Welcome to *traces*, a sustainability-inspired creative newsletter about life, processes and designing, that includes absolutely no references to design.
✦ Context ✦
If there's something that obsesses me, I try to think about it and it always becomes part of my creative process in one way or another; this is the act of looking. I mean looking in the sense of using sight to investigate, archive or seek inspiration. This not-so-simple act has many points of view, and perhaps because I never reach a conclusion and new questions keep arising, it obsesses me.
As designers (or any other type of creative), looking has always been part of the process. Looking at what others are doing to avoid copying, looking to find trends, looking to research more about something. But although it seems like an innocent or even necessary act, I feel that these days the act of looking stirs up less positive things.
In a time with so many stimuli, focusing on something specific is harder than ever. Ingrid Guardiola (El ojo y la navaja, 2019) explains that this excess can be a deficiency, "the multiplication of images can lead to a numbing of the senses". So this has forced us to move from being spectators to content curators.
In this sense, I wonder why we focus on some things and not others. John Berger, in Ways of Seeing (2008), says that "we only see what we look at, and looking is an act of choice." But what do we base our choices on? For him, we don’t just look at something; we look at the relationship of that thing to ourselves. He also points out that the meaning of an image changes depending on what one sees next to it or immediately after.
This trace connects, for me, with what Albert Rothenberg calls “Janusian thinking”, an idea drawn from Janus, the Roman god with two faces. Janus "looks and apprehends in opposite directions" inside and outside. Janusian thinking is "the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas, concepts, or images simultaneously". A swirl of opposites and contradictory ideas filling the mind creates possibilities for new points of view. In more designerly terms, it is the ability to observe details, coincidences, and rhythms that others "fail to notice". We no longer feel FOMO; instead, we want to find what others overlook.
So, why do we contaminate ourselves by looking at everything that has already been done? I think we look before we start thinking/creating/designing because there’s a certain fear of trusting our intuition, our ability to rely on our own references. We kill off our most promising thoughts for fear of seeming strange to ourselves and to others. We look at what others are doing in case we find new possibilities, but this, however, defines the limits of our imagination. We believe that everyone else knows more than we do, but we have met hundreds of people, experienced many places, entertained a vast variety of sensations and perceptions; we are simply lacking confidence.
Does this mean we shouldn't look at anything? Well, I propose something: why don't we try looking at what seems invisible to our eyes?
✦ Stories ✦
✦ Because looking involves looking at others, I highly recommend the latest newsletter from the thing magazine about finding inspiration in and creative copying.
✦ This article from Elisabeth Goodspread on the importance of taste and being able to select from the vast sea of possibilities.
✦ Being observed can lead to the fear of what others might say, but also the fear of being copied. Sometimes, this arises because we compete to be the best in our field and don’t want to share what we know or have looked/learned. After watching this masterclass by Israel Fernández, where he talks about sharing your knowledge, I no longer keep to myself what I have seen. Instead, I find it more interesting to share it with others and learn what they see.
✦ An exercise ✦
✦ In this interview with Andrés Colmenares, designer and co-founder of IAM and The Billion Second Institute along with Lucy Black-Swan, he mentions that he has his phone interface set to black and white because it helps him reduce content consumption.
✦ In a conversation with journalist Carlos del Amor, he shared that when he takes his young children to the Prado Museum, they only go to see a specific painting, room, or artist, instead of visiting the entire museum. This way, he explained, they pay more attention and better absorb what they see.
✦ What if the content is elsewhere? Eco-theorist Timothy Morton coined the phrase "Contact in content". He explains that “touching something or someone is where content emerges — touching the ground, touching the city, touching another person. An artwork's potential lies not only in the object or in the concept; rather, it is located in the nature of the touch between object, people, and world.”
✦ Extras ✦
✦ Cosmos is the new space where I´m currently saving cute digital stuff.
✦ Regarding the topic of "looking" and media, I highly recommend the book "El ojo y la navaja" by Ingrid Guardiola.
✦ The way Sofia Blu looks at and portrays people spending time outdoors.