Redefining Craft & Thinking in Patterns
Notes from a session held at the Luminous Green Retreat, 29th of April 2007
Rachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl
Main theme: using pattern as a language to connect different fields of knowledge and practice - understanding reality as a shared pattern
For example: observing the role of pattern within a traditional crafts context and also the context of digital technologies and new materials - bridging the gap between past and future, old and new
Using such a pattern based approach when looking at historical developments can have an advantage over a linear approach because:
- forwards and backwards are an “illusion”
- changes are complex and need to be understood on a transformational level
- changing patterns can not easily be reduced into dichotomies: good/bad, material/spiritual
pattern in different contexts:
- patterns show the connections between distinct elements therefore helping to understand the essence of things
- regularity, repeatablility: spatial patterns, temporal patterns
- observing patterns allows us to “open them up”
- seeing patterns within patterns
- a way to explore the concept of infinity
- 3-dimensional structures create different patterns depending on our point of view
- noise or randomness can be described as a lack of pattern
- architecture can be described as patterns on various scales that are defined by human behaviour within it
- creation of “alive” architecture (christopher alexander)
- pattern based design solutions allow for flexible modular solutions that can adapt to change
- patterns are a part of cultural identities in the form of artefacts, textiles, buildings
- we recogise different cultures by there use of patterns
- patterns describe proportional relationsips: musical harmonies, golden ratio
- meaning only arises within as when we recognise pattern
- verbal/textual language is a shared pattern
- pattern is a way of coping, a suggestion for survival
- describing the joy of birth
- consciouness is a pattern
Notes on craft:
- crafts add value to an object compared to mechanized production
- craft has a potential for personal development - provides a non-intellectual, physical and contemplative activity that allows us to explore materials
- the cycle of production has been split into several stages that where once connected: research, design and fabrication used to involve one person or group of people working together whereas now we have a situation where these different stages are split between different people working in different places, possibly even continents
Notes on Vasu/Barefoot college:
Main principles:
- living together in a community
- learning by doing, unlearning and relearning (illiterate people can understand basic princinples of electric circuits through practical concepts like colour coding)
- learner becomes a teacher during the process
Importance of 1-liner (a simple, yet imaginative way of describing your organisation/activity), especialy in a country with many illiterate or half-literate people. Barefoot college 1-liner:
ACKNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE RATHER THAN DEPENDENCE
- recoginsing your role within a community
- self-empowering members of a community to do mentoring/teaching
continual challenges sustain the project - being able to adapt solutions for different regions/climatic situations
discussing population growth and sustainablility
- having kids → 2 vs 1.72 or none…
- what does having kids have to do with sustainable issues… (perhaps sustaining a population?)