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A Sense of "Here" in cyberspace.
James Boyd-Brent, Lindsay Shen University of Minnesota jboydbre@che.umn.edu |
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| This talk is not really about cyberspace, per se; it's
about ideas of place, of the importance of locality, both in the creative
process and in the communication of ideas. We will talk about our design
project, Here by Design, in which we researched the relation between design
and place here, in Minnesota. The emphasis of the talk will be on how
"local" designers, such as Chank Diesel and Charles Spencer Anderson,
use cyberspace as an extension of their "place," and how this is
leading to a reevaluation of the importance of place. Ideas emerging from
our study of "local" design suggest that eclecticism is the norm in new
design styles. And that it is through an appreciation of the conditions
of the local that design not only becomes a significant factor in "place-making"
but also becomes highly interdisciplinary and cross-cultural. If the designer
has produced something that has truly captured the sense*the meaning*of
a place, then over time we as consumers become in our own ways intimate
with it. In communicating these particularities, design rooted in place
allows us into different and diverse worlds of thought.
Our focus is on the question of what is intrinsic to the idea of "local," and "locaness," in design. Explanations that we heard during our research, stressed the importance of the connection between the local and the global in design communications. We also encountered "place" described by designers as a "nodal point," a sort of community-sensitive organ sympathetic and receptive to what's going on "outside" its locale. We also heard repeatedly about how our ability to communicate with the "outside" relies on our ability to act and react locally in ways that affirm the diversity within localities. The local needs to be diverse, expressive of itself, truly local in order to actually have affinities with the global community. We feel that this is a new perspective on design in which, "there is no overriding paradigm, no preordained design strategy or aesthetic." note 1 Having a strong sense of where you are also means having a sense of who you are. For anyone with anything to communicate, this is of paramount importance, whether it's ideas that are being communicated, such as ideas about cultural diversity or cultural engagement, or whether it's the need to express your identity, or even if it's just the desire to effectively promote your own expertise as a communicator/designer. Or it could be that a company's identity needs to be communicated in order to that it can market itself effectively. It was obvious from our research that often these considerations overlap*that they do not necessarily contradict each other. The conclusion of our project is that having "a sense of place," rather than being a bourgeois privilege, is a practical necessity in the modern world. Localness can be a starting point for having your own voice in the global environment. |
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