Question: In design - a problem is solved either elegantly or clumsily. In art - what is undertaken and how is its success or failure known?
Transcript of the audio recording below
Transcript
So, in design, a problem is solved either elegantly or clumsily. In art, what is undertaken, and how is its success or failure not? So our first thing to say is, obviously, aren't design are not totally mutually exclusive categories, of course not. And plenty of people take a design approach to making art.
By the way, I'm making lunch while I respond to a question, so sometimes there might be some noise. I'm making chippea curry. Well, I've got some chickpea curry. I'm just heating up ready. Heating up is the basis of a lot of cooking, though.
Yeah, so there's plenty of, obviously artists who, either because they come from a design background or just because it feels like the right way of working for them, do make art using design approaches. And for example, in the way you phrase it, they might try and find some kind of problem or think about the work they're making as a solution to a problem, even if that problem is aesthetic or formal rather than, I don't know, functional or about utility. So that that's one thing to say.
But I I tend not to I don't really teach art like that. An interesting thing to say, I don't think I am going to publish this as a podcast, by the way, because I think it's too specific to the course that I run. I think. So the first thing says is that the way I teach art is not that way. And one of the reasons that I don't teach it that way, well, the main reason is because that's not how I make art. I don't think of my.... my artworks as like solutions to problems. I sometimes think of them as answers to questions, but the questions are are often quite minor or very open. They might be in the form of what happens when you use this material in a certain way. And then the answer is the artwork.
Whereas with design, it might be more like, how can we make the process of, or how can we make this building more accessible? And then the answer, if you're an architect or something, is to design a really elegant, as you say, sequence of modifications to the building.
Whereas with art, you know, what happens if I, for example, in my last exhibition, what happens if I try and make loads of sculptures, only using, you know, mainly using the materials that are produced or that I kind of have acquired through looking after my two children. So using lots of things like blue tack and kids stickers and hair grips and so on. So that's just a very different way of making art.
And then the other part of the, which, and the reason I, partly the reason I teach that is because that's the way I make up, but partly, I think that way of making art is much more productive in terms of the kind of pedagogical process. It's much quicker. If you do a kind of design approach, you don't do the making till right at the end, right? So you try and find a problem or something that you're interested in designing towards. Or I'd set you a brief, which I'm not really willing to set briefs either in art. I think that's a bit of a problem, which I'll get to in a minute. But either way, you then do all the designing, you troubleshoot the design before you get anywhere near production. You might do kind of R&D with materials and so on, trying to work out the best material. But you don't really get an answer to the question of like success or failure until, or, you know, elegant or not. What was your anyway, your phrasing was better, but you don't really get an answer to that until you finish the whole process, right? And that can take a short amount of time or it would take a longer amount of time. But you have to go through the whole thing and then you have a kind of, yes, it did work or no, it didn't work that well.
And that's fine for design and obviously there's a whole way of teaching that embraces that because it's teaching design. And that is the process. You know, NI's spoken about that hasn any like is interested in that design process. I think that's totally fine.
But on this course in particular, you don't have loads of time. And generally, on an MA, even if it was, you know, two full years or something, I don't think that's a lot of time to make, you know, the shift in your practice that lots of people are seekinging when they come and do an MA. And I think the way of working that I propose, especially in this first term, where you're just quickly trying out materials, is really, you're not, you know, this is then the question of what is being undertaken and how is it successful failure known in art.
What you're really trying to find out, especially in this early part of the course, is not whether you've succeeded in making a good or bad artwork, but what are the things you're interested in taking forward? And are they in the form of questions or problems or certain materials or processes? And how do you articulate those things?
You know, or the other side of art is, of course, not just making art, but being able to articulate yourself in relation to the art you make, which is why we do things like critics and presentations and we'll do, you know, this thing today where we all chat about our work. What is it that you're trying to set up here?
And that's the other difference between between art and design. You know, if we keep them separated in that kind of slightly it's slightly fictional way, right? But it's a useful fiction. What is the difference between art and design?. Is that in design, you know, not always, but often the brief is known, the brief is handed to you. There is a client. There is someone who has a problem and they want you to solve it. In art, half the battle, as it were, is finding out what is the prompt or what is the way of describing your practice or how how do you how do you get to the point where your practice suggests its own ongoingness?
Like, that is a huge issue in art, right? Like, obviously, some people get to make art because galleries and museums keep asking them to make art. But for most of us, no one's directly asking us to make things. You know, hopefully we're applying to things and getting offers of work and so on. But ultimately, you have to have a kind of momentum behind your work, which is personal, not in the sense that it comes from some kind of autobiographical or, you know, absolutely core belief in your person, but rather that the job of education education is really finding that kernel of your art practice, which is going to drive itself so that you don't have to think about too much about why you're making art or the success or failure of each individual piece of art in kind of in the way that you would think about success and failure and design, in the sense that each piece of art is both a success and a failure, but whatever however it comes out, the hope is that the best result would be that it generates thinking towards another piece of art or generates a drive towards another work. And again, you might think of those works in terms of questions that they answer or different combinations of processes and materials and concept or whatever it is or, you know…
I'm, I'm just writing something for my PhD and it's it's all about the relationship of subject matter to, um, the form of an artwork. And so I'm thinking about that. But obviously that, you know, that's, it doesn't, the artwork is not reducible to that problematic or that conjunction of ideas. But it's sometimes quite helpful to be able to articulate things in those ways.
So, to summarise, art and design don't have to be different and you could use a design design led process in art. But one, that's not my way of making art. So it would be hard for me to teach. And two, I don't think that is the most pedagogically beneficial way of teaching art on an MA.
And then leaning into that art and the question of art, then, what is it doing? I think really it's something about methodology, being able to articulate what it is that you're doing and how this drives your work forward, how the kind of your approach, like being able to work out, what is your kind of personal or unique approach to art that generates artworks because you don't have briefs. You do not have problems that you have to solve with art or for the most part, you don't anyway.
And that's kind of the, you know, like, ultimately that's the question of the MA is like, you know, what is your practice? Like, what is it that you do? and you learn that weirdly through doing it rather than through trying to answer that question directly, which again, is just another slight opposition to a traditional idea of design thinking. All right, there's plenty of talking. I'll send you the transcript for this as well if you don't want to listen to it. Cheers, Sally.