Creativity & Inspiration
Everyone is different and gets their inspiration from different places. I think that there are people who probably go through life never feeling inspired, because I go through periods of time when I can’t find inspiration. When I was 15 I found inspiration easily, and that is because I was still learning. Learning is a great source of inspiration. Listening to someone with knowledge of a subject (especially something niche) can be really mind expanding, and the things you are told in a lecture in college can stay with you your whole life. Periods of prolongued study of a specific subject can make you see the world differently. Being immersed (in my case) in a study of a specific time period makes you feel like you are living in that era. I remember studying the Eighteenth century for a couple of months and seeing College Green as if I was in the Eighteenth century. After reading a woman’s diary from the 1770s everyday for a week, I walked around one smokey Halloween night feeling spooked as I had been reading her account of travel by stagecoach, her run in with a brandy smuggler who climbed in through her window, and a treacherous journey by sea.
Inspiration & Escapism
You can time travel through studying a time period. You can escape the everyday. Is creativity about transcending the everyday? Is art about aesthetics? Some people like ugliness, other people like nature (which is mostly beautiful; ugliness is mostly man made). You travel in your mind and find something exciting. It is a spark, as people say. I have very happy memories of reading books. I feel I am in the place and time where I was reading that book and I feel nostalgic. Most of my ideas come from history. This is not necessarily good but it is what I like. Most designers base what they do on historical precedent and often update it through new technology. Not much is genuinely new (I think it would be difficult to find an example). Everything signifies something. Semiotics started as a method to study language but then it was developed in relation to aesthetics. It feels particularly relevant to design. What significance have we, as a society, applied to certain colours? How do we design objects to appeal to as many people in our society as possible?
Roland Barthes wrote about the ‘death of the author’; referring to the way in which the author (or creator) was historically the controller of meaning but in fact the interpretation is owned / created by the reader, which gives the reader authority and control over its meaning.
Value
Is what we do as interior designers lasting and valuable? I think this is a good example of the importance of interpretation. We design, the user experiences it and lives in it and what they make of it is where the value can be assessed. We can design something to photograph well, but the real value is in its beneficial effect on the users and how they experience it. If we get the signifiers wrong (say, on a cultural level), it will be a disaster.
Fashion & Meaning
Is our work purposeful, in terms of lasting value? Or is it transient because it is merely designed to align with current trends and will be ripped out in ten years time? Adorno had this issue with what he saw as popular culture and entertainment versus ‘art’. His ideas are dated but brilliant. He believed that the culture industry, being controlled by the market place, was turning people into commodified sterotypes. People sleepwalking through shops (today we stare, zombified, at advertisements on our phones). I appreciate changing fashions as being markers in time which give people a feeling that they are taking part in what is ‘going on’ in the moment. It is a way of jumping into whatever creativity is happening around you, in the world. In a way, it is a method of being social and acknowledging and engaging with society. Becoming part of the tapestry of life. It is hard to escape that (if you want to) as modes of dress, for example, align with all sorts of ‘tribes’ so that you will always end up falling into one or other of them, whether you want to or not. In interior design it might be a good idea to stay ‘classic’ and ‘timeless’ but something that appears to be classic now will probably look dated in 10 years time.
Architecture & Fashion
Architecture and interiors have been written about in relation to clothing. We wear buildings, especially if we are very conscious of the image we are projecting, and the tribe that we want to align with. In White Walls, Designer Dresses Mark Wigley wrote about modernism and it’s yearning to elevate itself above fashion and create a blank slate but unavoidably becoming a fashion statement. Bricks were stoccuoed over to create a classless and fashionless ‘skin’ of shimmering white that was supposed to look ‘honest’ and machine like.
Conclusion: it is all fashion.
In the end it is all fashion, and I think this is probably impossible to avoid even if your inspiration appears to come from the past and you want to create timeless meaning and value. Craft has been cited (for example, by the modernists) as a source of timeless design – objects that have been honed over centuries to be suited perfectly to their purpose. Decoration is appreciated, if not ‘tacked-on’, connecting the object to the maker / author, to the time and the place. It brings the user closer (can be enticing), it makes them want to interact with the object to meditate on it, invites people to dream. Perhaps this is also the significance of interior design.
Interior Design: Inspiration & Meaning
nova: vintage treasure 