Design Nothing
i received a two-word brief: design nothing. this is what i did.Nothing is a term we have proclaimed to represent an absolute that cannot be visualised. The number 0 or the typing in any language of null, zero, non, no, are just representations that we have commonly agreed to stand as substitutes for a variable we cannot see or touch, only explain. We can verbalise it as much as we’d like, but it will remain an intangible in the physical. A nothing can’t be designed because it just is, and there is no addition possible to it that can be done without set nothing becoming something.
Designing nothing is a trick question. We are just supposed to acknowledge that it already exists, send in a blank document and say that we have designed nothing, right? Maybe, but leaving it just at that would be the lazy charismatics’ answer.
So then, what could be a designed nothing? In a more technical way, nothing doesn’t actually exist: due to particles that form the air which we choose to ignore in considering as a something: we say that we see nothing, but in fact we see through something.
We see an empty parking spot and we say that nothing is there. We don’t think of pushing our way through waves of particles, but walking through an empty space, a nothing shaped by partitions and repetition. The nothing we use is colloquial, and will probably stay that way. And the same qualities apply to this type of nothing as well: it is no longer nothing if you give time, thought or action to it (park, inhabit, add, sculpt, etc.)
In terms of any type of design, it requires dedicating time and energy, in order to express or improve a something. Not a nothing. So then, if you can’t design nothing, and nothing does not exist, what can we consider as a designed nothing?
A mind and its bearings? No, because the brain is a physical thing, and also realised projects start from thoughts that became physical things when they were written down, diagrammed and sketched. What about thoughts themselves then, because the products of a mind are not recorded in any physical way at first. They are just thought of.
Thoughts. Yes. Now that is something.
Thoughts are made ex nihilo. Thoughts are invisible to sight, have no physical weight, and do not comply to the laws of physics (sure, you can get an equal reaction to a thought, but it is not a guarantee). Do they even exist?
They don’t have a touchable or visual version of themselves, until they start becoming other things. However, you can’t describe them as being just nothing, because they aren’t.
Then, thoughts are a designed nothing, because they have intent behind themselves and can be a solution to another something, while literally being nothing/nowhere/invisible, very quickly losing this property the moment they are acted upon, undergoing the conversion towards becoming something.
The only designed nothings are the ideas that are not acted upon, or not acted upon yet. It’s the limbo in which the emotive weight of the thought is still to be decided, and following actions to be planned, even if that may be to forget. So below, I could attach a list, but that would de-nothingfy my untapped thoughts and ideas, disintegrating some designed nothings. The task of designing nothing is a riddle, and the act of representing, through any medium, a designed nothing would be losing the game.
And I did. With this personal rambling in parts misinformed on the laws of physics, I did not design anything, but I did divulge one designed nothing, representing it through text. If Magritte’s “This is not a pipe” taught us why his painting can and cannot be a pipe, and why it can and cannot be a representation of a pipe, in the same way, you can look at this narration as a representation of an idea that can or cannot come to fruition: by writing it down, it is no longer a designed nothing, but a tool that tries to define what that is. The final product is not a designed nothing, but what this piece can do is induce thoughts. Induce designed nothings that can then to turn into somethings.
