Abstract
This paper identifies the under-explored link between agents and artefacts in the designing relation. It proposes that it is the practical reasoning governing the relation between artefacts and practice that explains the process of innovation in design. Opening up this gap admits a diversity of agents into the relation, a necessary ‘middle term’ that frames and extends our understanding of research into practice.
Brown, N. C. M. (2005). Paradox and imputation in the explanation of practical innovation in design. Speculation and innovation conference proceedings, 30 March to 1 April, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove. Reprinted by permission of the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology.
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Notes
- 1.
A criticism of Habermas’ concept of communicative action.
- 2.
Wittgenstein illustrates the point: “But now imagine a game of chess translated according to certain rules into a series of actions which we do not ordinarily associate with a game—say into yells and stamping of feet. And now suppose those two people to yell and stamp instead of playing the form of chess we are used to; and this in such a way that the procedure is translatable by suitable rules into a game of chess. Should we still be inclined to say we were playing a game? … This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with a rule…[I]f everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can be made out to conflict with it. …[and] in the course of our argument…we give one interpretation after another; as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of another standing behind it. What this shews [sic] is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘obeying the rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases” (1968, p. 81). Thus I could do design and call it research, or do research and call it design. But to do either of the latter is to make a symbolic claim on the practice at the meta-level.
- 3.
It is more likely that whenever similarities are drawn between art and research they are being drawn by way of analogy. In the philosophy of ethics practical analogies are drawn at the meta-level. Research and art, for example do not change their identities when used as meta-level analogies. On the contrary successful analogy depends on the identities of its examples being kept intact.
- 4.
For instance, Gestetner’s novel cladding of the office printer in the early twentieth century represents an innovative substitution of a design constraint. As contrasted with the design of the contemporary Canon Ir2200, which although an aesthetically unique printer casing, is nevertheless chosen within Gestetner’s original constraints (see Smith 1993, pp. 353–384).
- 5.
For instance, Duchamp’s revolutionary declaration of everyday objects as art revolutionised both means and purposes in the field. Duchamp left the concept of art intact but transfigured its conventions and purposes.
- 6.
There is a derogatory sense of ‘creative’, that is, when the term is applied to a poorly executed conventional performance as a deliberate mis-categorisation, or to falsely embroidered descriptions.
- 7.
Elster (1993), for instance, classifies a musical performance as creative, but reserves innovation for musical composition, arrangement and improvisation.
- 8.
Torvel and Dean the great British ice skating adagio team are famous for obliging Olympic judges to apply creative-aesthetic as well as established technical criteria in the adjudication of their performance of Bolero. See also Morris Stein’s (1966) essay Creativity and Culture, in which Stein emphasises the role of ‘the audience’ and ‘communication’ in proselytizing creative products.
- 9.
I use the term artefact to refer to the products of practice as distinct, for example, from its use in computer science where the term is applied to an object produced on the evidence of false data.
- 10.
In this instance a musical or theatrical performance functions as an artefact.
- 11.
Domain generalists such as Brentano, and Piaget would overlook the division.
- 12.
Concealed in the Sydney Opera House is the ‘poor historical timing’ that denied Joen Utzön and Arup the consulting engineers access to the digitized design technology available to Frank Gehry that would have made realization of Utzön’s original design for the roof sails feasible.
- 13.
In his biography of Sigmund Freud, Howard Gardner identifies the social field of the late nineteenth century as a critical agency in the formation of Freud’s creative achievement. Gardner says, ‘Just as projects serve as the intermediary between an individual and the domain, social institutions serve as the intermediary between an individual and the field’ (1986, p. 111).
- 14.
‘…there is no descriptively distinct class of performances or bodily movements that constitutes expressive behaviour. The concept of an expression implies the warranting of certain inferential structures, and it cannot be located by scrutiny of the descriptions of behaviour alone, unless those descriptions include among their truth conditions the relevant inferential moves. Explosive laughter, a facial grimace, a shudder, or a periodic tic are, in themselves, neither expressive nor non-expressive, and only if we have reason to connect the behaviour inferentially with some desire, belief, intent, or conflict are we entitled to treat it as an expression’ (Tormey 1971, pp. 44–45).
- 15.
Richard Wollheim’s concept of ‘fulfilled intention’ in which a property in an art work is not only intended by the artist to be seen in a particular way but is furthermore a property able to be seen by beholders in the way intended (1987, Ch. 2).
- 16.
For instance, sometimes works classed as preparatory in design, can only be differentiated from their companions by the fact that they are, for example, comparatively unresolved. Is Joen Utzön’s lyrical first sketch of the Sydney Opera House a process or an iteration of the building’s design? If Utzön’s sketch is an iteration does it possess its own nested ensemble of processes, and so on into infinity? See Wollheim (1980) and Wiggins (2002, pp. 219–220) on the differences between means causing ends, as contrasted with those states which accompany a means, such as ‘good health’, that are necessary but not directly instrumental to the realization of ends.
- 17.
One only has to think of the demonisation of copying in art education in the middle of the twentieth century.
- 18.
Otherwise the mere denial by the thief might be accepted as the true explanation of his role in a crime (Brown and Carroll 1998).
- 19.
The visual culture movement questions the causal dominance of the designer. This is an important departure from orthodox assumptions in art and design where the artist and designer are tacitly identified with the origination of a work.
- 20.
See Chapter 19 this volume.
- 21.
For instance, there would be no necessary properties of originality in a design practice (Brink 1996, p. 196). Properties of originality would be distributed according to the theoretical function assigned to them.
- 22.
That is, first person subjective.
- 23.
When we say, ‘The function of the heart is to pump blood we are…situating this fact relative to a system of values…’ (Searle 1995, p. 15). We approach objects as if they acted out of a sense of ethical obligation to some cause.
- 24.
For example a function of computer graphics is to make images. Image making consists, in part, as the deliberate distribution of pixels on a cathode screen. But it does not follow that the function of computer graphics is ‘to distribute pixels on a cathode screen’.
- 25.
Ironically contemporary practice in art and design has shifted to embrace a more functionally internecine character. Nicholas Bourriaud (2002) has coined the phrase ‘relational aesthetics’ to describe this shift towards interactive dependency in art. Art is set free from its cultural determinacy on the one hand and its field-classified idealism on the other Bourriaud argues, to assume a more eventful, collaborative, screen immersed, globally transactional yet locally situated character.
- 26.
It is not its role (except indirectly) to:
-
solve a particular design problem, do action research, or arm designers with reflective tools;
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conduct aesthetic or cultural criticism;
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use particular examples of design practice to induce general laws predictive of innovative practice and creativity;
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employ design practice as a way of doing research.
-
- 27.
Note that the artefact is ‘knotted’ into the Net as merely one among the other functions, even though the artefact is the focus of our investigation. Insofar as I have argued the artefact provides the most reliable location for the existence of innovative practice. Understanding the innovative causes of the artefact depends upon imputation of the effect of its relations with other functions in the field. That is, relations with other functions knotted into the same net.
- 28.
Note that presuppositions made about process and intention, in relation to texting and the consumer are not constructs of the evidence but hypotheses to be tested. Thus ‘process’ and ‘intention’ are the objects under investigation and in need of explanation. They are not the grounds for explanation.
- 29.
Porosity Studio provides a good example because it shows how Goodwin’s practice as a researcher informs, yet is distinguished from, his practice as an artist and architect.
- 30.
Goodwin writes: ‘Gordon Matta-Clark’s physical attacks on architectural fabric illustrate graphically how vulnerable architecture can be to redefinition via art. The image of an artist physically cutting slots and holes in a range of buildings, changed for all time the relationship between art and architecture and reduced buildings to armatures for future actions’ (2004).
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Brown, N.C.M. (2017). Paradox and Imputation in the Explanation of Practical Innovation in Design. In: Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42906-9_20
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