By Jamie Gahlon, American Voices New Play Institute Coordinator
"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a Design Science Conference hosted by the Synergetics Collaborative at the Rhode Island School of Art & Design in Providence, RI with Doug Jacobs and my colleague, Travis Ballenger (to read from the beginning of the journey, go here). We went to spread the word about the show, and to support Doug in his lecture on the "Design Science of Playmaking," and how he used Bucky's design science principles in crafting the play which we'll all get to see this spring!
In his lifetime, it seems, people respected Bucky's ideas but no group wanted to claim him- he was too far outside their realm of classification. The architects would say, "no, he's not an architect, he's an engineer." The engineers would say, "No, he's not an engineer, he's a philosopher." The philosophers would say, "No, he's not a philosopher, he's a scientist," and so on and so forth. However, the one group who it seems always embraced Bucky were the artists. Thus, it was strikingly appropriate that Synergetics presented a "design science" art show to kick off the conference. Here are some photos of the art on display:
Bob Sanderson's geodesic dome made out of straws!
George Mokray's building blocks. When their powers combine, you can end up with:
And, last but certainly not least, John Hiigli's gorgeous painting:
If we're lucky, we might just see some of these incredible artists represented in Crystal City as a part of the Bucky-Art exhibit installation this spring.
One of my personal favorites of the show, was a wire sculpture created by Dmitri Kozlov, which illustrates"tensegrity" (tension-integrity) beautifully as it expands and contracts from 3-D to 2-D and back. Watch and be amazed!
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