Focus: Different stories in design

Different stories in design: Provocations from the work of Gregory Bateson

The work of cybernetician Gregory Bateson provides a valuable entry point to explore the limitations and possibilities of mobilising design in the context of systemic complexity. Common throughout Bateson’s diverse work was the exploration of living systems of all kinds—octopuses, cities, families, institutions, minds, or ecosystems—in terms of communication and learning rather than matter and energy. For Bateson, these varied contexts all participate in the same sets of ecological relationships.

Addressing these contexts separately from each other, including in well-meaning attempts to mitigate problems, distorts the overall pattern of relationships, reinforcing the underlying causes of ecological crisis. This reductive way of engaging is embedded in the stories built around modernity, human agency, technology, innovation, and design. In their later work, Bateson explored themes such as dialogue, metaphor, and a secular rethinking of the ‘sacred’ as different logics of operations that could lead to different stories and other forms of engagement.

How may we use Bateson’s provocations to rethink the problematic stories around design and modernity as mobilised in contemporary design practices?

Indicative references

Bateson, G., & Bateson, M. C. (2005). Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of the sacred. Cresskill, N.J: Hampton.

Bateson, N. (2021) Aphanipoiesis. 65th Annual Proceedings for the International Society of the Systems Sciences. https://journals.isss.org/index.php/jisss/article/view/3887

Boehnert, J. (2018). Design, ecology, politics: Towards the ecocene. Bloomsbury.

Steier, F. (Ed.) (2005). Gregory Bateson: Essays for an ecology of ideas [Special double issue]. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 12(1-2).

RSD11 Call for Contributions

Now open. RSD11 Call for contributions that challenge, extend, critique, and diversify established working methods in systemic design.

Preparing an RSD submission

This article invites you to follow the RSD posting protocols and provides a detailed description of the basics to consider when preparing your submission.

Contributions to RSD11 focus sessions

Authors are invited to identify their paper or presentation as aligned to one of seven specific focus sessions. These have been developed as provocations for critical reflection, new topics, and different directions.

Focus: Design over time

Designers must navigate between the need for immediate action and maintaining long-term change. Yet, it is difficult to think of the temporality of design beyond the consideration of years or decades.

Focus: Products are systemic objects

In this focus, RSD11 is interested in contributions exploring: circular design, regenerative design, distributed design, and, more broadly, ways that designers of things act to shape the nature and legibility of economic, bureaucratic, ecological and cultural systems.