Sven-Erik Liedman critically includes curiosity in the concept of knowledge,
knowledge as the curiosity of inquiry involved in the acquisition of knowledge
(Liedman 2002).
Some of the skills might in some way be ”tacit” (Polanyi 1998), but as the examples
in this thesis make clear the role of the designer as an investigator does the best to
reveal both ”tacit” and ”silenced” knowledge. In this role, the aim of the designer is
to do his best to reverse engineer practice as well as material and to share skills and
information for communicating these for wider accessibility. Here, by opening the
methods, sharing the open source code, making cookbooks, the Swedish chef tries
to make himself understood and help others to cook.
From a perspective of fashion, manuals, patterns and “how-to” books have been
around for a long time and they have always mixed acting with looking. The ques-
tion has mainly been about who does the sewing. “Trachtenbücher”, or costume
books, emerged already in the 16th century to show images of the latest fashion, and
commercial “how-to” books, aimed at the domestic market, emerged already in the
late 18th century to help the uninformed housewife. With the distribution of the
first commercial paper dress patterns in the 1840s these “tissues of dreams” could
help the diligent hands at home to materialize the latest fashion, already then dic-
tated from Paris (Spanabel Emery 1999). This was, at the time, a form of controlled
action spaces, not primarily aiming to teach sewing as much as reproducing the
latest fashion. This made sense, as most people could not travel to buy the latest
fashion of Paris, so the fashion came in the shape of magazines and patterns, dic-
tating sewing and “how-to” look like in Paris. Similar to the pattern magazines of
today they offered no real possibility to “talk back” or form new communities. Yet
the motivation has changed over time. The objectives of home sewing in the west
were just a few decades ago still primarily those of economy or fit. It has today
changed to instead address questions such as individual accomplishment, creativ-
ity, self-confidence, independence, self reliance and development of skills
(Schofield-Tomschin 1999).
Even so, fashion is usually presented to us as ready-to-wear, as a finished product,
something we can choose from, but not engage in. The exclusivity of fashion stands
in relation to the limiting of our action spaces. This is not only in the sense of
brands restricting the amount of copies in circulation, but in the whole economy
as a whole, and where brands and consumers make styles become more rapidly
obsolescent. Throughout this process, we are usually not encouraged to see clothes
as material for inventive cooking or for furthering of our action spaces. Especially
not in connecting this practical action space, of hands-on craft, with the action
spaces of producing intensities, of making something fashionable. What we will see
throughout the following lines of practice are explorations in expanding the action
spaces in relation to fashion.
the sandwiched action space dilemma
A perspective of social action in design is not uncontested and not all skills in the
world are presumably good. Skill could of course be destructive and violent too,
and there are many discussions about the accessibility of the Anarchist Cookbook
(Powell 2003) or lately the Al Qaeda training manuals. Yet this is not of direct im-
portance in this thesis, as I already from the beginning stated that such actions
would be considered “cracking”.