Music Lessons.

Composer, conductor, and writer Pierre Boulez proposed that much music recorded throughout the 20th Century, could be characterized as having a narrative of inexorably breaking boundaries and parameters. Such rule-breaking included the blurred distinction of music with its environment, where and how a piece of music began or ended, or perceptions of creative (co-)authorship – who, where, and how audiences could continue or extend a work themselves.

If we understand music to be an agile, or unfixed discipline, where a composition might be ‘misplaced,’ ‘adrift,’ or even ‘absent’ in parts, can we also entertain analogous concepts of ‘lost,’ ‘off-course,’ or ‘unfinished’ fashion, which also looks to soundly reject absolutes and conventional confines of physical form and presence?

Nothing Really Matters.

Perceptions and states of creative uncertainty in the arts have often been informed and sustained, even if unconsciously so, by aspects of Eastern, Buddhist, or Taoist philosophy. These attitudes can teach us that the idea of “nothingness” may be definitive in order for us to extend a reach and scope of life.

Depending upon one’s viewpoint, such notions may be significant in that they challenge conventional cultures of objectification, consumption and materialism and help focus awareness on what is left behind, unnoticed or disregarded.

This is an idea that may become a progressively applied aspect of fashion practice, where the discipline seeks to auspiciously reject physical form in order to nourish complimentary cultures of reductionism. Where attention may progressively shift from the ‘object-garment’ to the ‘idea-garment,’ expanded criteria might develop that encapsulates a concentrated ‘presence of fashion.’

A Message From Our Sponsor.

If the work displayed on the walls of large commercially sponsored art galleries or museums may not be considered subversive or incendiary, what will happen within art and design institutions should they choose to follow similar sponsorship business models? Will they, for instance, run the risk of relinquishing the dominion of the ‘unfettered question?’

Should they choose such a route, as some speculate, creative institutions must look to preserve and be guided by the integrity of hypothetical questioning as driver of innovation and knowledge, as opposed to financially endorsed procedures of inquiry, which may carry responsibility to a sponsor or benefactor.

Creative institutions must ensure they carefully align themselves with partners who are adept, shrewd, imaginative, responsible, transparent and open askers of questions themselves.

Of No Fixed Abode.

Traditionally the role of the designer has been to engage design dilemmas through a rational process of analysis and utilization of tools and technologies. However, this procedure is often solution-centred - fixed upon an end product or entity - a tailored coat, for example. But here the design is largely understood and implicit, as it is ultimately a manifestation of the future as a set of clearly defined scenarios.

However, design can also be considered as less about conventional goals or completion-orientated approaches but rather as developing strategies, technologies, ideas and thinking towards aims which do not clearly exist yet or cannot be fully formulated, understood, or appreciated. This can be useful as it can give us license to find new conceptual spaces in which to theoretically invent futures to conduct imaginative research outside the constraints of the market place, but which may later inform and extend the market place.

Mind Your Language.

Future evolutions of designers may be increasingly called upon to employ different ‘languages’ in a design practice or process, where these languages are not visual in nature but rather fictional, and that have remarkable agency to conceive ornate designs directly in the mind.

Circular Economies.

Knowing ourselves better, and knowing ourselves better through our clothes, may also help us to become better acquainted with those we design for.

If our imagination shapes aspects of our personal and/or collective dress sense, our dress sense can also shape our minds, lending distinctive form to our imaginative and behavioural capacity.

So, constantly reviewing fashion’s role in forging exactly who we are, and who we want to be, must surely enhance the role of the designer, and heighten a mission to extend the human condition.

Space Exploration.

So-called ‘gatekeepers,’ cultural, economic and internet sentinels that determine and manage the flow of data and knowledge, do not always operate in the same realm as individuals and teams committed to the advancement and expansion of new knowledge, horizons and ideals. Rather, ‘gatekeepers’ often reside within a framework where knowledge and output is enabled principally by control through endorsed factual, material or fiscal value, and measured against other comparable outputs or units of value.

Where something ‘unfamiliar’ may not initially be afforded space, platform, or indeed dignity, it may never be able to assume the significance and potential it merits until the something garners respect and value through extended contact, proximity and familiarity. By which time, the something may no longer be considered new knowledge, and its currency becomes diminished.

It is vital, therefore, that there is the appropriate freedom and capacity for strange and unexplained ideas to be tested out, and crucially where they are allowed to fail. Everyone must be complicit in this effort, and it is up to all of us to identify, champion, and preserve dedicated spaces in which to find difference and re-evaluation.

Removal Services.

It is important to continually question the given structure of any creative discipline. The conventions of any popular expression, whether its cultural significant, physical form, aesthetic value, aural attributes, or commercial operation, etc., are routinely at risk of losing relevance, or where they feel like they have outlived their time.

Periodically, enthusiasm and re-appraisal is reclaimed through the work of a particular artist, designer, collaboration, visual or conceptual exercise, that re-animates purpose and dialogue for a discipline. But, we need to consistently consider how to find new ways of talking about the same thing, where implication, or value, or function is still there, just disguised, unfamiliar, or unrecognisable.

So, how much can we remove from the framework or context of something whilst still, just about, being able to identify what it is, and how can we learn to leave out what no-one else has thought of leaving out before?

Question Time.

Within UK art and design institutions, there is an increasing disquisition, largely passed on by central government, to further comparative and evidence-based exercises and models.

Such assessment may be useful in establishing correlative currency and value, and it may help formulate evaluative tools. However, these evaluative systems are seldom objective, and may be subject to convenient and strategic institutional manipulation. Significantly, these systems also rely on us trusting those who formulate and apply contextual frameworks to authenticate knowledge, where such authors and frameworks may not always recognise or capture inherent value.

Sometimes, it’s okay not to comprehensively know things, and sometimes it’s okay to ‘feel’ things, where value and knowledge is perceptive. Sometimes the question is good enough, and does not actually require a complete or finished answer.

So, if it is “the question” that is the essential driver of innovation, and that yet to come, it is crucial that we practice questioning within dedicated and adaptable ‘rehearsal’ spaces, where we learn from the question itself, however silly or meaningful this may be.

Wonderful Copenhagen.

Through his Copenhagen Interpretation experiment of 1920, Danish physicist Neils Bohr (with Werner Heisenberg), advanced a description of quantum mechanics as a phenomenon that could only be captured, or made real, when a researcher exercised their imagination and positively determined a decision or result. Therefore, he proposed that any event or conclusion should always be considered unfixed, fluctuant or variable, and determined only by the particular frame a researcher chooses to places around the experiment.

In other words, a ‘something’ can exist in all possible states rather than just one. Completion, outcome, or ‘the something’ is summoned into existence only when we think we find it, where there are no definitive facts, only interpretations. Bohr’s theory may offer us a paradigm whereby creative experiments and discoveries are made in analogous ways by ‘design augurs.’

Here, the resolute augur might no longer look to just create conventional, customary or functional fashion garments, artefacts, spaces, experiences, or networks. Instead, they may look to cultivate and advance a particular abstracted argument, concept or manifesto, in the same way that some utopian 20th-century architecture was conceived as purely conceptual and never intended as completed buildings or developments. 

Listening to the Future.

In the classical Greek and Roman worlds, Augurs were prized as creative and religious officials gifted with extraordinary visionary powers, and who could purposefully ‘listen’ to the future. Their chief role was the practice of augury – interpreting the will of the gods by studying the sky, and the particular and varied flight pattern of birds. They were considered central to any major public or private decision-making process, especially where that might affect matters of societal harmony, liberty, wellbeing, and commercial opportunity.

‘Listening’ to futures, then, in divergent and distinctive ways may become the calling and craft of what may be termed ‘design augurs.’ Such individuals and teams may serve to imagine and conduct uncommon experiments to establish compelling conditions for innovation and revolution within design, (whether fashion, graphic design, architecture, music, etc), and where ensuing ideas or strategies emanate less from any conventional understanding or expression of the designer/developer/maker, but rather from evolving apperceptions of the ‘fashion rehearsal.’ 

This new creative role might also be distinguished by a consideration of fashion that is defiantly disconnected from current or conventional practice, thinking or transaction. The design augur can then be described as a blend of pioneer, provocateur, agitator, radical, revisionist, progressive and dissident; and their charge will be to locate new platforms and prototypes that define patterns of fashion beyond consumer culture.

The Best Dressed Category.

In considering the cultural stature of a designer, label, collection or particular item of clothing, we may start by asking who or what is the authority defining this status.

If we re-configure how clothing has been valued or ‘measured,’ and by whom, we may apply a different understanding of what clothing is and what the new ‘expertise’ may be.

The Co-Op. A Different Kind of Business.

For me, the German digital art pioneer, Manfred Mohr, represents a fascinating example of what I term ‘creative augurs,’ after ancient Roman or Greek religious figures who would supposedly ‘listen to the future.’

An early innovator of what he called ‘programmed expressionism,’ Mohr championed the creative possibilities of algorithms throughout the 1960’s, but he needed extremely large and powerful institutional computing machines complete with technical support to generate the type of artwork he envisioned.

The Paris Institute of Meteorology offered him the use of their advanced meteorological computer so that he could generate his algorithmic art at night whilst the institute conducted its primary role of forecasting future weather patterns by day. This creative co-existence allowed Mohr to create what he called the “super-version” of himself, and to find serendipitous creative arenas otherwise inaccessible, and which facilitated dynamic and technically progressive work that he may not have achieved ordinarily.

Can large public commercial and civic institutions develop analogous policies with such coordinated, collaborative and educational ends? By tendering open utilization of their personnel, hardware, software, and technical expertise, can they become the champions of new creativity for the wider enrichment of society, where support for the arts is not forthcoming from central government?

Conversation Piece.

We know that a physical object, artwork, product, or garment can be more than just a ‘thing,’ it can also be what is said, reported, or perceived about the thing.

Can we, therefore, develop new forms of anecdotal or ‘lingual creativity?’

How to Dress Well.

Modern capitalist societies may principally be based around the triangulation of economies of esteem or status; fame and reputation; and money and finance. However, economies of benevolence, altruism, and attention must surely form another vertex, to be progressively developed for us to shape more compassionate, forward-looking, and enlightened futures.

Within fashion, status, reputation and wealth can be clearly conveyed through logo, brand, label or outlet, for example, but how might attributes of knowledge, perception, or kindness even, be manifest in new ways for apparel?

Utopia in Mind.

Notable architectural practitioners, idealists and theorists habitually created speculative space for open-ended, theoretical, and unrealised practice and philosophy.

Examples can be found in the work of Etienne-Louis Boullée’s Cénotaphe à Newton (1784), Gaudi’s Grand Hotel Attraction (1908), Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris (1925), the neo-futuristic Archigram group (c. 1961), ideologue Cedric Price’s Fun Palace (1961), or Walt Disney’s EPCOT Project X (1966).

Can we determine such occasion, condition and space for fashion to be increasingly grand, but ‘not there?’

Fiction Factories.

Whilst we can conveniently find numerous manifestations of fiction and imagination throughout culture and the arts, we must constantly seek our own make-believe realms and scenarios.

Establishing these can furnish us with unique and distinctive sources of ‘counterfeit’ culture – ideas, structures, places or journeys that are removed, either subtly or radically, from our customary understandings and experiences.

These ideas may not be ‘real’ in a conventional sense, but as expressions of fiction they are authentic. So tomorrow, consider being something or someone you were not quite today.