'Method and Methodology' exercise

Just as a peer to peer share of information, I would like to state here the fact that in the context of Design, my subject's first 'node' of relation to the academic code, as I see it now but couldn't see before, is what the tutors refer to as "broader context". We are asked to 'focus' and 'narrow' our 'broad' view into a 'broader' context.

How good is that?

How can we zoom in to a broader view?

By reflection: we focus on the mirror we place in our view of our subject at the very beginning (with the project proposal) and see through it what is the broader view wherein we are actually standing ourselves.

Any better?

Now reflect on reflection.

We take great care to review context so we don't fall into quite pointlessly reinventing the Wheel, but, hey! we can reinvent the Atom Bomb and Space Travel and the Internet! Unless the contextual review is not very broad at all since we can't even evade the 'mind-trap' of tautology.



A tautology very simply explained, is when a sentence is syntactically possible while its comprehension is not. It is very practical to evade it if we can, like with its counter-part 'contradiction', because they are both dead-ends of Reasoning. And Reasoning is all we have for putting up with Academia, apart from wit. Let alone the third 'evil' of language that is called 'contingency' and at it's best can form an assumption, that can be both true and false as it isn't necessarily any of the two, and it sounds like political debate, but is absolutely fundamental to objectivity and therefore necessary.

This is hardcore English and it takes many years of practice to find it in the dictionary, never-mind understanding it. I'm lucky to be able to draw similarities with my own first language because it is Greek, and English is a distant relative. But I have had to go through a life-time of panic-attacks as tautology is a default mode of bi-linguality and at times it feels like a perpetual cerebral arrest. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like with ie. Chinese or Arabic.

This has been a riddle-comprehending/solving essential process that wasn't accounted as one, but we were called to deal with since 'Needs Must'. I'm posting here only one but there's a lot of 'problematic' cases that we're presented with in our academic experience, and may be unintentional and in need of someone who's first language isn't English to point them out, so they can be dealt with. But these cases may also be intentional, as the discrimination of Aims and Objectives suggest, so that we learn to deal with English, regardless of where we're coming from. The latter actually is presenting an Ethical issue that needs to be resolved and, again, it may need a different language speaker to point it out. Either way, English is the current Global design language and it will soon adapt, like all good Global things, to suit the Global consumers, or else it will fail. So Globalization poses a Philological issue perhaps that needs a designer to point it out to the linguists.

Or... Maybe I'm just lost in translation here, and trapped into a trivial matter.

It is a very confusing, frustrating and unnecessary obstacle that can possibly be aimed at to be turned into a very useful tool, if set as an objective to be resolved by the same designer methodology of mind-map focusing: A group of people build individual mind-maps (brainstorm spider-grams) -method 1. If the same word appears more than once on a map, or if the same word is attached to more than one concepts on one map, the word needs re-definition/altering or may be a mind-map of its own and the original mind-map needs refining -method 2. Combining all maps of the group, in a bigger mind-map -method 3, leads back to method 2, until there is one simple mind-map with each word used only once. This methodology, I believe, signifies a process called "collaborative filtering" which can also be an objective, and for some of us even an aim.

Now, whether it makes sense or not, all the above is somehow different from saying: If we target a tautology, with evading it as our goal, we can use a system of mind-map techniques to score. It is the wrong 'language'. Κι αυτή τώρα τι είναι δηλαδή; Η σωστή; Like there is only one language to say some things. Honestly, it's a very tempting challenge but at very high risk.

This is to say in this little part of one little post on one little student blog, that without mapping we cannot see that things like these 'lingual coincidences' or 'tautologies' are placed in entirely different positions in the map and therefore signifying completely different meanings.
Be it English or non-English, every student needs to go through this in a research-refining process like the MA. And may be every educated person on the planet.

Mind-mapping is usually introduced to us by clear and beautiful model mind-maps selected or constructed for mere presentation. They are dummies of mind-maps, really. No wonder why many of us are scared of them. Our little "creative" minds are self-destructive and chaotic. They cannot be reflected that simple straight-away. Mind-mapping is a design-discipline on its own. And we have to develop skills for it patiently, before coming to producing a presentable model of our minds. Like we learn to read and write before we can conduct a phrase or meaningful sentence. Refusing to learn the basic skills for this is like denying us the use of multi-layer design platforms (ie Adobe Photoshop layers), or multi-channeled recording in music. The outcome is usually a single image or film or a mono/stereo audio track. But it is no longer made like that in its production. Some basic principles of understanding have evolved along with popular technology. We can all be geniuses like Einstein nowadays, and present a single, simple type in the end (well, not quite, really). A model mind-map is the simple end-result (aim) of the process of filtering (objective) when the methodology used is that of mind-mapping or mind-map focusing.

I am quite happy now that this MA Branding provides an excellent platform for training to do exactly that, in organized manner, effectively and above all, not going mad.
Money well-spent.

PS:
If we could get past the issue above, it might mean that 24/7 for a year would actually suffice for everyone to have a little personal life parallel to the academic one and not miss out much. Effective time-management, as it stands, means effective cheating towards both ends, which we presently take for granted. It is not a school's problem or a passing contemporary issue. It is the whole sector of Art and Design that is suffering and has been for a period longer than 15 years now. There are too many ill informed 'cheating' Artists and Designers in the market as a result of this, and subsequently too much terrible Art and Design to hold back the entire progress of civilization. At the same time there are the over-informed 'not cheating' ones that grow either too snobby or too mad to explain. The content of this post however is partially informing my academic argument (or research thesis).