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Hi Luke, You wrote ' It seems to me, that explaining what interpretation is and how it works would be an important part of design research and iconology.' It’s a big question and applies across a broad swath of foundational questions in design theory. I've found Damasio's 'Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain' and 'The feeling of what happens: Body and Emotion in the making of consciousness' plus Bastick's 'Intuition: Evaluating the Construct and its Impact on Creative Thinking' and Intuition: How we Think and Act' are potentially useful in this. They go some way to addressing how this is doen internally in the body in ways that align with the current biological evidence - rather than approaches based on potentially illusory subjective theorisation or that focus on the external objects and try to explain the internal bodily processes in terms of external inputs. Best wishes, Terry == Dr Terence Love PMACM, MISI, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE Director Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre Perth, Western Australia [log in to unmask] www.designoutcrime.org +61 (0)4 3497 5848 == ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566 -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Luke Feast Sent: Friday, 18 August 2017 12:39 AM To: [log in to unmask] Cc: Luke Feast <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Riddles Re: knowledge containers Hi Eduardo, Thank you for your response to my riddles. Your description of Walburg's process and the images of panels from his Mnemosyne Atlas (see https://warburg.library.cornell.edu/) remind me of a design method sometimes called an 'image board' or 'mood board' or ‘sample board’ that is quite commonly used in industrial design, fashion design, and interior design. Hanington and Martin (2012) define an image board as a “collage of collected pictures, illustrations, or brand imagery… used to visually communicate an essential description of targeted aesthetics, style, audience, context, or other aspects of design intent.” (p.100). Image boards might seem to be simple design method but they are used by some expert designers, for example, Raf Simons uses a similar method when creates a file of images and samples that make up the design concepts for his fashion design practice, he doesn't sketch at all, it is the members of his team that draw the sketches that become the looks for his collections (see f.ex the documentary Dior et Moi @ 00:16:00-00:17:00). So I can make a connection between the Mnemosyne process and the method of collecting and interpreting images that can form a part of design practice. However, as I see it, the fact that designers or iconologists can interpret new information from existing information is not such a surprise, since interpretation is, arguably, a type of inference that is found in many animals not only homo sapiens. For example, bats use echoes of ultrasounds to infer the identity and location of things such as obstacles or moving prey. It seems to me, that explaining what interpretation is and how it works would be an important part of design research and iconology. Let me say here that I'm not claiming that design or iconology should be reduced to psychology or biology but that social and cultural sciences should deal with both interpretation and explanation. To make this point more clear (and to connect my comments back the notion of “knowledge containers”) let me introduce the concept of metarepresentation (see Sperber, 1975, 1996, 2000; see also Norman, 1993 p.49-51). A metarepresentation is a representation that relates to another representation. For example: (1) Hanington and Martin (2012) define an image board as a “collage of collected pictures, illustrations, or brand imagery… used to visually communicate an essential description of targeted aesthetics, style, audience, context, or other aspects of design intent.” (p.100). Hanington and Martin’s definition of an image board is a representation that exists in the world (for example in a book on my desk), and I have reproduced it within the second-order representation sentence (1). Sentence (1) is a metarepresentation since it is a representation that contains another representation - the quotation. In this case the first-order representation is indicated using the notation of quotation marks. The second-order representation explains what that the first-order representation is and how it is being used, in this case to advance my argumentation by defining the meaning of the image board design method. Other kinds of artifacts, such as visual displays, can metarepresent as well. For example, a visual display such as a map is a type of representation that is complete when it contains other representations such as a title, labels, a legend, and perhaps a caption. These representations explain what the chart is and how it works. So I think I partly agree with your intuition that books should "contain knowledge", but not in the same sense that the pages are wholly inside the covers. Your intuition makes more sense to in terms of the concept of metarepresentation. Consequently, my point of view is that the task of a design researcher or iconologist is not only to produce a reverie of interpretations about the artificial world, but also to reflect on those interpretations and to explain the process that brought them about. Enjoy your vacation. Best, Luke Hanington, B., & Martin, B. (2012). Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions: Rockport Publishers. Norman, D. (1993). Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine: Basic Books. Sperber, D. (1975). Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Wiley. Sperber, D. (2000). Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective: Oxford University Press. ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------