Dancing for the King

Tonight’s Design Mind event in San Francisco generated a flood of thoughts on several topics. The thread that struck me most profoundly was the question of preserving artistic vision especially  within the context of group collaboration.

Alonzo King (Lines Ballet Company) shared how dance, ballet specifically, had become rigid. It had become rote, as it became less about personal expression or experience and more about professional entertainment. It had become “dancing for the king” not dancing for oneself, and some thing was lost.

What is lost is authenticity, and that has broad implications for not just dance, not just art, but design as well. We humans have a tremendous ability to perceive authenticity, though it is an incredibly subtle attribute with no functional purpose. We can perceive the difference between a dancer who is repeating movements he or she has done a hundred times, and a dancer doing the same movements organically, as an improvisation. Not only do we perceive it, but we value it. Highly. The interesting and paradoxical implication is that in the art form becoming professional, becoming “for profit,” one of its most valuable attributes, authenticity, was lost.

Why preserve artistic vision? Why is it so important that the original design intent of a piece of artwork, or a good, or a service, is experienced the way the initial creator intended? Why isn’t it better to have more people with varying experiences each lay their hands onto that thing without being beholden to the original intent? Because in losing that clarity of focus and vision, it loses authenticity, and customers understand that.

Arithmetic

A later panel of frogs (Denise Gershbein, Dave Hoffer, and Nick de la Mare), discussed the challenges of tackling complex problems that can’t be solved alone, that require team, or as one member of the crowd hissed, “a committee.”

As Denise discussed the new role of a team leader in the information age, Dave spoke of the role evolution plays in innovation, and Nick pointed out that “ideas come from ideas,” and I found myswelf questioning whether authenticity was really about preserving the singular artistic vision of an individual. My conclusion is that authenticity is about preserving the vision of the creatorS… because in a modern design environment, we feed off each other, we build from one another, and in collaborating, we remain creators. And the result is authentic. What separates that from the crowd member’s “committee” (hisssss) is the difference between collaboration and compromise.

Collaboration, additive/generative collaboration, is authentic. Compromise, subtractive/destructive compromise, is synthetic. Collaboration is where ideas come from ideas, where constraints produce inspiration, and working simultaneously we achieve a grander unified vision; consumers recognize that unity. Compromise is where ideas are whittled down to the lowest common denominator, constraints drive amputation, and sequentially the idea is incrementally removed from its origins; consumers recognize that void.

So, yes, a team can produce beautiful, inspired innovations. We do it by dancing for ourselves and our consumers, but not “for the king.” We’ll leave that to the committees.