Unsigned, "Nart", "Nelegance", "Nesign", or "Naysign"?

Happiness and Unhappiness through Naysign and Nescience: comprehending the essence of sustainability? (Part #7)

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In contrast to what is conventionally understood by "science", Rajan appropriately sees "art" as a distinctly valuable way of knowing -- as noted above. Art may also be understood as intimately related to "design", especially where prominence is given to aesthetic rather than technical criteria.

The challenge in both cases lies in their conventional (and traditional) meanings and the manner in which these are too readily understood, thereby inhibiting access to larger meanings with which creative reinterpretation comes to be associated in their future development. The case of "design" is especially interesting because of the faith-inspired debate regarding "intelligent design" by a transcendent "creator" -- and the threat it is perceived to constitute for conventional science (End of Science: the death knell as sounded by the Royal Society, 2008).

The approach advocated here might be more fruitfully applied to "art" through the neologism "nart". The latter term offers an aesthetic resonance to the Nart Sagas a set of folk tales originating from regions of the North Caucasus currently of great political sensitivity, namely the Ossetians and the Circassian peoples, closely followed by the related Abkhaz and Abazin people. Nart sagas are also present in Karachay-Balkar and Chechen-Ingush folklore. Some motifs in these sagas are shared by Greek mythology. It has also been speculated that many aspects of the Arthurian legends are derived from the Nart sagas

A sense of the larger significance of art and design is evident in certain psychoactive symbols which directly evoke a distinctive intimate mode of knowing (Topology of Valuing: psychodynamics of collective engagement with polyhedral value configurations, 2008). This evocative "direct" mode contrasts with the "indirect", detached mode characteristic of science. This may be especially evident in certain forms of poetry such as haiku as described in the light of a meeting of the World Academy of Art and Science (Ensuring Strategic Resilience through Haiku Patterns: reframing the scope of the "martial arts" in response to strategic threats, 2006). A description of this mode is provided in the much-cited classic taoist tale by Chuang Tzu (The Dexterous Butcher):

All I care about is the Way. If find it in my craft, that's all. When I first butchered an ox, I saw nothing but ox meat. It took three years for me to see the whole ox. Now I go out to meet it with my whole spirit and don't think only about what meets the eye. Sensing and knowing stop. The spirit goes where it will, following the natural contours, revealing large cavities, leading the blade through openings, moving onward according to actual form -- yet not touching the central arteries or tendons and ligaments, much less touching bone.

This traditional understanding is presumably comparable to the notion of flow as the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in action through a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity -- also phrased as "in the zone". This has been extensively articulated by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, 1996; Finding Flow: the psychology of engagement with everyday life, 1998).

On a larger scale, there are many explorations of the "art" of living, whether or not they reflect such understandings (for example, Art of Living Foundation; Tom Morris, The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and Outer Results, 2004; Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life, 1990; Organization and Lifestyle Design: characteristics of a nonverbal structural language, 1978).

It is appropriate to note that any such "art" is of a nature distinct from that which can be "signed" or subject to intellectual copyright -- as with "patent art" or "prior art". As such it is essentially "unsigned". Appropriately it is then necessarily impossible to appropriate in contrast with proprietary metaphors (Future Coping Strategies: beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors, 1992).

Applying the suggested method, the question is to focus attention on that which is (or may be) "not art" or "not design" in these conventional senses. In the case of "design" a possible neologism to this end is "nesign". With respect to the World Academy of Art and Science, this is of potential value given a workshop under its auspices with the theme "Who is designing the 21st Century?" as described elsewhere (Designg the 21st Century through integration of the arts and sciences, 1995). One of the contributions explored the importance of "de-signing" (Definitional Boundary Games and De-signing the 21st Century, 1995):

Designing can be understood as removing the significance of the underlying experience of nature. In this way architects and planners have eliminated the experience of nature.... In this way it may be understood as de-signifying. However design may also be understood as removing the architectural graffiti imposed by architects and planners on nature. Production of graffiti is a way for some to impose their tag or sign on any available surface. In this way de-signing may be understood as the removal of such defacement, namely of the artificial signs imposed upon nature rendering it invisible.

Pronouncing "nesign" as "naysign" -- implying the absence of sign or trace -- offers another sense, as indicated in that same contribuition:

A comparison has been made between French and Japanese cooking in the following terms. The most eminent French chef is known by what he does to the food. He is recognized by the tastes he adds to it in the form of sauces -- in which his hand is to be experienced at every turn. By contrast a Japanese chef is known by the impossibility of distinguishing his hand in the food that is offered. His work is to reduce the interface between the eater and the food to the strictest minimum -- allowing the flavours of the food to emerge of their accord. The question is whether the designers of the 21st century are to be of the first kind or of the second.

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