Sniffing the Corpse

Using scholarly methods for informing studio practice

Some incomplete and untrustworthy reflections - John Wood - 11/11/94

Overview: a hierarchy of intentions (in order of generalised interests)

'SAVING THE WORLD'!
by improving the Environment (saving Nature.....)
by helping designers to practice more responsibly
by helping designers to inform their studio practice
by offering theories that promote a more eudemonic form of praxis
thereby attaining academic distinction, vast funding, and a great deal of FUN. (joke)

to be accomplished:

by exploring the relationship between reading and professional competence in the design studio
and comparing scholarly rigor with methods of adaptive, abductive, situated judgement
by exploring HOW MUCH designers read (compared to 'research-oriented' professionals)
and exploring WHAT they read
and exploring WHY they read it (their own rationale)
and exploring HOW they read it
and finding out whether it informs practice or serves another function (my rationale)
look at individual-oriented v. society-oriented models of reading/writing
developing writing 'props' to help designers develop this reading mode

THE DEFINING PARAMETERS:-

practice-enabling (rather than a truth-seeking) role for reading/writing
question/develop alternative to 'RIGOR' as a metaphor for design-research approach
evaluate other key terms used in the design of authoring/writing systems: dubious metaphors such as BROWSING, NAVIGATION, TOOLS, NODES

Rigour and studio practice

THE IMAGE:

Christian interpretation of "logos" as a sacred corpus of knowledge / problematisation of life / retreat from 'the world' / the fall / gravitas / guilt / recoil from the body / obstetrics / encumbrance / fetishisation of the book / bookworms communing with the body of knowledge / many studio practitioners do not have the time or inclination to become book worms / at best they may become browsers and virtual surfers but will not be full communicants / their knowledge is too aromatic (insubstantial & dispersed) to be trusted

THE CONVENTION:

1 Rigor (Path.)

sudden chill with shivering before fever, etc., rigidity of body caused by shock, poisoning, etc.
mortis, stiffening of body after death. Latin rigere be stiff

2 whence Rigour (US rigor)

severity, strictness, harshness(in pl.) harsh measures; strict enforcement of rules etc. (with the utmost rigour of the law); extremity or excess of the weather, hardship, famine, etc., great distress; austerity of life, Puritanic strictness of observance or doctrine, whence rigorISM

3 L. 'rigidus' logical accuracy, exactitude - so rigorOUS (Concise Oxford Dictionary)

rigour as a bodily quality. A distinguished coroner (Anthony Clareâ€™s Radio 4 programme) quoted his tutor as saying that bodily changes after death are entirely predictable. It is only in life (psychoanalytically) that the human being is unpredictable. The word â€˜rigourâ€™ as used in academic research context is associated with scientific scrupulousness that was/is thought to be vital for conquering the tendencies of the senses to mislead the mind.

4 hardness / accuracy / severity / pitilessness:

maybe VISCOSITY is a more qualifiable, adaptive, and sympathetic alternative to 'rigour'
--
(Bohm) "From the fact that in Einstein's point of view no signal faster than light is possible, it follows that the concept of a rigid body breaks down."

Weiner's index of number and the innumerable

Champions of FLOW

Heraclitus â€”> Aristotle â€”> Nicholas von Kues â€”> Aquinas â€”> Whitehead â€”> Goethe â€”> Hegel â€”> Bergson â€”> Bohm â€”> Capra

Causality without periodicity

Chaotic notions of browsing. (c.f. Wood, J., "Chaos and the Virtual Library", 1994)

READING & STUDIO PRACTICE

"The only complete reading is that which transforms the book into a simultaneous network of reciprocal relations." J.Rousset; Forme et Signification, J.Corti, 1967
i.e. how can we understand the interplay between:

* actions and thoughts?

* between actions and things?

* between thoughts and things?

How do 'responsible' designers read?

It is has been said that many designers "don't read much" (Frayling, 1994), because they are steeped in the 'real world' of busy professional practice and do not see a commercial need for rigorous research. Many designers admit to 'browsing' for visual material to inform their practice, rather than resorting to reading text. Nevertheless, it has been shown that for interrogating actual situations, the need for text is inescapable (Stein, 1993).

My work will tend to focus on designers who have a desire to work in a more ethical way. For example, some work has already been done on computer-based representation of environmentally useful data. Some workers hoped that user-friendly systems could obviate the need for time spent in the library. However, recent studies show that ecological knowledge (Billet & Perkins, 1994) and ethical knowledge (Clarke, 1994) is too ill-defined and complex to be reduced into general 'rules for action'.

Where academic research entails rigorous, detached, explicit, linear, sentential modes of rational argumentation, designers prefer practices that are intellectually 'mysterious' (Coyne & Snodgrass; 1994), emphasise 'reflection-in-action'(SchÃ¶n, 1979), abductive reasoning, (Peirce, 1893; Wood & Taylor, 1993), and tacit knowledge (e.g. Ryle, 1949, Polanyi, 1967).

In general, whereas research scholars are trained to verify knowledge, usually represented as explicit textual argumentation, designers solve localised problems, or try to make things work more harmoniously. This historical division encourages us to polarise knowledge into two modes:

* truth-oriented, reflective knowledge that explains and confirms belief

* task-oriented knowledge that leads to situated actions and judgements

In trying to reconcile the two traditions, some researchers (Frayling, 1994), have attempted to classify design research into basic types:

1 "Research into Design"

2 "Research for Design"

3 "Research through Design"

The main interest in my study programme will be "research for design" with a related interest in "research through design". A key example of 2) is the idea that responsible designers (Wood, 1990, Whitely, 1992) must gain increased access to relevant scholarly data. The question of 'delivery' is important (given the problems cited above), especially as it is said (Lansdown, 1994) that such knowledge must be acquired at an early stage in the design cycle in order to be beneficial.

Problems with READING in the studio

What evidence do we have that text, and in particular, rigorous modes of reading and theorising, can inform studio practices? These issues have a currency for problems of design management, and it is hoped that some of my conclusions will eventually be able to inform the 'performance' of designers at a professional level.

Boundaries between action, signification, and the 'material' world

Some writers have claimed that design practice itself can be understood as a kind of rhetoric because it influences the actions of individuals and communities, shaping society in fundamental ways (Buchanan, 1989). Perhaps surprisingly, it has been claimed that (in rare cases) a certain art work can even be seen as inherently philosophical when it makes new claims about itself and exists as a tangible object that brings into existence the idea that it exemplifies. Benjamin (1991) describes this as an 'originary exemplification'.

A good starting point is the questioning of reading itself, and whether or how it appears to help designers. These remarks are from preliminary interviews conducted with selected design students who have already shown their competence with academic skills of reading and writing:

"The reason I find it difficult is that I don't think kind of logically; it's sort of like a whirlpool of thoughts and I guess I can't really express it in a sort of sequential way.."

"I don't find it difficult, but it can be complicated. For me one thing leads to another, words can easily lead to images, images can easily lead to 3-D."

"When people study music you don't start from like the very beginning. I think it is a very abstract way, to represent a frequency of sound by a dot and line. That's a very abstract way for people to begin. When you've progressed you really understand about semi-tones and tones and the relationship between notes and harmonics, which is the basic but it comes later."

"I can remember things about rooms, structures, etc. I am getting there by thinking in structures; its just the way my memory works."

"It is not necessarily easy to relate gut feel to learning. They are complete opposites: one is a completely irrational instinct, and one is thought out, has no irrationalities."

(see Wood, J., & Taylor, P.; "Mapping the Mapper", 1993) It could be argued that serial, textual argumentation (writing and reading) is incommensurate with creative studio practice in a number of ways:

Like all received knowledge, books are (in a sense) static and unsituated.

(Plato: books are like the painted figures that "seem to be alive, but do not answer a word to the questions they are asked."...."the teacher selects its pupils but the book does not select its readers, who may be wicked or stupid.") (c.f. Suchman,1987)..but pathways are also reader-determined! Increasingly so, with hypertext documents.

Hughes (1986) differentiates between "temporal" and "atemporal" questions and this illustrates a key distinction between the questions that could be asked of a conventional book, and those that may be permissable within a 'realtime' interactive document. He also distinguishes between "result-seeking" questions (why did you ask me that question?) and "cause-seeking" questions (Why did you conclude that?) that are useful in directing the transaction towards or away from the 'reader/subject'. Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) offers inspiration to this approach.

Prototypical linear, sentential reading emphasises singular narratives ('teleologies'), through a network of concurrently relevant events. (for important limits to this assumption c.f. Hayles et al, 1990,1991). Conventional 'reading' along those pathways induces rhythms in the reader that have an arbitrary relationship to that which they represent. (Dewey, ?)

At a certain level, scholarly rigour brings to bear conservative peer-group pressures that are inclined to sustain existing belief systems, often at the expense of newer, more appropriate, relevant, or inspired alternatives. (Feyerabend, 1975)

It is suggested that this mechanism can also be understood as a social process that operates at the institutional level to regulate the justification of belief. (Bruffee, 1988)

pragmatic view (Peirce, 1893) shows thinking as a simple process of informing belief, and that "belief is a rule for action". Yet it is now clear that beliefs also cloud our powers of reasoning, even in simple logical tests. (rudimentary syllogisms. Dobson, 1994)

It has been shown, for example, that we are easily confused by different logical modes, (Chapman & Chapman, 1959), and that we find it difficult to separate local from global data (Woodworth & Sells, 1935),

Festinger (1957) uses the term "cognitive dissonance" to argue that we are always striving (and failing) to attain 'consistency' between our desires and the conflicting evidence that we encounter in satisfying them.

The tradition of research writing is intended to comprise dispassionate, rational argumentation. However, there is much evidence that we are arational. This does not mean that we are unable to use logic, but that rationality and logic are often disconnected from the actual process of decision making. (Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982).

To summarise; it would seem that there are serious gaps between the explicit knowledge we think we use to make decisions, the tacit knowledge we actually use, and our ability to manage these different kinds of knowledge (Nisbett & Ross, 1980).

It seems likely that much of my quest to reconcile library and studio practices will require a convincing exploration of the role of consciousness. Minsky (1993) declares that the mystery of consciousness is "trivial. He claims that consciousness involves one part of the mind monitoring the behaviour of other parts. This function requires little more than short term memory, or a "low-grade system for keeping records", but Minsky argues that humans have pitifully shallow short-term memories...........what was I just saying?

We can characterise conventional research scholarship by sitting, reading, analysing, and deploying textual information in a rational, conscious way: SchÃ¶n argues that, when working in the studio, designers adopt a situated, extemporised mode of thinking which he calls "reflection-in-action". (c.f also Heidegger's term "mediative thinking") This raises further questions about the nature of conscious thought, and the pace and flow of mental and bodily actions.

Einstein: "To these elementary laws there leads no logical path, but only intuition, supported by being sympathetically in touch with experience".

The idea of 'tacit knowledge' (Kant, Pascal, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Ryle, Polanyi, Dreyfus & Dreyfus) draws attention to the possible importance of the situated flow of information in that it identifies a dispersed and manifold nature of 'mind' rather than the received idea of a conscious, rational intellect located at a single point in the brain. Wittgenstein's description of learning to ride bicycle shown as "not reducible to knowing that" taken up by Ryle and others.

Polanyi quotes Kant's reference to "an art hidden in the depth of the human soul" and describes how an experienced doctor might recognise an illness merely by its 'look' (its â€œphysiognomyâ€), rather than by its separate, nameable features. (Polanyi, 1967)

But he also goes further to claim that all knowledge is tacit "if it rests on our subsidiary awareness of particulars, providing these particulars form a comprehensive unity. In other words, it is deeper than we know." (Polanyi, 1967)

This is exemplified in the 'Paradox of the Centipede' (Koestler, ) in which the human body is (implicitly) compared to a creature with so many feet that it must expend almost all of its mental effort on walking and cannot, therefore, rise above its current evolutionary level of intellect. (Some designers choose to encumber themselves with many feet but few brain cells)

Representation. We probably have more ability than centipedes to focus our conscious minds on the task in hand, but it is interesting to note that grammatical sentences are sometimes inadequate for representing even the simplest transaction. Example of a carpenter using a hammer to drive nails into a piece of wood. Immersed in this familiar routine, the carpenter is subjectively â€˜part ofâ€™ and, for this reason, completely oblivious of the hammer (verb) until it unexpectedly fails to behave in the desired way. It is only at this moment that the hammer appears to become a discrete object (noun) with attributes of its own. (Heidegger)

Kornhuber's experiment used volunteers to monitor EEG traces before, during, and after they flexed their fingers. Although they were asked to perform this action at their own chosen time, the EEG showed a 'foreknowledge' of the intention to flex the finger that took a whole second! (Deeke, GrÃ¶txinger, & Kornhuber, 1976)

Libet (1992) and others have shown the significance of the relationship between real-time events and the processing time that cognitive and motor faculties require to 'deal with' such events. Sensory stimuli at the finger-tips, for example, takes < 0.1 sec. to reach the brain, and a further < 0.4 sec. for the brain to process into an intelligent response. We do not notice the delay, as it is a perennial and ubiquitous feature of the way we function...because our pathology has evolved together with a neural mechanism for "backward referral in time" that enables us to subjectively compensate for the cognitive time lag.

Clinical research seems to confirm possible coexistence of multiple sites of consciousness. Split brain subject shown, simultaneously, with different sensibilities (even contradictory verbal narratives!) in each separate hemisphere. (Wilson et al. 1977; Gazzaniga, LeDoux?, and Wilson 1977).

Are we really so cut-off from conscious, situated experience? It would appear that conscious thought merely provides an 'action replay', as a justificatory critique, or rationalising narrative to be used later for future strategising. (Penrose, 1989)

One suggestion is that, between thinking and doing, there is an intermediary level of 'procedural knowledge' (Anderson, 1983) that guides our actions yet remains invisible to our conscious introspective thought. Similar to 'propositional knowledge' (Chomsky, 1969).

Difficult to explore the interplay between actions and signs, especially in the context of 'creative' studio practices. Philosophers such as Austin and Searle developed the idea of 'speech acts' in which communication is not regarded simply as a neutral symbolic code, but as a performative, executive action in its own right.

Project at Austin, Texas may help to reconcile tacit knowledge with formal logic. The 'Large Common Sense Knowledge Base' project attempts to inform a computer 'expert system' with "common sense", rather than logic. Even highly ambiguous statements can be validated by a network of secondary assertions ('micro-theories'). Problemmatic but useful.

Difficult to explore the edges of boundaries between actions and thought, and between 'subject' and 'object'. Dyson (1979) uses ideas from quantum theory: "It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events."

Using similar scientific arguments, David Bohm, relates this idea to a form of praxis, advising us that explanations describing the actual relationship between thought and object are far less important than â€œ.....an act of understanding; in which we see the totality as an actual process that, when carried out properly, tends to bring about a harmonious and orderly overall action, incorporating both thought and what is thought about in a single movement" (Bohm, 1985).