Would it be desireable for us to post PDFs of our letters so that they may be read in their entirety (including bibliography and sources), now that they are (presumably) done? I know this was done last year on Forest’s site and it was helpful.

My actual letter

My thoughts loosely-

I am thinking about failure in general, but mainly the failure of one structure, that leads to the flourishing of another. Think a sidewalk that cracks (failure) with a tuft of grass now growing up through it. Failure as an opportunity.

Failure is an integral part of the design process. We must continually fail in the effort to achieve a design direction that is satisfactory.

A quote from Ernesto Blanco at MIT “Failure is the mechanism nature uses to communicate.”

Is a design ever final, is there not something that can be changed to make it work better once more knowledge is aquired? The perfect design has no flaws, but there is no such thing so all design is flawed.

What about the tv show “Survivor” It is all about fighting failure.

Why have all art movements come to an end? Is it because that style fails to represent the artist anymore, does it become mainstream and thus unacceptable to continue producing in that way, is art all about “the latest” and therefore anything that is known and “been done” is not going to work? For dada, its success automatically meant its failure since it was anti-art and it claimed that art is dead. Once people started elevating it to the status of art, it could no longer be dada.

What about design movements? Nobody does the whole deconstruction thing anymore. Does it still communicate (like it did)? Or, would it be considered a failed creation if I were to try to do something in that style today?

Failures function as a result of a lack of inputs (maybe not the right word). Traffic congestion occurs b/c there is not enough money/space/time/manpower to make larger roads. We know the solution, but cannot implement.

Prince symbol-
when prince converted from his name “Prince” to it was generally considered a failure b/c nobody could refer to him verbally. It was not part of language as defined by words, letters, and sentences, but, like all logos, existed strictly as a part of visual language. Paradoxically, this failure was successful in creating more of a buzz about the artist and an even higher demand to describe him verbally.

This verbal need to describe him forced people to reference him as he was-by saying “The artist formerly known as Prince” or “The artist formerly know as” Linking his physical strictly to a visual representation removed his present existence from the present-since language allows for a perpetual or timeless reference that is possible only b/c language is of the abstract and not the real. (A tree is always a tree unless it is not a tree in which case it is whatever it has become-a dead tree, for instance. I am rob now and when I was a baby even though I am very different physically and mentially in each of these instances. Rob refers to the collective experience of me, I guess.) He existed in the present based on a reference to his previous identity. He was in a verbal non-space. Therefore, he could remain always what he was.

As a pop star, Prince is in the unique position to do this. If I put a blotch on the page, and tried to get someone interested in describing it, it would not work. It is probably the only time anyone would need to refer to the blotch and thus not worth the effort to define it any more specifically than a blotch. Everything visual, has its (verbal) language counterpart. There are different classifications for this-characterized by the the scientific classification system-which goes from specific to very general or very general to specific. (Live Oak–>Oak–>Tree–>etc.)Other visuals, such as logos, always have to have their category with them to differeniate them from the actual physical thing. IBM logo is different than IBM b/c it has logo with it. It tells me that it is the logo of IBM. It needs two descriptors since it is removed from the actual physical thing. What do I call it if not IBM logo? Prince was able to remove the very specific verbal representation (although, really, prince is not that specific if looked at as a title rather than a name-as in prince so and so) to be the “Prince symbol” and elevate himself up the line to a universal-a symbol. He was represented by this symbol as we all are supposed to be represented by the universal man. In essence, with this move, he became a universal.

saw a mention of a “hapax” which is”(a word that occurs only once in a language), appearing without predication or description, in a context that offers no denotations, but only the undemonstrable connotations implied by the name itself.” in Cabinet Issue 7. A hapax is a pure signifier without signified, a word without object. Whereas, Prince is an object without a word.

In a culture of mass production, inconsistency is considered a failure. How can inconsistency be used?
Disassembly (the parts become worth more than the whole e.g. old cars) or destruction implies failure, reassemly implies success. Maybe Paul Elliman’s bits is like this? Only through the failure of other objects is it possible to assemble these pieces of scrap for reuse as a typeface.

Butchers Bar-this would not exist without the failure of the butcher. Normally, it would have been turned into a bar as a bar is supposed to look, but by finding a way to convert the failure of one into something else, it reused, reduced and recycled in a way that is beneficial for the environment and it is a solution that could not happen anywhere else except for the place it happened.

From:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008566.php
another area where scientist can learn from artist since a painting is like 20 layers of failures and one layer of success or a mix somewhat in between the last layer of failure and the first layer of success, if paintings like the Mona Lisa and her smile are to be explained for its attraction. Look at interesting comments on the post also.

From:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/007988.php
Norman White on Mistakology
Good discussion on the kinds of mistakes people make and some examples of mistakes (generalized). Discusses technology and using it in relation to making mistakes.

Things to look at:
Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine
http://www.jnrbm.com/

People working with failure:
Måns Wrange-
Did an art project called the “Encyclopedia of Failure” “One of the things revealed in this tender study of failure was the many aspiring artists who nearly succeeded in becoming “immortal” but instead disappeared into oblivion.”

Peter Santino (1)-
(Translated from german by google-almost a failure). To 1.1.1991 the 1948 in Kansas born Peter Santino created ”failures of institutes“, who exactly existed as project in the Worldwide Web up to 31.12.1999. It should be primarily a meeting place for all those, whose interest in questions of the failure went so far that they entered this word into a search machine. The thought of the failure as Kraft just like the principle of the temporal delimitation of artistic production, positively which can be used, pull a large part through of the work of Peter Santino. A quote from “500 Failures” “(called “failures” in the sense of a work “failing” falling inward, compressing and perfecting itself)”

(the key phrase-pulled out by me) It concerns to it not the opposite from success, but many more in principle around the question, how things in their failure can also develop themselves further or complete.

Books:
Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (probably not very useful)
Success through failure: the paradox of design
Visual Explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative
Quote from Introduction to Engineering (Paul H. Wright, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002)-Wright states, “Although the object of engineering design is to preclude failure, truly fail-proof design cannot be achieved. (But)… it is a curious fact that we often learn more from our failures than our successes.”

Objects implying failure-
Tapes-scotch, duct, etc.
shims
red zig-zag line, usually found within word processing programs to denote a word not in the programs dictionary
returned emails

Visuals of failure-
Error pages in web browsers

dirt trails created by a best route where there are sidewalks

Error(failure) as humor

Failure as an opportunity to reassess and make better

Also thinking loosely about reuse. What is the point of creating more waste (Literal and figurative)? Can we utilize the current structures so that there is less waste? Cut and Paste what is already there.