Patterning in pattern: the woven, the thread, the cairn, the stone, the array: The psychic language of design, pattern, place and presence.
A friend of mine, Susi Johnston, from Bali, introduced me to this group.
Susi — she’s a gallery owner there, and she’s always been a wanderer into the intentions of mystery, beauty, magic — and the Indonesian way of being, tinged with the spirits, tastes, scents and touch of South East Asia.
Doon is an interesting modeling — for a company, an art, a practice. It’s named after a particularly inspiring, and inspired, dog. A boxer, I believe, as shown above.
What I find, in exploring that idea — the patterning — is that it represents a kind of psychic intimacy. A pattern reflects the reach of the mind.
There is memory hidden there. Patterning is a kind of insinuation of some mysterious mnemonic — a patterning of mind fullness — and a reach into the heart of meaning and emotion.
Doon celebrates that connection — in the imagery that’s noted, as well as the quote from the site — I’ve broken the text:
“We need to recognise that human beings are no longer overwhelmed by the onslaught of images within a highly visual culture, but see images as a domain of self-empowerment.
This realm of images should be read not in negative terms as a loss or concealment of some original ideal state, but rather in positive terms as a mode of self-expression.
It is not as if identity is lost as everything is mediated through images and commodities. Rather, in a culture of branding, identity is itself forged through that domain.
Yet aesthetics and decoration became dirty words in modern design culture. This is something of a cul-de-sac which leaves anyone working in the visual domain radically disempowered.
We should embrace our present culture as a realm of the seductive and the alluring, yet one which has universality of appeal. Images allow us to relate to the world, in terms of the way we present ourselves, in the selections we make for the things that surround us, or in the appearance of the things which we produce.
The difference between productive and unproductive modes of expression is a question of design.”
For me, in designing, that idea of pattern making is at once about telling the story of a proposition, and yet, it’s another: a kind of mythic gesture. In scribing a repetitive ranging of layer on layer, one practices a legendary marking — creating markings –that are distinct with meaning. For in one layer, there is beauty, in another, there is something imbued with deeper symbolic value and character. One story on the surface, another is found — deeper down. One experience is about light, color, beauty in expression — another reaches to content, context, power and the magic of illustration and the lustrous. That which shines, illumes through.
There are patterns that you recognize in a deep way, they reach and connect with your heart, there is a recalling to memory, they gather some sense of the architecture of emotion and experience — what makes that happen is unknown, of course.
Working with retail design and brand strategy guru, Dawn Clark, AIA LEED AP, Principal of Studio 88 | NBBJ Design. I learned more about how this idea of implementation of story in place — and the making of it — can be powerfully implemented.
Surely there’s something there, to the deeper complexities and symbolic imagery of tribal art and pattern making. And there’s some way of gathering that sense of legend, in pattern, and bringing that into other experiences. It might be mystical — in the context of sacred place; or it might be a space of living, something residential, for example; or it might be brand — retail design in place.
Some ideas, to applications, here:
Seibu | Jakarta: patterning blog:
http://blog.girvin.com/?p=549
Patterning, seen in other light — to nature:
Patterning in pattern: the cairn, the stone, the array: https://tim.girvin.com/?p=454
Pattern is rhythm. Rhythm is life. Design is a heartbeat on the note of that pulse. Patterning explicates.
I believe that a story has layering of patterns. You hear them. You see them. You touch them — sense them; and patterning recalls — takes you back, and takes you forward.
And beauty, found. What pattern, then — have you found?
TSG | Decatur Island
Patterning in interiors (literature):
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471241628.html
References to patterning in place (Alexander communities): http://www.patternlanguage.com/index.htm
Exploring art, patterning and decoration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02artswe.html?fta=y
Exploring art, patterning and decoration:
Exploring patterning in art architecture (literature):
http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Design-Architecture-Petra-Schmidt/dp/3764371846
