What, Exactly, Is Making? by KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts Gent

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Introduction

2014

Bhagavad Gita

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Introduction

2014

Bhagavad Gita

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

You have the right to work but for the workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake only; you have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either. Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failures, for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by Yoga. Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahman. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Eames India Report, Intro p.5

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Many of us know that design has somehow reached its limits as a particular, outspoken kind of form. Many believe that the path of giving meaning to an object of use through a concept, has likewise lead to a dead end. We are now trying hard to think in terms of social design, co-design, open design and other new methods to give our domain a reason for existence. However, it seems that in doing so we are giving up on the essence of design: making everyday things, as a means to improve our life. In 1972, one year after Papanek’s Design for the real world, the Japanese mingei specialist Soetsu Yanagi wrote a manifesto for the preservation and enhancement of crafts. It was a plea for everyday objects made by anonymous craftspeople, which in Japan and Korea had at that time lost all value due to industrialisation and opening up to the West. In a sense Naoto Fukasawa & Jasper Morrison’s attention for Super Normal things is a similar contemporary plea for re-valuating beautiful, simple objects that shine a light from within and do not necessarily have to be labelled by a famous ‘designer’. With their book and exhibition, they emphasise the beauty and importance of objects that do not need the halo of a marketing machine to make sense in our daily lives. Yanagi writes: On reflection, one must conclude that in bringing cheap and useful goods to the average household, industrialism has been of service to mankind – but at the cost of the heart, of warmth, friendliness, and beauty. (...) Moreover, the chief characteristic of handcrafts is that they maintain by their very nature a direct link with the human heart, so that the work always partakes of a human quality. Machine-made things are children of the brain; they are not very human (Yanagi 2013: 107). Looking into the qualities of making in craftsmanship can possibly lead to a translation into contemporary methods, which could be applied in the designing of everyday things. To use the words of Yanagi, could it make sense to look into objects how they are being born, rather than being made? And thus move from the God’s eye view or the intuition to first think, thus design, and then make or produce, towards a more holistic methodology? Dictated by the material, possibly linked to tradition and ritual, and created with the whole body rather than just the brain. A methodology which wishes to embrace beauty as a real entity, rather than a decodeable form that sends out messages from brain to brain. What is it that makes the old hand-blown wine glasses bought in a junk shop, Jasper Morrison is referring to in his book, radiate a presence? For Morrison, this quota of atmospheric spirit is the most

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

mysterious and elusive quality in objects. In trying to understand why certain objects have this quality and others not, he claims a lack of noticeability has become a requirement (Fukasawa & Morrison 2007: 28). In looking for possible answers towards a creation of this quality of inner beauty, we should probably start with a renewed favour for the embodied praxis, which begins with the way the designer perceives reality. Husserl and the phenomenologists emphasis the need of a radical breaking with what Husserl calls the natural standpoint from which we look at reality. Descartes taught the Western world to divide our head and its thinking, from our body and its making and feeling. Moreover, the Cartesian worldview emphasized the importance of our brain and its thinking over full body experiences, and thus introduced the idea that the subject (we) can rationally observe and define the object (the world around us). With our ratio we thus give meaning to the world. Phenomenologists however teach us to look inside, rather than looking outside as a way to understand the world. Merleau-Ponty, who influenced architects as Steven Holl and Peter Zumthor follows the reasoning of Husserl, but adds the importance of the (incarnated) body to give meaning to the world. He explains: Quality, light, colour, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our body and because the body welcomes them (...) Things have an internal equivalence in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence (Pallasmaa 2011: 42). Our body is a diagram of what is outside us. We can only capture nature and beauty because their echoes lay within the contours of our body. Or as Cézanne simply explains: nature is inside us. The French painter André Marchand explains, in the tradition of the transcendental experiences of Paul Klee, that often when walking in the forest, it was not he who looked at the forest, but at certain moments, it were the trees gazing at him, talking to him. As an artist the universe must permeate the painter and not the other way around. Merleau-Ponty calls this experience: inspiration. He explains that the word inspiration should be taken literally: inspiring and expiring of Being. This phenomenological approach resonates very well with a description of the process of the making, written down by the well-known British potter Bernard Leach in a foreword to Yangai’s publication: Every artist knows that he is engaged in an encounter with infinity, and that work done with heart and hand is ultimately worship of Life Itself. Sometimes a pot sings out from its wheel-head, from all its related parts, and the potter may pause in himself thinking. “No patteren

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

this time-just a single good glaze-or none at all”, and hope that fire will bless with added strength and variety that which his hands have made. Such a pot, or indeed any work of art, is not an expression of the maker alone, but of a degree of enlightenment wherein infinity, however briefly, obliterates the minor self (Yanagi 2013: 90). These experiences by renowned artists echo Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s flow, or optimal experience theory. He explains the moment of flow as characterized by complete absorption in what one does. In those moments it is not the end result, or what one will achieve that is important, on the contrary the key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself (Csíkszentmihályi 2008: 67). The phenomenological approach, the stated experiences of the artists and the theory of Csíkszentmihályi all emphasize the importance of the moment of making as a bodily experience, rather than the moment of designing as a mental exercise. According to Yanagi it is precisely in the making, when heart, head and hand are in proper balance that true beauty comes into being. Although the industrial world might not be interested in moments of transcendence or optimal joy, an object resulting from such joy expresses more light, more ‘presence’ and more beauty. In Bernard Leach’s introduction he reports on a conversation between the Japanese potter Hamada and a young journalist asking him, how in today’s industrial society good work in the sense of Yanagi’s plea for beauty, can be obtained. Hamada answers that he had met one man in America, who had shown a way forward. This man was Charles Eames, whom Hamada and Yanagi praised for his open acceptance both of the contemporary scientific and industrial world as well as the traditions of the past; upon his playful refusal to be chained by fear, and his constant inventiveness and domination of the mechanical by a new freedom of intuition and joy in making (Yanagi 2013: 95-96). Making is much more than thinking: while maker-movements everywhere around the world are flourishing, crafts are vanishing, and design in the sense of making useful things remains in a crisis. I therefore plea for a renewed interest into the way of the craftsman, who mainly considers himself as a maker and therefore applies a different method in designing, dealing with materials and embracing intangible elements within the birth of the object. This approach was already embedded in Walter Gropius’s first Bauhaus Manifesto: Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”.

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in craft is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies (Gropius & Moholy-Nagy 1919). In accordance with the work of Pallasmaa and Sennett, I strongly argue for the way of the craftsman, which can guide us towards a set of phenomenological qualities, which can add to generating objects with an elusive quality of atmospheric presence (Fukasawa & Morrison 2007: 28), and which are better fitted as man’s companions in daily life (Yanagi 2013: 107). A FEW EXAMPLES OF SUCH QUALITIES COULD BE The archetypical form Or what Morrison refers to as lack of noticeability. Contemporary commercial design’s most important asset is an abundant form. However, thinking of Konstantin Grcic’s Mayday, or Maarten Van Severen’s .02, is not the archetypal form often the most logical one and the best fitted to our bodies and our habits? Pallasmaa claims that the most simple and most archetypal forms lead to the most open interpretations and experiences. The way he explains the impact of architecture, can easily be translated to design: The mental impact of architecture does not derive from a formal or aesthetic game; it arises from experiences of an aesthetic sense of life. Architecture does not invent meaning; it can move us only if it is capable of touching something already buried deep in our embodied memories (Pallasmaa 2009: 136). Sense-driven A bowl is an extension of a hollow hand, cutlery is the extension of our fingers, an ideal chair follows the curve of our back, … Design in essence is a dialogue with the human body in its surroundings, however designers rarely start from the body and the touch. For most designers bodies have become abstract, reduced to virtual renderings, or as Kenya Hara explains: We used to fill our imaginations with the glamour of achieving happiness by sending a virtual self to live in cyberspace, but we’ve realized that virtual happiness cannot become real happiness. In time, dust will cover even modern structures designed to be aesthetically light, and products made of new materials will gradually evolve into

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

antiques. We don’t know what to do with our bodies, which need massages as much as messages (Hara 2007: 144). The thinking hand Pallasmaa sees a general disinterest in all the senses but the eyes, and explains this through the loss of interest in crafts. Together with Richard Sennett (Sennet 2009) he demands a renewed attention for what he calls the thinking hand. Pallasmaa focuses on the hand as the link between our experiences and our imagination. Both authors advocate the importance of drawing in an age of renderings. In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity — with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together — fails to be recognized (Pallasmaa 2009: 36). Materiality Craft is no doubt organized around material experience. Yanagi and other adherents of mingei are opposed to any form of conscious control of irregularity, and stress the importance of the material to express itself through the final shape. The love for the irregular is according to Yanagi a sign of the basic quest for freedom. Furniture designer George Nakashima explains in his widely read book The Soul of the Tree how the spirit of the wood defines the furniture. There must be a union between the spirit in wood and the spirit in man. The grain of the wood must relate closely to its function. The abutment of the edge of one board to an adjoining board can mean the success or failure of a piece. (…) Gradually a form evolves, much as nature produced the tree in the first place. The object created can live forever. The tree lives on in its new form. The object cannot follow a transitory “style,” here for a moment, discarded the next. Its appeal must be universal. Cordial and receptive, it should invite a meeting with man (Nakashima 1981). Other qualities related to the making of crafts could be elements of rhythm, pattern, slowness, ritual, silence, story telling, the joy of making. These are mostly lost assets to be

Joy in making

2014

Hilde Bouchez

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

brought back into contemporary design methodology, leading to products that radiate something honest and good. Looking into these qualities is part of a four-year project at KASK, directed by Dr. Hilde Bouchez and Eva Van Regenmortel. Part of the research looks into these and other qualities in general, and in particular in the work of Maarten Van Severen and other contemporary designers. A second part of the research will test these preliminary qualities with students, throughout their own design practice. The results will be shown in 2016-2017 at the Design museum Gent & KASK, and be published in a catalogue.

Prof. Dr. Hilde Bouchez is affiliated as a researcher directing a research on phenomenological qualities in design at KASK / School of Arts of University College Ghent where she also lectures. She is also lecturing design theory and criticism at the Design Academy Eindhoven and is advisor to The Maarten Van Severen Foundation.

Creativity and the environment or The material as partner

2014

Catherine Willems

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Creativity and the environment or The material as partner

2014

Catherine Willems

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Of all the objects we have seen and admired during our visit to India, the Lota, that simple vessel of everyday use, stands out as perhaps the greatest, the most beautiful. The village women have a process which, with the use of tamarind and ash, each day turns this brass into gold. But how would one go about designing a Lota?… Of course, no one man could have possibly designed the Lota. The number of combinations of factors to be considered gets to be astronomical — no one man designed the Lota but many men over many generations. These are the words Charles and Ray Eames wrote in ‘The India Report’ in 1958. The Government of India asked for recommendations on a programme of training in design that would serve as an aid to the small industries; and that would resist the present rapid deterioration in design and quality of consumer goods. The Lota was chosen, according to Ray, “as a fixed symbol of utilitarianism in an evolving pattern of design. It could have been anything else from the day to day lives of the people.” Obtaining insight in design and ‘design thinking’ is a true challenge involving many disciplines. There is for example the growing trend of biomimicry or how scientists and designers mutually turn to nature to find inspiration for future products and processes. How can a gecko walk on the wall and the ceiling? Is a spider’s web as strong as steel? How do the self-cleaning properties of the leaves of a lotus flower work? One of the best known examples of biomimicry is Velcro. Annoyed by the repeating problem of burrs sticking in his socks and his dog’s fur, a Swiss inventor, George de Mestral, discovered the hook-and-loop structure that became the basis for Velcro. The intention of ‘bio inspiration’ is not just to copy nature. The labs where this type of research is conducted do not aim to reconstruct an exact copy of a lotus leaf but develop related applications such as self-cleaning surfaces. Over the last ten years we also saw a trend towards collaboration in creation processes which focus on the process rather than on the final product, ultimately questioning the role of the sole geniuses. Everybody knows the terms ‘co-creation’, ‘anthropological design’, ‘participatory design’, ‘social design’ etc. Although these approaches share a common goal, namely to drive, inspire, and inform the design process, not much is written about the socio-cultural context of creativity. What is the effect of the environment and how do tools, techniques and materials affect creativity? Marc Higgin, a doctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen, devotes his work as an anthropologist and designer to clay. Using this material he explores the relation between landscape, matter and creative practices. He focuses on: “the active role that environments play in our evolutionary and

Creativity and the environment or The material as partner

2014

Catherine Willems

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

cultural histories”. The same accounts for my own research that is dedicated to vegetable tanned hides and footwear design in different environments. The material I have seen and used mostly during my work as a designer-anthropologist is vegetable tanned buffalo hide. The shoemaking artisans in North India I conduct work with have a bag tanning process which, with the use of calcium, bark and oils, makes the hide ready to use for their footwear. The same question as the Eames asked when talking about the Lota can be posed: ‘But how would one go about designing a Jutti (leather shoe with closed upper worn in Central and North India) and what happens when you treat the hide in a particular way, what happens to the hide and the Jutti’s during the different seasons, e.g. rainy versus dry season? The material is far from a static entity with fixed attributes. There is no such thing as leather. There are many types of leather, and even coming from the same animal, no two hides are the same. The tanners and artisans know what happens if they treat the hide in different ways. Even when human intervention stops, the hide still grows and undergoes changes due to weather and light, being worn or not worn. DESIGN AND MAKING There are two extreme visions of what is understood by ‘design and making’ (Willems 2013). Following the doctrine of hylomorphism -first formulated by Aristotle, design and making involve the bringing together of form and matter. Over the centuries this model became increasingly unbalanced, as form came to be seen as imposed by an agent with a particular idea in mind, while matter, thus rendered passive and inert, became that which was imposed upon (Ingold 2011). The design as idea is an immaterial form to be imposed on a material substance. The philosophical term and intuition ‘God’s eye view’ offers a broader frame to this doctrine. In the intuition of the ‘God’s eye view’ we humans look upon things, people, the earth and, indeed, the whole universe as if we were able to take the point of view of the only outsider in the Western cultural and religious tradition, i.e. God. Of course this need not be a universal human intuition – in fact, anthropologists know this is rather specific to the Western tradition (Pinxten 2010). In this first intuition, design, followed by making, are rendered context-free and objective products. According to Tim Ingold (2013), making, in terms of this intuition, is thought of as a project. We can approach ‘design and making’ from another angle, a second intuition. This intuition can be called the ‘in habitat position’, using the words of Tim Ingold, or the ‘natural standpoint’ mentioned above. Here, neither design nor making comes before the other: rather, both emerge together as twin outcomes of the process. Making is deemed a process of growth (Ingold 2013),

Creativity and the environment or The material as partner

2014

Catherine Willems

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

while the outcomes of the making process are described as ‘things’, not ‘objects’. In the last two decades, various authors have emphasised this process of growth, focusing on a range of materials. For example, in his essay ‘On weaving a basket’, Ingold (2000) dissolves the binary between making and growing. Baskets are made of long, flexible sticks which have to be bent into shape. The weaver begins with a spiral and the basket slowly develops in the weavers’ hands. The idea of applying a form does not fit well in this scenario. The material is not just formed, it is also formative. With ‘Biocouture’ Suzanne Lee follows the latest developments in biomaterials and biomanufacturing that have potential consumer application. ‘Biocouture’ looks for example at the growing aspect of material, with its focus on cellulose which has been around for millennia. ‘Biocouture’ transfers materials from the natural world in order to explore their potentials and determine whether they can work in different contexts. The bacteria, and the cellulose that is the result, are grown in sheets under controlled conditions in a laboratory setting. But possible they can also grow into other shapes. The bacteria and the material outcome are natural, recyclable and biodegradable. The aim is to grow as much of it as you need, while using minimal resources (Lee 2012). How people make objects and how they use them is very much connected to the environment and the context. More than fifty years after its publication, The Eames Report is still frequently cited in the explosion of contemporary discourses surrounding design. Unfortunately, the cultural association in the subcontinent of the Lota with hygiene, and washing oneself needs to be considered too. 200 years ago the Lota was still frequently used in Indian households to transport water. With the laying of water pipes and taps the need to go to the well and to transport water is diminished. If the village women have access to running water at home, they don’t need Lotas. Using or not using a Lota is not really a matter of choice, rather it stems from a lack of choice. The same accounts for the making of footwear in India. Should there be openings in other jobs or in higher education the artisans would not hesitate to switch their careers. The ones who work with leather (like butchers, tanners and shoemakers) are ranked below all other crafts because the material was and is considered ritually polluting in the Indian caste system. Our appreciation of the craft as such is probably greater than that of the artisans themselves. In my research on design and footwear it is obvious that different environments and climates lead to different footwear (which in turn, might influence gait). From a biomechanical point of view, good contact between the surface and the feet is needed as input for the body to adjust to different positions and surfaces and to control its balance and stability. In the broader context — looking at the cultural and biomechanical functions of

Creativity and the environment or The material as partner

2014

Catherine Willems

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

footwear — I consider good footwear to be part of an unbroken proprioceptive loop that runs from the brain of the person wearing the footwear, through the feet and into the surface walked upon; then to run back again, allowing the individual to monitor and adapt the pattern of their gait. Making new models with the artisans is a means with which to engage with the artisans and to rethink design and not an end in itself. The focus of design could instead of being on the preservation of a particular set of skills, be on what it means to make things, including many contexts and practices. The way objects are made in different contexts and with different materials can offer another perspective on what the role of a designing researcher can be. Is this to foster creativity, ownership and empowerment, rather than appearing as a final authority on creativity? We can return to Eames’s vision of the designer as a facilitator who empowers social groups and more broadly to their program for a socially conscious design to confront the homogenizing forces of globalization. Eames’s conception of design as a bridge between the traditional and the modern has a new urgency and resonance in the face of a growing gulf between the urban, international locations for design, and the rural, vernacular basis of craft communities. In the end, however, these concerns cannot be said to belong specifically to India. They point to the larger dilemmas linked to the economy of design. My research wants to challenge and add nuances to oppositions between invention and convention and between innovation versus tradition and wants to stimulate the capacity to combine traditional motifs in new and challenging ways and not measure the designer’s abilities in terms of a sole innovation. It is a call to see creativity as immanent in all moments, and thus it cannot be the preserve or property of a particular institution or of particular individuals. Collaboration between disciplines, a focus on the creation process taking into account the environment and the materials all make the designer/ maker aware that a balanced way of making is necessary in the coming era. Catherine Willems is affiliated as a doctoral researcher to KASK / School of Arts of University College Ghent where she also coordinates the shoe design studio of the Fashion Department. Her research Future Footwear focuses on the creation and on the wearing of footwear in a particular context. Willems explores the relation between materials, skills and design methods in various communities and revisits the conventional thinking on design, production and creativity. catherine.willems@hogent.be

Collecting - Trying - Refining - Applying

2014

Clara Vankerschaver

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Collecting - Trying - Refining - Applying

2014

Clara Vankerschaver

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Crafts are easily associated with a high level of skill. Starting out as a novice and religiously dedicating oneself to becoming a master craftsman has been the traditional trajectory. Yet from the very first attempt at a new skill, we are engaging in craft practice. Already, making a stab at things holds the promise of growing into a certain skill. The decisive moment may not be from novice to master, but from passive to active. Although most craft skills can amount to well-respected complex extremes, at their core lie simple strategies. According to sociologist Richard Sennett a true craftsman is driven by the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Making an effort, trying your best, even at a first attempt constitutes a craftsman. The question is not so much at what level or how good you are, but more if you are willing to engage in the first place. Part of my research is looking at textile-related craft skills that could be of use in an everyday context, presenting craft strategies that can engage people from passive consumers to active makers.

Clara Vankerschaver is affiliated as a doctoral researcher to KASK / School of Arts of University College Ghent. Working on the project Textile as a vessel for tacit knowledge she investigates how practical textile related skills could be effectively transmitted, aiming at renewed practice.

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

2014

Siegrid Demyttenaere (Curator)

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

2014

Siegrid Demyttenaere (Curator)

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

FAQ (27-30 June 2013, KASK Gallery) is an exhibition that raises questions. Everyone is questioning himself or herself during the creation process. Some processes start from a question of a third party (an assignment), others start from a pure need to create. In both cases, the ‘creator’ is questioning everything. This interdisciplinary exposition of a selection of graduation projects related to the design department of KASK aims at causing confusion, and thinking outside the box. The visitor is challenged to ask questions, just like the students did. Some of them will find answers, others will be left with even more questions. In order to find out more about a project, the questions in themselves can be the answers. FAQ – frequently asked questions is a notion taken from the internet. A list of questions is composed, based on the most frequent questions about something. In most cases answers are provided as well. In this exhibition there are no direct answers, neither to the questions the students asked themselves, nor to the possible questions of the visitors. The viewer can take the initiative to look for answers in the ‘black’ boxes, without being sure to actually find any. The disciplines also are questioned, but they raise questions at the same time. If boundaries are fading, new insights arise; challenges and interesting debates spring to life, which help to look at your chosen path from a wider perspective.

— — — — — —

BART DE ROY Musical Instrument Construction Am I working indecisively? Which personal design would be the ideal? How can we approach iconography in a scientific way? Does a synergy of sources always appeal to the imagination? As an independent entrepreneur, is it possible to keep collaborating with someone who has the same interests? Does the plutocratic consumption of digital information prevail over the thorough study of recent and decent literature?

JAKOB DE JAEGE Musical Instrument Construction — asymmetric or harmony? — What is the freedom of movement of wood? — What is the historical importance? ONDINE CANTINEAU Musical Instrument Construction — What am I doing? — Does this need string tension? — Why is everything so big?

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

2014

Siegrid Demyttenaere (Curator)

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

— — —

—

— — — — —

— — — —

SARAH OYSERMAN Multimedia Design How do we relate to objects and how does their size and the context in which we see them influence our experience? Has a piece of decoration, made in function of the theatre, really the same functionality as e.g. a design object or an everyday utensil? Can I transform myself to an object of art by standing on a volume, like an art object on a pedestal, or by merging with it by crawling inside of it? Are these objects then props in a performance? Can a piece of scenery also be an autonomous sculpture when it is detached from the context of a stage? LINDA BAUMSTEIGER Textile Design How can I create a tension between what is shown and the tactile experience of it? Why do I constantly think that doubt (in the work process) has to remain invisible for others? Are boundaries between the various disciplines more and more subject to fading? Can I balance between the free and the applied arts in an unscrupulous manner? Does an independent object lose its value when it is transferred to a product for use? MILAN VERSTRAETE MILAN Multimedia Design Will 200 newton be enough when the linear actuator is placed on a radius of 110mm? Can I bridge the difference in height of 798 millimeter with a movement of 130 millimeter if I take a radius of 75 millimeter? Will the elastic cover cause extra resistance for the movement of the wings? Is the distance of 700 millimeter between the armrests enough for an ergonomic position? Which type of wood could I use to create the strongest possible construction with a section of wood that is as small as possible? LUCAS STRAETMANS Fashion How many shades of gray are there? and pink? and black? and green? and yellow? and red? and purple? and yellow? and blue? Does a collection have to be build like this? – Why? Does this match? Does this contribute anything? – Does it fit in this series?

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

2014

Siegrid Demyttenaere (Curator)

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

— — — —

Does this speak enough? What was my concept again? Is it beautiful? – Does it matter? Will people like it? – Does it matter?

ELISABETH CLAES Fashion — What is a mother? — What is horizontal and what is vertical? — What does logics mean?

— — — — —

PIETER VANHOUTTE Graphic Design What is the position of a robot such as a drone within its team? How can design influence this role and improve the collaboration between man and machine? How does a robot see things and how can it interpret what it sees? How far can you go as a designer to solve problems in the field of ethically charged subject such as drones? Does a drone have to become a sort of comrade to the people whom it works with? NIELS COPPENS Multimedia Design Can one hurt modern man without stealing from him? Does one have to take the form of the enemy if one wants to criticize him with effect? Does design equal deceit? Is the commercial motivation able to take into account the social needs of society? Can I please help deciding? Oh thank you.

—

LAURA CAROEN Textile Design What does nomadic existence mean? Did my experiences as a traveler influence my choice of theme? How can I transpose my textile design to a monumental visual idiom? Are my transobjects useful?

— — — —

CHARLIE WHITTUCK Multimedia Design What is wrong with the products I can buy today? What does sustainable design really mean for my community? Why should design be doing more to improve our lives? Can sustainability make me happier than I am now?

— — —

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

2014

Siegrid Demyttenaere (Curator)

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

— — — —

TAMARA VANDECATSEYE Graphic Design Can we experience characters outside the context of language and acknowledge them for the unique forms that they are? Is there something like a ‘basic form’ of each letter? How far can you go in manipulating the form without affecting the given forms that we know and use? How will the evolution of the character further develop taking into account the newest technological developments? EMILIE FAVRIL Focus Design and Furniture (Interior Design) At which point is the construction sufficient with respect to stability? How can I realize a junction in an orderly manner, without making the weldings all too visible, and guarantee solidity at the same time? How can I realize my vision of design regarding the subtle, pure point of contact with the floor? How do I connect the leather seat with the steel substructure with respect to appearance, stability and purity?

ZIAZIULCHYK DZMITRY, COLPAERT JANA, NOULEZ ROBIN, WOUTERS BO, DEWAELE STAN, DAEMS KIM, SPIESSENS SANNE, IMBRECHTS DOLF, WANTENS LANDER, ROSSCHAERT MAARTEN, DE CONINCK RUBEN, BLOK SAM, VANTIEGHEM BERT, VERHAEGHE LISE, VERMORGEN TARS, GEUDENS JEROEN, PRAET MAX Landscape development — How to improve the legibility of the landscape? — How to reconcile visions and concepts with attainability and economic reality?

2014

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS MAKING?

Catherine Willems

Clara Vankerschaver

Laura Caroen

Hermine Van Dijck

Linda Baumsteiger, Sarah Oyserman, Lucas Straetmans, Milan Verstraete

1: Laura Caroen / 2: Lucas Straetmans

1: Elisabeth Claes / 2: Ondine Cantineau

Sarah Desmet

Colophon Publisher: KASK and Conservatory / School of Arts Gent Co-ordination and editing: Els Roelandt, Bram Crevits, Ilse Den Hond Texts: Hilde Bouchez, Catherine Willems, Clara Vankerschaver and Siegrid Demyttenaere. Language editing: Steve Marreyt Photography: David Willems Photography (pp.45-54), Aaron Lapeirre (pp.63-68) Design: Studio Jurgen Maelfeyt Printing: New Goff Edition: 1000 copies Thanks to: Sarah Desmet, Wouter Decorte, Els Huygelen, Claire Stragier, Pascal Desimpelaere, Katrien Vuylsteke Vanfleteren, Jan De Pauw The research projects Textile as a vessel for tacit knowledge by Clara Vankerschaver, Future Footwear by Catherine Willems and Research into the phenomenological qualities in design by Hilde Bouchez are funded by the Research Fund University College Ghent. This publication was initiated by the design and architectonic design departments and published on the occasion of 2014 Milan Design Week. www.schoolofartsgent.be KASK and Conservatory School of Arts 6, Jozef Kluyskensstraat 9000 Ghent Belgium

Cover: Sarah Desmet, Inside the Wox, 2012 Sarah Desmet (1979) lives and works in Ghent. She is a master student of multimedia design at KASK / School of Arts Ghent.