Gunta Kaza

In this case study, Gunta Kaza explains how she teaches her students that design is not about process only but about their feelings as designers, which are influenced by their environment and background and emerge in stages throughout the design process. Her improvisational teaching method unwraps responses to hidden thoughts and emotions that are buried under the mundanities of daily life as every class brings on a new experience and challenge inspiring educator and students alike.

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Preamble

I feel resistant toward writing this article. Why? Am I afraid of exposure and judgement ("Will I sound smart enough? What if it's boring...")? Or is my distracted state due to some selfish impulse to withhold information? Just as importantly, how do these internal responses shape and inform the work in front of me? If I pay attention to these shadowy processes lurking just beneath the surface, and then if I take the time to clarify and respond to them with creative awareness, my work will become infused with an interest and a humanness that not only strengthens the quality of output intended for others, but teaches me something valuable about myself, as well.

The creative process continuously mines the unknown. We create something out of 'nothing' - and 'nothing' is not really nothing, it's just initially hidden from our conscious awareness. The classes I teach at DMI, Design as Experience I & II, confront anxieties toward these unknowns and, through a spirit of play, encourage students to not only tolerate these anxieties but to use them as catalysts for creative thinking and problem solving.

The creative process

Each week students are presented with an object, or a word, phrase or place that they are asked to 'respond' to by the following week. The objects or words, however simple, might be initially confusing to the student, as they often relate to me personally - parts of projects I've been exploring, popsicle sticks my kids like to stick between the TV and DVD player, hair balls from my dogs...they're certainly not the typical corporate design specs they are familiar with. Students are challenged to make personal sense of this odd request. What ensues is the struggle of making meaning out of seemingly nothing important. There are no preconceptions. They must ask of themselves: "How do I represent this? How do I put this into context?"

Rapid prototyping and designing intuitively are encouraged-no overworking or over-intellectualising allowed! Also, the responses are to be drawn from personal content and observations. Because I often reveal some vulnerability through the assigned object, students may feel safer revealing something about themselves. Do the students think I'm a wacko? Have I lost my rocker? Probably, but in a spirit of exploration, of play, a sense of safety develops and we learn.

One of the rules that are agreed upon in the first class is to keep all of the class experiences within the classroom. In other words, what is exposed within the group experience becomes just that a group experience-discussed, analysed and interpreted within the group, not privately among a few select members. This helps to reinforce a safer learning environment.

The first challenge

I brought with me an old book of Shakespeare and asked students to take from the book what they wished and 'activate' this in combination with the phrase, "My life is an open book." (I was feeling particularly exposed that day, so this phrase had meaning for me.)

Carlos responded the following week: "My response was to let the energy flow through the book and scatter it, in two parallel actions. One became book dough, was chopped and baked into a book cake; the other was burned and ashes were thrown into the air and documented. Two images represent the book after the action. In both cases, the main characteristics of the book-its words-can be seen. The typography survived." His conclusion was that life is not an open book, that while the context and presentation changes, life's complexities, entangle the type. Twisted, mutated, distorted parts are lost and unreadable, inaccessible. My response was to ask what kind of a reaction he expected from his presentation. He'd given me an answer to my riddle, instead of creating a dialogue. Was he concerned only with the making of these objects? Why did we feel removed from the experience?

Another student, Lynn, had created a book jacket. Her presentation was literally a 'jacket' made of the pages within the book. It was meant to be worn, but we observed that, although presented on a coat hanger, the jacket looked too delicate and frail to be physically worn. The class questioned whether or not it needed to be interacted with. Her carefully considered meaning, which addressed a longing to live in a culture she recognized and whose customs she was familiar with (she is from South Africa), had stimulated the making of her response.

The second challenge

Another project began with a visit to the Christian Science Church in Boston. Obviously, the religious aspect was not a significant component; rather, the architecture of 'place' was what I encouraged students to experience. The first stop was the reflecting pool designed by I.M. Pei and Partners; the second was the avenue of trees, also designed by Pei; the third, the Hall of Ideas [1], containing an interactive installation designed by David Small and sculptor Howard Ben Tré. My request was to create a response in relation to an experience of 'place', whether of one place or all three.

Kate had combined her experience of all three into one project of a relationship between the natural and synthetic environments. Initially she created a mobile, which combined curved, string-like material with sharp and angular wires. The class response indicating a lack of viewer participation encouraged her to try again. She then created a wire hand-cranked structure, which, when cranked, plays soft musical notes-a fusion of her first project with sound elements. I asked students to write questions or words in response to Kate's presentation. Whimsy and whimsical were the most common words that surfaced. The next week, I asked students to write about the experience of seeing, making, interpreting, and integrating. Kate spoke of a resistance to writing, to verbalising and making sense of these visceral experiences. I asked her why she had to make sense of it? Could she just 'babble'? (Babbling is what I do when I don't have the right words with which to say something.)

A final challenge

As a final project I asked students to respond to the word tropos (a Greek word that means 'to draw out, to bring out from within'.) Kate's direction combined the initial mobile and crank, with the concepts of whimsical, (the freedom to babble) and tropos. Her final presentation included three soft-sculpted heads, that, when interacted with (you have to pull something out from them), squeak and mumble. She spoke of the difficulty in retrieving internal experiences and translating them into sensible external messages. These 'heads' presented this experience in a whimsical and humorous way.

Stephen had presented a montage of images of the natural world in combination with seeds for the first part of the same assignment and a question was raised as to what the viewer's response should be. Was it a montage for observation, or was there anything the viewer should do with the seeds? Having been inspired by this question, Stephen brought in a beautifully wrapped paper container. He carefully and slowly carried the package around the room and invited all of us to take something from within. Each of us was given a gift-an apple. He spoke of a gift verifying the existence of another. Similar to the way that I.M. Pei's reflecting pool and avenue of trees was a gift for us, Stephen's gifts were an indication of temporality and permanence; as we consumed the apple.

Evaluating students

Finding criteria for evaluation-a way to discuss each project-is challenging. "No aspect of human life, be it music, medicine or technology, can be adequately discussed if we are always restricted to a scientific mode of discourse. If we wish to discuss a human activity, there are times when there is more insight to be gained from knowing what something feels like - knowing what its existential meaning is - than from knowing how it works and measuring it," writes Arnold Pacey in his book Meaning in Technology [2]. Since there is no right or wrong, no objectively measurable good or bad, how do we evaluate the responses? I may ask students to write a question of each other's projects in response to what they make, before we discuss them. Sometimes, the questions posed in class about each response lead to further investigations.

Ideally, each class builds upon the next in relation to a larger concern or interest that each student may be developing. It is no easy task to teach by this method. Each class begins with the same unknown for me: "What if I don't know how to respond to a particular student's project? What then?" I have to listen and pay attention to each moment, and be aware of what my own internal responses alert me to.

The teaching method

The teaching method is very improvisational. There are times when students display their response on the table and no one has anything to say. Can we ask a question? What is it? What does it do? Can you hang it? Can you throw it? When we begin to question, we come to understand what the intention is. In turn, observations of our interactions with the object are fresh, and allows the students to understand what this class is all about: a synthesis between what students make and how what they make affects the other. If what the student has made invites no response, we have to ask, "why not?" As a result students begin to transform their visceral experiences into compelling, tangible interactions.

The Random House Dictionary states: "Experience implies being affected by what one meets with (pleasant or unpleasant), so that to a greater or lesser degree one suffers change." Additionally, in the classroom we define experience based upon limitations-isolating emotion and distilling meaning. Universal meanings derive from personal beginnings. Ben Shahn writes, "In being average to all things, [generalities] are particular to none...but let us say that the universal is that unique thing which affirms the unique quality in all things...a de Chirico figure, lonely in a lonely street haunted by shadows; its loneliness speaks to all human loneliness."[3] The personal experiences students feel, interpret, and bring to synthesis as creation become a part of a collective awareness.

The outcome

Slowly, we observe what is of importance to each student. Personal mythologies emerge when new forms and meanings are discovered in relation to familiar themes. These mythologies teach us something about ourselves and the world in which we live. What results is a reflexive communication between the maker and the work, which invites the audience to partake in the conversation. Projects are presented as needs surface in discussions with students. Improvisational relationships between myself, the students and their projects allow for investigations that promote interactive exchanges and emotional maturation.

This class within the DMI poses a laboratory of study that examines and explores human interaction, adaptability, growth and transformation. In the practice of developing visual responses that have acquired meaning from 'nothing' we are training our non-verbal skills to integrate with the still small voice inside each of us; to become more familiar with utilising multiple senses; to become involved and concerned with the 'other'; to create experiences which result from intimate, personal responses transformed into universal truths; and to bring our humanness to the forefront of our creations. Motivation for this vision is spurred by the changeability of our everyday experiences. Personal, cultural and social experiences lead the way to a new form of examining who we are and who we are becoming. The dynamism of this invitation becomes too seductive to ignore.

References

[1] Mary Eddy Baker Hall of Ideas can be found at www.marybakereddylibrary.org/exhibits/hallofideas.jhtml
[2] Pacey, Arnold, 2001, "Music, Source of Technology?"; Meaning In Technology; The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pg. 3.
[3] Shahn, Ben, 1957, "The Biography of a Painting"; The Shape of Content; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pg. 47.

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About the case study

This case study, reprinted with permission, was originally published in The means by which we find our way: observations on design, a project developed and edited by David Gardener and Andrea Wilkinson. The publication looks at "how graphic designers and educators navigate both the visual and the printed landscape."
www.designproject.co.nz

About the author

Gunta Kaza is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design in the Communications Design Department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.