The Unprimed Canvas
What is it about?
Following Design Ecologies 1.1’s inquiry into a field of ‘thinking in design’ we begin to unpack a weird – but great- set of similarities between points of view that are wildly different. As Benedict Singleton has described in an email to me: “ There is a constant doubt about ‘what do we do now that it doesn’t seem obvious what ‘practice’ even is’, but also a lot of ingenuity, invention. And in a slightly different register, they seemed to share a mix of vague horror - the lesson of ‘ecology’ was by no means taken to be some happy-clappy, ‘let’s all be sustainable’ one - and a strange sort of comedy. Felix Robbins and I were talking in the AA bar about how Samuel Beckett the general sentiment seemed to be - ‘try again, fail again, fail better’, or ‘must keep going, going on, call this going, call this on’. It’s like we’re all doing work that makes a certain kind of sense to us and to each other, and although we’re not really sure where it’s going, we’re doggedly journeying on through a surreal landscape. Hopefully, Design Ecologies will be a vehicle to traverse it.” This statement outlines a way in which we can encounter designing in the world as a system of strange communication that is complex and involving.
Why is it important?
Design Ecologies 1.2: The Unprimed Canvas is related to Francis Bacon’s decision to use an unprimed canvas where every mark on the indelible surface is very important. This has everything to do with ecology as a complex system. Drawing forth the idea that design could be embedded within the environment, we can begin to think of ‘design before the design’. The canvas of our environment is not blank but it is indelible. It could be said that design does not need an active interfering designer, as it’s an inherent part of the universe. A more assertive designer could treat design as a giant simulation and just allow things to happen. There could be a series of variables of sequencing, prompting, editing – a situation of coherent play with itself. Every action in the sequencing of prompts could have a spatial consequence on other environments, a process of managing uncertainty through an invisible web of relationships – collapsing the artificial onto the natural.