Shape

6 Introduction: Tell Me All About It
drawing got there, or which of its lines were actually drawn. Remember, it’s possible to
forget. And even if I know, I can be wrong. For example, I may inadvertently rotate the
drawing. Its history is as irrelevant as it is invisible. You’re free to start over, or to
change your mind. It’s completely up to you. Whatever you see is right. There are no
prior results to guide you. And it’s no good trying to cheat. Analysis won’t buy you
anything. There’s nothing to figure out in advance—parts aren’t definite. Shapes are
always ambiguous. It’s no use asking me what I’ve done—I can’t do your seeing for
you. It’s always the same. What you see is what you get.
This is like relaxed conversation with friends. Talking can be aimless—fluid,
funny, full of irony, irreverent, illogical, lacking any definitions, frustrating, enjoyable,
and so much more—and even so, very useful. You don’t know what you’re going
to hear until you’ve heard it, and this goes for what you say. You just go on talking.
And in the same way, you don’t know what you’re going to see until you’ve seen
it, and this goes for what you draw. You just go on looking with your eyes. You’ve
got the knack. But don’t be complacent. It’s never absolutely sure. An automatic
process can be stopped. Then everything can go horribly wrong. It all falls apart. And
when shapes are in pieces, their changes are in the past with nothing new in sight.
Analysis decides what there is before I look. There’s no more to see, only arrangements
of pieces combined in alternative ways. These are easy to count, and the results
are always the same. Analysis settles everything before it begins. Nothing is ever really
new.
What can I do to stop you from using your eyes? Are there neat examples of this?
Are they something to worry about? How do you go on seeing anyway? What does
it mean when you’ve got the knack? These are some of the questions I’m going to
answer. But like many good questions, their importance is established only as their
answers unfold. Everything depends on shapes and their properties. I want to take advantage
of these properties to get something new—to use shapes in a continuous process
that doesn’t check my ability to see in another way as I go on. Look at it like this. I
want to have the ability to act on what I see, whatever it is and whenever I see it. Much
more, I want to try and explain how all of this works. I want to figure out what’s going
on as shapes change.
Another one of my big questions is how to be creative in design. My guess is
that shapes—drawing them and seeing them—have a lot to do with the answer. If
designers use shapes in their work as sketches, drawings, models, and the like, then
they can’t do anything more than shapes allow. This is a lot for both hand and eye.
Still, there are telling implications for creative activity. Understanding shapes is a useful
place to start and outline the limits of design. First, there are experiments to run
with pencil and paper, and other devices to get the facts right, so that seeing is never
lost. This is like physics. There are phenomena—shapes and the lines, etc., that go to
make them—and observation. Everyone can see what’s happening and talk about it in
his or her own way, while shapes ground the discussion in concrete experience. Shapes
are there to see and to see again. Then, there’s the mathematics to describe the many
and varied results of these experiments, and to tie them together in a meaningful way