montserrat college of art
graphic design
stick squared

stick | square : some indefinite ruminations

The stick signifies walking, exile, the philosopher and, of course, the pen.

The square signifies the idea of enclosure, of house, of settlement.

Thus two of many thinkers and practitioners on these topics, Anthony Réal and Bruno Munari. For the designer, the stick invokes gesture, expression, the virtues of "the hand"; the square suggests the grid, exactitude, order. These and related themes were taken up by Design Seminar students in the Cabot Studio Gallery space during the week of 16-20 October, 2000. The show - better characterized as an exploratory gesture in the white box of this exhibition space - was the fourth in a series of design theme shows that began in 1997 with natter, followed by lines and dots and, last year, signal to noise.

These exercises test ability to work with metaphor, to determine and respect rules, to collaborate, to communicate. All of these capabilities are crucial for the designer.

The democratically chosen theme - stick squared - biases the argument in favor of "square." It suggests that something is being done to the stick. I choose to be agnostic. My own ruminations and extracts follow.

The stick is ambiguous, existential. At what point does the stick emerge from or devolve into being a twig or splinter at one end, and a branch or trunk or pole at the other? Is a dowel - machined barkless - a stick? We thought much about what sort of object it is that makes itself available to us as a stick. It's a longish thing, suited to handgrasp and to human frame and scale and needs, as weapon or tool. It has two ends, thick and thin.

Frutiger distinguishes two types of horizontal line - one with indefinite ends (lying down, waiting, infinity) and the other with defined endings (lying down, waiting, earth, passivity) - from the vertical (stick-like) line (standing up, keeping watch, weapon, activity).

The square is unambiguous, an abstraction. Someone invented the idea of a square. It's an assembled thing, stick and frame construction, artifice.

There's nothing like putting stuff in boxes, said designer Muriel Cooper. For MŸller-Brockmann, the grid betokens a progressive, rational attitude.

Does any relationship obtain between the stick and the square? The authorities are divided. There's something here, clearly, about raster (grid) versus vector.

Klee postulates a point, and a walking line, as his point of departure. An active line, on a walk, moving freely, without goal. I imagine the walker to employ a stick. I imagine the map that our walker eschews.

Denman Ross distinguishes between "lines" and "outlines."

There is something incommensurable between walking in an experiential world, and theorizing a function, in this case based on four points equidistant from their immediate neighbors, and situated at 90 degree angles. The square is a special case of a rectangle. Yes, the square might be drawn by a stick, and even be suggested by laying sticks on the ground, but the function leaves the mundane behind.

Munari relates the anecdote about a woman who could not reproduce a square shown her without presenting it as a window, with an architectural arc above, and a cross delineating four panes within. The story suggests that the abstraction requires a brain process that picturing does not.

The relationship of stick to square is metaphorical, not formal.

The dowsing rod, the charmed forked stick, the water witch, is a tool for finding (doodlebugging) water or oil. The finding aid (stick) is the flip side of classification (the square), and it is natural that bibliographer of bibliographers Theodore Besterman wrote Water-Divining, New Facts and Theories in 1938.

The square is about counting, measurement. Yet the ruler does the same.

George Christoph Lichtenberg, author of wastebooks, hunchback, Shandean philosopher of the serpentine, writes of the crooked path connecting two diagonal vertices of a square, established by sleepy-night watchman, who crosses the square during a night of heavy snowfall. The passage is translated by Stern (pp 115-16). Lichtenberg doubts the possibility of absolute, rectilinear motion.

One grids fields, but dibbles willing soil.

To speak is, at once, to invoke stick and square, blade and hearth, tool and plan. Their common denominator is, to devise.

The purpose of what is called art-teaching should be the production, not of objects, but of faculties - the faculties which being exercised will produce objects of Art, naturally, inevitably. (Denman Ross)

references

Adrian Frutiger, Geometry of Feelings (1998)

Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925, translation 1953)

Bruno Munari, Discovery of the Square (1965), translation of Il Quadrato (1960)

Anthony Réal (Fernand Michel), The Story of the Stick in All Ages and Lands. A Philosophical History and Lively Chronicle of the Stick as the Friend and the Foe of Man. Its Uses and Abuses. As Sceptre and as Crook. As the Warrior's Weapon and the Wizard's Wand. As Stay, Stimulus, and as Scourge. (1875)

Denman W. Ross, A Theory of Pure Design: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm (1907)

J.P. Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (1959)

I watched hikers yesterday, on Monadnock. Their sticks did them little good on steep descent.

John McVey, instructor