Wittgenstein as Designer
Otl Aicher • 1991
Figures from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1914
Wittgenstein's famous duck-rabbit illusion explains the concept of ‘aspect perception’. Even for the same object, depending on the observer’s conceptual and experiential framework, ‘seen-as’ changes as a duck or a rabbit, and we always immediately recognize the object ‘seeing as’ rather than as itself. Wittgenstein points out that the moment of realizing this perceptual shift is rare, and some people may be ‘aspect blind’ and not be able to see the other aspect at all. Ultimately, this reminds us of how fluid the way we understand the world is at times
"We remember see the rabbit when we see the duck, but we cannot experience both at the same time." — E. Gombrich
“The idiot never notices that everything has two sides.” — Ernst Bloch, The Dialectical Method.
WIn a footnote to her article on Jasper Johns, Rosalind Krauss talks of his initia- tion into Wittgenstein's philosophy. Johns recounts that in 1961 someone told him the story Norman Malcolm writes of in his reminiscences of Wittgenstein. “Once after supper, Wittgenstein, my wife and I went for a walk on Midsummer Common [Cambridge, England]. We talked about the movements of the bodies of the solar system. It occurred to Wittgenstein that the three of us should represent the movement of the sun, moon and earth relative to one another. My wife was the sun and maintained a steady pace across the meadow; I was the earth and circled her at a trot. Wittgenstein took the most strenuous part of all, the moon and ran around me while I circled my wife. Wittgenstein entered into this game with great enthusiasm and seriousness, shouting instructions at us as he ran.” On hearing this story Johns decided to read all the Wittgenstein he could. The appeal the tale had for him was one that still remains intrinsic to his work; the idea of game playing, but like the philosopher, games to be played seriously not lightly. As language was for Wittgenstein's later philosophy so is art for Johns - in fact he has often expressed that painting is a language.
Wittgenstein Text-experiment in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, 1946
A Ludwig Wittgenstein began to train as an engineer. He worked on flying machines and aeroplane engines even before the Wright brothers flew for the first time in 1908. B His work on mathematics led him to philosophy. He was interested in the question of how thinking could be made more precise by a kind of mathematical logic. C Formalization of the steps taken in thinking was intended to bring more clarity and eradicate meaningless statements.
Wittgenstein thought very highly of Kant. They were both concerned with mathematics. Kant kept to geometry, which is brought to life by pictures. Wittgenstein remained attached to algebra, and raised the algorithm to the status of model for logical operations. Thinking should follow a system of thought-steps, running like thought mechanics.
This made it necessary to have clear concepts, a language with precise expressions and statements. Wittgenstein was convinced that “everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.” At the end of the Tractatus he said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” E
Later Wittgenstein reversed his view. F He then discovered that our concepts are not unambiguous, but have many dimensions. G “What we teach is the different nature of concepts.” It is not a language with exact concepts that is precise, but a language that can adapt to states of affairs. H In language games, language moves towards its objects and as it were, opens up new dimensions of the concept. 1 We do not come closer to things through logic as a system of exact statements, but through study, the description of language in use.
There is no longer a truth function. Functionalism as a system of exact elemental statements, as a system of exact scientific operations, is superseded. A new criterion of truth appears: use. I
Listening and looking become an act of philosophy, and not a thinking operation within a complete system any more. Wittgenstein is now saying to his pupils: “Don’t think, look!” J
What now emerges as a new philosophy is a revaluation of all values. Its rule is: “We are taking words away from their metaphysical application and back to an everyday one.” In metaphorical terms this means that the mind is not above, in the heights, there is nothing higher, the mind is in the thing. L
Here he is as bold as Marx, who explains consciousness from the material culture of work, or the designer, who sees art as aesthetic metaphysics, and in designing does not turn to higher things, but to everyday use. M The everyday is not a lower thing. “The most important aspects of things for us are concealed by their simplicity N and everyday quality.” We have to reveal them.
Everyday language is not the materialization of the logical structure of language. Spoken language is not application. And philosophical depth is not found with new words, it appears in revealing, describing and explaining the everyday. Greatness is to be found in the ordinary.
In parallel with this, design is not application of a higher, artistic aesthetic to the everyday. Concern with design at the point where it appears, in everyday use, opens up real aesthetic spaces. Form becomes perceptible by approaching use, in following its operation, its variety, not in the esoteric gesticulation of art. O The way an object is used, the way it is made, shows form and design. P
“The more precisely we consider actual language, the stronger is the conflict between it and our requirement (for crystal clarity of logic). The conflict becomes intolerable. We have got on to slippery ice, where the conditions are ideal in a certain sense, but we also can’t walk for that reason. Back to rough ground!” Q Super-ordination of logic with its super-concepts is in a vacuum.
Use reveals the correctness of things that fit together. Use reveals fact. The constellation of what is correct is established by use. 2
Visual thinking, that Kant understood as Anschauung and aesthetic judgement, is applied by Wittgenstein to the consideration of use. 3 Functionalism orientated towards science now leads to a description and not a reason. Seeing how things behave, seeing how words are used, seeing how something is done. “It is not possible to guess how a word functions. One must look at its application and learn from it.”
Without an attitude of this kind, without this kind of life-form, we are trapped in the cage of a self-created claim for purity, clarity, calculation. To approach language we should contrive language games T, examine language models and set up algorithms of its modalities. U It should be tested. V
This kind of philosophy is an activity, is work. Yes, it is an attitude, a point of view. Wittgenstein uses the word “Lebensform”, “life-form” for it. 4 Language becomes accessible through language games W from a particular life-form, from a particular way of handling words.
Philosophy and design do not just have concepts in common, they follow a common path as well, they find out what should be from use. Philosophy and design are heading for the same point 5, philosophy in thinking, design in making. Y This point is that our world is in condition of manufacturing itself. 6 Z It is designed, it is made, we must see from use how good, how bad we are. 7
Notes
Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.
Our imagination, as Wittgenstein used to say, is a “complicated formation out of heterogeneous components words, pictures”.
To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.
What is the aim in philosophy [design]? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
In a sentence a world is put together tentatively.
The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.
NTis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd, To turn, turn will be out delight 'Till by turning, turning we come round right.
— Simple Gifts, Shaker song, 1848
PFaktura, literally “texture,” is related to the Russian avant-garde’s preoccupation with the fundamental principles of the creative process. The term, applied to a work of art, addresses the way in which materials are used, the processes, the surrounding environment, and the artistic devices; it characterizes the textural structure of a work of art and the manner by which it was constructed.
Black Square, Kazimir Malevich, 1915.
“The whole effort of a poet and a painter is aimed first and foremost at creating a continuous and thoroughly palpable object, an object with a faktura.”
“The form of a work of art, derives from two fundamental premises: the material or medium (colors, sounds, words) and the construction, through which the material is organized in a coherent whole, acquiring its artistic logic and its profound meaning.”
— Nikolai Tarabukin, in From Faktura to Factography, Benjamin Buchloh, 1984
TDieter Roth, Mundunculum: A tentative "logico-poeticum". 1967.
Dieter Roth, Why Wittgentstein has to be an Ascetic and why Rot cannot be a Philosopher:
1: The flow of thought has the shape of skin.
2: The philosopher's thought wants to flow in a circle.
3: Rot's thought flows around the things that have entered his nature.
A + 1: The thought patterns of the vegetarian, non-smoker, and non-drinker.
B + 2: The thought patterns of the vacant, ascetic Wittgenstein.
C + 3: The thought patterns of the smoking, drinking, and shit-eating Rot.
YFunction always refers to the relation between a minimum of two variables that are dependent on each other.
... we can distinguish two different groups of functions.
The first one reveals the relations between the object and people as individuals (and as a society).
The second one reveals the relations between the components that make up the object and the processes by which it is produced.
— Max Bill, Function and Gestalt, 1958
Max Bill, Doublement, 1969
