Design as a cultural phenomenon

Introduction

Currently, the philosophical and cultural understanding of design, the study of design as a cultural phenomenon, is particularly relevant, given the ubiquity of design. Design today is a metalanguage of the modern visual and informational environment in which humanity is immersed.

Design is close to art in its philosophical content, however, it has its own specifics. Cultural understanding of design can cover various aspects of this phenomenon. In this article, the research is based on the system of aesthetic categories of V. V. Bychkov, since if we accept this classification, in which there is a category of "art", then "design" can be considered as one of the categories of aesthetics. At the same time, the category "design" will describe that aspect of reality for which there is no aesthetic category yet. That is, in this study, design as a cultural phenomenon is compared with the phenomenon of art, and in this comparison, the specifics of design are revealed.

The object of the study is culture in terms of its aesthetic component (art and design). The subject of the study is design as a cultural phenomenon.

 Currently, the design has been studied quite extensively. These are the works of the first design theorists, for example, D. Ruskin ^[1], A. Loos ^[2], the theory of design developed in the first design educational institutions of the Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS, for example, the works of K. Malevich ^[3], V. Kandinsky ^[4], I. Itten and others. The general theory of design was developed in the 1960s under the leadership of G. P. Shchedrovitsky ^[5]. Design as a project methodology of modernity is considered in the works of A. A. Zelenov ^[6], A.V. Kazarinov ^[7], S. V. Norenkov ^[8]. Design from a semiotic point of view is considered, for example, by E. V. Zherdev ^[9]. A deep philosophical analysis of the design phenomenon is presented in the works of G. N. Lola ^[10].

The author of this article has also already addressed the study of design, including on the pages of the magazine "Culture and Art". Thus, in the article "Design in Modernity: a historical choice in favor of globalization", the period of the formation of design was considered ^[11], and in the article "Flat design as visualization of flat ontologies", the design of the modern period was considered ^[12].

In this study, the focus of attention is focused on identifying the specifics of design by comparison with the phenomenon of art, based on the functional approach to the classification of aesthetic categories by V. V. Bychkov ^[13].

Of course, design existed long before its comprehension in the works of both modern authors and design theorists. In this sense, the history of design can be divided into two uneven periods: implicit and explicit. The implicit history of design is the history of the subject world and the visual environment before the emergence of the designer profession in the 1950s. The explicit history of design is the period of the existence of design as a profession, as a social practice and as a subject of theoretical understanding. 

Design, as a cultural phenomenon, is inherent in man from the beginning, and that is why it is curious to draw a line where this cultural phenomenon is distinguished from the phenomenon of art. Both art and design accompany the entire history of mankind, belong to the aesthetic part of culture. That is why the difference is interesting, I wonder what exactly the specifics of the design phenomenon are manifested in.

V. V. Bychkov, classifying aesthetic categories, identifies two meta–categories of aesthetics - art and aesthetic. Art, to use the definition of V. V. Bychkov, is a universal way of concretely sensual expression of non-verbalized spiritual experience, primarily aesthetic ^{[13, p. 255]}. Aesthetic is the most general category of aesthetics; it is a metacategory by which its subject is designated ^{[13, pp. 143-146]}; the sphere of subject-object relations in which the perception of an object or the representation of it is accompanied by disinterested, disinterested pleasure.

Aesthetic is understood as a broader category than art, and the emergence of this category is associated with the modernist revolution in art in the first half of the XX century, when there was a devaluation of the category of beauty and new spheres of human activity related to art and creativity, but not necessarily related to traditional ideas about beauty.

It could be assumed that the already existing categories of aesthetics are sufficient for philosophical understanding of the design sphere, however, neither the category "art" nor the category "aesthetic" reflect the specifics and deep content of the design phenomenon.

Let's consider what is the specificity of the philosophical content of the category "design", for which we will draw a line separating the category "design" from the categories "art" and "aesthetic".

I. Demarcation with the categories "art" and "aesthetic"

1. Functional difference

The fundamental difference between the category of "art" and the supposed category of "design" is the anagogic function, that is, the ability to elevate the consciousness of the perceiver into the high spheres of the spirit.

Real art always contains a transcendent signified, refers the recipient to archetypal meanings, to being, to God. A work of art is always to some extent a symbol, since the content of a real work of art is always larger, more voluminous, deeper than its form. A work of art either hints at a transcendent reality, or openly indicates.

Art is designed to reveal the truth in a sensual form ^{[14, p. 137]}. According to F. V. Schelling, "creativity or creation is always and necessarily the identification of something infinite, some concept in something finite or real." ^{[15, p. 186]}. The subject of art "can only be a real idea that opens to sensual contemplation" ^{[16, p. 129]}. The understanding of art as a way to point to a transcendent reality, to the world of ideas, comes from Plato, who clearly distinguished real art, "the art of creating images" ^{[17, p. 30]}, from simulation – the art of "creating ghostly likenesses". Real art is always vertically oriented, pointing upwards, to a supersensible being.

At least, such a philosophical understanding of art was dominant until the early 1910s, when avant-garde art, reflecting the ideology of the materialist paradigm, fundamentally changes the philosophical content of art. And it was among the avant-gardists of the 1920s that design as a profession was consolidated.

In design, an anagogic moment is not mandatory, moreover, some authors emphasize the rhetorical, superficial nature of the design. For example, G. N. Lola writes about this, saying that "by the end of the XIX century, the understanding of design as a means of re-sacralization of a thing was established" ^{[10, p. 83]}. Or: "the purpose of design is to bring comfort into the world as such, in distraction from the meaning inherent in the "work"" ^{[10, p. 173]}. The designer does not care about transcendental meanings, about the deep meaning of a thing, he just creates comfort, interface, communication.

This property of design is not evaluated by the designers themselves as a kind of inferiority, on the contrary, since the era of modernism, the time of the establishment of design as a profession, design has been postulated as part of the positivist paradigm. Designers have always emphasized their continuity in relation to designers, engineers, scientists and distanced themselves from pure art. The ideology of the first design schools, Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS was fundamentally horizontally oriented, built around an exclusively materialistic worldview.

V. V. Bychkov argues that the need for the appearance of the category "aesthetic" is connected precisely with the modernist paradigm in art, which allows both the ugly and disharmony as a means of artistic expression. One could assume that "aesthetic", being a broader category than "art", includes phenomena that, while not having the ability to refer to the transcendent, are nevertheless associated with the beauty of the objective world. However, even in the case of the category "aesthetic", there are noticeable differences from the philosophical content of the category "design".

Since the time of I. Kant, the self-sufficiency of the aesthetic phenomenon as an object of non-utilitarian pleasure has been fundamental for the category "aesthetic". A. F. Losev defines aesthetic as "an expression of one or another subjectivity given as a self-sufficient contemplative value and treated as a bundle of socio-historical relations" ^{[18, p. 393]}. That is, aesthetic is all that the perception of which gives us pleasure, but at the same time is not related to our practical need and benefit. This is formulated in Oscar Wilde's famous phrase "all art is completely useless" ^{[19, p. 70]}.

On the contrary, functionality is the defining moment for design. Design is fundamentally useful. In design engineering, the most important thing is the moment of feasibility, expediency, practicality.

According to a group of authors led by G. P. Shchedrovitsky and O. I. Genisaretsky, "design appears to be a system that reacts to gaps and contradictions in the social and subject organization of the world as disturbing influences and which, through the design and implementation of projects, develops controlling influences that eliminate these gaps and contradictions" ^{[5, p. 296]}. That is, the design eliminates problems, improves the functioning of the environment.

Art has higher goals, and aesthetic has goals that are more distant from practice.

So, the category of design does not refer to the transcendent signified, as art, and is not associated with a non-utilitarian contemplative value, as aesthetic. There is another difference from the named aesthetic categories.

2. Difference of origin

 The genesis of design as a social practice is strikingly different from the emergence of art. Art first slowly grows out of other fields of activity, and then is comprehended philosophically. On the one hand, the same can be said about design: design is an immanent property of human culture. However, on the other hand, design as a reflexive activity is a projective phenomenon ^{[20, pp. 204-215]}: initially, design arises as a philosophical project, as a requirement of the time, formulated in the works of critics and art historians, and only then gradually becomes a social practice. The term "projectivity" means, according to M. N. Epstein, orientation to the future. Of course, design thinking existed long before design theorists formulated their design request and began theoretical understanding of design. But still, in the history of design, for example, in S. M. Mikhailov ^[21], it is customary to refer everything that relates to the implicit history of design to protodesign.

The design theorists of the XIX century, as you know, raised the question that thanks to scientific and technological progress, a new sphere of life appears that needs aesthetic understanding. It was about the products of progress, to which it was useless to apply classical ideas about beauty.

Further, within the framework of the Chicago School of Architecture, there is an understanding of the aesthetics of functionalism. L. Sullivan writes that a skyscraper should have its own aesthetics associated with height and exaltation, and deduces the formula defining for all modernism, "form follows function."

Following the American functionalists, A. Loos in Europe writes his program article "Ornament and Crime" ^[2], in which he draws a clear line between the aesthetics of the past, associated with decoration, and the aesthetics of modernity, associated with cleanliness and getting rid of any jewelry. The aesthetic meaning of A. Loos' article is in purism, the purity of lines and surfaces, which have since become a common place in design. The culturological content of A. Loos' thoughts is that a modern person and a person of traditional formation think fundamentally differently. Modern man, according to A. Loos, does not need additional meanings, which are expressed in additional signifiers (decorations). The reality of modern man is fundamentally pure and removed from nature. Modern man lives in a world of objects created by scientific and technological progress. The danger of the ideas of A. Loos, fraught with rejection of history, culture and national identity, could not have been realized a hundred years ago, and is not fully realized now. However, it is the ideas of functionalism that have defined the essence of design up to the present day.

That is, design arises together with the need for an aesthetic understanding of the world, which is not part of art and part of nature. A world generated by scientific and technological progress and a positivist worldview.

Art and aesthetic understanding of reality arise in a vertically oriented paradigm. The most important role in the formation of art as a social practice is played by Christianity, the Christian worldview and the system of values.

Aesthetic consciousness and art before the realism of the XIX century obeys the idea of aesthetic hierarchy. A work of art is all the more real the closer it is to the Idea of Beauty, to God. Art, no matter how folk its roots may be, by its very idea is the sphere of the aristocrats of the spirit. "A real peasant cannot see the beauty of the herd: he sees only those properties that make it useful" ^{[1, p. 60]}, – wrote J. Ruskin in lectures on art. Later, he would become one of those who anticipated the appearance of design, a practice with slightly different goals.

Design is born and consolidated as a social practice in parallel with the birth and consolidation of the materialist paradigm and the institution of political democracy, as well as in parallel with the projects of socialist utopias and the development of ideas of social equality.

The design reflects the ideology of equality, denies aesthetic and any other hierarchy. The famous Bauhaus and VKHUTEMAS design schools flourish in the conditions of universal fascination with the ideas of social equality and express these ideas in design.

The design of modernism is, first of all, the idea of international design – a design suitable for any country and equalizing the social status of people. Postmodern design continued to work for the masses, mass culture, thereby achieving true internationality and, indeed, equalizing the masses and the elite. Modern design is, in many ways, an instrument of globalization, thus continuing the line of upholding universal equality and denying the idea of aesthetic hierarchy.

Thus, at its core, the essence of art and design is dramatically different. The very idea of art is based on an aesthetic hierarchy. Design, on the contrary, grew out of the ideas of equality, the negation of hierarchy.

Of course, in modern art the situation with the aesthetic hierarchy is more complicated, and that is why a broader category of "aesthetic" is introduced into the system of philosophical categories. But modern art is a conscious denial of the classical understanding of the idea of art. In this sense, where art departs from the idea of creating a work of art (for example, in Dadaism), and becomes a simulacrum, it ceases to be art in the full, and, in any case, in the philosophical sense of the word. As J. wrote . Baudrillard about contemporary art, "art is everywhere now, because artificiality is now at the very heart of reality. Consequently, art is dead" ^{[22, p. 154]}.

Design, on the contrary, has grown and consolidated on the idea of social equality and aesthetic pluralism. This, by the way, nowadays leads to some design problems associated with the practice of lack of differentiation and individualization that has become entrenched in design.

The aesthetic hierarchy of art is determined by its proximity to transcendent reality, therefore it is permeated with Logos. The aesthetic pluralism of design is determined by fashion, politics, and the chaos of the modern agenda.

3. Semiotic difference

Despite the difference in origin and functioning, art and design are semiotic, that is, they can be considered as systems of signs.

Any work of art and any work of design is a sign. "In the range from the simplest kind of sign – gesture – to the most exquisite pictorial image, the iconic function of the image remains unchanged. "Nailing to the cross" by Rubens is a sign, but crossing yourself is also a sign," writes E. Gilson ^{[23, p. 237]}.

However, the semiotic system of art and design are different. The difference between semiotic systems is due to origin. As it was shown above, the category of "design", in contrast to the categories of "art" and "aesthetic", arises in the materialist paradigm.

The main type of signs used by art is a sign-symbol. It is with the help of symbols that art shows the transcendent. It is for the transmission of transcendental meanings that the sign-symbol appears in the Christian paradigm, and then exists in art.

Design appears in the XIX century, when the perception of reality changed to the opposite. In the XIX century. the active process of the loss of the transcendent began. "We live in one of those historical periods when the heavens remain empty for a while. By virtue of this alone, the world must change," wrote G. Lebon in 1895 ^{[24, p. 172]}. At the same time, the practice of design begins to develop. The design grew out of a conscious break with the transcendent.

The formation of design coincided with the Industrial Revolution - the time of the appearance of the second-order simulacrum - industrial analogues. It was for the development of second-order simulacra, for mass production, that the design was originally intended. That is, design as a semiotic system immediately set a course for using the simulacrum as the main type of signs.

After the 1960s, during the active heyday of social consumption, design switched to the use of third-order simulacra, signs that are structural units of hyperreality. Design today is becoming the main tool for organizing hyperreality, forming an interface of communication between a person and the information environment. In hyperreality, the main type of signs are precisely simulacra signs.

If we consider a work of art as a sign, then, in the end, it refers the recipient to the transcendent signified. A work of art is always to some extent a sign-symbol.

If we consider a work of design as a sign, then comfort, or a certain complex concept of "Design", will be signified. Design is a sign of itself, that the thing is "designer". That is, design as a sign tends to level the depth, to connect the signifier with the signified, that is, to use the simulacrum as a sign.

Thus, the main semiotic difference between art and design is in the prevailing type of signs. The highest art uses signs-symbols, design in its limit uses exclusively signs-simulacra.

II. Semiurgical essence of the design category

 M. N. Epstein identifies three types of activity in the field of signs: sign-matching, sign-descriptive and sign-creative. The first type includes all written and spoken texts. To the second – dictionaries, linguistic studies, textbooks, where the laws of word combinations are derived. The third type – the rarest – is the introduction of new signs. M. N. Epstein calls this type of work with signs semiurgy and considers it one of the most promising areas of science.

Design, being practically an indicative semiotic system, covers all three types of activities related to signs. Sign–matching activity is a common design practice. Design is the principle of optimal combination of signs. Sign–writing activity is the compilation of brandbooks, design codes, description of the principles of work within the framework of the developed system of signs.

And finally, design deals with semiurgy more than any other semiotic system. The creation of new things, systems of visual messages, symbols – all this is the field of activity of designers. As an example of such a semiurgy, one can cite the creation of a symbol denoting the ruble, developed by the studio of Artemy Lebedev.

M. N. Epstein attributes semiurgical practices to projective thinking. So, in the field of linguistics, projective activity is the creation of new words. It is clear that design is almost entirely a projective activity, both in this sense and in the most direct. Design is design, and this is how it was understood back in the days of the Bauhaus VKhUTEMAS. Project culture has become a unifying concept of the Bauhaus education system ^{[25, p. 47]}.

Moreover, in the era of modernism, projectivity, orientation to the future, orientation to the new reached hypertrophied forms. For example, art history was not taught at the Bauhaus, since "Walter Gropius saw history as nothing more than a way to cloud the project imagination" ^{[26, p. 27]}. Design is fundamentally directed to the future, the past is not interesting to designers.

Design is focused on the creation of the new, but the "new" exists only in dialectical interaction with the old. While in the discourse of design history, in principle, does not exist. All three main periods in design – modernism, modernism and postmodernism – are essentially connected with the "new", which is reflected in the terms themselves. The "new" in the discourse of design is replacing the "new". The meaning of the concept of "new" merges with the design itself, "new" turns out to be synonymous with design.

Design creates new things, signs, systems of things and signs, but, in fact, design is busy reproducing itself. The semiurgical activity of design is an endless reproduction of a new design. The very expression "new design" becomes tautological in the discourse of design. An example of such a tautology is, by the way, the design movement of the 1980s, which received just such a name - "New Design". Representatives of this movement began with a postmodern play on the design of modernism, but entered the history of design with fairly standard objects in the spirit of design throughout the XX century.

Thus, design is engaged in the semiurgical activity of reproducing itself. Design constantly produces new signs, but their novelty is not an essential novelty, that is, not something fundamentally different, but a novelty in quantitative terms. The design constantly produces another sign.

Conclusions

 Thus, design as a cultural phenomenon is characterized by:

1. Projectivity – orientation to the future;

2. Functionality – focus on optimal application;

4. Immanence – the absence of references to the transcendent.

5. Semiurgicity – the function of creating new signs.

Design projects a system of images and connotations onto a system of real things, building its own cultural code. This sign system becomes an intermediary between a person and absolutely everything that surrounds him, allows you to construct an aesthetically justified subjective world based on the existing objective one.