"It
is my wish and hope that what is written here will help a great many people to
find more real success, more satisfaction and more deep and abiding joy in all
that they do." - Edward Matchett, 'Creative
Action', 1974
Edward Matchett
(1929-1998) was a remarkable teacher of creative design. He started his engineering
career as apprentice, then draughtsman and engineer at Rolls-Royce Engine Division,
Derby GB. In 1952 he went on to teach Aero Engine Design at The College of Aeronautics,
Cranfield, now Cranfield University, and it was while at Cranfield as a Design
Lecturer that he became compelled to seek out ways of improving design science.
Early on his career, he made as the centre of gravity of his researches the
primacy of need. As he saw it, most designs were produced as an extension
of what already exists instead of responding to what was truly needed.
A need 'does not exist' but is capable of 'pulling' something into existence.
A true design would be one that fitted the sum of the true needs of a particular
set of circumstances. The 'sum of the true needs' meant that the good designer
would pay attention to all of the needs and not just one kind - it would meet
not only technical requirements but financial, social, systemic, and human needs
as well. The idea of 'fit' was primary: the design should have the complete
form that corresponded to the form of the sum of the needs.
Initially, he devoted himself to developing comprehensive and exacting systems
of design, such as MAUD, (Methodical Analysis for Use in Design) for the Royal
Navy and PABLA (Problem Analysis by Logical Approach) for The U.K. Atomic Energy
Establishment, Aldermaston. However, he rapidly became more interested in the
designer and what went on in him. The designer needed to be aware
of the designing process as it proceeded in him. For this reason, Ted focused
a great deal of energy on the practice of self-monitoring. It was not
enough to have a good system of design if the designer was not aware of how
he was working. It is not surprising that he then found the work of Gurdjieff
and Bennett of great relevance to what he was attempting to do.
In following up this line of research, Ted increasingly employed
expressive media and what we would now call visual language. His students
would model the processes in visual terms, producing remarkable and inspiring
images and diagrams that went far beyond any simply logical system. They would
be literally 'drawing the action of mind'. The use of expressive media, which
extended from drawing to actual three-dimensional modelling, was to develop into
the practice of immersing students in multi-media environments, in which visual
art, music and nature played a major part.
His way of working is what we would now call logovisual.
Later on, he would as a standard practice equip his seminar rooms with the most
wonderful selection of books, including art books in particular of twentieth
century painters, paintings and posters, various artefacts and would also incorporate
an 'immersion' space where students would sit in front of elaborate slide shows
accompanied by (usually modern) music.
In the late 1960's he was asked by The Science Research Council of Great Britain
to make an extensive research into the 'Development of Creative Mental Skills',
or in other words 'what made genius'. Over two years he studied this question
with great intensity but it was not until the time was almost up, while walking
in his beloved Glastonbury, that his now famous 3-M equation came to him:
MEDIA
PLUS MATTER = MEANING
He himself was surprised by
the term 'media'. Why 'media'? What is this term 'media'? Instead of seeking to
substitute a more easily acceptable word, he obeyed what had been revealed to
him. We mention 'obedience' because this became the very core of his work and
indicates how close it is to the core of our being, which is in the will.
The crucial insight was that we did not need to 'understand' what might be revealed
to us - at least as 'understanding' is mostly understood these days - but our
role was to obey and do what was indicated.
For people who have
engaged in a spiritual path involving teachers or gurus, this may sound familiar.
Gurdjieff himself taught that we could not make ourselves change from ourselves
alone but needed an 'outside' act of will to enable it happen. Many spiritual
paths involve an action in which the student learns to obey the instruction of
the guru, without asking it to 'make sense' in their own terms. The hazards of
this practice are fairly obvious, but so many traditions incorporate obedience
in their practices that it must be taken very seriously indeed. Joseph Rael, an
American Indian shaman, always speaks of the need for obedience and how this can
grow naturally out of obedience to the elders.
In many of the spiritual
traditions, the role of the guru was understood to stand for, or imitate, the
role of some spiritual reality. In the same vein, in external religion we have
the role of Pope as 'infallible'. There is always an uncertain area in which the
obedience of the student is transferred to the spiritual reality itself. In Ted's
work, this was assumed.
Ted's media became the source of intelligent - or even supra-intelligent
- impulses. In this sense, media is unlike a Platonic world of Ideal
Forms, though may have more in common with it than is usually understood. Our
word 'impulses' is chosen because it became more and clear that the action that
Ted was concerned with was an instantaneous one, 'in the moment' as it
were. In time, Ted's 3-M equation developed to involve five instead of just
three factors:
MAKING MEDIA PLUS MATTER MEANINGFUL IN TIME
ΔT
Though Ted uses the words 'in time δt' I understand it as 'is δt'.
The action does not occur 'in' time but 'creates' time!
Media itself has much in common
with Jung's concept of archetypes in that, as Jung many times pointed out,
we cannot be aware of the archetypes as they are but only of images of
them. Similarly, we know media only through experiential modes such as dreams
and creative works of art or superb designs. We cannot be aware of media, only
of its results. And the results of media are meanings.
More than
once, in working with Ted, we agreed to take media as the 'active unknown' and
made great efforts not to codify and explain the word. Ted was a genius at evoking
in people a sense and feeling for media - and his work with music and works of
art played an important role in this. Of course, we will tend to treat the unknown
as empty and passive, whereas it is really full and active. It would be quite
good to consider media along the lines of something seeking to manifest through
us.
We can easily see that Ted did not regard creativity as essentially
a matter of human power. He thought of it as coming from the active source - media
- of everything that had meaning in our lives. The passive source of meaning
was to be found in what he called 'matter' - that is, everything that exists,
has explicit form and is known, whether mental or physical! This positioned us
in-between media and matter. Though he never referred to it, his vision corresponded
closely to the Chinese conception of the three-term system or triad:
HEAVEN MAN EARTH
However,
the Chinese scheme does not bring home to us the primacy of the instant of
creation, nor of the way in which we might consider Media + Matter = Meaning as
a statement of how time is created. The idea that time is created by the
mutual impact of three independent impulses is to be found in various places but
never generally accepted or even noticed. For example, the physicist Julian Barbour
speaks of the making of a Now in terms of the coalescence of three particles that
precedes time and space.
The experience of the 3-M equation is so fast that it can be missed. What is
crucial is that what we might call our 'minds' are 'bypassed' as it were. Or
we could say that a mind is formed in the very instant of creation. If we stop
to have an experience of what media is telling us, it becomes too late to manifest
what it means. In this sense, we have to learn to be empty of ourselves. Our
content is entirely matter, waiting on the impact of media to awaken us to a
new meaning. Later in his life, Ted wrote a book from this perspective called
Journeys of Nothing in the Land of Everything.
That is why, increasingly, Ted abandoned his early - and quite extraordinary
- work on fundamental design method, which he developed
before the breakthrough in Glastonbury, and considered design method itself
to be re-created from moment to moment. In retrospect, therefore, it was
not surprising that he would turn to music as the very embodiment of his theories.
This emerged as a definite technique we agreed to call neural education,
that I later took up under the name ILM
(immediate learning method).
As we have said, media implied a higher
intelligence. This is even a 'logical' assertion, since media is posited as that
from which the impulse comes that is at a higher level than current meaning.
If we look back to the 'Chinese' triad, we can imagine some kind of 'step-down'
function operating between the different levels or 'voltages'. Following up on
this metaphor, we can consider human beings as 'transformers' that translate the
very high voltages of the media 'grid' into domestic use!
Towards the end of his life, the religious impulses that had always played
a major role in his life came more to fore and he formulated a new method he
called Sophiagenics - loosely translatable
as the 'getting of wisdom'. Sophia is the biblical name of the higher intelligence
that 'dances before the Lord' in the Wisdom of Solomon and is the higher
or demiurgic intelligence that Bennett also dwelt on in his last years as wisdom,
which he defined as the source of perfection in doing. Similar, or perhaps
in some sense identical to, 'the work' Bennett had also referred to this in
terms of his fourth 'line of work' that he called manifestation. In this
line of work, the third or 'hidden' force expresses itself directly.
Both Bennett and Matchett were centred in the will.
We need to understand that the true will is beyond awareness and cannot be known.
We can take Ted's 'matter' to be function, his 'meaning' to be being and his 'media'
to be will. Both appreciated that the free man or the 'man of God' does not know
what he is doing but is able to listen and obey with perfect confidence.
The
3-M equation reaches far and wide and includes all paths of innovation, discovery
and realisation. It takes media as the unknown as of urgent relevance to the meaning
of our lives and work. The 'proof' of the efficacy of the 3-M equation is what
we do. Though to say that we 'do' is as questionable as it is in Gurdjieff's teaching.
Perhaps we should remember Ted's religious nature and agree to represent his equation
in the words:
Edward Matchett
(1929-1998) was a remarkable teacher of creative design. He started his engineering
career as apprentice, then draughtsman and engineer at Rolls-Royce Engine Division,
Derby GB. In 1952 he went on to teach Aero Engine Design at The College of Aeronautics,
Cranfield, now Cranfield University, and it was while at Cranfield as a Design
Lecturer that he became compelled to seek out ways of improving design science.
Early on his career, he made as the centre of gravity of his researches the
primacy of need. As he saw it, most designs were produced as an extension
of what already exists instead of responding to what was truly needed.
A need 'does not exist' but is capable of 'pulling' something into existence.
A true design would be one that fitted the sum of the true needs of a particular
set of circumstances. The 'sum of the true needs' meant that the good designer
would pay attention to all of the needs and not just one kind - it would meet
not only technical requirements but financial, social, systemic, and human needs
as well. The idea of 'fit' was primary: the design should have the complete
form that corresponded to the form of the sum of the needs.