Just kidding Ma’am! It was inspired by the video of Sir Ken Robinson on the TED website where he talks about the conventional school curriculums which mar the creativity of the young minds, and it has nothing to do with this assignment, just felt like giving this title as I was struggling how and where to start.
Well, before I start I should apologize for the stupidity of not visiting all these websites long long back when you gave them at the beginning of the semester. It’s about wonderful ideas opening up a whole new world of possibilities and pushing one’s mind to think out of the box. And honestly, since last one week I have been going through them, relishing them, sticking on to them like a bug…finally today it just became like an overload of information which my mind could not take anymore. The things that I was reading bounced back on my face and the mind went numb. And now when there is so much to do and so less of time, I really regret not seeing these sites earlier in detail and going through infinite links and new worlds that opened up with each link.
But here I am not writing all this just in praise of this list. There are some sites which I could not relate to much and some sited like the TED website, IDC’s Design degree show, Banyan girls’ story in Think Change India site, Uday Dandvate’s short write up on today’s design inclinations and needs etc. which attracted my attention more. The IDESIGN site refers to seven ways of thinking - intentional thinking, referential thinking, relational thinking, formative thinking, procedural thinking, evaluative thinking and reflective thinking which I feel is very useful and relevant to a day dreamer like me who just cannot stop thinking for a second. These categories help organizing things and thoughts that seemingly create a chaos and confuse my mind. I feel, seeing things holistically is very important, but at times, analyzing and understanding the parts within this whole becomes equally important. Had I seen this list earlier; it would have helped tremendously to organize and proceed in my studio project.
I had already visited some of the sites like designinindia, thinkchangeindia earlier before I joined the faculty, but the intension and approach then was quite different. Like the link of Satish Gokahale’s design directions in M. P. Ranjan’s blog reminded of PurpleStream – a sister concern of Design Directions where I had applied to work, before I joined FAH.
I don’t think it is important here to discuss what each and every site is talking about, cutting pasting stuff from there, just to reach the target of 3000 words. I think everyone of us would have visited these sited now so the content, design explorations and innovations, certain eye openers and awe creating stuffs may have been already visited.
IMPORTANT ISSUES
What I felt more important is to understand from these sites, what are the key issues of design today. One very predominant obsession today is of the words like ‘green design’, ‘sustainable design’, ‘environmental design’ etc. in response to issues like imbalance in the ecology, pollution, global warming, globalization etc.
Other more prominent issues are of education and culture. The reason I state them together is that they are very much interconnected. More and more people are becoming aware of the importance of looking at issues in a holistic manner and encapsulating a systems thinking approach. Here I would like to quote Uday Dandvate, “It is time to MacroDesign. It is time to think about the world as a whole as opposed to thinking about narrow nationalistic considerations. The fact that our futures are interconnected has never been more obvious before than today. Rather than trying to align along old ideological issues, we need to build tools where individuals can collaborate with other individuals, no matter where they reside to exchange and build ideas. By connecting minds a new order and a new system of generating value will evolve.” His statement sounds so relevant in today’s context.
Also, as technology and its advances are ever evolving, at some point, technology, I feel, is taking a backseat, not in its progress, but in its importance. Slowly but quite evidently, the disciplines of arts, cognitive sciences, cultures, humanities have started emerging as important concerns of today’s society. It is like learning Hindustani music. There is a technique, a precise science in the base which might have been developed very painstakingly at one point in time, but then, as that has to be perfected and is extremely necessary, it has to take a back seat and give space for the aesthetic experiences to emerge. Something similar has been happening around us. Post world wars and industrial revolution, we had diverted all our energies to rebuild societies through science, technologies, structuralism etc. in attempt to establish an order. Not that they are not important now, but they are now well established and can afford to take a back seat to give space to the disciplines of humanities and finer arts to be explored in great details because society building is not just about physical building but also about the metaphysical needs of human beings.
It is like phases or periods in civilizations; things are cyclic and keep interchanging. Structuralism leads to post structuralism; from art deco to modernism to postmodernism…the cycle goes on and on. World is now trying to deal with issues of spirituality, inner reflections, psychology, human emotions etc. This can be understood by seeing projects of the students of important design schools today. I’d just like to mention a couple of projects of students of IDC Mumbai. One student, Anand Prahlad is studying Jung’s theories and trying to understand the psyche of the young minds around the age of 20 where they undergo the confusion in making major decisions about their carreers and important issues of life at this age. The project is called ‘A mirror within’. Another student, Pradipta Das Sarkar is investigating into design of learning materials for students who don’t like exams! So what are they trying to address here. If one could relate this with one of the TED video that I mentioned in the beginning, of Sir Ken Robinson, here he talks about our education system and why it is the way it is. Why don’t we have dance as a subject that is as important as maths or science. Now the reason according to him is more logical than emotional. Post industrialization, society needed more technical people in the society. People who pursued arts or peripheral disciplines had relatively less opportunities in the society which was moving towards a highly industrialized set up. Naturally, more demand was of engineers and scientists and mathematicians. This had a direct effect on our education systems and created this hierarchy among the subjects studied.
So what is happening now? We are standing at a turning point of an era. The way we look at things is changing drastically. We are breaking old codes, replacing old myths with new ones! We are desperately trying to connect the compartments that we have created within our own lives to create a whole which would give some meaning to our existence. We have created many dots, now the effort is to connect these dots and make a picture out of it. So if we see around us today, we will find new schools, education systems, Non Profit making initiatives, coming up so recurrently widespread in the society. And this is happening RIGHT NOW…we can see it popping up all around us! We can see the change happening around us and we, at FAH are the change!
Now when the way of looking changes, lifestyle changes, obviously the markets patterns, products, materials etc. everything would change. Consumers change so products change, the challenges we face and the issues we address today change so the design responses also change…it’s all obvious. With open economies and markets, things from everywhere are reaching almost everywhere. I guess this seemingly obvious displacement is leading to a very important issue; the issue of identity. There is a major identity crisis because of this over exposure. The Indian would feel proud to be able to speak or behave like French and an American would feel ‘cultured’ and ‘peaceful’! if he would know Power Yoga. A European artist would love to come to India and do spiritual art or write on miniature paintings and we Asians would attract people in the name of culture and we as Indians ourselves dream to be settled somewhere in USA. And this dilemma and identity crisis has now led us to questioning our own callings and concerns. We have started questioning what matters to us and we are now daring to go for it. Not that people did not do it earlier, but just open the ThinkchangeIndia site, the GoodNews India, TED site and we’ll be able to see a drastic rise in the numbers of people who dare to move out of the system, challenge it and change it, trying to make it more relevant to current issues that we are struggling with.
And this process is not new. It has been the same since time immemorial. The issues keep revolving, repeating, and responding to the surrounding events. It’s like the question we had asked in our interviews at FAH, where would India be like in 2020. Well the responses then would remain same but the issues might shift from responding to ecological concerns to the issues of humanities and finer arts or any other issue that would be more pressing and raising fundamental concerns of that time and society.
Submitted for : Key Ideas in Design (Part1)
Date : 09 – 04 – 2009
Faculty : Suchitra Seth
Student : Mauli Bavisker (0109)
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