The Future of Design

Challenge

A School of Art and Design has the task to prepare students for their professional future, while working with teacher designers of the present. The word future is referring to something which is not yet present and thus cannot be known. Teaching the future of something is extrapolating current developments. If the word future is used for design than the current notion of design is seen as changing. Design of the present will clearly not be the same as the design in the future. The question is if the school of Art and Design can think non linearly enough to support its current students for the future of design.

Design transforms

The fact that design has changed is easily inferred from documentation of design or design exhibitions of the past. For instance the Rotterdam Design Prize Exhibition of 2011 in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen showed works of autonomous art (Matthijs Munnik, Microscopic Opera), bread design of a shop selling bread (Vlaamsch Broodhuys), non catwalk driven fashion, and esthetical lamp design amongst others on equal footing. Around 1987 when I was a student at the Rotterdam School for Art and Design, now called Willem de Kooning Academy, this mishmash of art, sculpture, social projects and design of this Rotterdam Design Prize Exhibition would have been unthinkable. Painting and Sculpture were the main subjects of study, with small groups of students in the department "Publicity" and "Fashion".

Painting declared dead

During my study at the Art School critics declared Painting "dead". Although Hegele declared Art dead, after the same decree on God in the 19th century nobody could deny the success story of the Art and Painting in the beginning of the 20th century. But what "Art" was or is or should be has changed dramatically during the ages. The Art of Hegel cannot be considered the same as Art 100 years later. Heidegger even relates to Art of the Greek period, where everything was ideal, according to his text "Die Technik und die Kehre" of 1955. In the years following my graduation painting was indeed disappearing from the attention of the public, although of course painters could still sell their paintings to the public, which lagged behind the critics for 10-20 years. The painting hype was over - even if the Chinese Painters have established themselves. Instead photography, video, drawing become fashionable. But as fast as these domains became leading the popularity disappeared again. Leaving currently a very small group of autonomous artists, working in a small niche of ever more shrinking autonomous art. There are still very good painters and painting is still sold, but the attention of the public has shifted to "liking" and "retweeting".

Design becomes socially involved

Nowadays not painters but architects are the rock stars of design. Art, autonomous art is just a part of design. If a fashion label needs "Art" in its branding it can be incorporated easily for instance in the Prada Epicenter in New York, designed by Rem Koolhaas where you can shift a staircase away revealing an art gallery. It could also be items for sale. Already during the first decennium of this century autonomous artist were leaving their studio's and going "social", even in Rotterdam. Although Rotterdam as a city is not insignificant, the artist of Rotterdam follow global trends. Art is very much global, which means practically the same in every country and every city. Global art effortlessly overcomes the enormous cultural differences which causes wars and suffering in other domains of existence. Social projects, working in the neighborhood, considering people and their behavior as your medium was a big shift for studio based artistic work.

School integrates design developments

Ten years later the curriculum of the WdKA, School for Design and Art instigates students in the minors "social design" to become socially engaged. Not designing a chair, a dress or making an illustration is leading, but a social design problem. Preferably a social problem which cannot be solved - called a "wicked problem". The way to approach is called "a project". The difference between an autonomous artist and a designer working in the social domain is that the former artist is still living his or her own dream, while the designer wants to signal problem. The solving a design problem - that is starting to make, design or create something - is not fashionable anymore.

From solving to posing a design problem

Solving a design problem is not the main point as can be read in the new magazine of the WdKA "Ik Willem", because the indicated problem is only a problem when it cannot be solved within the project. When humans are trying to live together problems pop up out of nowhere. Already on their own everybody not living an average life can be called a problem. Not only the homeless, the poor, uneducated, refugees, also handicapped people, older people, younger people, pregnant young mothers, the deaf, the blind, prisoners are all easy targets. These are isolated groups. Then all these groups trying to form a community, living together, interacting. The number of potential problems is unquantifiable. But don't underestimate the inventivity of these socially engaged design students. Before you know it you yourself are a social design project. When you don't own a TV set, don't read a newspaper, don't have a relation, are not divorced, are beginning to get older (which is easy from the perspective of 22 year old students), not submit to the terror of the social media you could become a social design project.

School curriculum

The hyper modern WdKA teaching curriculum is based on research about the future of design. The school doesn't want to educate students the way this was done when I was a student. Not teaching painting and drawing when indeed very few people can earn a living with these skills. The WdKA curriculum is apparently foreseeing many possibilities for social design and the contributions which can be made to society coming from young fashion designers, illustrators, advertisers.

The Future of Design

The task of a school to foresee the future can be seen in the perspective of contemporary developments. Abundant at the moment are exhibitions and publications around fashion and textiles containing the word "future". Everywhere, where design relates to technology the "future" is inferred. For instance "The Future of Fashion is now" 2014 in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Based on this title you must conclude that Fashion has a future. This seems trivial. But the same cannot be said of "art', more specifically "autonomous art", like painting. Even if Painting already included technology and electronics 50 years ago, not only in the globally known neons of Bruce Nauman, but also the Rotterdam based artist Woody van Amen. Language is a tool and this tool is shaped by the users. The word combination "the future of art" or the "future of painting" is used just a few times and the video's of Erik Niedling called the Future of Art are mainly documenting contemporary art, art galleries, collectors - not "the future of art" - which just doesn't exists. The contrast with the normality of talking about the future of fashion or the future of design is striking.

Contemporariness of Art

Art can only be "contemporary", as most of the exhibition showing recent art are called (Dutch: eigentijdse kunst, German zeitgenössische Kunst). Contemporary indicates from this time, and stating this also reinforces the notion that art has no future. If Google Image search is used to find images of "future art" you get science fiction views of cities in a gloomy apocalyptic style. Or at best you get some exhibitions called "the future of art" showing contemporary art. Modern Art is even referring back to art of the middle of the 20th century. Modern is followed by postmodern before the total collapse of the system of naming and identifying currents in art. This collapse occurred at the same time as the evaporation of general interest in contemporary art. The public is still interested in art, as can be seen in the booming business of museums and exhibitions an all cities big and small, but this interest is either for the architecture, e.g. Bilbao, with the building of Frank Gehry, which by the way could be called the future of architecture, or subject matter of the "modern art" period, or even before that, the very much approved art, like impressionism. The fact that this art is considered "holy" is shown by the stunning prices paid for these works of art at auctions. Future is of course a notion which resides in language since it cannot be materialized or confirmed yet. Stating that this word just belongs to the category of "language" is dangerous because it suggest that language can be separated from the rest and even be isolated living on its own. In this dichotomy "language" can be seen as opposed to "the visual". Language and certainly text has a tendency to consider itself superior to everything else. Writing about something is dominating it - from behind your writing desk. Writing is criticizing, while doing, acting, painting, designing, performing is an act in the present which can easily go wrong. For instance even if a concert performance succeeds many mistakes are made which can easily be described by an expert critic. All creating can become the victim of this writing. Of course writing itself becomes creating and can be written about. But the other way around is difficult. Which fashion designer shows a dress criticizing a text using fabric, shape and form?

Decline of Text

In a moment of despair about the dominance of text over the visual arts and also very much in admiration of famous texts I once made a figurative drawing which shows a figure eaten by a book with the title, also part of the drawing, "You are text". Philosophy was seen as so elevated and much more important than visual art. Looking back at this drawing of 10 years ago I realize that this drawing is already outdated. Not only the medium "drawing" looks terribly old fashioned even retro nowadays in era of "likes" and "retweets", more importantly the notion of the superiority of text has disappeared. Philosophy seems to have lost its charm but for a very few experts. The god like giants Derrida, Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze, hero's during my study are totally unknown by current students. Are these thinkers punished for not foreseeing the internet and the terror of social media? Theory in art school is a shadow of what it tried to be 20 years ago. The theory section is trying hard to save some of the old canon, meaning that which has happened after 1990. This date is not a coincidence, it is the time of the rise of the internet. Theory as study subject is replaced by what is called research, artistic research, which differs from scientific research, we are in the social domain.

Projectification

Coming back to this drawing mentioned above, if I would make this drawing again it would probably be called "You are a project". During these last decades everything has become a project. Calling building a museum or making a movie a project seems natural, since there is a client, a time span. You have to prepare, to organize, materialize and the museum is delivered, opened for the public, and the project is finished, resulting visits of the public can be measured, the bill can be sent. In the end the result of a project is a spreadsheet of numbers of visitors, likes and appreciation numbers. This way of working has taken over all styles of working and threatens to take over "living". Everything nowadays is a project. Painting in the old sense was developing yourself, working on change, slowly molding your style, opening new vista's while working with a always recognizable signature is not considered right - because an oeuvre cannot be called a project. Nowadays if a designer wants to "do" a painting you organize the production of this painting in China. But not only that, living itself is divide itself in projects. Raising a child becomes a planned project, marrying and separating. Nothing can exist outside this project timeframe. Nothing is allowed to develop itself without a goal, a bill and a resulting spreadsheet of "likes". It cannot be a coincidence then that sooner or later everybody will be projectified. You will always fall victim to the project of ... a social designer. But this projectification is happening now, it is contemporary, what could be the next step, the future?

Decline of the project

Combining the drawing and the future of design, the future title of this drawing would not be "you are a project", but "you are a wicked problem". The wicked problem terminology could be the next step after "the projectification of life". The wickedness is indicating that the complexity of the project is not allowing a solution, within the time of a project. But then the project structure fails - although the designers and researchers are happily sending the bill after making the actors of the wicked problems talk about their problem. The wicked problem construction ensures that the next project follows naturally from the first. In this perspective, indeed, you can make a living as a designer posing design problems.

Decline of the future of Design

The wickedness of the problems will also be the downfall of the projectification of life. Non linearity in social systems makes the world unpredictable and the amplitude will only increase given the population increase and the limited amount of resources on Earth.