{ chrislip.com/matthew : blog }
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03 February 2006
{ Best before }
What is the life expectancy of a good idea?I recently attended a very interesting lecture given by Katherine McCoy (former co-chair of the graduate design program at Cranbrook) titled "Speaking in Tongues." Though very few of her ideas struck me as truly fresh or groundbreaking—perhaps I was introduced to her thinking long before I knew whom to credit—I was impressed with the clarity and comprehensiveness of her synthesis of theories concerning globalization, monocultures, and subcultures. I took advantage of the opportunity to talk with her for 15 or 20 minutes after her presentation, and I left feeling inspired and empowered.
A couple weeks later, while thumbing through the final issue of Emigre magazine, I learned that McCoy has been circulating these ideas since the mid-eighties. My first reaction was to question the continued relevancy of her "pet topic." I began to wonder if she had ever allowed for much reevaluation and development of her theories. If I were to find a transcript of one of her lectures from twenty years ago, how would it differ from the version that I heard just last month?
Of course, my next thought was to question the relevancy of the theories that have shaped my understanding of design up to this point, and I was horrified at the thought that I may have inadvertently restricted my own development to its infantile stages. But then I remembered that my views are changing almost daily. In less than a year's time, I've managed to cycle through upstartish naïveté, theoretical curiosity, anti-intellectual cynicism, and most recently, unabashed theoretical elitism (here's to inaccessibility!).
Which brings me back to the post-Emigre dilemma...
Every generation of designers has its activists. (Some might call these the avant-garde, but I'm beginning to shy away from this term for various inexplicable, intuitive reasons.) The late eighties and nineties were certainly shaped, at least with regard to the role of graphic design, by the work of the pro-digital graphics radicals and their ugly, illegible designs. And the progression of this movement was both documented and directed by Rudy VanderLans's controversial publication. About that...
My haphazard discovery of Emigre #67 (of 69 total) just over a year ago sparked an intense fascination with the world of design theory and criticism. I felt as if I had walked into an obscure café, and spotting a group of well-dressed hippie intellectuals huddled in one corner, I sat down at a neighboring table to see if I could catch little bits of their conversation. I craned my neck in an effort to hear them better, and just as I started to get the gist of what was going on, they all got up and walked out of the café.
So the question, which I've mentioned before in other terms, is this: what do we do with all this empty space that they left behind? Sure, it's a hot question in design discourse right now, but does anyone else feel some sort of personal responsibility to rally the forces? What will happen if I try to take the lead for my generation?
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 01:58 :
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3 Comments:
A "personal responsibility to rally the forces" isn't quite how I would have phrased it, but I do believe I feel something similar.
I have been wanting for a long time to find like-minded people. When I think about my views of design, its roles and responsibilities, I am convinced there must be many others with similar views. And it seems to make sense that they are probably sitting in a café somewhere, but I somehow never run into them.
Maybe our generation hasn't gotten organized yet (because they're busy running errands for Karim Rashid and Ross Lovegrove?). I don't want to make any attempt to "rally the forces" if they've already been rallied (I'll be content to join their ranks), but if they haven't I think we need to attract some attention.
Independently of the topic, I understand and feel your intellectual excitement. Some brains generate cerebral electricity like yours.
Similarly, when a topic excites me, or when I read a good friend's letter, my answer flashes in my mind, and I write it very quickly as you wrote this article. I like so much witnessing enthusiasm in other minds and it is so rare especially in France.
Also independently of the topic, I endorse Nathan's sentence " I have been wanting for a long time to find like-minded people". We need other minds as mirrors into which to look at ourselves. Without this we are alone to think what we think and this is the definition of madness or genius.
I think this own contemplation in others is the true joy of the Trinity who also wishes to extend it to Humanity. God wants us to be his mirrors.
:-) (-:
I reread this entry today as I was sitting in front of my wood fire listening to early Celtic music, while reading current research journals. I’d been reading/thinking about manifestations of creativity in traditional cultures and the push/pull of preserving cultural identity vs. press for cultural shift. And it struck me that here I was, reading (at least someone’s idea of) the new and forward-thinking, while being blessed by the preservation of thinking of many generations past. It made me think of Sternberg, who is a major player in thinking about intelligence. Some of his latest writing talks about intelligence giving us the wherewithal to think analytically, adapt to the environment, and so forth, and creativity giving us the ability to change the environment/discipline, whatever. But he says those are not enough. We need wisdom to determine which needs to be applied when. In the same way, I suspect a good bit of (especially long term) success in creative endeavors is figuring out which ideas we really do need to hear over and over again, which themes need to be adapted, and which need to be thrown out to make way for something new. I know nothing about design, but I have to imagine there would be considerable press for new-for-the-sake-of-new, and considerable need for wisdom to know when it really works. But what do I know? (I am, for the record, at the polar opposite of inscrutable elitism. Bob doesn’t even bother to invite me to self-consciously incomprehensible plays any more. I’m convinced anything I truly understand, I can explain in some form to a six year old! Too many years of teaching elementary school, perhaps.)
But, in the end, your “should I rally the troops” question reminded me of a pivotal graduate school moment. I had just written a paper, fairly early in my program. I don’t even remember any more what it was. I handed it in and got it back with a grade—pretty much the normal cycle of papers as far as I was concerned. My advisor then looked at me and asked, “Now what journal are you going to send it to?” I’m sure I stood there looking as if he’d asked me what planet I was headed to for dinner. He than asked, “If you don’t write this, who will?” While it still astounds me that anyone actually reads the things I write, I’ve come to understand that one of the reasons this particular advisor’s students are so successful is because he always assumes they can lead the field where it needs to go. What a gift that was. So I pass the wisdom along. If not you, then who?
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