Higher education, once the exclusive province of social elites, has become something of a general commodity. By the end of this decade, close to 36% of the work-age population of the United States will have some form of college degree. And while as a general state of affairs this is a good thing, for those few of us who are attempting to truly distinguish ourselves, whether within the academy, or through the academy into public life, the overwhelming flow of educated individuals makes each of us less visible, and makes the truly unique individual harder to identify.

It is in the domain of those who wish to practice beyond narrow academic confines that the vocabulary of "Public Intellectualism" and "Interdisciplinarity" comes to the fore – describing individuals who are willing to be both vocal and visible beyond the narrow confines of their own discipline, and oriented to a dialogue with a larger public. These individuals are not mere marginal participants in their chosen area, but are, in fact, participants in multiple identity roles, simultaneously.

In order to do so, such individuals have first to establish competency in those multiple roles on their own terms. I mean this in two senses; they have to both be able to demonstrate to relevant disciplinarians a commitment to the projects of that discipline through a body of work, but they must also produce that body of work in a manner that remains true to the convictions they have already established through their previous education and experience.

This form of identity construction is without a doubt the kid of experience sociologists call a synthetic experience – it is deliberate and measured in it's manufacture. As such, it is fundamentally different than the "disciplining" that constitutes normal education, especially in the arts, at a minimum; it requires clear justification along the way.

In general, the study of identity construction itself has been something of a preoccupation for social scientists, looking for bedrock on which to lay claims about how the social world functions. One might describe it as the equivalent of a love for Legos in an architect: a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for entry into the mysteries of the role.

For myself, this preoccupation moves beyond the fascination requisite to maintain a professional identity as a Sociologist. Yet for particular reasons, I believe that the modes of knowing in the social sciences can assist the labors of designers in architecture and the associated arts. So, following what appears at a glance to be a clear path, I have made a foray into the realm of the interdisciplinary.

The connections in the design disciplines however remain somewhat obscured by a variety of technical practices in which proficiency must be acquired first. In an attempt to master one technical area that particularly suits my temperament, I have stumbled upon cast metal sculpture as a means to express some of the deeper problems of identity construction more immediately than may yet be accomplished through architectural design.

For the duration of critique week, I have placed some of this work on display in the hallway, and invite each and every one of you to consider both the work, and the nature of the interdisciplinary message it suggests. I will admit here that it risks, because of the history of cast metal, to be read as acting in the same manner as Jessie's suggestion below that we use a legal framework to evaluate the environmental – a move that Andrew Abbott calls "bringing it back in," adding to a discourse some past element of dialogue lest we forget where the dialogue has been.

First, to address Jessie's comment: yes, a legal framework would insist on tight definitions of environmental, et al, and establish precedents on which we might act to defend the environment from degradation. Legal processes are lengthy, and require a fundamentally different education that that of design. More to the point however, we have relied on the law to protect the environment and public interest for a century, an it has proved to be a blunt tool indeed.

Lawrence Lessig has observed that technical infrastructures can be put in place or in the path of law to short circuit the longe dureé of life on the bench. And indeed this is the innovation that Bruce Mao added at an apropos moment to the public dialogue of both sustainability and design. We should all keep in mind, when discussing his contribution, this significant move.

Notice however that, when addressing designers, he becomes preoccupied with the agenda of sustainability. Having observed his work twice now in non-design contexts, I can add that in those contexts, he is quite careful to construct a narrative of and about design. It seems wondrously strange to me that he wouldn't reverse this – if he wishes ongoing legitimacy as a designer, he has to continue to contribute to the profession, and, at a moment when sustainability has enough celebrity to win the Nobel Peace Prize, his message likely needs to be refreshed in that community as well.

I'll add that if he wishes to actually retire into the more private confines of the ivory tower for an extended stay, then he does need to prove his bona fides in that realm as well: publish, teach, administer. It seems unlikely that a person in his role would return to school long enough to have the credentials to do so however; and by extension the assumption of the anonymous poster who provoked us all begins to appear dubious as well.

The opportunity to have a window on Mao's re-gathering of strength before once more pushing to become public should prove instructive to any of us who wish to try to be public voices, whether in the dialogues of art and design or elsewhere, whether Mao succeeds or no.

In fact, if that anonymous poster does prove true in the long run, if Mao does prove to be a one-trick pony, he may be an even better participant in our experimental community as an object lesson of what not to do. For that to work as an educational experience however a critical dialogue must surround our reception of the Mao experience in our midst.

To that point, I will agree with Hennie that individuals who criticize without substantiation should only do so after a sustained contribution to a discipline. They should know the body of work spanning back a generation or two, the substantive debates and issues, why they were significant and be dismissive precisely because the issues in question have been dealt with.

When teaching, to encourage the participation of less mature voices, they should explain such a history. When being talked at by a professor, a student who happens to be aware of a substantial criticism presented by a reputable scholar in print should suggest that the professor engage that criticism before presenting the material again. After all, that ought to be why the person wants to be part of academe – because they are earnestly interested in the ideas.

Issac is also correct – criticism is serious work. It requires a well-structured framework for both what constitutes appropriate knowledge, and what fair debate means. It is an expression of earnest good faith that the ideas under consideration are worthy of our time. It requires the diligence to follow up on the substance of every criticism, no matter how minor it seems. And it requires the fair-mindedness to cite the work of others appropriately.

Thee two opinions are not at odds; they are ships passing in the night. Criticism with substantiation is not merely the work of disciplinary specialists in critical studies; it is the province of every individual in an educated society, especially those who happen to find themselves within the academy.

We should be particularly careful to distinguish criticism from critique. Criticism is dialogic inquiry into a set of ideas to establish their efficacy or veracity. Critique is ad hoc commentary on the work of others, hopefully with the intent of improving the quality of that work. My sense is that the reason we are having this debate is that of the two, critique has been valorized as perhaps the only appropriate mechanism for the transmission of knowledge from on high, whereas criticism has been largely ignored.

Under such circumstances, the material technology of idea transmission becomes a relevant vocabulary. I just happened to hear, this very moment, a critique panelist ask a student why (s)he had, "eschewed the standard technology of plan, section, and elevation." They are, of course, conventional technologies for idea communication, just as well as they are mechanisms that seem no longer fully relevant.

The same critique has certainly been voiced of narrative figurative sculpture cast in bronze at more than one point in the last century. It represents a way of thinking about sculpture that has become passé. Like the plan and section, like Mao, they are old news.

In our relentless search for the hot, the new is sometimes fetishised, and to our collective detriment. There is a wonderful shop in the basement of 112 where the art and technology department has collect dead technology for use in new projects. Historical precedents need not always be dismissed – they can be appropriated, or even embraced.

Subtle critical thought requires the discipline of an anxious education in the subject to excel at. The culture that celebrates garbage so much that it elevates it to art, and indeed refuses to accept that any other thing could be worthy of consideration or use would seem incapable of that sustained engagement. That culture will misquote the arguments of more subtle minds to justify its lazy ways.

Curiously, we have simultaneously reached a moment in time at which the cost of producing cast metal has become so comparatively safe and affordable that it need no longer be the exclusive province of high culture. For those ideas that we deem worthy of consideration by future minds, we can form and pour them into the kind of historical-philosophical-aesthetic tradition that the Greeks sold, the Romans stole, the Germans misappropriated and some few archeologists can eventually discover – in a Spielberg film.

Karl Hakken
MArch Candidate
April 29th, 2008