E-Book Overview
Making tangible connections between theory and practice, ideas and form, this book encourages debate about the artistic, conceptual, and cultural significance of the way things look. What are the metaphysical concepts at the heart of design education, theory, and philosophy? Why do we assume that design is impossible to teach?
This book challenges the traditional foundations of perception and takes an imaginative, radical approach, setting itself apart from the traditions of analytical philosophy, evolutionary psychology, and phenomenology which underpin much of current design theory and discourse. The new definition of perception produces startling consequences for conceptions of language, intelligence, meaning, the senses, emotions and subjectivity. This is an innovative, fresh view on design and how we can improve it for both practitioners and students in the architecture and design fields as well as philosophers.
E-Book Content
o v e r lo o k i n g t h e v i s u a l
Descartes’ drawing of the coordination of muscle and visual mechanisms clarifying the distinction thought to exist between body and mind (c.1664).
Overlooking the visual Demystifying the art of design
Kathryn Moore
First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Kathryn Moore All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Moore, Kathryn (Kathryn J.) Overlooking the visual : demystifying the art of design / Kathryn Moore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Design—Philosophy. I. Title. NK1505.M66 2009 745.401—dc22 2009018054
ISBN 0-203-16765-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-30869-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-30870-4 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-16765-1 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-30869-4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-30870-0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-16765-6 (ebk)
contents
Foreword vii
Preface x
Acknowledgements xii
one
Introduction 1
two
The sensory interface and other myths and legends 17
three
Teaching the unknowable 35
four
Aesthetics: the truth, the whole truth and universal truth 45
five
Objectivity without neutrality 71
six
Studied ignorance 105
seven
Seeing is believing 153
eight
Theory into practice 197
Bibliography 237
Subject index 245
Name index 249
Image credits 253
contents v
foreword
When I first talked to Kathryn Moore about this book, she was in the middle of writing it. She was teaching at the university in Birmingham, and she was also at that time the president of the Landscape Institute, the professional bod