Take the unknown
Since "Disegno" operates in the field of tension between the identifiable code of the material world and the unknown (the dark matter and energy), without which the material world would not exist, it is the perfect tool for learning how to take the unknown into account.
On the analytical level, we begin with Leonardo da Vinci's "Book of Painting", in which he describes how this in-between space is constituted: from point to line, to form, to colour, to what we recognise, to what is unknown to us, what must remain unpredictable.
From this point, we look back to the practice of the augurs in ancient Rome, who claimed to incorporate the unknown will of the gods into concrete political decisions, and forward at the same time; from Paul Klee's "strolling lines", the non-material identity of the point as described by Kandinsky, to the need to connect every point with every other, as Deleuze and Guattari have formulated the demand we must follow today.
Based on the Practice of Disegno, we investigate the possibilities of making the "free-flowing causalities" of the unknown, or unpredictable, available for design practice.
The aim of the practical work is to develop design methods (they can also be called social design or design thinking methods) for two main areas:
1) The field of decision making, to enable decision makers in the political as well as in the cultural and social field to take the unknown into account.
2) The field of designing media and material products to create what we call "participatory objects or products".
Nothing without the Unknown
The unknown is the source of all natural and cultural development. In addition, we try to understand how the unknown was dealt with in earlier times as a potential of free-flowing causalities.
1st Step – Dealing with Complexity
Reconstructing the elementary way of dealing with complexity. How to aesthetically capture and fix the possibilities of the unknown (or unpredictable).
2nd Step – Layering
How to create conditions for the interpretation (of the potentials extracted from the unknown) , more precisely, for the diversity of cultural references.
3rd Step – Organic Moulding
Organic modulation activates the cultural coordinates: How to organically complete the grammatical geometric structure (which already demands a formal interpretation) and thus activate the interpretive schemes of the psyche.
4th Step – Interpretation
The interpretation takes place on both levels, the formal and the psychological, combined in relation to the respective theme that is elaborated by the respective student as their concrete example of social design.
The first four steps are structurally identical to the specific method of design practicing which we call Practice of Disegno that decision-makers can use to take the possibilities of free-flowing causalities into account.
5th Step Transformation
By applying the Practice of Disegno as we do within the four steps of „taking the unknown into account", this method can be used (in the sense of the original definition of Disegno) as a general procedure in the field of tension between construction, composition and interpretation.
The transformation of the potential of the unknown (or unpredictable) into concrete media or physical objects or products extends across all creative fields.