Ken,
You mentioned about the dicourse barriers between Anglophone and
Francophone. Despite their geographic proximity the twin have dificuly in
meeting!. I can understand the frustration of Kati and others in search of
literature especialy from other esotric cultures!. Kati relax this is a
wide spread problem but has to be surmounted. In Science and
engineering such a problem does not exist as these fields have developed a
common research language and vocablary which can be seen in the numerous
research journals and publications. Of course this has happened overtime
and has contributions from acrross the globe. ( Example the numeral 0 (
zero) originates from Indian culture.
All the more resaon why we in Design need tools as annotated
bibliographies and design dictionaries, as mentioned by you.
As rightly said by you a design researcher needs to do a very through job
of Literature search. Unfortunately aspiring researchers donot seem to
think that Literature studies is part and parcel of their research work.
They think thier contribution starts after literature search.
Also we designers probably stop researching ones we reach the cultural or
other 'barier'. Regardles of which culture Design belongs too , it has
many universal truths waiting to be discovered. It is such 'truths' that
we designers must seek in our research. Another word for 'truth' is
Science but many of us in Design seem to reject it due to its narrow
interprtation arrising from its assotiation with Chemestry, Maths, etc.
While Chemestry, Maths etc are sciences, 'Science' is not Chemestry, Maths etc.
One way to do it is what Jean Schneider suggested ("....could Indian
semiotics teach me something about composition in Le Corbusier architecture (and what?)
etc.... e.g; chinese treaties of painting gave me a completely new
understanding of mimesis that appears quite enlightingl when studying
ornament in the west".)
Design researchers should not stop at comparing and studying cultures but
continue further to bring out the underlying principle that makes
Design 'tick' universaly. This may mean a sytematic peeling of layers of
culture to get to the core ( Sanjoy ... I am borrowing your terms!). Not
stop at 'Information' or even 'Knowledge' level but to try and reach the
'Wisdom'level of the problem under investigation.
Pradeep.
_____________________________________________________
Pradeep Yammiyavar
Professor
Department of Design
Indian Institute of Technology
Guwahati 781039, Assam, India
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