Design and Representation

You can only think of something if you think of something else
Jean-Luc Godard

Representations embody a paradox at the heart of human perception. According to Serge Moscovici, 'The purpose of all representations is to make something unfamiliar, or unfamiliarity itself familiar'. Representations clarify and simplify the multi-dimensional complexity of life, however, they begin to be accepted as a real thing and not the reality they were made to represent. In other words, they become part of the complexity of life. Furthermore, representations are intrinsically social and it could be argued that the shared understanding of representations is what in fact defines a community or culture. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices Stuart Hall writes that 'culture…is not so much a set of things…as a process, a set of practices…culture is concerned with the production and exchange of meaning'. Representations may begin as 'mere' tools for communication, but they very quickly become an individual and social reality which in-forms individual and social existence.

Marshall McLuhan begins the first chapter of Understanding Media by stating that

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

McLuhan continues

…the "content" of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print…If it is asked, "What is the content of speech?" it is necessary to say, "It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal."

And so, it is also possible to ask "what is the content of design?" and remarkably, the same answer seems to apply – "It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal." As the written word is the content of print, so artifacts are the content of standardized representational technologies. A building is the content of a plan, section and perspective. But we cannot make an exact equation between Thought – Speech – Writing – Print and Thought – Design – Artifact – Drawing because design has retained a close affinity with both drawing and artifact. The word design itself implies a strong connection to the medium of drawing and so it is as if speaking and writing were collapsed into one medium. This has led to some confusion, as the word is used to conveyed both the expression of the thought process and the technology of this expression. As this technology changes, we are faced with questions relating to the impact of this change on the expression of thought.

In The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert Simon states that 'the representation of space and of things in space will necessarily be a central topic in a science of design'. For Simon, design is a problem-solving activity and 'solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent'. Let us position this understanding against McLuhan's ideas; McLuhan writes that 'the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.' McLuhan wants to make the psychic and social 'message' visible by understanding the media which has provoked it. Simon is interested in how we 'devise artifacts to attain goals', in other words, in articulating the change in scale or pace or pattern of particular human affairs by using a medium which implies a desired outcome. This is in no way a trivial thing and it suggests that a designer / problem-solver is capable of deliberately altering his perception through the use of a medium. While these views differ in their point of reference, both suggest a close, illuminating relation between media and message, representation and design. In Politics of the Artificial, Victor Margolin has juxtaposed the positions of what he refers to as 'The Two Herberts' - Simon and Marcuse - in order to argue against the 'technological rationality' of 'one dimensional man' which he identifies in Simon's attempt to reify the design process. In my view Margolin has misinterpreted Simon and his conception of both science and problem-solving. For example, Margolin writes that 'Simon seeks to legitimize design as a science by reducing the role of intuitive judgment in the design process'. This is simply not evident in Simon's work. On the contrary, Simon has conducted significant research into the process labeled 'intuition'. He writes that 'most intuitive leaps are acts of recognition'. Based on research into master chess-players as expert problem-solvers he contends that 'recognition capabilities, and the information associated with the patterns that can be recognized, constitute a very large component of chess skill.' Furthermore, Simon compares this human quality with the capabilities of the computer, writing that 'by contrast, most extant computer chess programs carry out enormous searches for lack of strong recognition capabilities'.

Having said that, I do find Margolin's approach very interesting. On closer examination, his Politics of the Artificial does not stand so much in contrast to 'science' (of the artificial) as to 'poetics'. Margolin takes the discursive approach articulated by Michael Foulcault in The Archeology of Knowledge (and other books), locating design knowledge and meaning in the historical specificity of the discourse surrounding design. Margolin is more concerned with the effects and consequences of this discourse than with how design and artifacts represent meaning.

In The Reflective Practitioner Donald Schön critiques Simon's attempt to formulate a science of design writing that 'his science can be applied to well-formed problems already extracted from situations of practice'. Drawing on Gilbert Ryle's 'knowing how and knowing that' which he discusses in The Concept of Mind, Schön suggests that if the model of 'technical rationality' is put aside, it is possible to see intelligent practice as an application of knowledge. He defines this as thinking-in-action and reflection-in-action, and has suggested that design should be seen as a problem-defining rather than problem-solving activity. Using this definition, Schön also highlights the significance of media. He writes

Media cannot really be separated in their influence from language and repertoire. Together they make up the "stuff" of inquiry, in terms of which practitioners move, experiment and explore. Skills in the manipulation of media, languages, and repertoires are essential to the practitioners reflective conversation with his situation…[an architect's] designing depends on his feel for the sketchpad and the scale model, and for the drawing/talking language in which he works…Because of the importance of this feel for media and language, an experienced practitioner cannot convey the art of his practice to a novice merely by describing his procedures, rules and theories…[and] the art of one practice tends to be opaque to the practitioners of another… We know very little about the ways in which individuals develop the feel for media, language, and repertoire which shapes their reflection-in-action. This is an intriguing and promising topic for future research.

However the relation of design and problem-solving is defined, it is important to keep in mind that design problems do not have one solution. More importantly, there is no real criteria to indicate when a design problem has actually been 'solved'. Designs are in essence never completed - only released (to rephrase my husband, Isaac Waisberg rephrasing Paul Verlaine). In many respects, it is the opacity of media which lends artifacts and representations of design an aura of closure.

Design can also be seen as a prediction; Of needs, of taste, of form and of function. Stewart Brand, referring to architecture has said that 'All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong'. Albert Borgmann discusses this in Holding on to Reality in somewhat less forceful terms, offering that contingency is at the heart of the ambiguity between signs as information for reality and things. He writes

No design can specify its realization fully. To convey exactly as much information as the thing realized, a design would have to exhibit just as many features as the thing. But then it would be a duplicate of, rather than information for a thing. All cultural signs undermine their realization and are in this sense necessarily ambiguous. This kind of symbolic ambiguity-an ambiguity of austerity – makes for the creativity of realization and the drama of contingency.

This contingency can be scrutinized at any point of the 'biography' of an artifact as it makes its way from the virtual world through reality. A design-thought undergoes modifications with each incarnation through media, and so it changes from sketch to drawing, from drawing to model, from model to prototype, from prototype to product etc. Individual circumstances also impact the 'life' of a thing once it has hit reality. It is contextualized and modified through artificial and natural forces ranging from possession and interaction to gravity and friction. Similarly, a constructionist approach to representations offers representations as open-ended vehicles rather than objects of meaning, moving unfixed through space and time. And so design is elusively located on the slopes of Sisyphean desperation: a process never completed, yields offspring which betray their designer's intentions on the moment of release into reality.

Nitzan Waisberg...work in progress...