In response to The Sympathy of Things

It would be impossible to not realize the pattern of 21st century`s war against technological singularity after reading The Sympathy of Things along with a couple of other enlightening writings and movements. To name a few: the new bright kid of philosophy: object-oriented ontology, Joichi Ito`s Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto, xenodesign movement and even radical ecofeminism , to a certain point.

For me, all these speak the same language, they sing the same song. But I don`t want to sacrifice the ornated idea of sympathy by being too abstract. That would exactly what Mr. Spuybroek would want us to avoid from doing. So I will try to explain by touching upon some of the points he so brilliantly makes in his book.

Spuybroek argues our relationship with digital tools and machinery should be a path of least resistance, namely with a complex motor schema in our heads – not a mental image of an end product but a series of actions we know by heart, which have a rhythm as much as on order.

I believe this passage encapsulates what he then calls having a sympathy for the tools or materials that we work with.  He defines it as sympathy: a fundamental reaching out things to things. Having sympathy would be unlike Owen Jones` geometry-dictated dull patterns, but rather of co-movement and resonating with the design object itself.

A the chapters where he talks about dissecting a pattern, I was able to see a more of a broad pattern of thinking. A form of thinking where abstraction is not made for the sake of abstraction, reducing all variation to a uniform schema in order to produce sameness at the prolific rate of modernity. But to create vagueness, changefulness, and savageness as he borrows from Ruskin`s rules of Gothic.

Let me get back to the early onset of the passage where he talks about these a little bit.

What may look like a mere formula for creating an unnaturalist and savage pattern may as well be formulated for every areas of design. Being playful, changeful, and not ornamented for the sake of adorning.

He explains this as: ``…on Gothic – Life and beauty are not added to a column afterward, like classical acanthus leaves; they are effectively what produces that column – as I said, this is a beauty that works.``

What I understand from this is a cooperation of having rules and breaking those rules together. Not in the same area though. To paraphrase Owen Jones as he does: ``See how various the forms, and how unvarying the principles.``

So as a design principle, whether while designing a pattern or an object, we should have principles to guide us in defining our core value and/or motivation while creating; and we should then iterate from those unchanging principles.

Some might think of this as a limitation, I think as the opposite. Having a given set of principles might help us to achieve the desired since elimination is perfection.

What Spuybroek has for us as suggestions do not finish there. He also suggests that we should not think of our work as finished work. Because that would also be a non-humble action.

Overall of my understanding from this fantastic article is to be able to see things from both emotional and analytical perspectives, going beyond merely what is given to our sight but think of everything we perceive through a meta-cognition lens. Seeing this with their written code, and their ornamented selves.

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