The Master and his Emissary

This is the title of a remarkable book by Ian McGilchrist that I am reading at present. Even before I finish it I can't recommend it too strongly to anyone who is interested in our behaviour and our culture. In essence, it explains the asymmetry in our brains and how this not only affects us individually, but also how it has guided the history of human development. The author is a neuropsychologist who also happens to have taught English at Oxford University. So his thoughts are based on extensive scientific research into how our brains function. But his achievement is to fill the gap that exists between recent understanding of how this amazing organ operates and ways of thinking both now and in our past about the different sides of our nature, sometimes referred to as the rational and the romantic. He makes extensive reference to philosophers' grappling attempts to understand our make-up and motivations. Nietzsche, and others after him, referred to the two sides of human nature as the Apollonian and Dionysian.

The first part of the book explains how the two hemispheres operate. In essence the right brain initially perceives the bigger picture, seeing things in context and in relation to one another. The left brain then takes over and examines them in detail -- it is able to de-contexturalise and to abstract. Finally it hands this analysis back to the right brain to put it into the larger context again for action. There have been attempts by protagonists for both sides of our nature to promote their side of the brain as being much more important, but the point is that we have only come this far because both have worked in tandem. McGilchrist's argument is that now we have lost that balance. The left brain is not handing things back, and we are no longer seeing the bigger picture of our place in nature, only that of narrow self interest. Reason makes its own self-perpetuating rules. He sees this case of the Emissary (left brain) taking over from the Master (united brain) is much of the cause of our current problems of over-exploitation of the planet and of one another.

I find this really exciting because it covers so much similar ground to my lectures and thinking: loss of empathy for other humans and for the environment, embodied (craft) knowledge, and keeping a balance between our rational and our spiritual/nature knowledge. But it explains all this, not as some vague split between reason and romance, but inescapably in terms of what is going on in our own brains. And knowing that, maybe we can wrest control back from our left brains and put things 'right' again!

I will put up another post when I have finished the book, but it won't be for a while until after we have done the Milan show.

Design Resources misdirected?

I was recently talking to a designer who works for a top car company, and he revealed that he has just spent four years working on the steering wheel design for a new model. FOUR YEARS! I can't possibly imagine how one person can fill that many working days on just one object. And what about all the other designers working there? How many are there for the whole car? How long will one of them spend on the rear light cover, or even the coat hanger hook??

What really disturbs me though is how this obsessive search for perfection reflects the values of our society. How can the creative value of this design resource be so squandered when there are so many infinitely more pressing problems that need solving? Millions, even billions, of people on this planet are starving, malnourished or without proper basic facilities such as shelter or running water. With all that desperately urgent need out there we fritter away our time on the unbelievable and unpardonable luxury of a steering wheel that takes four years to design! Surely even six months would produce a perfectly adequate steering wheel, and the car company can then donate the remaining three and half years of the designer's time to solving the real problems of this world?!

Breaking free

(It is spring in New Zealand and the beautiful yellow kowhai flowers have bloomed and fallen.)

I recently watched the documentary 'Man On Wire' about the tight-rope walker, Philippe Petite, balancing between the twin towers in New York. The film and the stunt are truly amazing and inspiring. I had the same emotional reaction as I get when watching surfers ride giant waves, or extreme mountain skiers dodging avalanches, seeing a tiny, insignificant but indomitable figure braving to go so far with such spirit, and taking just a little bit of us with him. It is not just sport, it is a powerful theatrical performance and we are the richer for it. I think we need these visions of the seemingly impossible being realised to uplift us, to give us hope, something to aspire to, not necessarily to do what they do, but to take us out of the limitations of our daily lives and to stretch our notion of the possible.

To string the wire between the twin towers they first used a bow and arrow to shoot a very thin fishing line across. To find the line in the dark he stripped naked to be able to feel it on his body. Then they used the line to pull back a heavier string, and then an increasingly heavy rope until they were able to haul across the wire. What a wonderful metaphor: to shoot an arrow, a simple low-tech, prehistoric device, up into the dark night sky trailing a gossamer thin thread, to link two buildings! That thread then pulls behind it increasingly strong lines that will build a walkway for the brave to follow.

We need examples and role models of people who dare to venture to extremes to spur us on to similar achievements in our own fields. The same vision is apparent in iconic architecture such as Gehry's Guggenheim and Shigeru Ban's new Centre Pompidou in Metz. Their idea was a pioneering arrow stretching the limits of what was possible. To conceive this requires more than a little craziness!

The most contemporary and ancient art

This is one of Dorothy Napangardi's 'Salt on Mina Mina' paintings from the central Australian desert. It is so amazing and inspiring in every way, that if I were ever to produce a work like this I would feel that my mission on earth had been accomplished and there was nothing more to do. Dorothy, like most of the recent wave of Aboriginal women painters, only started painting late in life with little or no previous art experience. How does this miracle happen? How does a race of people, living a simple life in some of Earth's harshest environments, come up with artworks that are so utterly contemporary that they strike a chord in every sensitive person's heart anywhere in the world?

As well as being one of the most marginalised, the Aboriginal culture is also one of the oldest with an unbroken history of 40,000 years. They have survived in the desert simply because they are so perfectly attuned to it. Anything less would have vanished. These artists are able to tap into a wellspring of knowledge and experience that we can only guess at. Their work expresses their sensitivity for, and integration with, the land like no other. In their existence lies our redemption. They claim that their paintings are a cry of help for the land to the West.

How can we hear and implement their message? In our cities we have lost a vital contact with, and respect for, the land which we need so much to support us with fresh water, fresh air, food and waste disposal. If we as designers can imbue our work with just a little of the qualities of these paintings, can we begin to rectify this impoverishment? Can we learn from, and apply, just some of the processes and sensitivity of artists like Dorothy? In her work I sense a total immersion and rhythmic articulation that blots out the twittering rational mind, allowing her to connect to her surroundings and heritage. Therein lies my goal.

The future role of design

The Kyoto Design Declaration was signed in Kyoto on 28 March 2008 by the Executive Board of Cumulus. The declaration states:

“A paradigm shift from technology driven development to human centred development is under way. The focus is shifting from materialistic and visible values to those, which are mental, intellectual and, possibly, less material. An era of ‘cultural productivity’ has commenced, where the importance attributed to modes of life, values and symbols may be greater than that attributed to physical products. Design thinking stands steadfastly at the centre of this continuum. Simultaneously, this development highlights the importance of cultural traditions and the need to extend and revitalize them.”

A few years ago the frog design agency made a similar statement: "in order to create a radical position around sustainability, we need to change our concept of design."

This echoes what I have been saying in my lectures for some time: that the future of design has to lie, not in designing more things, but in the way we do things. Don't design a better car, design a better transport system, or ideally a better lifestyle that does not need transport. It is also exciting to see another message from my lectures, that design has to encompass greater cultural nourishment beyond the more limited, functional, problem fixing role it currently plays. This is design taking on some of the wider responsibilities of art. How many designers know of this declaration? And how can we incorporate it into mainstream design practice?

The importance of Art

One of the most powerful arguments for the importance of art was given by the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel prize acceptance speech. When I was a student I read his book Cancer Ward (several times). Somehow he manages to imbue this awful setting with the deepest expression of warmth and humanity. This is a humanity he acquired as a survivor of Stalin's Siberian death camps. In his speech he says that it is easy for us to empathise with the suffering of a neighbour, but much harder to do so with the suffering of so many more people much further away. Art Bridges this gap: it enables us to empathise person-to-person anywhere on the earth. Politicians and speech makers can throw us back and forth with powerful reasoning, and we lose our moral compass. Art cannot lie; it touches our hearts, it reaches our humanity, it dispels complacency, it is the friction that causes the spark of life.

When I talk about art I am not referring to the superficial, commercial, crass work of artists such as Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. These artists only encourage the worst of our throwaway and exploitative culture. I am thinking more of artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Olafur Eliasson and Emily Kngwarreye who are deeply caring and thoughtful role models. And of course writers like Solzhenitsyn. You can read his full speech here and I strongly recommend it. I can still remember parts of it 39 years after I read it.

A Freely Roaming Imagination

How often do your children (or did you) play adventurously in the wild? In a new book -- 'Last Child in the Woods' -- the author Richard Louv argues that today's children suffer from "nature deficit disorder" because they are cosseted and no longer spend time outdoors exploring. If they did do this he believes that they would be more confident, more competent physically and mentally, and less sedentary and therefore less obese (as described in the review by Margaret Stead in the Guardian Weekly). She goes on to say, "perhaps a sense of solitude -- of being alone with the 'self' -- is the key to the development of a creative imagination."

I am very thankful that I did have this experience as a child, and I have absolutely no doubt that it taught me how to enter that place where dreams happen, and to find a quietness there. At the same time it generated in me a love and respect for the natural environment. Such experiences in childhood remain with you forever. If everyone could have some sort of similar experience as a child would we see less abuse of that environment that we need to give us life?