Hi Keith
I really like the idea of textiles you bring up. Clearly for you language
functions
viscerally. However from what I have read in and about design that is rare.
As soon as you mentioned textiles there was a natural resonance coming from
something I suspect unites the body with language.
Would it be possible to read something you have written that speaks to this?
Have you read Christopher Alexander's work? (The Timeless Way of Building)
He seems to work with these ideas from the point of embodiment.
This is the subject of my dissertation so I am listening carefully as all of
us are coming to this from
diverse design, cultural and intellectual backgrounds offering what we have
found.
Looking forward to hearing more. Textiles, they remain the one mystery still
capable of enveloping
a culture, an idea and a beingness that takes in both worlds, art and design
without being lessened by either.
Kathryn Simon
Adjunct Professor
Fashion History and Fashion Theory
Parsons School of Design
--
VERMILLIONmedia
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Art/Design
On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 1:30 AM, Keith Russell <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Kathryn
>
> I agree about the embodiment aspects and I would see that all
> agonistics have, at their core, an account of and an encounter with,
> the body. Part of the difficulty lies in the different apprehensions of
> the body that are available through the mediation of experience and
> being-in-the-world.
>
> Language, for me, is a key aspect of my being-in-my-body and my
> being-in-the-world. Textiles are also key though nobody pays me to talk
> about that even though I make textiles.
>
> For many people, their account of language seems like a half-remembered
> encounter with a vague ghost - many people seem to find language to be
> abstract and more slippery than silk. I find language in my body just
> like I find silk at my finger tips and in the centre of my eye.
>
> Just as there are polyglots and polymaths so maybe we need a category
> of poly-bodies - those who inhabit a wide range of sensory identities. I
> recognise that mathematicians experience numbers as things just as
> carpenters experience bits of tree as wood.
>
> Maybe we need an expanded existential psychology that can inform us of
> the varieties of sensory apprehension?
>
> great re-direct
>
> cheers
>
> keith russell
> oz newcastle
>
>
> >>> Kathryn Simon <[log in to unmask]> 6/26/2008 3:03 pm >>>
> Great conversation. Happy to be mostly a lurker-There are a couple of
> issues that have come up that a very least need to be considered.
>
> Most critical to me is design as a practice-that it is essentially
> connected
> to embodiment. It
> becomes a tactile experience whose agency isn't really in words but in
> the
> realm of the senses.
>
> I also agree that each of the design arts seems to have a different
> quality
> to its activity. Graphic design
> is not like fashion. and so it goes. Each works with different elements
> and
> envisions them in dynamic
> ways that are unique to their discipline.
>
> There is also a terrific difference between those who practice design
> and
> those who write/think/research
> on design. Its my personal feeling that the direction things have been
> heading in for quite a while and will
> continue to is about the connection-the embodiment not the rigor of
> thinking
> it through but the actual product
> as it relates, is part of human life.
>
> Kathryn Simon
> Adjunct Professor
> Fashion History and Fashion Theory
> Parsons School of Design
> New York
> AAS Dept.
> 917 226 2860
>
> Cultural Producer & Curator
> Art/Design
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 11:56 PM, Gavin Melles <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Wittgenstein's family resemblance is useful here (substitute design
> for
> > game)
> >
> > 65. Here we come up against the great question that lies behind
> all
> > these considerations.-For someone might object against me: "You take
> the
> > easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have
> > nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of
> language,
> > is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into
> > language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part
> of
> > the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the
> part
> > about the general form of propositions and of language."
> >
> > And this is true.-Instead of producing something common to all that
> we
> > call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in
> > common which makes us use the same word for all,-but that they are
> > related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of
> this
> > relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all
> "language".
> > I will try to explain this.
> >
> > 66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I
> mean
> > board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What
> is
> > common to them all? -- Don't say: "There must be something common,
> or
> > they would not be called 'games' "-but look and see whether there is
> > anything common to all. -- For if you look at them you will not see
> > something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and
> a
> > whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! --
> >
> > And see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Lan (below)
> >
> > It is here that Wittgenstein's rejection of general explanations,
> and
> > definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best
> > pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher's "craving
> for
> > generality", he points to 'family resemblance' as the more suitable
> > analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same
> word.
> > There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally * and
> > dogmatically * for one, essential core in which the meaning of a
> word
> > is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word.
> We
> > should, instead, travel with the word's uses through "a complicated
> > network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing" (PI 66).
> Family
> > resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the
> > distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same
> > concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of
> form
> > * be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a
> > proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that
> > applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what
> > Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind
> with
> > family resemblance.
> >
> > -----
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--
Kathryn Simon
VERMILLIONmedia
917 226 2860
Cultural Producer & Curator
Art/Design
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