikko and others).
Following the 'timeless' thread now during more than 10 days and matching my own thoughts and reflections with different notes, I agree with you when you write 'timeless is an abstraction ...... '. But I am not sure I agree that it makes more sense 'where there are forces countering decay'! If timeless is defined as 'eternal' or even as 'without dimension of time' - there must as follows be counterforce against decay that are also 'ever ongoing'. Which means we are adding one abstraction to another.
With the translation (note, not definition) of timeless that I originally favoured, defying now-time (which I think is quite close to Gunnar's less literal translation), there is no proposal of eternity and a clear point of reference - now-time.
The debate on the list has given me one very important input; when the basic language in a research proposal is not unambiguous, the whole research base may easily be questioned.
Concerning the current example, the head-basket [or any basket], I think decay has to be defined as well. Are we talking only about the material decay? Most materials decay over time. Are we talking about decay of the basket as a container/ package for displaying, storing and transportation? So far this concept doesn't seem to be in decay, neither in western nor in other cultures. Mikko's comment on Exotic Fallacy doesn't seem appropriate here. The most disparate cultures, including my own Nordic (with all its variations), I have come in contact with have their 'basket-culture'. What is interesting is why some of these baskets exists only as souvenirs from an earlier way of living, while others are truly transitive, functionally, aesthetically and emotionally, seemingly neither relics nor nostalgia, not out of traditionalism or lack of 'new' thinking, not out of pure rationalism. The individual basket, the souvenir as well as the transitive, will of course decay from a material point of view, as will most objects if they are not maintained (forces countering decay?). My point is, why are some objects [if maintained] continuously in our known time-span, defying now-time, and also constantly being reproduced, but not as nostalgia, neither as relics etc (see above). Well aware of the effects of factors like marketing, regulations and other 'guides', I would like to identify the factors beyond. If this is possible it might open a way out of the spiralling cool and fashion taking over so much of design ( the critic of the ongoing Milan furniture fair is tough on these issues!) and open a way to new objects which will become 'challenger's of now-time.
But I will only use the word timeless as one example of an apparently confusing designation, which paradoxically may have a counter effect, defiantly inspire the cool and fashion factors.
Kind regards
Kristina
----- Original Message -----
From: klaus krippendorff
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 2:00 AM
Subject: Re: Further on timeless
i hate to be a stickler for clarity, but my baskets are not timeless. they get soon old, brittle, break in use, and get thrown away. this decay is what physics explains in terms of entropy.
i guess, what seems timeless to YOU is your concept of a basket, the fact that a basket made a while ago looks much like the one made today. your concepts can be forgotten and die with you.
there may be a reason for your affording this stability, and that is the observation that the concept plus the ability to shape a basket accordingly is passed on from one person to another and is no longer owned by one person but by a chain of them. this isn't timeless either. naturally things evolve or erode and disappear. this is where designers come in. here stability or timelessness depends on whether there are institutions capable of preserving that stability, correcting deviations. etc. this may be a culture trying to protect its identity, a profession trying to continue its status, etc.
timelessness is an abstraction that makes sense only where there are forces countering decay
klaus
At 07:57 AM 4/12/02 +0300, Mikko Koria wrote:
Dear Kristina,
I guess that, in the context of design discourse, the basket can be taken as timeless: it certainly defies now-time more than most of the artefacts canonized by the Design institution. I still feel a bit uneasy with the discussion here. I am concerned of what Papanek calls "Exotic Fallacy": that we Westerners get some how too excited about vernacular artefacts and their makers, the Noble Savages but don t seem to know what to do with this excitement. It has not lead us anywhere: whatever values we attach to the vernacular items, in the general scope of things they stay in the margin. As far as the competitiveness of products is concerned - and it is this aspect that interest poor people more than how items are ranked in design history - it really is the "Cool Factor" that rules. And let s face it, my basket is not "cool".
Good luck with your research!
kind regards,
Kati the Uncool Female
klaus krippendorff
professor of communication
gregory bateson term-professor for cybernetics, language, and culture
the annenberg school for communication
university of pennsylvania
3620 walnut street; philadelphia, pa 19104-6220
telephone: 215.898.7051 (office); 215.545.9356 (home)
fax: 215.898.2024 (office); 215.545.9357 (home)
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www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/krippendorff/index.html
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