“The Reservoir”:Towards a poetic model of research in design

Rosenberg, T. (2000) “The reservoir”: towards a poetic model of research in design. Working Papers in Art and Design.

http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol1/rosenberg2.html ISSN 1466-4917

NOTES:

– Neo-Apollonian philosophy = promotes rationalism in its strictest sense (methodological). p.1

– Neo-Dionysian = celebrate the private and personal; subjectivity above all else (imaginative). p.2

– Popper believes science is universal language p.1

– Einstein downplayed his imagination/creativity as a “hunch” p.1

– Successful research = rigorous methodology and the following up on intuitive “hunches” – Alex Seago p.1

– Flux/Reflux between chorus, drama and spectator the Dionysian communicates. p.2

– The Apollonian is communicated through the text of the drama…moving between waking and dream state and approaching the dream in a critical way. p.2

– The Apollonian and the Dionysian work diacritically. The define, form and inform each other; the one being the complement of the other. p.2

– research that engages in the “hunch”; in other words, “poetic research.” p.2

– Centripetal = Research with a straight line of “intent”; that is a line that substantiates, makes reference and grounds the project. p.4 Converging on the one point of a hypothesis.

– Centrifugal = Research involving movement away from the central focus – divergent

– Mikhail Bakhtin – “Heteroglossia” = the myriad of meanings implied within one linguistic set/language (i.e. social groups, generational meanings, etc.)

– Context is constrained and the weave between the errant line (discovery) and the line of intention (substantiation) is held in this limiting channel. p.4

– Application is complication. (Bachelard quoted by Lechte 1994; p5.) p.4

– Poetic research is rhizomatic in nature it sets out roots and shoots that break and reform, reproduce and transform. p.4-5

– This pulling back equates to a “needing to know” or a “needing to assimilate” and it is an essential part of the poetic program. p.5

– The abnormal paradigm is only made pertinent through “points of inference” and these are configured in reference to “linguistic, contextual and general world knowledge”. p.5

– Shakespeare – “Burning daylight” is an ambiguous phrase in which a complex of possible meanings is clustered. (“The hour is late”, “we are wasting time” and so on). p.6

– An ex-student of mine took three key words in his fields of interest – heterotopias, schizophrenia and the Gaze – and broke down them down etymologically; subsequently recombining them to form new words e.g. hetero-phrenia, schizo-topia, schizo-gaze. Each neologism moved the work in to unexpected and fertile areas, which created an original set of focuses for research/practice.p.6

– Other students wittingly or unwittingly have deployed punning, metonym, metaphor, ellipsis, hyperbole, contextual shifting and other poetic techniques to develop, progress and realize design. These kinds of poetic disruptions are a keen tool in the progression of imaginative research in design. p.6

– the creative thinker has to make a decision about his route without having the full information needed for his choice. p.6

– The Reservoir is a landscape of an uncharted territory waiting to be explored, p.6

– Programme may therefore be considered as a weaving of concerns, themes and theories in order to site design a wider field. p.7

– This mapping is heteroclyte i.e. a series of isolated and unrelated points. It must also be added that this is not brainstorming, in as much as what is being mapped is not outcome driven. p.7

– definition, de-definition and re-definition; acting to process, hone and clarify the area of interest or trigger. p.7

– If the areas of ground are too close the forces will align and the “poetic” will be compromised and end up as a linear pogram [sic]. p.8

– The three trigger areas when mapped in the Reservoir create a triangulation of conflicts p.8

– it creates a platform from which one can build a project (research and practice). p.8

– Paradigm and syntagm shifting are used regularly within the research for project. Context shifting is also widely used. p.8

– Elision, enjambment, metaphor, paradox, pun etc. when applied to research topics and methods will create exciting and original programs for research. p.8

– Used tactically, conventional methods can inform and enrich the creative process and animate a rich field of research. But used absolutely they negate the possibility of research that is “other” to it. p.9

– In this paper I use poetry to describe a process and not the genre. In this reading it is centrifugal. It is a process of disruption and moves to the unconstrained. p.9