Invention beauty morality

1 GETTING STUFF UNDONE

Last time Ive tried to include everything and everyone was on architectural
workshop this summer. In the end weve had three unfinished projects and the story
about how did we argue with each other (so you present us that you are just unable
to work together? question from the audience) and EVERYONE was unhappy with
the result.
but it was the most stimulating experience Ive had in last 3 years.
I am unhappy with this essay I couldnt finish witch the approach Ive chosen. The
esteemed reader wont be happy either.
Once there was a Hungarian intern in the office of Louis Kahn. He wasnt good at
anything, he wasnt doing anything. Everyone asked Kahn - why wont you fire him?
He told me that when this guy is present while working with the creative team, his
presence stimulates others. He didnt tell the team
I could write somehow coherent, somehow smart essay on a limited topic. Or
something witty various architectural workshop taught me how to do a brain gym.
But what you have here is something more and less at once.

2 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY

REMAIN THE SAME.
Weve told each other that real culture is about discovering yourself. In this case you
find different ways to discover same truth.
On a postmodern contrary If there is no single truth and punkt widzenia zaley od punktu siedzenia (viewing
point depends on sitting point) then, we should do what fits us because the only
truth is the one we discover. Marta Leniakowska in her essay on Morality in
Architecture comments that this kind of approach sometimes ends up in choosing
an ideology we like in a supermarket of the postmodern world and not having any
true one in the end. In other worlds its better to know your place and go beyond it
than to superficially pretend that you can really engage in all of them.
Lets start from the first starting point. Even if we believe in common truth and we
want to discover it your interface to interfere with the world is incomplete. Our
perception suffers from a large range of biases:

BIAS we prefer new

unknown is enemy

but on the same time

BIAS we prefer something that fits our knowledge

boring

BIAS others,
BIAS known is

Can the beauty be invented? Or can it just be discovered? During the discovery of
the beauty, that is timeless we have to use our own senses overcome multiple
biases that are dynamic and not separable from both senses and intellect. Good
luck.

3 I AM AN ARTIST ON LIVING MY WORK OF ART IS MY

LIFE.
In the book Think like Leonardo da Vinci which try to insight the life of one of the
greatest thinkers and suggests application of some methods that he used.
Under creation of this book lays deep belief that we can improve, and moreover
much hope that this improvement actually has sense. In one of the School of Life
videos there is mentioned a concept that every age has a similar amount of
geniuses, but its the clear mission, very strong narrative of particular eras that did
let some of them outshine the others.
Michael J. Gelb introduces some kind of criteria or interface for interacting with the
world.
Curosita - curiosity
Dimostrazione experiment and test all you learn
Sensazione use all your senses and sharpen them
Sfumato deal with ambiguity
Arte/Scienza balance this two elements and merge one into another
Cosporalita - care about the body your interface and tool
Connesione relate everything to everything and every criteria you see above with
each other, relate relate relate.
What differentiates this set of criteria from unity-contrast-symmetry/asymmetrycomposition-proportion-rhythm or other aesthetics set of criteria is that they are
more holistic and are designed to apply to nearly everything.

In this model of development brain is supposed to improve as we age and we are

supposed to evolve more. Yore elderly were a masters of life. They had instinct,
experience and they were respected. Nowadays as we are changing quicker from
one narrative from another (Primer on Postmodernism) people as they grow older
lose their mental legibility of surrounding world.
Emphasis on youth and speed that we face nowadays seems to be quite contrary.
Many people become somehow useless as they age used machines we need to
replace. Occupations that dont require intellectual work expose that we die more
and more every day this happened to my parents who are physical workers. Brain
is the only organ that can improve with age and the same was explained by a
Dreyfus development model (modern project-management alien terminology). Most
people stop at the stage of advanced beginner.

Figure 1: Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

So we are not able to become experts and find our place so easily anymore. And
when someone is unrooted its easier to use him and manipulate him. You could be
expert in being a mother or even in complaining, but what is important is to try to
understand your role. Without it your sincerity can be used against you and in the
end you wont create anything that will be able to improve world in any way.
What differentiate art of living from a lifestyle is that is a process of acquisition.
Church, authorities, governors give us some advices and rules, but rules dont mean
much without a journey.
If so what is the purpose of styles? Maybe it is because people are not able to
handle all ambiguity of life and they have to jump between narratives that doesnt
supply them enough?

In the end theory about sinusoid within art styles is modern one and was invented in
the moment where it didnt have an application there were no universal, official
styles anymore.
As Im not sure whether book about programming will be tempting enough for
aesthetics professor I attach following excerpt.

In one of the Dreyfus studies, the researchers did exactly that. They took

seasoned airline pilots and had them draw up a set of rules for the novices,
representing their best practices. They did, and the novices were able to improve
their performance
based on those rules.
But then they made the experts follow their own rules.
It degraded their measured performance significantly. 7

In my opinion beauty is discovered all the time because there is no normative for
explaining it, no eternal ideas. Beauty is a process and discovery of it is also a
process process of becoming more aware of yourself and overcoming the bad
truth once weve been able to notice that. Therefore more advanced way of taste
judgement is instead of establishing some rules or ideals, to establish holistic
criteria of everything which go only as far as they can go and at the same time try
describe everything the art of living.
The real genius, the truth, the beauty is probably something that cannot be taught,
you have to go through process. But to go through it you have several methods
that can help you.

4 THE METHOD AND THE DANGER

Most of the true experts Ive met in my life werent only talking how to do things
they were warning of possible results
When I told my diploma teacher that I would be keen on researching inventive
methods more, she slapped me down by saying that many western companies
transform that kind of methods cynically into tools for making the money and they
work perfect this way as well. She didnt tell it but I think she meant that one should
share this knowledge only with people who know how to deal with it.
Maybe thats why you can find lots of semi-scientific publications in this field
connected to design and project management and much less for architects or
artists.

Second reason is that if someone is sensitive enough, he can grasp the same from
reading Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Georgio
Vasari. As Andrzej Stasiuk, Polish writes says To reading, likewise everything else,
one needs to have talent. Maybe if you are curious enough you could get the same
depth from looking at a stone, only you wouldnt have any language sophisticated
enough to express it. Language isnt very precise tool anyway.

Figure 1: Question #23 of Unfinished 365 questions on architecture in one year

Unfinished like this essay

My friend read The art of War for managers based on Sun Tzu. She told that she
doesnt like texts of Chinese old masters, because they leave too much ambiguous.
She needs a set of rules that are instantly applicable. War is just a tool, but it was
between the words of ancient general but he saw what is beyond that tool, why do
you have do be a great general, who will suffer if you will fail (in which book for
bank accountants could you read that your actions can cause a bankruptcy of a
country?), in his description war was really beyond killing people in efficient way. In
modern explanation nothing survived in between.
Edward de Bono introduces his method - lateral thinking, to train creativity in
ordered manner. Unfortunately, even though the exercises can be repeated
infinitely, at some point the method stops to be stimulating because it requires too
little independence from the user. As we mentioned before only people who stop at
Advanced Beginner state need simple rules, if you try to evolve you build on your
own experience gained through that rules, in between (prayer in Monastery
repetitive routine, at some point its not enough just to repeat prayers)
As you advance and become the part of the system, as you dig deeper (mind maps
Tony Buzan) relate everything to everything.
At this moment I usually try to imagine some African peasant and application of
such a pathetic sense in his life. I worked in Zeev Baran office in Israel who had his
own, clean-cut approach to architecture Function, System, Perception. He
collaborated with various people - both government of Israel and people from
villages in Africa, and that is what hes learned: in his opinion greatest humiliation of
human being is loss of perception.
If so, theyre even more privileged then we are, even though living in dirt and
feeling pain every day, even if they are not supposed to acquire sophisticated
concepts. Modern conveniences were probably designed to improve, to sharpen
ourselves, instead we can become less unitary in our humanity. Roles change,
treatment of women changes, complexity of art changes.

5 TESTING THE METHOD

Dimostrazione so lets develop some tools to try to challenge it. I tried to conduct
esthetical survey. Every participant could propose criteria, every member of jury
should also add them. You could send anything performed using paper, brain and
describing space. Luckily, people werent as stupid as I am and lost in lack of orders
and brief presented quite narrow bunch of approaches. I tried to use scientific
approach while evaluating the sketches to have anything that would merge this
freedom together.

Winning sketch using the method.

Winning sketch by voting of jury

Two other interesting sketches

Language good name of the criterion, legible for all included in process of
perceiving the art. I couldnt just take the criteria Ive read about after Ive seen
sketches I added sincerity and my colleague added idea
Craft If you cannot transmit what you want to say through talk, craft became
important. Not surprisingly, aggressive draft and colors worked the best. People
seemed to trust sketches that were confident, but not hyper realistic or simplified
ones.
Idea Purely intellectual sketches didnt do well in the voting. Ones that included
senses were much more successful. In the architectural routine its possible that you
can add what is missing through nonverbal knowledge. It seems that criterion that
would describe intellectual values of the work would be very useful and the vision
of future paradoxally was closer to grasp that
Model thinking on Coursea
Michael J. Gelb "Think like Leonardo da Vinci"
Marta Leniakowska "Co to jest Architektura. Moralno Architektury", essay on
"Architecture and Morality" by David Watkin
Edward the Bono Beautiful mind