(Photo from Raymond Chou Photography.)
The always insightful PSFK offered up an article today called, "Making Culture, Provoking Culture," by Grant McCracken. If this sounds dull, keep reading. It involves pie.
McCracken (sweet last name) writes that people settle into a state of statis. We become routine in the way we think (the world operates in this particular way), the actions we go through (ex. - get up, brush teeth, shower, dress, go to work, get lunch, etc.). In a way, we acclimate, and desensitize to our everyday stimuli (much like your eyeball would, if held completely still - the image in front of you will start to disappear).
Therefore, we need to be provided with something new. Something that forces us out of our habitual state of mind. McCracken's simple example is of a group of people who stood on a street corner in Belfast, Maine, and handed hand slices of pie, pecan, pumpkin and apple, to passers-by. For no reason, other to interrupt them out of statis with a little surprise and delight, even for a few minutes.
My favorite line from the article is: "Designers are very good at thinking about provocations. After all, they are in the imagination business. They are trained to look at existing systems, spot where stasis lives, and think of ways to make things new."
I'd like to think good planners are this way too. They look at the way the world is and question it. They ask why we do things that we've always done and have taken for granted. They don't take that's-just-the-way-it-is for an answer. And it's then that culture is provoked (such a great way to phrase it!).
Full article here. Worth a look-see, I barely scratched the surface.
0 comments:
Post a Comment