Transdisciplinary Design

unstuck-ness

Posted on November 21, 2021

I saw KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME last week.
They said he was unstuck in time. That he had seen it all, the before, the after, that it was all happening always. That the way we thought about time was not how it really was.

Should design put present issues or preferred futures first? Are they the same?

I often feel like I come alive in the world of fairy tales… the spaces I grew up thinking about with unicorns in the woods and fairies in the gardens. I feel understood when Jean-Michel Basquiat says, “I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.”

It seems that one thing that unifies many people from all of the strangely divided realms of our constructed world is the idea that our societal concepts of time are absolute bullshit.

Can we design in the now to shape a certain vision of the future?

“It is of course valuable, especially as a form of entertainment, but for us, it is too removed from how the world is. This is the space of fairy tales, goblins, superheroes, and space opera.” [1]

“. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.” [2]

Maybe the way that we organize our time in every piece of what we do resonates with what passports do… “These led to a system that developed into an obsession with registering everyone and everything.” [3] Nothing can exist outside of our notions of time, being unstuck in time seems like a nonsense idea.

“Before asking ‘what if…?’ ask ‘is there…?’” [4]

And there is. Maybe it doesn’t look like I thought it would. But it’s there. Because everything

always is.

But to know what to look for maybe I need to ask what if… but this itself is born out of

all that is already.

Is all of it just a fluid re-shaping?

Fairy tales are born of what is, of who we are. It feels as though this realm is a clearer and more universal painting of this world’s ‘reality’ than anything else. That the way they are

‘unstuck in time’

makes them special?

This world of ‘fantasy’ has always felt… important? Inevitable?

“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” [5]

Maybe this is why I cried deep in the mountain forest’s dark cave, with a hand on the rock. Why I keep my journals tattered, my painting chaotic and messy, and my drawings scratchy. Something feels dark, ancient, deep. But at the same time, maybe it is bullshit.

“You think I’m insane?” said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.
“You’re still in touch. I guess that’s the test.”
“Barely — barely.”
“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”
Finnerty shook his head. “He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded, “Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.”

– Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

Is this what we try to do as designers? Look over the perceived edge of reality and now into the future to design something new, un-dreamed of?
The power of the margins…
But maybe

it is already

but it’s just in the margins? Or off the page?

What if I were to jump? What does it mean to even go beyond this edge of reality? Seems to me anything and everything that is, already is reality… but maybe there is an elsewhere?

“…borders do not merely exclude and include. They produce a flow.” [6]

A flow between what is ‘real’ and what is beyond?

Maybe this is where I start, I start to see the flow between these borders of time that we have created, and slowly that boundary will become blurry until there is no more

and then it is just fluid

and all just is.

And design becomes a fluid re-shaping

guided by something dark, deep, ancient.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” [7]

“In this regard, perhaps the unfinished, not completely user-friendly, and half-functional design is more ethical than its more effective counterparts.” [8]

Or, there is no counterpart, all is unfinished yet finished at the same time, a

re-shaping of the same ‘stuff.’