On Lightness: Sketches on the Connectivity of Art, by Marc Hohmann
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Chiaki Arai, Kadare Cultural Center, 2012 // Photo: Taisuke Ogawa, courtesy of Chiaki Arai Office
By Marc Hohmann, Design Partner, Lippincott
It’s a striking quote by the prophetic British writer. The technological quest to make things easier and more convenient may be endless, but at what point do we become apathetic, numbed out, uninspired; in a word, bored? As the world gets smaller, so do our dreams—they’re becoming easier to reach everyday. Two decades ago, we would have been happy to have a stereo that could access every song recorded in the last 100 years. Are we happier? What kind of inventions are we dreaming of now? What still excites us?
Supposedly, Big Data is the latest thing. This means that airlines know what kind of movies I like when I book a flight. I should be excited about it.. but I’m not. I feel that research has gone from a treasure hunt to a commodity. As a result, any form of personal preference has lost its exclusivity. Still, statistics show that our level of happiness has not changed at all in the last 100 year—it’s stagnant, even as we busy ourselves with ever-evolving hype. We’re bored without knowing it. It seems that we’re in the suburbs of the soul already.
Now I dream of a future where there’s privacy, discretion and contemplation, and where we have accomplished ultra high efficiency and productivity in order to enable ourselves to work at a personal, healthy pace. A natural state of being, that aims for timelessness and long-term perspectives. In a word, I dream of quality.
To me, the essential goal in designing quality for tomorrow’s world is lightness, rather than its prevalent antithesis, which is not only heavy, dramatic, loud, insensitive; the un- or over-refined. A light solution always aims to leave room for interpretation. It should be graceful and natural and should solve a fundamental need, without imposing weight or an aggressive point of view. Even aggressive lightness still has an aura of positivity. Lightness cannot become boring because it remains an ongoing challenge: elusive, agile and unpredictable. Most importantly it stands for freedom of the soul, contra the complacent definition of disposable happiness (as in Ballard’s suburbia).
Jasper Morrison, The Crate Series, 2007 // Photo: Gavin Proud
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