Hi Gunnar and all,
<snip Gunnar wrote> design (and here I mean human creative activity meant to
change the state of things) is an art (here I mean activity that is complex
enough that it defies being replaced by stock algorithms.)
Whew. . . looking at this, can take us into some pretty difficult, emotional
and political territory. I'll put on the devil's advocate hat.
The reality is that humans behave very predictably, and have a limited
range of responses that they apply in a very routine fashion. This is
especially obvious with creative professionals. For example, when someone
has become skilled at creative design, they develop a style. You can see
this in the way that on one hand people can recognise that routine behaviour
('Hey that is so Starck', or 'Yup, that book cover looks great it must be a
Martin Salisbury cover'). On another hand, you can see it in the fact that
it is possible to teach Art and Design. This latter means a body of
information about design has been assembled along with an ability to
recognise in whatever way the attributes of a good design. On the third
hand, and perhaps the most obvious proof, the field of Design History
exists; the purpose of which is to distil explanation, identify causes,
classify types and categories and provide the basis for prediction (in fact
the latter is one test of historical analysis). Its also how you can
identify fake art and fake Shakespearian plays.
This all makes creating algorithms to represent that human Design and Art
behaviour straightforward and is happening continuously at Adobe, Wolfram,
Autocad, Catia, Solidworks, Vensim, PowerSim, AnyLogic etc.
One of the aspects of the restrictions and blinkers on each of us
human's creative thinking is an inability to self-perceive our thinking and
creativity is limited. This is self-evident, on one hand, we can see the
evidence of our predictability and on the other, we internally perceive it
doesn't affect us.
The bite in the argument, is the human limitations on our creative output is
something that algorithms can go beyond. Algorithms can address a larger
solution search space.
Even more challenging, perhaps, especially for design educators, in theory
terms it may be better to see the use of algorithms in creativity as the
global defining attribute of the largest categories of design and art, with
human-created design and art being a subset of those larger possibilities?
In theory terms, this makes good sense above and beyond being a devil's
advocate argument. In the longer term, I suggest, this may be a better
foundational position for design theory.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Project Manager,
WA CPTED Awards,
Sellenger Centre for Law and Justice,
Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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