Rock or Smoke?

Thoughts are formed from ‘nothing’. Thoughts lead to actions and actions lead to some product – object, furniture, or architecture. Thus, the objects – whatever they may be – are indicators of thoughts/ ideas/ concerns/ beliefs.

As time goes by, the physical object may remain the same, but perspectives towards it, keep changing. At times, the same meanings get reinforced to such an extent, that the thought and the object become virtually inseparable. The meanings get so loaded, so layered and so accumulative of years of perceptions, that the object becomes “heavily” value laden. In such cases, it becomes difficult to change the physical object that is consumed in our experience. I think, that is what seems to happen to objects representing ‘tradition’, a cultural meaning or a symbol. Objects signifying collective memories are also hard to break or change. Examples among them are temples, forts and anything that can be recognized as being “religious”.  Any attempt by architects or designers to change the form of the object is perceived as sacrilege by the society! The society has forgotten the idea behind the object and considers the object as the complete reality – or an end in itself. The idea of the object has now become as hard as a ‘rock’.

If an idea (and the object communicating it) has become as hard as a rock, it will take enormous strength and time to loosen its grip on our mind. However, the rock also disintegrates into granules and granules into dust. That way, everything can go into dust! This should be remembered by all.

The process of loosening the hold of the object on us – is of “decoding”. This simply means to keep asking why and keep going back to the origins of the thought and the connections that have formed by billions of thoughts to make the present object. As we unearth the connections, a sort of fluidity emerges and we encounter the domain of nebulous ideas – continuously forming and dissolving. These ideas can be transformed, adapted, changed, into anything else in any given time at any given place. Thus, we have encountered the zone of pure space – (or void or nothingness) where everything is possible. We have moved beyond the object and the object has dissolved completely for us. The object is not the reality for us any longer; the object is only a temporal expression of space.

This leads me to infer that the link between an ‘idea’ and the ‘object’ it represents, is NOT direct or straightforward or logical. The same idea can generate numerous objects and the same object can communicate numerous ideas. An object can be seen as the container of billions of ideas, so why should we be so concerned about a ‘particular’ object and its specific syntax? Can’t the object be seen only as a gesture to indicate a higher and a nebulous space? In realizing and being aware of this space, it then becomes acceptable for us to represent or express a particular idea in many manifestations (or Avataar).

This is the crux of designing a product, where a potential thought can manifest itself in numerous products. And the products get interpreted in numerous ways by the end users! Students sometimes make a mistake in trying to rationalize their thoughts into some equivalent object of expression. This need not be so. If a student realizes the mystery, the fuzziness, the eccentricity, the intuitional aspects, the spontaneity of thoughts, they will come to accept that the object is NOT the sum total of all thoughts and it is ambiguous in its representation and interpretation. Thus, an object need not prove any definite set of thoughts. It is just an indicator of potential of thoughts. The act of creation is therefore, not just mathematics.