If, as propositioned here [ insert link to paper - find paper ], the ephemeral is always just out of reach, if it is believed to have been reached, it is no longer and if its always just out of reach, can ever be. Does this make the ephemeral always and never at the same time. In turn does this make the ephemeral the 'present', which in case of western society always looks forward and is continually behind.
Through out history human communication has always dealt with the future or the past, cultures are founded on talking forward or backwards. So for C.Design to engage the ephemeral it needs to embrace the present. Potentially leaving the process of design to be concerned with creating possibilities through open ended responsive scenarios that are purely dependent on a situation that they are played out in. Making the point of response or feedback the communication and the design.
A core function of design is involved in ideology through the development and clarification and transportation of ideological beleifs. Artifacts could be seen as being memic capsuals, in that they transport the drug to the part of the body that will absorb it.
The nature of participation is also of interest so often interaction and participation seems to be written about in terms of being active - yoou press things, you make things, you play with things. Active is reasonably easy to understand, but what does it mean to be passive. Are you passive if you walk through sensors, the reason why you could argue no is that the design as pre-empted the walk or created the passage way, in turn forcing you to become a active-passive participant. But what happens when a person or an entity becomes central to the designed communication without that entity ever being conceived other than that there was a possibility that the entity may materialise purely because the situation was happening.
This happened within the performance Unititled 00.60.05 where the passive participation of one audience member completed the performance. But is a abstract audio visual event such a highly designed event that the increased probability of this entity materalising becomes of such proporation that they are a designed entity in that they fit the target demographic of the event.
The confusing thing at the moment is the position of ideology in my practice. If we are to design without ideology are we in fact designing at all. Information systems such as street signs do not hold ideology - or do they. The naming and use of language in the signing of places does support or promote an idealogy. Though not all ideologies are bad. The signage in Wales over the last decade as seen the application of Welsh and English langauges and names in an attempt to find the native tongue of Wales, an attempt to rediscover and populorise traditional Welsh culture. Other examples of renaming can be seen in India and Russia amougnst others.
But what is the relation of my Masters to the previous paragraph. Currently the nature of communication through 'graphic design' is such that it is dominated by a consumerist docurine, hench the emphasis on brand development as a strategic and principle pursuit. It seens sad that this is becoming ever more vaqueros with the embracement of post modern individulism in design. It has also been argued that design at present is becoming ever more ephemeral due to the nature of world wide trends that sweep the world, where people want designs that look like that cool ad that they sore. Source: http://thecreativeforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=335
Where AJ Kandy is claiming that ephemeral design is such that it has little craft and no value over a period of time, contray to what he calls 'timeless' design, I would argue that his definition of empheral design is mislead in that the ephemeral is something that we cannot ever quite reach, so to copy and spread as he puts it, memetic outbreaks of trends - which I beleive is a far comment - is not an ephemeral process more over it is a traditional processes of learning by immatition, which Aj Kandy does acknowledge in his article. Though he is arguing for looking at what makes good design good, which seems to be a pretty arduous and futile search.
More and more I am wondering if design is term that fits my study. Design seems to be a large void that is constraing and constructed that is static and convoluted. Rather I am more interested in picking apart my processes and understanding the role that they play. If to design is to constrain and if an arguement within this study is for communication to lose the 'frigid' shackles of society then whats involved.
Firstly I would say that a fundemental idea is held with in Guy Debords Theory of the Derive, in that we need to let our selves become vunerable to the situation so that vortexes and avenues become accessible whilst others become blocked and redirected. This position with the underlying understanding of your practice frees the creative mind opening the possibilities of a project. I see that this is about the navigation and understanding of topographies, and whilst in this new topographies and be found, which in relation to a creative practice may well evolve the curration and collection of a large body of materials, order and sorted in no particular stringent manor.
By reducing a collection to what it is and not confining it to be something allows the collection to be used and reused depending upon the situation. This I view as a contrast to a traditional design process where materials are ordered and purified to mean something, creating a defined if unspoken label, in turn creating visual ideologies. An great example of collections that are heavily ordered and ideoloical are the online stock libraries, where its easy to find your Soft Romance loop, or the perfect business person. So the role of many designers is to search through ordered and generic libraries rather than exploring a visual opportunity via a subconscious drift of the overal topography of the project.
To follow this the pursuit of artifacts within in design is not a bad thing, I value the an outcome as much as any other. Where I feel that design artifacts at present fail is that they are finished pieces that constrain the overal message to mean one thing with little possibilities for amendment and question. One form that has grown to challenge this is the common wiki, different from weblogs as they have moderators not owners - yes I own this blog and I control the content. Though this blog is not ashamed to be corrected, it is not concerned with timed posts, rather bodies of ideas that are normally unfinished and which get edited and re-edited to co-insde with my continual growth.
Comments
I read here that I an unsure about Design as a term for my practice. Since this post I have adopted design as being the principle concern of my practice, that design is the centre of what I do and how I live. Why this shift, well to a degree I was dropping all termalology from my thinking so that I could move away from the associated meanings that had developed over time. I also was finding that I was getting confussed with disciplines with in a design practice eg graphic interaction etc. Another shift is that design for me know includes coding structures, walks etc. So my practice which is a design practice includes performance, walking, image making etc.
Posted by Keith Deverell at August 2, 2006 03:12 PM
I notice in this post I raise the question of design and is validity with my practice. I think my current stance is that it is the _root of my practive, the meta activity. Being at this level removes discipline, form and media from it.
Posted by Keith Deverell at June 2, 2006 12:09 PM