Thinking Through Making

Important Quotes and Things to Note:

- Making thorough thinking — hylomorphism — to project the form onto the material

- A form that initially existed as a template in the makers mind is imposed on a natural material

- The artifact is the materialization of a thought

- To make something you have first to think it

- Theory leads practice follows

- Think backwards from the finished object to the idea that gave rise to it — attribution of form to an unprecedented idea — creativity with innovation

- Things and ideas generated in flows and transformation of materials and ideas

- Form making is life form is the end death

- Joining with the movement of making and materials and awareness — finding ones way to improvise is to think through making — nothing is ever finished — on its way to something else — every thought is a passing moment in a process of thinking that carries on

- Creativity lies in improvisation not in innovation

- Innovation in processes not in novelty of ephemeral products

- In thinking through making, Making cannot be projection of thought on material or form on matter, rather making it’s an ongoing binding together of material flows and sensory awareness, think of making as weaving every artifact is a kind of knot… every knot might get bound up in other knots — to think of artifact in terms of histories of materials that make it up.

- Surfaces as places with interchange between materials and environment

- Craftsman has to follow materials, join their life to the lives of the materials they work with

- What are the materials what is stone or wood? — for maker materials are what they do, what happens when you work with them — if you push your tool this way it will crack if you turn it that way it will carve nicely — must understand properties of materials, not objectively measured or subjectively attributed — properties that are experienced

- Thinking through making generates knowledge of some kind — to place the knower outside of the world they seek to know — making through thinking,

- Thinking through making puts that in reverse — a way of knowing from the inside — knowledge not created thorough encounter of minds that already understand concepts + frameworks — rather knowledge grows from engagement with materials things beings around us, inside of being in unfolding of life

- We cut knowing off by wrapping it up in our predefined concepts and frameworks — more knowledgeable we become the less we pay attention to what’s happening in our environment

- To thinking through making is to participate in the weave of the meshwork of the world

- Thinking runs ahead of making, not just feeling our way forward but our actions are being pulled form in front our imaginations pull

- But materials give a limit to how fast you can move have their own friction have to work slowly — yet the imagination Is always pulling ahead — skilled craftsmen is one who can hold the forward moving momentum of imagination in check with the slow movement of working with materials look into distance and be close up at same time, hold close to material but think from a distance

- Tension between reach of imagination and drag of material holding back and we’re caught in the middle — art of the maker is keeping eye trained on the far horizon while still engaged in the labors of proximity

Thoughts and Questions:

Ingold, Tim. “Thinking Through Making.” Lecture. October 31, 2013. Accessed October 24, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygne72-4zyo.