Odor and Disarray
Design. Deconstructed: de - sign. A symbol, uncreated, recreated. A re-representation.
Design is what separates the human kingdom from the animal kingdom: it is wildness made deliberate, nature articulated, instinct systematized.
Design is utilizing a pre-existing idea or object and recreating it deliberately, with pattern. It is re-invention, innovation, improvisation and intonation. And at the base of this all, is a Way of Seeing, of arranging disorder into organization.
An example of this is the story titled 'Amid the order of the Morning Market,' where Parni finds design in the unlikeliest of sights: a man stacking and slicing fish. Street design is perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of design in India: what is the root of this everyday aesthetic of commerce, and the role of the visual in the purely functional, will you more more apples if they're stacked beautifully? Or is a sense of order inherent in our consciousness?
Shaheen finds design in organizing sound-- collection aural landscapes and composing them into physical music-- is a Way of Listening.
Veerangana designs a Way of Movement in her story, where the text itself is mapped in a way that walks the reader through a virtual exhibition on space and the architecture of the interior and the exterior.
Prayas Abhinav tells a story on the power of error, where an artist Designs chaos itself. This subverts my original theory on organizing chaos, as the artist, Hemant Sreekumar, flips order into chaos. The story theorizes on the science of the glitch, the mistake that actually creates a work of art: Chance is assembled in machinery as well as the cerebral consciousness, so, in effect, the artist designs a Way of Thought.
And finally, macrocosmically, there is Intelligent Design: the order inherent in Nature, the belief that a larger consciousness (God) may have indeed carefully designed us and all our landscape.
So in betweeen the odor of fish in a market and the more cerebral reflection on error in art, your consciousness will, naturally, design itself to make patterns, because as much as we try, all matter and its anti-matter is indeed Designed. If not, it would be much easier to achieve Randomness.
Wishing you a slow read,
Himali.
Editor's Note.
Every sunbeam, every strain of music, every sapling and starfish is ultimately the regeneration of a previous something, a collection of somethings, taking on new shape. At the most indivisible level we can comprehend, all life is nothing more than atoms and molecules dancing their way through various forms. And if everything comes from something, it stands to reason that everything must go to something as well.
Read More
Illusion: Seeing Beyond Seeing
Meaning: In Search of Significance.
Melody: A Different Tune
Rhythm: Ordering Time