A short essay on the ontologies of Art and Money, Creativity and Rationality, and Imagination and Structure written for the Design & Critical Thinking community and also published at https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/.
Contributed By: Julian Bleecker
Published On: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 16:22:55 PDT
Updated On: Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 14:31:28 PDT
Why do I blog this? Our relationships to value as creatives has been terribly distored through the challenging mechanics of value exchange. And I want to try different ways of remedying this predicament, to the degree that it has a had a direct effect on my own experiences, professionally speaking. I've also been meaning to excavate that one scene from that one Woody Allen film for a few months now, and this gave me a chance to sit down and do so.What I am going to say, well — it will sound mean, but that’s just because you’re not thinking straight. You’re feeling broken and beaten and you were just trying to save me, and my family — and the whole world and now look at you.
You’ve got two black eyes, one of your feet is missing a shoe *and a sock, and the back pocket where you wallet is meant to be has been torn straight off your $600 jeans.
What is this ‘crisis’?
Could it be that the feeling values of imagination, renewal, dreaming new possibilities that lurk within the creative consciousness are in intense conflict with what design has become known as — a utility function, easily harnessed and just as easily dismissed.
“But – I thought Structure — I mean, “Google” — loved me?”
(“Google” never loved you.)
(At best, it lusted. Structure — the rational consciousness — will do that, with a sense of envy, just as Imagination — the creative consciousness — is susceptible to lusting after what Structure has of value: money, fame, attention, business class accommodations, restricted stock options, etcetera.)
“Google” wondered about Imagination with awe. You could feel it, couldn’t you?
Google would say:
“How do you do that thing? How do you know that the kerning should be *that rather than *that?
“Wait, you think those colors go together? How do you know?
“What a mystery you are… I need some of that mysterious creativity you have that I don’t have. Gimmie.
“Wait. Sit for a moment. I’ll show you I know you, and I believe in you, and I want you.
“I’ll integrate you into myself.
“Look! I’ve started wearing red sneakers, too. Here are some punch colors about the office. No office? Open plan? Kombucha? What’s that, but okay?
“Now we’re together, right? Here. Have some fun bean bags and a vegan lunch and six different options for a hot lunch. Dry cleaning, no problemo — that’s easy.
“You just wait and see. We’ll change the world, you and I. I can’t do it without you! J’adore!
“Here’s how much I love you, I’m going to give you what I value if you give me this imagination of yours. I need that. Wait. Here are some more of these restricted stock options.
“Can you feel how much I love you now?
“More? Okay, sure. No problem.
“When we’re done, there’ll be more on the dresser, I promise. Just don’t get how you get, okay? And please close the door on your way out.”
I could be wrong. But when the creative consciousness accepts to measure its success by things like revenue generated, users onboarded, month-on-month growth in active users, something is wrong.
When the creative consciousness makes decisions about what job to take based on what funding round the company has done (C is too late, evidently), something is wrong.
Is this a crisis?
Or is it a fit of confusion followed by rage at having been rug pulled.
Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m immune from the despondent feelings associated with being within the crisis.
I’ve had my fair share of rug pulls, I’ll tell you what.
After I founded, built, grew, and sold my product company OMATA — a success to a degree I can’t even begin to completely express, with every start-up horror story plot fully realized, and not just the one where the one other partner quits right when the work actually gets too hard to suffer while taking half the equity with him — I figured there was nothing I could not do. I mean — I had faced intense adversity and, through will more than anything, brought enough value to the company to make it something someone else wanted to buy.
I figured I’d be an enviable hire to lead a team in a tier one product company.
I was told, though, that I could do *too much too well, which these days is about as useful as not being able to do anything at all.
I became grateful for that assessment, not from the implication that my experience and skills made me as useful as a lamplighter or ice cutter, but from the realization that the world right now is one of highly specialized compartments of work, what we once referred to as ‘the cubicle’ — and I’d lose my mind in a world in which human creative potential was organized in such a way.
So what are the other ways of organizing human creative potential?
This essay was commissioned and published by Kevin Richard’s Design & Critical Thinking community. You can read more essays published under the topic The State of Design over at the Design & Critical Thinking community site.