FLUX: Design Education in a Changing World
DEFSA International Design Education Conference 2007
The Future of Written Text in Art and Design Education
Abstract
The predominant focus of contemporary Art and Design education is visual, rather than written, communication. This paper explores recent shifts in Art and Design curricula, which have brought students’ engagement with the written word to a bare minimum. Drawing on my recent experience teaching at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM), Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (WSA) and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), I will discuss how the written word may begin to take up a more productive place in Art and Design teaching. Changes to dissertation requirements at CSM at the MA level and WSA at the BA level, provide examples of alternative approaches to the use of writing in studio-based studies. While both institutions have reduced the word count of their dissertation requirements, they are also encouraging students to use the written word specifically to explore their own studio practice. Similarly, courses such as “Writing and Making”, which I have taught at RISD and WSA, ask students to question the relevance of language to their practice and suggest that words can be understood as yet another material. When students can see that writing is yet another creative act, we will be able to transfer the confidence many visual arts students have in their ability to communicate through visual means into written language. This written language may be something entirely different from what we know today, but it will be language that is both purposeful and useful to visual arts students.
Key Words: curriculum development, written communication, practice vs. theory
Introduction
Education has long engaged with written assessment, in keeping with the text-based learning of many academic subjects. The visual arts do not have as simple a relationship with written language. In recent years, several institutions have shortened or removed dissertations at the BA and MA levels. To begin to understand the implications of these changes, it is useful first to consider the relationship between the written word and studio practice. This paper will focus on the text and textile in the course work of three institutions where I have recently taught: Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM), Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (WSA) and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I will discuss “Writing on Making”, a course I have recently taught at RISD and WSA that asks students to consider the relationship of written language to studio practice. I will then consider two examples of institutions that have recently reduced or eliminated the dissertation as a requirement for BA and MA studies. In 2006 MA dissertations at CSM were shortened to 4000 words and no longer require students to use a standard academic format. Similarly, in 2008 BA dissertations at WSA will be are to be replaced by a Reflective Journal unit.
Before going any further, let me briefly explain my interest in this particular area of education. I graduated from RISD’s Textile Design Department with a BFA in 1999. As an undergraduate student at RISD I began to see that my studio course work informed an unconventional type of textual reading in my Liberal Arts courses. I noticed the vital role textiles play in many texts and began to see the text as organised in ways similar to that of a textile structure. These ideas led to an MA in Comparative Literature and PhD, which examined the role of textiles in the fiction of Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera. My response to Vera’s fiction is informed, to a large extent, by my interdisciplinary education. Textiles, in my mind, must be understood not only from the perspective of an academic, but also a designer and maker.
My subsequent teaching responsibilities at RISD, CSM and WSA have brought to my attention the tenuous position written language plays in contemporary art and design education. In my opinion, reading and writing need to be introduced during studio practice. More crucially, students must be taught to approach written language as yet another creative material. Words can be shaped and defined through creative processes that are not dissimilar from the decisions students successfully make in the studio. Taught in this way, students can be encouraged to transfer the confidence gained in the studio to writing. This, in turn, will improve not only their ability to communicate through words, but also provide a further tool for critical reflection in the studio.
Writing on making
“Writing on Making: The Literature and Theory of Contemporary Craft” is a course I have taught at RISD and, more recently, at WSA. Both institutions offered the course as an elective, rather than required, unit. In the course handbook, I describe the course content to prospective students as follows:
Since the industrial revolution, the crafts have been entrenched in a battle for legitimacy. “Writing on Making: The Literature and Theory of Contemporary Craft” explores depictions of the craftsperson in fiction and contemporary craft theory. The identity of the craftsperson, the value and place of the handmade in today’s society and literature’s relationship to craft production will be examined. What is the role of written language in relation to the crafts today? And what is the relationship of the maker, who necessarily becomes conversant in a visual language, to the written word?
My intention when writing this course was to encourage visual arts students to consider how words describe designing and making. Taught as a seminar to facilitate group discussion, the course asks students to consider if the “crafting” of words can be understood as similar to the crafting of materials. Are there moments when language fails or betrays us and an object records the truth? Does hand production in particular convey a type of narrative that can be compared to written or oral story telling? Students seek the answers to these questions through two distinct types of literature. The first is contemporary craft theory. The second is fiction that includes characters that could be understood as craftspeople, albeit often in the broadest sense. Crucially, students should see their own studio practice as central to the discussion.
Theory
The majority of contemporary craft theory written in the English language in the past decade has been published in Britain and Australia. Two consistent strands of thought appear in these writings. The first is that language and craft are “oil and water” as the British critic Peter Dormer put it (Dormer, 1997: 219). That is to say that language does little to explain craft because craft needs no linguistic explanation. Objects speak for themselves. In the aptly named “Why the Crafts need more than literary criticism” Dormer questions “the ease with which theory parts company with practice. Practice is another country, one that some theorists refuse to visit or if they visit they do so in the way in which the worst colonists visit other lands – they stay in compounds with their own values and sneer at those who go native” (Dormer, 1995: 20). Elsewhere Dormer proposes that “there can be no general theory covering the craft disciplines, and that consequently whatever clarification of motives and values the craftsperson achieves can be inferred from the work and what he or she does but cannot, with any depth be put into words . . . almost nothing that is important about craft can be put into words and propositions” (Dormer, 1997: 219).
Observations such as Dormer’s throw into stark question the relationship of writing to design and making. Dormer’s opinions are not isolated. The Australian critic Rosemary Hill voices a similar concern when she writes, “criticism that looks at the crafts from a theoretical point of view such as Marxism or deconstructionism has important insights to offer but it annexes the crafts to an existing intellectual system” (Hill, 1997: 191). The crafts, Hill suggests, have experienced more than enough annexation. It would be ironic if those of us committing our careers to the research and publications on the crafts contribute to what elsewhere is coined the “’ghetto’ consciousness” in the crafts through analysis entirely inappropriate and unhelpful to the objects at hand (Rowley, 1992: 167). Amongst these readings which suggest, with good cause, that craft is a system operating outside language, there appears a second strand of thought. This second strand suggests that objects, in particular the handmade objects that occupy our daily lives, narrate in a way that may not be as dissimilar to a piece of literature as we think. The difference between the two is a general illiteracy or ignorance on our part when it comes to hearing or seeing the narration objects offer.
Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz in “Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship” celebrates the beauty that can be found in usefulness. But he too relates this usefulness to a voice of sorts: In its rightful place. Not fallen from above, but emerged from below. Ocher, the color of burnt honey. Sun color buried a thousand years ago and dug up yesterday. Fresh green and orange stripes cross its still-warm body. Circles, frets: remains of a scattered alphabet? Pregnant woman’s belly, bird’s neck. If the palm of your hand covers and uncovers its mouth, it answers you in a low murmur, a bubble of gushing water; if you rap its haunch with your knuckles, it gives a laugh of little silver coins falling on stones. It can speak in many tongues, the language of clay and matter, that of air flowing down between the walls of the ravine, that of the washerwomen as they do their laundry, that of the sky when it grows angry, that of rain. (Paz, 1987: 50) [italics added] The murmurs, laughs and tongues Paz hears emanating from craft objects require us to develop a new form of literacy. I believe this literacy comes – in part – through a studio practice that encourages students to use writing, like Paz, to document and reflect upon the objects they create.
While critics such as Dormer question the role of the written word in relation to craft, others such as Paz simply ask for the object to be heard. Other critics simply ask for more effective words to be put to the service of craft. American Janet Koplos in “What’s Crafts Criticism Anyway?” suggests that “If crafts has its own character, why shouldn’t it have its own form of response, perhaps not even “criticism” at all? If crafts meet the expectations of art criticism, is it still crafts? If it’s not, why are we here together under this label?” (Koplos, 2002: 86). Koplos concludes: If I were looking for a “better” crafts criticism, I would not be looking for theorizing borrowed from literature or other fields. I would be wishing not for more jargon but for the right ordinary language to do the trick. I would not be hoping for critical infallibility. I would simply want better writing, showing thought and care. I would wish for an intense concentration on the work, what’s there, the actual stuff and what it makes you think and how it makes you feel…the best writing would be like the best work, enlightening and from the heart (Koplos, 2002: 89). Koplos call is an inspiring one that asks, not for a more complex use of language, but for a more passionate use of the written word. In the institutions where I have taught, many students arrive firmly believing that they cannot write. If words can become yet another material, students can begin to approach writing with some of the curiosity, passion and creativity that they bring to their studio studies.
Teaching haptic knowledge
Malcom McCullough writes that hands “act as conduits through which we extend our will to the world. They serve also as conduits in the other direction: hands bring us knowledge of the world” (McCullough, 1998: 1). While it is well known that hands bring us a wealth of information, McCullough also notes that “for working hands, taking may be as important as giving: hands get shaped. They may get callused or stained. They pick up experience” (Ibid., 2). This image of give and take, an imprint left on both the maker and the material, is not the reality of the academic classroom. In fact, the central challenge of teaching a course such as this one is that haptic rather than intellectual knowledge is at the core of craft production, but is discussed in an academic setting. By haptic knowledge I mean, to borrow from Dormer again, “tacit knowledge – that is, it is learned through experience” (Dormer, 1997: 225). The puppet maker of Japanese author Uno Chiyo’s short story captures the challenge of haptic teaching when he writes:
Whenever I get set to teach someone a thing or two about carving, I tell him right from the start that I’m not going to sit there and explain every little thing. I show him one of the puppet heads I’ve carved and tell him to try and carve one like it. Then, as he goes along, I tell him ‘that looks fine,’ or ‘that’s no good.’ But what I can’t ever tell him is how he should make the final strokes, the finishing touches . . . I think on them so hard I become completely swallowed up in my thoughts, and then I proceed to carve. But even if I can’t come right out and explain to my students all they should do, I show them with my hands. I guess it amounts to the same thing (Chiyo, 1992: 128).
Ideally, “Writing on Making” should be taught alongside studio practice. The changes institutions such as CSM and WSA have recently made to their dissertation requirements, as discussed in the following section, are beginning to bridge this gap.
Crafting a dissertation
The MA: Textile Futures at CSM introduced new dissertation requirements in 2006. The course now requires students to undertake a short written assignment of 4,000 words with an emphasis on discussion of their own practice. The dissertation guidelines I wrote for the course state that writing must show:
1) Evidence of a written voice that establishes a tone and makes use of vocabulary appropriate to the practice led work under discussion
2) Ability to reflect critically and professionally on your own creative process, acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses of the practice led portfolio you have created
3) Awareness and consideration of the context in which you are designing and articulation of how this context informs and/or challenges your practice
4) Critical discussion of the contribution your practice led work makes to the future of design, with particular reference to issues (both positive and negative) of sustainability
The length and tone of the dissertation is described to the students as akin to a formal conference paper or feature length magazine/journal article. Students are discouraged from dwelling on the conventions of formal academic writing and instead are encouraged to approach the dissertation as an opportunity to articulate, through written language, the research that underpins their design work.
Acknowledging the importance of design for these students, the dissertations can take on any format the student is inclined to create. Choice of paper, font size and the layout of images are all determined by the student. The only firm requirements are that their research includes a bibliography, uses an appropriate referencing system and that the paper is illustrated with examples of their own work. During tutorials, each student is asked to explore the tone and style of their writing in relation to the style of their design work. In some cases poetics are dominant, elsewhere the tone is clipped and minimal. The most successful show a continuation from the development of an increasingly mature design aesthetic, into a written voice that captures a similar style and thus effectively communicates the concerns and priorities of their studio work.
Course Director Carole Collet believes that “generally speaking this system works a lot better. Less and less students arrive on the course trained to write academically. Talented designers who can orally explain their ideas and communicate visually were experiencing terrible creative blocks when they had to write a formal dissertation.” The shortened dissertation that is now required allows students to create a piece of writing that is relevant to the design work they have created in the studio. As a result, Carole and I have observed that students find the dissertation more relevant to the core of their studies. Furthermore they begin to understand that writing can play an important role in the process of clarifying design ideas. Thus confidence gained in the studio is transferred, at least partially, to the written word. I believe this is because students are encouraged to approach the dissertation as another project that needs to be designed, crafted and constructed, just as an object would be. Acceptable outcomes are as individual and original as those celebrated in the studio.
Conclusion: encouraging critical reflection
In 2006 the Winchester School of Art introduced a Reflective Journal unit for level 2 BA students. For the 2007-8 academic year this required unit is now part of level 2 and level 3 BA studies. At level 3 the Reflective Journal will now replace the required dissertation for those completing BA studies in 2008. In theory, the unit is designed to allow students to compile and record a rigorous body of independent research through a means of their own choosing. A short written statement of 1000 words must accompany the research journal, but otherwise the unit has an open-ended format. Films, photographs or poems, for example, are not beyond the boundaries of the assessment criteria.
This shift away from a traditional written dissertation was driven by two main concerns. The first was the separation of research from practice, which in previous years allowed students to write dissertations on topics that had no relationship to their studio work. The second was the perception, by some students and tutors, that the dissertation was a ‘distraction’ from the development of studio work during a semester when students needed to be completing their final degree projects. Because the separation of theory and practice had become so great, the dissertation was seen to be taking vital time away from the real point of their studies: the development of a visual rather than written vocabulary. Like CSM, students also perceived there to be a division between their written work and their studio work. In both cases, changes to the dissertation requirements were driven by a desire to mend this gap. Time will tell if the changes WSA have implemented bring about as positive a response at the BA level as the MA: Textile Futures at CSM have experienced. It seems, for the time being, to be a step in the right direction.
When written assignments move away from academic conventions, interpretations regarding the definition of research and the relationship of theory to practice can become ambiguous. I believe it is here that the challenge for written language within art and design education lies. Before dissertations of any style can be a positive element of art and design curricula, students must be taught how critical reflection about their practice can take place not only through making, but also through writing. When students can see that writing a dissertation is yet another creative act, we will be able to transfer the confidence many visual arts students have in their ability to communicate through visual means into written language. This written language may be something entirely different from what we know today, but it will be language that is both purposeful and useful to the visual artist.
Bibliographic Citation
Chiyo, Uno. 1992. The Puppet Maker in The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo trans. Rebecca L. Copeland, University of Hawaii Press.
Dormer, Peter. 1997. The language and practical philosophy of craft in The Culture of Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dormer, Peter. 1995. Why the Crafts need more than literary criticism in The Context for Critical Studies in the Crafts, Loughborough College of Art and Design. Crafts Council Conference Report, 28 February 1995.
Hill, Rosemary. 1997. Writing about the studio crafts in The Culture of Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Koplos, Janet Koplos. 2002. What’s Crafts Criticism Anyway? In Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory and Critical Writing. Canada: Coach House Books and The Craft Studio at Harbourfront Centre.
McCullough, Malcom. 1998. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. Boston: The MIT Press.
Paz, Octavio. 1987. Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship in trans. Helen Lane, Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
