Intuition is a more evolved sophisticated level of instinct. Instinct is immediate; it is an instant recognition of pattern. Essentially it is pattern for survival. Intuition is something different. It is a force that deliberately extends those patterns of survival. The spur of creativity, the hidden catalytic is intuition. The sharper and more honed the intuition is, the more creative the choices. The person with the sharper intuition will create more, because they are navigating those paths for survival. Pattern is fundamental to us; it is everything. There are those patterns which, as we grew from Neolithic man, existed as physical, geographic location patterns. On one level, we learned through trial and error that certain repeats are safe. We changed our action then repeated those changes. Finally, we grew an awareness of recognition and pattern. We instinctively recoiled from dangerous patterns, this primed our senses. Gradually the priming evolved to a more sophisticated level. Now it’s the admittance of the dissimilar which pushes evolution forward, otherwise the pattern would ossify; we wouldn’t evolve. So the evolutionary force also seems to be a willful search for schisms and ruptures in the steadiness of the repeats. Instinct recognizes that the patterns have evolved.
As a designer, I have evolved to this moment in time by extending those patterns, whatever those patterns are, in a broad, abstract sense. I keep extending and pushing, pushing to get it right.
Instinct is conncected to the sub-conscious, and intuition is connected to the conscious brain. I’m absolutely convinced the conscious brain has its own subversive elements; it will not accept repeat as completely safe. Intuition gets better, sharper and more refined. But it needs nurturing, it needs fertility, it needs irregularities. It will accept repeat for a while, but somewhere something happens, we want a change; it is absolutely primal to us, to seek change.
When on the journey, there is always that risk you don’t know. You trust that through the rigor it will be a journey that could be interesting, that’s the trust. If the rigor wasn’t there it would be highly speculative and whimsical; you might hit it because you just happen to get the parts right, but there are more chances of getting it wrong. It goes back to my evolutionary theory at the beginning and the survival patterns. The rigor gives you a certain safety in playing, in the journey, if you like, and still allows the ambiguity to come in, the generative. There is a risk element in it, risk by invitation, but we’re not philosophers, we work in the real and need the rigor, otherwise everything would just spin out of orbit.
Cecil Balmond in Models vol. 11
