This is my first ever blog entry, so I want start with something big and epic. At the office, we had a project that dealt with paleolithic man and early stone tools. As an inspiration for the project, we got a copy of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey 2001 for the office’s DVD library. It’s a film about design. In the Dawn of Man-sequence, a black monolith inspires primitive ape-men to use bones as weapons. A bone-bearing hominid beats the dried skull of a large mammal under an orange sky, and imagines the slow-motion death of the animal. This moment, in which the mind shifts its attention between action and method, from end to means and back, demonstrates a uniquely human skill of applied imagination, or design. This skill drives progress forward, and governs our thinking. Every new task or problem sparks a new evolution of tools, solutions and methods aimed at achieving better, faster or easier results. Our world is generated by this reflex. What I found interesting, was the fact that in 2001, the source of inspiration for the first design act was the introduction of the abstract. The super-smooth surface of the Cartesian monolith is so unlike nature, that the early men immediately understand its alienness. As a sort of ?creation story? of design and technology, the film’s message is surprising: it presents the imitation of artificiality as the original motive for design, not the imitation of nature. I like that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 17:27 and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.