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| futurist_fieldguide:six_memos [2015-04-04 19:27] – [Lightness] nik | futurist_fieldguide:six_memos [2015-05-20 13:38] – alkan |
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| ===== Six Memos ===== | ==== Six Memos ==== |
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| In //"Six memos for the next millennium"// Italo Calvino proposes six principles for writers of the 21st century. Although Calvino focused on writing, the memos can be applicable to any creative endeavour, including futuring. The six memos include: | In //"Six memos for the next millennium"// Italo Calvino proposes six principles for writers of the 21st century. Although Calvino focused on writing, the memos can be applicable to any creative endeavour, including futuring. The six memos include: |
| * Visibility → Bring visions into focus, stimulate imagination | * Visibility → Bring visions into focus, stimulate imagination |
| * Multiplicity → Weave together the various branches of knowledge, use rules as boundaries | * Multiplicity → Weave together the various branches of knowledge, use rules as boundaries |
| * Consistency → Unfortunately, Calvino died before writing this memo. As with many of his works, he leaves space for his readers to fill in the blanks… | * Consistency (Unfortunately, Calvino died before writing this memo. As with many of his works, he leaves space for his readers to fill in the blanks…) |
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| At FoAM the Six Memos are used as guiding principles, inspirations or tests through which we can scrutinise our creative process. We strive for Lightness as a counterbalance to the weight of life and work, attempting to distil the light essence that isn’t burdened by unnecessary details and formalities. Quickness we interpret as finding the right speed that creation needs, from swift responses to slow pondering, taking as much time as necessary. We understand Exactitude as a need for clarity and meticulous preparation, especially when designing participatory experiences; the more exactitude is present in the preparatory stages, the more effortless and spontaneous the work. Visibility encourages us to find words, materials and media that can spark imagination and create rich mental and visceral images; it’s about a transmutation from experience to vision and back again. Multiplicity relates to making connections between everything and everything else; it intertwines different branches of knowledge into a meaningful whole, yet it is also about rules which function as boundaries preventing us from getting lost in the vastness of possibility. The last memo, Consistency, remains ambiguous as it was never completed. We interpret it as a consistency of process, a determination to leave the creative work open, inviting additions, interpretations and improvements: | At FoAM the Six Memos are used as guiding principles, inspirations or tests through which we can scrutinise our creative process. We strive for Lightness as a counterbalance to the weight of life and work, attempting to distil the light essence that isn’t burdened by unnecessary details and formalities. Quickness we interpret as finding the right speed that creation needs, from swift responses to slow pondering, taking as much time as necessary. We understand Exactitude as a need for clarity and meticulous preparation, especially when designing participatory experiences; the more exactitude is present in the preparatory stages, the more effortless and spontaneous the process. Visibility encourages us to find words, materials and media that can spark imagination and create rich mental and visceral images; it’s about a transmutation from experience to vision and back again. Multiplicity relates to making connections between everything and everything else; it intertwines different branches of knowledge into a meaningful whole, yet it is also about rules which function as boundaries preventing us from getting lost in the vastness of possibility. The last memo, Consistency, remains ambiguous as it was never completed. We interpret it as a consistency of process, a determination to leave the creative work open, inviting additions, interpretations and improvements: |
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| <blockquote>a work that would let us escape the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language, to the bird perching on the edge of the gutter, to the tree in spring and the tree in fall, to stone, to cement, to plastic… | <blockquote>a work that would let us escape the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language, to the bird perching on the edge of the gutter, to the tree in spring and the tree in fall, to stone, to cement, to plastic…\\ |
| —Italo Calvino</blockquote> | —Italo Calvino</blockquote> |
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| ==== Lightness ==== | ==== Lightness ==== |
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| <blockquote>…my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. | <blockquote>…my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.\\ |
| —Italo Calvino </blockquote> | —Italo Calvino </blockquote> |
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| * Allow the breeze of possibility to blow through a stale situation | * Allow the breeze of possibility to blow through a stale situation |
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| <blockquote>Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous”\\ | <blockquote> |
| —Jim Dator</blockquote> | Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous”\\ |
| | —Jim Dator |
| | </blockquote> |
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| ==== Quickness ==== | ==== Quickness ==== |
| <blockquote>“Festina lente… | <blockquote>“Festina lente… |
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| Quickness of style and thought means above all agility, mobility, and ease, all qualities that go with writing where it is natural to digress, to jump from one subject to another, to lose the thread a hundred times and find it again after a hundred more twists and turns.” | Quickness of style and thought means above all agility, mobility, and ease, all qualities that go with writing where it is natural to digress, to jump from one subject to another, to lose the thread a hundred times and find it again after a hundred more twists and turns.”\\ |
| —Italo Calvino</blockquote> | —Italo Calvino</blockquote> |
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| * (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images; | * (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images; |
| * (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination. | * (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination. |
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| —Italo Calvino | —Italo Calvino |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
| ==== Visibility ==== | ==== Visibility ==== |
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| <blockquote>If I have included visibility in my list of values to be saved, it is to give warning of the danger we run in losing a basic human faculty: the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut, of bringing forth forms and colours from the lines of black letters on a white page, and in fact of thinking in terms of images. | <blockquote>If I have included visibility in my list of values to be saved, it is to give warning of the danger we run in losing a basic human faculty: the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut, of bringing forth forms and colours from the lines of black letters on a white page, and in fact of thinking in terms of images.\\ |
| —Italo Calvino </blockquote> | —Italo Calvino </blockquote> |
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| ==== Multiplicity ==== | ==== Multiplicity ==== |
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| <blockquote> Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement… The grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various “codes” into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world. | <blockquote> Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement… The grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various “codes” into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world.\\ |
| —Italo Calvino </blockquote> | —Italo Calvino </blockquote> |
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alkan