Practice
The Anatomy of Order offers a frame in which to reflect on perception and truth in everyday experience. How can I create a practice that focuses on responding to the effects of this contemporary condition reception over reflection?
What are other ways of thinking about our ephemeral culture that have not been explored? In this post-digital period, the various things presented to us by media forever alter our perceptions, but we can reveal the truth of the content by curating the material through designed systems. Moving beyond a culture that complacently receives information, my thesis uses a curatorial approach to allow for - and in some cases force - what it means to take a "second look." From these projects, the second look has grown into an extended look of what isn't right here. A look at spaces and projects that enable us to reflect on the present, creating a new mode of looking as an ongoing practice of perpetual reflection.
In Designerly Ways of Knowing by Nigel Cross, the author discusses how designers problem-solve by synthesis.
Designers should utilize their research skills through observation, collection, and design by creating an environment to learn and look at things differently--designing as research through different interpretations. For future projects, I would like to investigate other environments that could represent meaning beyond the first look by designing outcomes responding to contemporary culture.
Kalus Krippendorff states "Designers must vigorously examine their own methods."
My methodology of curating-as-design stems from the affordances that curation offers, which include collecting, organizing and classifying through a set of constraints. This system becomes filtered through the curator's perspective, which in my case was a response to reveal the truth in the everyday. "Design is about making sense of things to others" writes Krippendorff (based off the original Latin term de+signare which means to mark out, set apart, give significance by assigning it to a use, user, maker or oner) -- the Anatomy of Order allows the audience to view content in a more truthful light, designing a new quality of understanding.
Good designers are ones who "know" the material they are using. Good curators are ones who "know" the material they are curating. For me, this "knowing" has become the inspiration for my thesis research. In order to truly know something, one must completely engage with the material. It is imperative for me to understand the content I am designing; the curatorial tactics that I have used in my research are my way of engaging myself with any content. The collected stories in the thesis investigation included written and spoken words because language provides communication that can be interpreted in many ways. The multiple layers that conversations and written words present are limitless. In the future, the investigation can go beyond language--applying the design-as-curation methodology to video, sound and other mediums can make new discoveries.
As a multifaceted designer, I believe the goal for a future practice is to respond to contemporary culture using the most appropriate medium. Individuals such as Miranda July and Fritz Haeg have created spaces reflective of their interests through different media forms rather than allowing the medium to become a constraint to their inspirations. It is in this spirit that Anatomy of Order builds a space for audience participation to respond and reflect.