We can discuss a piece of furniture that does not exist once we have a design. The design need not be the piece itself, just a line drawing, a mock up even a toyist scale model. None of these are the piece but they are a product we can agree exists.
This is design.
Thinking about a piece, having an idea in your head is nothing. We would have nothing to discuss. We could draw with our hands in the air, do a dance to communicate its' proportions or describe it in words.
All these are the same as the drawing. All are design. The idea is not.
Being an artist or a writer may, after all be like being a christian or a muslim if we call a christian or muslim one who practices, not just thinks of themselves in the abstact as one. In he same way a writer is only a writer if they write on sufficient occassions to distinguish themselves. It isn't a trait like your gender, something you are at all times without returning to practice.
This is quite a breakthrough for me to see religion as a craft. A series of practised moves, rituals.
Is a man a thief because he steals your marbles once, twice or must he do it consistently enough for you not to leave your marbles out on the table when you go for a piss.
With god again there is nothing to see. Some take a flower, for example to be evidence of his existence in the same way the drawings are evidence of the idea, (another thing existing but not in space). But where we can prove a causal link between our idea and the drawing and finally the piece of furniture, there is no provable causal link between a flower and a supernatural god in the sky.
A designer maker is someone who makes things from their own drawings, not from drawings given to him or her. That is the design. If he or she goes dircetly from ideas to wood, as we go straight from ideas to paper, where can the design be said to be?
Do we say that exists only in the mind?
Yet we have agreed that only bodies, not minds are existent in space. The mind can not be said to be anywhere in space and nothing can be spacially in it.
It is language that lets us down here. It tricks us in to thinking that there is a distinction between designing and making. Our pride takes this fault and developes it to satisfy our ego.We do not want to be rude mechanicals.
Only one thing is taking place. We are not doing two things. Designing seperate from making is an illusary piece of propaganda with routes in Descartes myth of the ghost in the machine, propelled by politicians and everyone else.
The seperation of mind and body and all the metaphor around this we often treat as facts; hearing music inside my head, I thought of you in my minds eye etc. are not factual statements.
And that is the simple reason why I prefer not to use the term designer maker.
Has the idea of designing and making only come about since the industrial revolution when division of labour broke making down into many parts? Or was it Descartes "I think therefore I am which separated it"?
ReplyDeleteA lot of what you talk about reminds me of Persigs "Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance".