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Dear Clive, When one announces a project, a shiver runs through your spine. Will it attract interest? Will the interesting people be interested in it? When we, the local editors, send the CFC before the weekend we thought: at least we will have the weekend to forget about it. I, at least, did not get near a computer the whole weekend. When I arrived today I run through my emails and found some encouraging letters about it. I must thank deeply your letter because it goes intensely to the core of the project, especially when you wrote: “For too long design theory has lived under a self-inflicted burden of thinking design in absolute terms—the ambition of producing, it has sometimes seemed, almost a mathematics of design. But few phenomenon are as historical as design. Even the capacities with which design deals, though deducible in the archaeological and anthropological record as capacities belonging to what it means to be human (what disposition imposes on us) nonetheless take precise historical form. To write a theory of design is therefore also to write a history of design.” (my bold) I say to some of my colleagues, in moments of great anger and despair, that there is no Design Theory other than Design History. This is a bit more radical. My question is that historical ignorance, or mistreatment of historical facts can be very dangerous when you try to build a Scholarly discipline. Well, I just want to thank you for your post. It sure lifted our spirits here in Lisboa. Thank you very much, My best regards, Eduardo Corte-Real ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clive Dilnot" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 11:01 AM Subject: History and Theory I hope I'm not the only one on this list delighted by ThRAD's call for papers on the "Golden Age of Design Culture (1950-1990)" —not because one takes this title literally (far from it—one hopes the editors mean it also ironically and with a critical dimension) but because this theme might allow for something very necessary in design studies, and that is a movement towards being able to think design (i.e. think it theoretically) in a historical context. For too long design theory has lived under a self-inflicted burden of thinking design in absolute terms—the ambition of producing, it has sometimes seemed, almost a mathematics of design. But few phenomenon are as historical as design. Even the capacities with which design deals, though deducible in the archaeological and anthropological record as capacities belonging to what it means to be human (what disposition imposes on us) nonetheless take precise historical form. To write a theory of design is therefore also to write a history of design. The converse is, or should be, equally true. Unfortunately, at the moment the history of design appears to eschew theory to precisely the same extent that theory turns its back on historical comprehension. I see the ThRAD project therefore, in however small a way, as an opening towards a much more subtle dialogue between history and theory—a dialogue which to my knowledge has not yet begun. >>> Eduardo Corte Real <[log in to unmask]> 07/28/06 11:06 AM >>> - "Apologies for cross posting, NENIKIKAMEN!", Said Phidippides, the soldier from Marathon, to the Athenians on a hot 490 BC afternoon. Even with the risk of contributing to the ozone gap here goes one more CFC Call for Contributions: "The (radical) Designist" (ThRAD) online journal of Design Culture asks for contributions about the Golden Age of Design Culture (1950-1990)". The contributions may take the form of papers up to 7777 words. ThRAD welcomes papers about Design inside other cultural manifestations. ThRAD welcomes papers focused, with short lists of bibliographic references. Out of ThRAD, annually, UNIDCOM and CEIADE will publish in paper "The Reader's Designist Magazine" (ThREAD). ThREAD papers will be published according to the advise of the international advisory board. For ThREAD we welcome contributions in the form of epigrams, short or shot stories, anecdotes, interviews, book reviews, images or visual portfolios, all you can imagine possible to print in a reader's magazine. Some of this material maybe published also in ThRAD. We also look for reviewers or people willing to be members of the international advisory board willing to work on the homely atmosphere of their homes for the glory of Design Culture Scholarship. For the time being you can take a look at the zero issue available at: www.iade.pt/designist ThRAD is affiliated to the Theory and History of Material Culture research track inside UNIDCOM/IADE, Unidade de Investiga**o em Design e Comunica**o do Instituto de Artes Visuais Design e Marketing funded by FCT, Funda**o para a Ci*ncia e Tecnologia. ThRAD will be a journal about Culture in general with a Design motto. ThRAD will welcome especially narrow observations of Literature, Film, Dance, Theatre, Sculpture, Architecture, with short lists of bibliographic references. Meaning that we prefer deep plunges in texts or objects rather than extensive literature reviews. We hope to find Design everywhere inside the cultural production of the period considered being the golden age of Designism (1950's to the early 1990's) by the local editors. This period is also characterized for being the extreme expression of a tradition initiated by the invention and institution of the word Disegno originator of the first modern academies, just before the empire of digitalisation and the World Wide Web. It corresponds, therefore to the last days of the contemporary age, just before the hyper contemporary age. Time, fast galloped away from those 'happy days' of pre-post-History so what we are proposing is an archaeological attitude to prevent mythographies of being installed about it. Nevertheless, contributions not limited to that time frame are welcome. We encourage also contributions about the Portuguese-speaking countries golden age. The zero Issue of "The Radical Designist, online Journal of Design Culture" results from the contributions of some friends associated with the project. When we asked for the zero contributions we had in mind a journal that could publish different kinds of texts focused on Design outside the well-grounded Design Research Areas. A Design Culture was consolidated during the 20th century based on the globalisation of the word that started meaning mostly "Product-Design". This Culture was evident on Film, Comics, Literature, Philosophy, Sports, Theatre, Dance, Science, Pottery, Television Series, etc. As an example we may say that this culture is expressively documented in the MoMa gift-shop. During the process of "designing" this journal, a research project presented for funding at FCT about Drawing and the 20th century Portuguese Visual Culture was approved. So we found a source of income to maintain this Journal. Another pretext emerged: Compare and study the visual culture production based on drawing in Portugal and the rest of the world with a special emphasis in the lusophone countries. Our invited friends knew nothing about these final developments but, in a way, they constructed a fairly exemplary zero issue that we hope to trigger further production. Rosan Chow's paper replicates much what she presented in the EAD conference in Bremen and signals the complexity related with accepting the global definitions of design and Design instead of the universalised notion of Design. Ranulph Glanville gives us an exemplary exercise of what we would want for ThRAD. His study of Piaget underlines the utmost importance of the Swiss thinker in the construction of our contemporary worldviews about ideation and reasoning. It also provides an example for what can be a focused text that doesn't need extensive literature review to worth by itself. Ranulph also did us the favour of checking the annotated Inigo Jones's copy of Palladio's Treatise. Those annotations reveal a lost verb and noun: To designe and Designe also written as desine and Desine, referring to questions of projectual drawing. This is conceptually problematic and will deserve further development. Remember that Palladio uses disegnare and Disegno. We decided to print it with no comments. They are useful and resourceful to everyone that are interested in identify the origins of the word Design related with the practical arts. Thomas S. Rasmussen exemplifies very clearly the kind of contributions that we will also welcome, showing a commitment with what he likes to call the meta-questions in very expressive few lines. . Luis Carmelo is a Portuguese writer and thinker, adapted to cinema, a semioticist starting to drive through the narrow paths of Design Culture. His text signals the recent acquisitions of Design meaning inside what we could call the "French Philosophical Tradition". Finally, a text chewed and re-chewed by Eduardo C*rte-Real, someone entangled in two traditions. Last but not the least, Cameron Tonkinwise, arrived a few days later. It will probably contradict all we have been saying but with extreme quality. It also shows that we aren't THAT strict with deadlines. The local editors (ThRAD) is an on-line refereed journal with double blind reviewing system devoted to the publication of texts about Design and Material Culture in general. For the two first launching years ThRAD will also make part of a research project funded by FCT, Funda**o para a Ci*ncia e Tecnologia about Drawing and the Portuguese Visual Culture of the twentieth century second half. Cheers, Eduardo C*rte-Real