What. Just. Happened.

What just happend?

To say that I had a whirlwind experience this past weekend may not suffice for what actually happened. It started with the Black Keys at the Fox Theater in Oakland and reached its peak at the Shpongle and Infected Mushroom show at the Warfield in San Francisco.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_PrT25o8Vs&playnext=1&videos=wI_JqhRH7pk&feature=artistob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwdkexdiHh8&feature=related

In the midst of the flashing lights, thumping beats, and my psychedelic trance, a homework assignment suddenly popped into my mind out of no where. A homework question is the last thing you should be thinking about in such a state but this one was different and it came with the answer I was looking for.

Design is an illusion.

It is our reinterpretation of reality. We look to design to understand the world around us and try to make a deeper connection with our surroundings by shedding new light onto it.
That does not mean design is fake or a fabric of our imagination. It comes from a wide variety of experience and knowledge, all of which are real.
Kostas Terzidis mentions in his essay, "The Etymology of Design:Pre-Socratic Perspective", that design cannot be created out of nothing and that it cannot simply disappear. Its process of creation is based on reduction and regression; "reduction... can be associated with abstraction, simplification, and idealization. Similarly, reversion is about... return, reassessment, and reconsideration."

In other words, design is a mental process in which we dig through our memory box, use what we have, and create something extraordinary.
Furthermore, our memories and imaginations are limited. We cannot recall every data, information or sensation that we have experienced in our lives. And although this may seem problematic at first, I find myself more creative under such limitations, or design restraints, than when I am given a free-for-all assignment.