Hi all,
By saying this I always remember Gary Larson’s cartoon where a guy with an
arrow on his butt, facing the castle’s guards, says: “ You misunderstood
me, I said: I’m Al Tilley, the bum.”
We can address this research matter from a broadening view of design, which
includes any human activity that is preceded by project. OK for me. Or, we
can focus on the core of the processes of Design.
This is a preproposal (sorry Rosan), I’ve arrived this weekend from Oslo
where I suffered the disappointment of having on my country the wrong kind
of oil (olive oil instead of petroleum) so I’m slightly out of focus.
Project/Design is developed by multiple individual and group tasks
performed by humans. This process has been described as decision-making
process. Modelling these processes has been the work of methodologists. Any
decision-making process of deciding what kind (formal) of objects are able
to be in the world (real world), from the immense capacity of imagining
objects to be used, is silly if not consider its possibility of use (from
useless to universal use).
Here I call to the stand Molloy, the Samuel Becket character, which sucked
little rocks that he gathered on his pockets.
From the immense knowledge of God it had to become possible Molloy’s drive
to suck rocks. By setting the erosion process on little rocks, God
certainly expected, human pleasure on sucking rocks (specially children’s
and Becket’s characters pleasure).
Studying the way God set things moving has been the problem of science (we
can not be silly to the point of believing that coherent settings for
sciences have not the role of partially substituting God on a world view
that is also religious in the sense that re-ligates). Going back to
little “suckable” rocks we discover the immense possibility of the hyper-
contemporary paradigm. Studying the use/centred paradigm we are always
defining limits to be surpassed. Optimal use, optimal objects for use,
social trends on using, psychological demands on use are just defining
narrow limits that are more important because of the dimension of what is
left out that for what is defined inside. Self-generated structures are
continuously linking elements creating systems that can only be described
historically (and some times hysterically).
Somehow, we cannot get ride of Leonardo’s mechanical view of the world and
we will not ever figure out why birds fly.
Design Research should, from my point of view, be centred on project and
projecting admitting the possibility of no use or no destiny (the only way
that we are sure to deal with the very core of the metaphysical dimension
of project). But, on the other hand:
What are the design dimensions of a sociological project?
What are the design dimensions of a scientific project?
What are the design dimensions of an artistic project?
What are the design dimensions of an artistic, science based with
sociological implications project?
…and so on…
If we, besides all information gathering devises about users, techniques
and form, could focus on projecting, maybe design research, then, could
build a theory (or story) of human demiurgic action.
Maybe we should divert from the yes questions to the no questions. Maybe
the interest should shift from objects to nearly objects, to the leftovers
of the process.
Molloy organised the distribution of the rocks on his pockets so that he
would never use one more than the others and also to be sure that no rock
was forgot.
Best,
Eduardo
Note: I didn’t have the time to read thoroughly all posts on this thread.
Sorry for redundant statements.
PS: 22º in Oslo and 16º in Lisbon. God has defiantly deserted us.
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