Dear Keith, I think you are probably right. Although this seems be the way my son paints - he is a toddler. But consider this other example: Kandinsky comes home and discovers a beautiful painting, only to realize that it was his own painting of a symphony put on its side - then the realization that art is not merely about imitation, but also the splashing of vivid colors. And thus was born the father of modern art. Not sure if this is accurate, whether I got my art history right, but even if hypothetical, makes the point, not that design needs imagination (it does of course!), but that design can in fact be unplanned, and sometimes good design (ok, again contested ground here) is the attentiveness to side effects and unintended because unforeseen consequences (here again bounded rationality, a recurrent theme) suggest new good goals. Perhaps this is really stretching the word "design". But when Hayek pointed out that the market was an excellent tool for coordinating the distribution of goods, and therefore shaped up policies to promote the free market (and hence design the free market political economy), that which he designed was not in fact HIS design, but his attentiveness to something that had arisen almost by accident, unplanned for. No one intended the market, but having seen its effects, it is now intended anew (at least, for the capitalists). But you are right in the end: it's not so much imagination here, but a kind of attentiveness to unintended consequences and their value (in problem solving). But this then in turn suggests that sometimes, we should "design" in this way precisely to emerge side effects that had not been foreseen. Design becomes an exploratory tool, and because of bounded rationality, there's no better way: do things, change things, and let things happen. You cannot sit in an armchair and think out possibilities: we cannot do it because we lack the wit to; we have to design to emerge these things. This may be completely wrong headed, but it is an interesting idea. It's not imagination. Maybe it sounds more like experiments in living: do things in life and you do not know what else comes your way... And I do not know what to call it. Someone I know talks about "productive failure" - i.e., that even if at times the original goal was not achieved, something else had emerged that was productive. But the logic in this: probably a kind of opening up of our attention, and then an increased capacity for abduction, resolved into a kind of semiosis. The interpretant which connects one thing (sign) to another (signified), by enabling one thing to point to another idea, becomes enhanced given this heuristic of an openness to side effects, or a kind of willingness to let go of original goals. Sorry: muddling through. But bottom line is: design is terribly important a thing to learn to do, even if you have no desire to make a living through it. Socrates said that an unreflected life is not worth living. I wonder if we could say that an "un-designed" life is not worth living, because one fails, in not designing (in the way we spoke about), one has not explored what else one can be, beyond what our boundedly rational minds can project and imagine...
J
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of KEITH RUSSELL
Sent: Tuesday, 03 September, 2013 8:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Simon on painting
This bit of Simon has stuck in my head, over the years, as an indication that he didn't have much grasp of painting as a creative activity and as an indication that he mistook the kind of iteration that is typical of problem solving as the key to imaginative activity:
"Making complex designs that are implemented over a long period of time and continually modified in the course of implementation has much in common with painting in oil. In oil painting every new spot of pigment laid on the canvas creates some kind of pattern that provides a continuing source of new ideas to the painter. The painting process is a process of cyclical interaction between painter and canvas in which current goals lead to new applications of paint, while the gradually changing pattern suggests new goals." (Simon, Herbert A. The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed. London: MIT Press, 1996. P.163)
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