Quote vs. Quote
Posted by ben on 20 Aug 2007 at 09:04 am | Tagged as: design, essays, vs.
“It should be clear that in the applied arts, innovation is not an unceasing hunt for heterodox and unseen things from desert islands; it is not merely an image surgery soliciting the senses, or a tension tickling the nerves. The idea of seeking the new for the sake of being different is nonsensical, resulting from the prevailing contemporary ‘market and goods’ ideology. True innovation is one that is rightly able to link the adaptive history embodied in any artifact with the changes of production tools, whenever they occur.” — Sergio Polano, Emigre 26
“But these forward gropings, this anticipation of an undefined future and the cult of the new mean in fact the exaltation of the present. The new time consciousness, which enters philosophy in the writings of Bergson, does more than express the experience of mobility in society, of acceleration in history, of discontinuity in everyday life. The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present.” — Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity – An Incomplete Project”
oooh very nice!
Polano’s definition of innovation is going to take a little while in the processor before it gets a clear pass. It becomes more adaptation than spontaneous generation.
But I am intrigued with the idea of binding that definition to the evolution of technologies. It relieves a little bit of the pressure. And “artifacts” in this case seem to refer to some set of primary technological archetypes, which sounds like fun.
Habermas wants start dates and end dates, clean breaks between the tides and to see everyone dressed in jumpsuits of primary colors. The world just don’t work that way.
I love the diammetric, Juds. Of course I do.
[...] Emigre just published the history of the Matrix typeface on their site to hail the release of Matrix II. It’s a story of emerging technologies and their impact on design (exemplifying this quote, also from Emigre), of an iconoclastic designer whose work became iconic, and of the kind of debate that has been raging in the design community for years. It’s also the story of a great font. [...]
http://www.tv.com/uservideos/?action=video_player&id=JXMzl2b_5b8JvTbd&om_act=convert&om_clk=viduservids
Haircut for school..any suggestions?