On the Evolution of Ideas

How does an idea go through a tool to become a project

Thinking is the most complex cognitive mental process, which consists of reflecting essential properties, features and regularities from reality. Through this process we can create models of the world and represent it according to certain objectives, intentions and desires. The main forms of thinking are observation, analysis and synthesis (rational discourse).

In those three forms certain knowledge also goes through different kinds of consciousness or media and with every step it is abstracted and therefore gains a different kind of meaning.

In the paper Entering a Risky Territory: Space in the Age of Digital Navigation Bruno Latour1 analyses the evolution of mapping and it’s radical transformation since the digital age. The reason for depiction, the means of gathering data and their representation has developed over time  parallel to our society. Typically, following a scientific discovery, the newly aquired knowledge shifts the general understanding of our place in the world and artists are fast to grasp those new notions and interpret them subjectively. Later that change further reflects also on our everyday life. So if in his work Bruno Latour is focusing on the shift of pre-digital and post-digital age and the different notions it gives, the text The New Plasticity by Sanford Kwinter2 from 1986 follows much deeper the transition of knowledge from one area to another. The process starts with the publishing of the relativity theory and the revolution it caused in terms of new understanding of time and space followed by the interpretation in the arts, described by the paintings of Boccioni and the Futurists, and ends in architecture with the project for La Citta Nuova by Antonio Sant’ Elia and his visions. In both texts, as well as in many other interpretations, it is easy to follow the tendency of knowledge to morph its concept as it transitions through different medium. As Marchall McLuhan  famously concluded – The media is the message. However, this conclusion leads to the question – now that we are equipped with such powerful tools, tools which are creating themselves just as actively as we are, how does that change our designs and understanding of our environment?

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On Digital Manufacturing and the Myth of Pressing the Button

As digital manufacturing enters the practise of artists, architects and creatives an appealing idea propagates – now you can just press a button and your crazy design gracefully enters the real world. Countless videos show in an almost magical way how fantastic shapes, without any fault or imperfection are effortlessly woven by a regular 3D printer or a more advanced robot arm. A milling machine creates a masterpiece all on its own and a 3D scanner gets all the perfect dimensions and all materials correctly – all of that at the click of a single button. Right.

Now there is nothing surprising about companies wanting to promote their products by demonstrating their flawless operations, but the perversion itself comes when even creatives support that utopian vision. There is this sense of pride when your design has been manufactured in a mystical technological way and it all goes as planned. No humans needed. Right?