Learn­ing from Lye

Len Lye could inform and enrich the onto­logy of 21^st Cen­tury New Zea­l­and design. Words: Michael Smythe. Images: Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

From ProDesign 105 (with addi­tional images)

Lye’s 1947 pho­to­gram — self por­trait. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

Thirty years after the death of Len Lye (1903−1980) New Zea­l­and remains at the fore­front of extraordin­ary efforts to real­ise the kin­etic vis­ions he thought would be “pretty good for the twenty-first cen­tury”. Two new books, one with a DVD included, and recent exhib­i­tions in Mel­bourne, Auck­land and New Ply­mouth, have expan­ded the oppor­tun­ity to ‘get in his shoes’ the bet­ter to cobble our own. Rather than simply review the books it seems more use­ful to identify some of what makes him rel­ev­ant and invite New Zea­l­and design­ers (product, spa­tial, archi­tec­tural, urban, graphic, multi-media, etc, etc) to take him on as an essen­tial ele­ment of our her­it­age – quick, before the rest of the world catches on!

First it must be said that Len Lye’s sculp­tures and films are to be exper­i­enced and enjoyed in their own right – as intrinsic explor­a­tions and cel­eb­ra­tions of the energy that is life. Lye would want us to eschew rational ana­lysis and allow our ‘old brain’ to empath­ise with his works. The DVD that comes with Art That Moves offers the best access to the films, if viewed on hi-def screens (low-res view­ing on You­Tube does not do them justice), and goes some way to deliv­er­ing the kin­aes­thetic exper­i­ence of being in the pres­ence of the kin­etic sculp­tures. View­ers will be motiv­ated to seek out oppor­tun­it­ies to see the reel /real things. Per­man­ent pub­lic art install­a­tions of Lye sculp­ture in New Zea­l­and so far include the gently entran­cing Wind Wand in New Ply­mouth and the wildly excit­ing Water Whirler on the Wel­ling­ton waterfront.

The 45-metre Wind Wand on the New Ply­mouth water­front. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

Water Whirler in one of its mot act­ive phases. Cour­tesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.

Len Lye’s art can speak for itself, but even design­ers could be trapped into think­ing these fully resolved pieces were achieved with the spon­taneity they evoke. Get­ting to know the man and his work affirms our know­ledge that fresh ori­ginal think­ing is the out­come of end­less hands-on trial-and-error exper­i­ment­a­tion driven by a desire to get at some­thing we know is there but can­not yet artic­u­late. And it would be a mis­take to use Lye’s pas­sion for ori­gin­al­ity and indi­vidu­al­ity as a reason to avoid learn­ing from oth­ers – he developed the cour­age of his own con­vic­tions by being an insight­ful observer and listener, a vora­cious reader, a hungry researcher, a spir­ited com­mu­nic­ator and a cre­at­ive collaborator.

While Roger Hor­rocks’ 2001 bio­graphy of Len Lye provided a great insight into the life of the extraordin­ary artist, his Art That Moves (2009) focuses more fully on the think­ing and pro­cess that gen­er­ated the work. Cann and Curnow’s Len Lye (2009) deliv­ers a rich offer­ing of essays and images to deepen our appre­ci­ation. What fol­lows are one New Zeal­ander designer’s reflec­tions in response to these two excel­lent books:

Kiwi life­style as empath­etic asset. Hor­rocks says Lye “often spec­u­lated in his later years about how grow­ing up in New Zea­l­and had left a deep imprint on his art”. It was not just his enjoy­ment of sport, the great out­doors and rugged coast­lines, it was the oppor­tun­ity to engage with early Maori and Pacific cul­tures offer­ing con­nec­tions to the old brain (the body’s deep­est level of intu­it­ive aware­ness) which civ­il­ised soci­ety was smoth­er­ing with intel­lec­tual ana­lysis. Para­dox­ic­ally an Eng­lish sur­real­ist painter saw him as hav­ing a new aware­ness rather than empath­ising with dra­matic land­scapes and past cul­tures – he is quoted as say­ing Lye was “like a man from Mars who saw everything from a dif­fer­ent view­point, and it was this that made him original”.

Empathy as phys­ical insight. Hor­rocks quotes Lye: “The whole busi­ness with any art is first, empathy.” Some may argue that per­sonal insight and self expres­sion comes first for artists while design­ers use empathy as a tool to con­nect with con­sumers. But 60 years ago Lye’s sens­ib­il­it­ies were more con­cerned with gain­ing physiolo­gical, rather than psy­cho­lo­gical, access to empathy.

Body as leader. Lye did not see the body as a mere vehicle to gather and deliver inform­a­tion to the all mean­ing­ful and power­ful brain. His was a body of know­ledge and per­sist­ent enquiry that led the way; the primary source of cre­at­ive inspir­a­tion, the “organ­ism that … got me out into the sun­shine to exper­i­ence being alive.” Lye’s per­cep­tion of phys­ical form and move­ment as an expres­sion of per­son­al­ity and iden­tity applied not only to humans but also to mater­i­als and tech­no­lo­gies. Get­ting inside Lye’s skin on this sub­ject could broaden our under­stand­ing of ergo­nom­ics, mater­i­als and pro­cesses from intel­lec­tual and meas­ur­able to exper­i­en­tial and intan­gible. We may also see what we could lose if we allow design to become a sedent­ary and pass­ive process.

Proprio­cep­tion as real­ity. Hor­rocks helps us to grapple with Lye grap­pling with the concept of proprio­cep­tion (gain­ing inform­a­tion through the body) as opposed to extero­cep­tion (gain­ing it through the senses) – we all began to know ourselves and the world around us through bod­ily inter­ac­tion and some, like the deaf per­cus­sion­ist Evelyn Glen­nie, con­tinue to employ it. Those involved in design for dis­ab­il­ity and aging could find it par­tic­u­larly use­ful to study Lye.

Because proprio­cep­tion oper­ates below the level of con­scious aware­ness Lye used games to cul­tiv­ate his proprio­cept­ive powers. Appre­ci­at­ing old brain aware­ness may help design­ers develop and trust the ‘feel­ing in their bones’ when they have, or haven’t, got some­thing right and value cre­at­ive pro­cess reach­ing bey­ond the rational world to the hol­ist­ic­ally intu­it­ive ‘zone’.

Indi­vidu­al­ity as hap­pi­ness. Lest we each try to become a little Lye we should know he wanted stu­dents to have con­fid­ence in their indi­vidual abil­ity and intu­ition. “I would like you to shape your own shoe,” he told them, “as you, and only you, know where it fits best.” He invited them to play empathy games which would not be out of place in con­tem­por­ary Kiwi design courses.

Lye’s Indi­vidual Hap­pi­ness Now (IHN) the­ory was his altern­at­ive to bland con­form­ity in gen­eral and the spread of fas­cism from pre-war Nazi Ger­many in par­tic­u­lar. But it means more than the free­dom to find pleas­ure in one’s own being. Lye’s own artistic out­put, groun­ded in his per­sonal pur­suit of what excited his old brain, deliv­ers deeply sen­sa­tional pleas­ure to many.

New Zea­l­and design­ers can feel sup­por­ted in avoid­ing con­form­ity with what the mar­ket says it wants in favour of find­ing fresher dir­ec­tions by tun­ing in to per­sonal /universal insights.

No 8 is OK. Those who want to rehabilit8 Num­ber 8 think­ing rather than annihil8 its Kiwi char­ac­ter build­ing role will be reas­sured by the way Lye’s pro­cess of impro­vising and making-do with what he could afford led to cre­at­ive break­throughs of great qual­ity. His hand-made films and kin­etic sculp­tures grew from explor­ing the prop­er­ties and pos­sib­il­it­ies of mater­i­als dis­carded by oth­ers. But Lye was not engaged in ad-hockery – he was a quest-driven per­fec­tion­ist whose need for his cre­ations to ‘feel right’ was the anti­thesis of ‘she’ll be right’.

Motion as emo­tion. The poten­tial to be moved by move­ment was Lye’s motive force – he con­ceived his sculp­tures as per­formers rather than objects. Hor­rocks sug­gests Lye might have reframed Descartes’ dictum by declar­ing ‘I move, there­fore I am’, and para­phrased Archibald MacLeish’s ‘A poem should not mean / But be’ with ‘A film should not mean / But move’.

How much atten­tion do design­ers give to ‘com­pos­ing motion’ through the way their cre­ations move and /or the way people are made to move, and be moved, as they inter­act with them? Lye’s prose included at least two explor­a­tions of bod­ily feel­ings and phys­ical sen­sa­tions around chairs.

There has been some aca­demic dis­course and e-static less than ecstatic about the notion that Len Lye’s con­cepts are being real­ised posthum­ously by a trust estab­lished in his name. Given that Lye was happy to meet this group before he died and entrust his archive to them while express­ing enthu­si­asm about their plans, it’s hard to under­stand the con­cerns. Artists since way before Michelan­gelo and well and after Andy War­hol have had artis­ans inter­pret their inten­tions. Of course those of us who like to see Lye as a designer rather than an artist have no prob­lem with cross-disciplinary team­work ful­filling his vis­ions. But would that dimin­ish the value of these works in the art world? Len would prob­ably be happy to see magical pres­ence of the artist’s hand taken out of the equa­tion so that the emo­tional exper­i­ence of encoun­ter­ing the work is all that matters.

The Lye leg­acy could live on in twenty-first cen­tury New Zea­l­and design­ers informed by the Len Lye school of indi­vidual empathy, proprio­cep­tion and motiv­a­tion who dig deeper than mere ‘emo­tional design’ and allow ‘design that moves’ to reflect our being.

Frames from the ‘aster­isk’ sequence of Free Rad­ic­als. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation

Four images of Fire Bush in motion. Cour­tesy Point of View Productions.

Frames from Tus­a­lava (1929). The sequence reads from left to right. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

The kin­etic sculp­ture Uni­verse. The striker ball is sus­pen­ded above the steel loop, which has just rolled over to one side. Photo Brian East­wood. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

Lye’s sculp­ture Blade in motion. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

Lye with his sculp­ture Storm King. Cour­tesy Eric Shiozaki.

Two series (part 2 fol­lows) of pho­to­graphs of Blade in motion. The first saws it start­ing to oscil­late and curve. In the second series, increased energy is caus­ing the blade to strike the ball and to pro­duce what Lye called “double” and “triple” har­mon­ics. Cour­tesy Len Lye Foundation.

Blade in motion part 2.

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