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VALUE
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(in design: how we define it/how it defines us)
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CREATIVE PROCESS: HOW IT’S VALUED WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF DESIGN
THE VALUE OF CREATIVITY CULTURALLY: NOT JUST AS A COMMODITY; AS AN ACTIVITY AS A MEANS OF ENGAGING THE WORLD AS A VALID FORM OF COMMUNICATION
HOW CREATIVE ACTIVITY IS VALIDATED, ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED WITH, AND THE BLURRING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN FIELDS
CULTIVATING CREATIVITY, AND GROWING RECOGNITION OF NEED FOR IT.
(or)
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
3/22
It’s un-debatable that design offers much of value to others today; “design thinking” has been championed as the new magic ingredient in buisness schools; design is oft-equated with innovation, and of course the power of design to influence consumer and viewer behavior hasn’t fallen from favor either.
But “value” itself is less-easily defined. We can certainly pinpoint specific contributions design has made to the evolving sphere of culture and communication, and to ways it’s assisted endeavors in other fields. However, in quantifying design’s bright potential, I believe there are valuable aspects of design process–more broadly, creative activity itself–that too easily slip through the cracks, benefits that perhaps don’t register on the radar of certain broader value systems.
While on the one hand, we seem to be recognizing, suddenly, that creativity is a valuable asset in employees across fields, and that people have “unmet needs” to be creative, on the other, what meager support we’ve had in place for the arts–in schools and at large–is being cut away at even more; we have a very poor system, it seems, for nurturing the kind of creativity that’s in apparent demand. This conflict of needs is confusing, and perhaps leads to a larger question of how we define our values now. As designers, we are in the luxurious position of making creative activity valuable in the world. It seems, in order to give creative process its due, however, we need not just more funding and support, but a more holistic framework alongside quantitative measures, or an entirely new model for understanding “value” altogether.
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
4/22
How do we value creative activity, and what can we do to foster support for creativity - as designers? - as educators, and/or with educational policies? - culturally: through our institutions and/or government support? And what other structures are set up to “nurture” the arts/creative activity?
How fluid with boundaries between art and design are we? How do dif-ferent disciplines inform each other?
Can art (as an approach: exploration, latteral thinking, intuitive ideation, etc.) provide extra steps in innovation and/or “problem-solving” that we need if we are basically re-defining what “graphic design” does?
How do we foster recognition of creative value, and encourage par-ticipation in creative activity: generally, as designers, as educators and culturally?
Some Questions
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
5/22
John Maeda:
“Great science happens because of great creativity.”
“Be the artist inside the scientist.”
“We believe that creativity is a right.... art and design create... innova-tors.”
http://vimeo.com/26901487
http://vimeo.com/30624307 (1:30)
1. STEM into STEAM
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
6/22
“An unmet need that has emerged repeatedly in the past three years... is the need for everyday people to be more creative. We see this need expressed both at home and at work.” (2:17)
“People need... above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and put them to use in caring for and about others.” - Ivan Illich, in Tools For Creativity (3:24)
http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Summaries/Sanders_summary/SandersQuick-time/SandersMovie.html
2. Liz Sanders: Participation Design
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
7/22
2. Liz Sanders: Participation Design
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
8/22
“State support of Dutch culture within and outside of the Netherlands has generously and actively contributed to the vital development of global artistic practice, presentation, and discourse. Given the Nether-lands’ role as an exemplar of cultural cultivation, we believe that this se-ries of events signals a dramatic turn and sets an unfortunate precedent in the international cultural landscape.”
“... the government itself... keeps on repeating that art should take care of itself and better start looking at the market instead of the state for any kind of financial support.”
“The solution posed—to cut-off certain institutions (especially non-exhib-iting ones where the measure of cultural value is not in property but in processes that build culture) and to close academies is unacceptable...”
http://fillip.ca/content/responses-to-recent-dutch-arts-cuts
3. Government Support: Arts funding cut in Netherlands
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
9/22
If art as it stands today can’t take care of itself without external support, is it a viable practice? What is the relationship of artistic activity to commerce?
Is arts practice an inherently elitest activity? Or at least, a luxury of more wealthy economies?
How might art/creative practice be useful in defining the future? What do we gain from it?
3. Government support: Arts funding cut in Netherlands
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
10/22
4. Design School: Blurring boundaries between art & design
“More than anything, these distinctions are devices of disciplinary convenience. ...Graph-ic design stopped looking like graphic design, as we once knew it, several years ago...I have met many people in graphic design who might just as easily have studied art, photography, digital media, or film and whose interests span all these activities—as mine do—without drawing strong distinctions among them.”
“...everyone’s workload is broader now, and design’s vanguard has moved to a more open and less definable location—a place that looks more like what we see going on at the Sandberg Institute.”
“Yes, it does sound close to art, since artists engage in similar activities, and the design M.F.A. explicitly sets out to develop individuals with a strong personal position and voice. As design evolves, there is a need throughout higher education to rethink some no longer black-and-white aspects of the art/design relationship.”
- Rick Poynor, A Report from the Place Formerly Known as Graphic Design, Print Magazine
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
11/22
4. Design School
Jen Bracy, http://www.jen-driven-bydesign.com/?p=456
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
12/22
5. Challenging notions of “Art,” connecting Art & Design, expanded models of communication.
Joseph Beuys - Performance Art, “expanded notion of art”
Sol Lewitt - Challenging the authority and ownership of the artist
Bauhaus Philosophy / Anni Albers - the connection between art and design
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
13/22
5a. Beuys
“... connection between object-based work and an ‘expanded conception of art” An expanded definition of material that included “will, speech and thought.”
Saw social sculpture & education as one of his greatest artworks.
“The whole process of living is my creative act.”
Joseph Beuys repeatedly said... it was his role to provide “the means to point out that the human being is a creative being.” ... for Beuys, “Art is not there to provide knowl-edge in direct ways. It produces deepened perceptions of experience. . . . Art is not there to be simply understood, or we would have no need of art.”
http://www.walkerart.org/archive/5/9D43B5DB685147C46167.htm
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
14/22
5a. BeuysBeuys, I Like America and America Likes me
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
15/22
5a. BeuysBeuys, Action Piece (Performance)
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
16/22
5b. Sol Lewitt
“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v8n1/gallery/smith_e/lewitt_541.shtml
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
17/22
5b. Sol LewittSol Lewitt, Wall Drawing 793B1
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
18/22
5b. Sol LewittSol Lewitt, Wall Drawing Instructions and Certificate
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
19/22
5c. Anni Albers, from “Work with Material”
“Life today is very bewildering. We have no picture of it which is all-inclusive, such as former times may have had. We have to make a choice between concepts of great diversity. And as a common ground is wanting, we are baffled by them...
... We have useful things and beautiful things -- equipment and works of art. In earlier civilizations there was no clear separation of this sort...
But most important to one’s growth is to see oneself leave the safe ground of accepted conversations and to find oneself alone and self-dependent. It is an adventure which can permeate one’s whole being. Self-confidence can grow. And a longing for excitement can be satis-fied without external means, within oneself; for creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know.”-- Anni Albers, “Work with Material,” from “Black Mountain College Bulletin, no. 5, November 1938
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
20/22
Anni Albers, Second Movement II, 1978, detail.
5c. Anni Albers
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
21/22
5d. Questions About Artists
Can we apply Beuys’ philosopy to communication today? Is this method of communicat-ing “indirectly” something that needs to be valued/recognized today in a larger cultural sphere?
Can investigation of authorship and process, as exemplified in Lewitt’s work, be valuable to expanding the role of the designer and common models of communication? How is this sort of activity cultivated and valued in design schools, in design practice, and/or cultur-ally (at large)?
How relevant is Albers’ philosophy to now? Do we still recognize/concur that there’s an inherent connection between process across arts disciplines? How might we shift our per-ception and view these separations in a more holistic way?
Value (in design: how we define it/how it defines us) | Frances Pharr | Grad Seminar | Fall 2011
22/22
Amsterdam Budget Cutshttp://fillip.ca/content/responses-to-recent-dutch-arts-cuts
Manifesta Art Mediationhttp://manifesta.org/network/manifesta-art-mediation/
What’s in a Name? http://www.jen-drivenbydesign.com/?p=456
STEM into STEAMhttp://stemtosteam.org/(more videos: http://vimeo.com/26901487, http://vimeo.com/30624307)
Sol Lewitthttp://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v8n1/gallery/smith_e/lewitt_541.shtml
Joseph Beuyshttp://www.walkerart.org/archive/5/9D43B5DB685147C46167.htm
Anni Albershttp://www.albersfoundation.org/Home.php
William Morris, Art Wealth and Richeshttp://www.chanceprojects.com/node/283
Can You Measure Design’s Value? (Businessweek, 2007)http://buswk.co/ew38tm
Education: Documents of Contemporary ArtFelicity Allen, Ed.
Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century Steven Henry Madoff (Editor, Introduction)
Liz Sanders Creative culturehttp://www.maketools.com/What is Creativity?http://bit.ly/uBELtYA Social Vision for Value Co-Creation in Design, w/ George Simons
The Relevance of Critical Theory to Art TodayJ.M. Bernstein, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, and Chris Cutrone http://bit.ly/dIiXI1
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