Tim and Siv discuss the book «Making»

(Reflections edited May 2020)

In this text I describe some of the central topics in Tim Ingold’s book «Making» and relate them to my own thoughts and ideas. It is written in the format of dialogue although I did not talk to Tim Ingold. Yet. At some point it would be very interesting to get Ingold’s response to this. Some of the parts are more evolved and reflected upon than others as this is a text in process. (For more detailed resumé of the book, see notes in my orange notebook.)

AIMS OF THE BOOK «MAKING»

-Bring things back into life.
-Close the theory/practice gap
-Restore knowing at the heart of being
-Turn towards the world and what it has to teach us

KNOWING FROM THE INSIDE

TIM: Thinking through making. The only way to know is through self-discovery. Karen Barad: «We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because «we» are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming» (p.5) Correspondence is not to describe the world but to respond to it. Anthropology as an art of correspondence, and a speculative discipline; imagining what life could or might be. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture are the four A ́s. The boundaries between the disciplines disappear. It is wrong to think of learning as a transmission of ready-made body of information, because we learn by doing. (p.13)

SIV: Artistic Research is exactly this; about standing in the middle of the making while researching and reflecting. I think it is an honest way of doing research, because it is not about observing from a distance, claiming to be objective and arriving at solutions and final, universal truths.

(Note to self: Write about how LaTour describes the difference between traditional, scientific research and taking things out of its context to observe, and the artistic research, about observing close-up and from a distance, Actor Network Theory etc. Look at text from the white book I borrowed from Sunniva, I probably have some notes on this somewhere).

I can relate to this speculative approach to a design perspective, and I realize that design and anthropology have much in common. I am not concerned about the borders between disciplines, and I see my work much influenced by both anthropology and archaeology.

OBJECTS AND PROCESS

TIM: The process of making is often swallowed up in the object made (p.7). We should read forward instead of in reverse and focus on the process rather than the object.

SIV: Yes! When finishing an object it often feels like it becomes self-contained, leaving little trace of the process. The object might look easy and obvious, but often the questions along the way, the flow and the struggles of the process is lost, creating a distance between the process and the final object. Are there ways of embed the reflections from the process in the object? Is this even interesting, or is it ok that an object is enough in itself? Maybe this is why I am drawn towards reuse of existing materials and collage technique, an unfinished/unpolished aesthetics, because it leaves traces of what has been, of flaws, of process? And because it leaves the process more open and unfinished it casts forward towards something that might become instead of closing and concluding. To read forward, like Tim writes, is about speculations, and relates to what Carl DiSalvo in his essay «Design and the construction of publics» calls projection (https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ desi.2009.25.1.48).

Objects that are enough in themselves are stopped, fixed, finished and do not open up for interaction and activity. Process, activity and movement, in contrast, do not stop but are in constant flux. Objects have been my focus as a designer in the past, and now I want to explore activity and interaction more.

OBJECTS AND MATERIALS

TIM: Materials have life and are active, while objects are stilled. We often think of making as a project, but Tim think of it as growth. We should soften the distinction between organisms and artefacts, because they both grow and are made. The difference is the extent of human involvement in generation of form. The properties of materials (for example the stoniness of stone) are not attributes but histories. (p.30). Materials do not exist, they are substance-in-becomming, always on their way to become something else. Making is an act of correspondence, not interaction, because the maker has to follow the material. The artisan wants to know what the material can do, the scientist was the material is.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas famously stated that dirt is matter out of place.

SIV: Dirt as matter out of place corresponds with my interest of looking at things out of its usual context (and the disobedient objects) as a way of unfolding meaning and value. The stoniness of stones corresponds with the hammerness of hammers; what makes a hammer different and similar to other things, and at what point does something start and stop being a hammer? Can hammers both grow and be made? I could make hammers from materials I find in nature, and I could do the same with materials I find in the human-made world, as a way of exploring how the different degree of artificial/natural materials influence the process of making and what things are made from it. It will not grow to be a hammer even though I use natural materials, will it? In both cases I control the process and have a specific outcome in mind; a hammer. Is there even something we could call a hammer that grows without someone shaping it to be a hammer? Is hammer a concept that makes sense in and of itself, detached from someone having made it, using it and having an idea of why it is needed?

Tim talks about how objects are fixed and frozen and materials are substance-in- becomming. I think materials also in many cases are fixed and already has become something, and I experience the branch of a tree as a more open and alive material than liquid plastic dried in shape by a mold. But maybe this is the point when a material is no longer a material but becomes an object; when the human dominatance becomes stronger than the material agency? But what does plastic want? I find it harder to think of a material as plastic or other fluid materials as having an agency, in contrast to materials that have a form, like a tree, and I think it is hard to see the boundary between materials and objects. I sense that the more natural the material is, the more open-ended it is and the lighter the human trace in the thing made from it will be evident.

HANDAXES

TIM: The relation between the human body and the soul is a dilemma in the Western philosophical tradition. Aristoteles stated that matter and form is brought together in the act of its creation, an idea that forms the basis for the hylomorphic model of making: Hylomorphism views materiality as form-receiving passivity rather than form-taking activity.

Tim challenges this notion that humans have plans in the mind before they are carried out and materialized. As for the prehistoric handaxe; Tim writes that the form was not imposed onto the material, but was an outcome of the process of flake removal. No handaxe can ever be finished because it comes from a current of skilled activity. Every piece is a testimony to a life of working with the material and is generated in the very unfolding of the force field between available material, anatomy of the maker etc. (p.44) Making flows and is a journey.

The finished artefacts fallacy: archaeologists find things that prehistoric people already had thrown away as waste because they where no longer functional. The archaeologists might therefore arrive at wrong conclusions.

SIV: Ingold writes about how the thing/artifact (in this case the handaxe) is not thought of/planned ahead but is becoming through the process of interaction/correspondence between material, movement and the human hand. This is a contrast to what is written in «Are we human», where the handaxes are defined as «(...) human artifacts because the regularity of the shape surely implies design, the application of forethought, and an intelligent purpose. The physical implement is first and foremost an instrument of thought.» (Are we human, chapter 3, p.32). I definitely think things evolve in the meeting between what a material allows, what the hand can do and what the mind thinks and plans for. There is a pushing and pulling between these different factors and the thing made is never exactly what was planned for.

As for me exploring the hammer, a tool that, like the handaxe, connects modern man with his prehistoric ancestors, there are several trajectories to follow; some of them quite anthropological and semantical; what is the meaning of the hammer/what can a hammer tell us about who we are etc.? .... (Start of an unfinished thought. To be continued.)

PROCESS VS. PLANNING

TIM: In the Middle Ages the architect was considered a ley craftsman, in Renaissance he became the person bringing together form and matter. Medieval builders made drawings, but not detailed plans; drawing was not the visual projection of an idea already fashioned in the intellect, as implied by the Italian word disegno, but a craft of weaving with lines. Designing, like drawing, was a process of work, not a project of the mind. How can architecture be distinguished from building or design from making? (P.55-56)

SIV: This reminds me of a discussion I had with my collegues Ashley, Svein Petter, Ingrid, Dóra and Siren in my exposition of the hammer project, when Ashley said that design started when man put the hammerstone on a stick. Because this was the point that there was an intention, an intervention. Hm... I am not sure. Is intention and intervention what defines design? The handheld hammerstone was also used with intent as a tool, the difference being that putting it on a stick made it a more complex thing and a more suited tool because it gave a heavier strike and you did not hurt your hand the same way you do when striking with a handheld hammerstone. I have experienced myself how the plans I had in my mind ahead of getting into action mode and interacting with materials, fade as I merge with the process. Sure there are components of intent and intervention in this process, but it is so much more. We could say that design is human activity; that anything man makes is design. Following this logic, our ancestors designed. But at what point could we say they differentiated from other species and became human? And if design is defined as human activity, how can we explain that many animals also use tools and create things from their environment and therefore also design? Defining what design really is and when it started seems impossible, and that is fine with me, I feel no need to clarify, I think it is great to leave it open for curiosity and speculations.

I see design as both a discipline of thinking and making; the designer as someone both having intentions and plans and at the same time following along as the creative process starts materializing and living its own life. A detailed, strict plan with a preplanned outcome might result in lost opportunities. In my experience, the most engaging design processes are those starting with an idea of something I want to explore, and where most of the action happens in the process of making while corresponding with the situation; When the tools and available materials, my current mood, physical and mental capability sometimes harmonize and create a flow, other times crash and spark friction; when what is in the heat of the moment experienced as failure force us to explore other possibilities arriving at something surprising rather than what we had planned for.

What Tim writes here is also related to my interest within design, which is not about solving problems and finding solutions, but to open up a space for reflection and exploration of alternatives. So far I have been very much inspired by critical design and using design as a tool to create awareness. Reading Ingold inspires me to further explore the process of making and being more sensitive to the material itself.

TIM: The philosopher Vilem Flusser writes in an essay called «the shape of things»: «Every object of design sets a trap by presenting a problem in the form of what appears to be its solution. Thus we are deceived into thinking of the spoon as a solution to the problem of how to transport food from bowl to mouth, when in fact it is the spoon that determines that we should do so rather than, say, holding the bowl directly to our lips.» Ingold frames the designer’s field as the management of imperfection, and asks how there could be design in a perfect world.(P.62)

SIV: Well put! This is a critique of the design thinking, problem solving framing of design that has been dominant for so long. (Write about the other roles design has. The Discursive book has some good points)

TIM: So what is design if it is not about implementing a plan? Is design the same as making? Design as anticipation of the future; «Far from seeking finality and closure, it would be open-ended, dealing in hopes and dreams rather than plans and predictions.» (P.71) Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa: «Design is always a search for something that is unknown in advance». Creative people are caught between the anticipatory reach of imaginative foresight and friction of the materials. (p.72)

Tim frames design as anticipatory foresight that do not connect to a preconceived idea of a final object but as a process of following materials. Like cooking and gardening. Things instead of objects. Everyday things are not finished but are carried on in their use as you carry on with your life. Things are things and not objects, when they correspond and relate to other things and are defined by a narrative of anticipated use; You design breakfast by laying the table (p70). Melau-Ponty: «To see is to have at a distance». But hearing and touching you come close and merge with it. Where the reach of the imagination meets the friction of the materials is where the human life is lived.

The mound (in Norwegian: haug) as the opposite of edifice. In an edifice each new piece is resting on top of the other, maintaining static equilibrium. A mound has no foundation and is never complete; it is as much of the earth as on it. A mound is not built, it grows. (P.78) In Post-renaissance landscape and monument was understood as complete and fully formed, and land was being shaped as material.

Heidegger: the difference between thing and object.

SIV: Note to self: Change my focus from object to thing, and from finished things to more open-ended. Focus on and explore the process and activity rather than finished object. I have to look further into the distinction between object and thing, and read about thing theory. From wikipedia: «Thing theory is a branch of critical theory that focuses on human–object interactions in literature and culture. It borrows from Heidegger's distinction between objects and things, which posits that an object becomes a thing when it can no longer serve its common function. When an object breaks down or is misused, it sheds its socially encoded value and becomes present to us in new ways through the suspension of habit. (...) As Brown writes in his essay "Thing Theory": We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the window gets filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily. The story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relationship to the human subject and thus the story of how the thing really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation. As they circulate through our lives, we look through objects (to see what they disclose about history, society, nature, or culture - above all, what they disclose about us), but we only catch a glimpse of things. Critics including Severin Fowles of Columbia University and architect Thom Moran at the University of Michigan have begun to organize classes on "Thing Theory" in relation to literature and culture. Fowles describes a blind spot in Thing Theory, which he attributes to a post-human, post-colonialist attention to physical presence. It fails to address the influence of "non-things, negative spaces, lost or forsaken objects, voids or gaps – absences, in other words, that also stand before us as entity-like presences with which we must contend." For example, Fowles explains how a human subject is required to understand the difference between a set of keys and a missing set of keys, yet this anthropocentric awareness is absent from Thing Theory.» (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_theory)

TIM: Objects are agains us, things are with us. «Every thing, for Heidegger, is a coming together of materials in movement.» (P.85). The etymology og thing stems from ting (gathering). «To witness a thing is not to be locked out but to be invited in to the gathering.» (P.85).

SIV: I definitely want to reconsider the title for my phd. Object is not right, because I do not want to work with fixed, finished objects that are shutting people out because it is enough in itself, rather things, because it is all about interaction, process; the back and forth movement and interaction between thing and human. (Thing in English and ting in Norwegian.) And human; If human is an assembly of nature, technology, movement etc., if human is not a fixed entity separated from the things and environment; what, then? (Not sure what my question is here, just that I have to consider it). So human object might be a totally wrong title to what I want to do in this project.

When flying a kite you have three forces involved, says Tim; the kite, the flyer and the wind. But what is the third force in the hammer-human interaction?

TIM: The difference between inhabiting and occupying the world. We occupy a world of objects locked in final forms, while we inhabit by joining the process of formation. A tree does not start and stop, because it is part of the earth, the sky, the leaves, the insects, the woods etc.; it is in process of formation.

SIV: Entanglement. There is no start and end, everything is intertwined and in process. 

BODIES ON THE RUN (this chapter seems very relevant for my project)

TIM: The body as a tumult of unfolding activity. (p.94). Body is an organism, person and thing. Not think of relations between people and things, because people are things too. Jane Bennett: overlap between personhood and thinghood. And how the us and it slip- slide into each other. (p.94)

«Objects and subjects can exist only in a world already thrown, already cast in fixed and final forms; things, by contrast, are in the throwing - they do not exist so much as carry on. And as the things they are, people too are processes, brought into being through production, embroiled in ongoing social projects, and requiring attentive engagement» (Pollard 2004:60, cited by Ingold on p.94)

Animacy and embodiment pull in different directions. «The appeal to agency (...) is a corollary (konsekvens) of the logic of embodiment, of turning things in on themselves. To undo this logic is (...) to exorcise the specter of embodied agency and to bring things back to animated life. As a bundle of potentials in an ever-unfolding field of forces and energies, the body moves and is moved not because it is driven by some internal agency, (...) but because as fast as it is gathering or winding itself up, it is forever unravelling or unwinding, alternately breathing in and out.» (P.96).

SIV: How does this relate to my concept of the disobedient objects? I know that objects can not be disobedient in the sense I pretend in this project, but that it is rather my opposition against design making things comfortable and that designed objects are there for us, not for themselves. The disobedient objects are illustrating an idea. But can we completely remove the concept of agency? Designers definitely often have intentions before making something, and we often struggle to make things work the way we want, to get the technologies right, force the materials into the desired shape etc. We could say that both designer and material have agency, and that the trick is that I listen to what the material wants, and that the material listens to me, and together we create something that is better than what I had in mind before I started interacting with the material, and the material also is surprised at what it was capable of, at the same suggesting new directions that I could not have foreseen. According to Tim, the question of agency rests on a false premise (p.96), and he criticizes Bennett who does not let go of the term agency. «... if our aim, like Bennett ́s is to counter human exceptionalism, why not argue to the contrary, that there is absolutely no reason to credit humans with agency in the first place?» (P.96). Tim writes that humans and non-humans do not possess agency but are possessed by action, and from what I can understand, he is by this opposing the a priori view and that this is where the notion of agency comes from. As he says; «For only the retrospective reconstruction of action already undertaken (...) can we derive the agency that is supposed to have given rise to it. (...) We need a theory not of agency but of life (...)» (p.97) «The idea of agency is the corollary (konsekvens) of a logic of embodiment, of closing things up in themselves.» (p.100)

Tim sees interaction as a dance of agency, and correspondence as a dance of animacy. «To correspond with the world (...) is not to describe it, or to represent it, but to answer to it. (...) it is to mix the movements of one’s own sentient awareness with the flows and

currents of animate life. Such mixture, where sentience and materials twine around one another on their double thread until (...) they become indistinguishable, is of the essence of making.» (P.108).

TELLING BY HAND

TIM: Articulate knowledge is statement about the known. Personal knowledge both grows from and unfolds in the correspondence of the practitioner’s awareness and the materials with which they work. (P.111).

An object that might be used as a tool is in itself no more than a lump of stone; the hand merely an arrangement of skin, bones and muscles, the brain a tangle of neurons. Intelligence happens in the gesture when they are brought together (p.115).

«(...) our very earliest ancestors were likely to have been fibre users before they where tool users.» (P.118) «Of all the proceeds of human artifice, string is perhaps the most wide-spread and least appreciated».

«(..) How can we be responsible for a world that comes to us ready-made?» (P.122)

Philosopher Martin Heidegger is sceptic towards new technology (writing can only be done by hand, a typewriter can only transcript words to paper, p.122), scientist and researcher André Leroi-Gourhan is a techno-optimist. Both are respectful towards human craftsmanship. Leroi-Gourhan questioned the assumed superiority of head over hands that had underpinned mainstream accounts of the rise of human civilization. (p.123)

Think about words like grasping, handling, reaching in relation to understanding. They used to be actual, physical ways of understanding something, now that machines are taking over work that used to be manual, they are merely metaphors.

Ingold is interested in drawing as a way of telling. «A hand that tells is also one that feels and draws.» (P.125).

Sketches are drawings that tell in both senses, they are gestural lines that express the movement that generated them. They are non-propositional and issue from things (including the body) rather than make statements about them. Sketching is a haptic exercise. When a sketch gives way to a technical drawing, the movement is stilled, the drawing becomes optical rather than haptic, devoid of feelings. Writer and critic John Berger: Drawing as the trace of a gesture. (128). The drawing is not the shadow of a mental event, it is a process of thinking, not the projection of a thought. (p.128) «Whereas the project implies a throwing forward, a cast into the future, drawing is the gathering, pulling closer.» (p.128)

TIM: Network; linenes connect and are connectors between points. Meshwork; lines not connecting, they are movements and growth, loose ends (like life itself) moving towards entanglement with other lines. «It can only be carried out in a world that is not fully joined up, not fully articulated. Thus the very continuity of life (...) depends on the fact that nothing quite fits.» (p.132)