My ambitions were never to become a designer or artist in pursuit of importance, status or notoriety. My interests were always bound to an insatiable appetite for discovery and looking for collaboration in interpreting the discovered phenomena. “Ask a provocative question, and without hesitation I stand ready to explore it to find an answer”, that is my motto. I wanted to become a knowledgeable “pataphysicist”, because pataphysics is an all inclusive discipline like sociology, which tries to see the world as it is, warts and all, rather than as some want it to be, a cleaned up and stilted version of reality, because all of nature is about living, begetting more life and survival. Life is not only super-real. It is surreal.

For me design, like handwriting or photography, is a recording tool, a way of capturing or apprehending perceptions and observations and then making them visible. It is ideal for exploring the edges of pataphysics. The recognition and understanding of perceptions provide the contents for design explorations. Without contents, design is a very shallow excursus, in which the pursuit of high aesthetics is shallow and meaningless. MIT was an ideal place in the sixties for embarking on a quest for pataphysics. While joining this tongue-in-cheek discipline, this early expression of a Dada world, absurd and chaotic, but also rational and ordered, pataphysics provides an amazing high plateau for observing the world without having to become an expert.

The name pataphysics always reminded me of Miriam Maceba, the South African singer and her “Pata Pata” song, which in the Xhosa language means “touch touch”. I may have misinterpreted “Pata Pata” wrongly, in the same way in which I mistook hurricane to mean “wind rushing through cane fields”, I invented a mind image which seemed appropriate of grass being bent into all directions by the velocity of wind gusts. The name pataphysics for its discipline seemed well coined.

As a pataphysicist I am empowered to touch everything, seeing everything connected, dependent and interdependent. I like to take on the characteristics of the discipline which are patient, benign; which envy nothing; are never distracted, never puffed up; without any aspirations other than understanding nor seeking ownership or power-control of knowledge, because all knowledge is the sum of perceptions of the universe made by many who came before us. As pataphysicist one gives credit to anyone who sees, discovers, invents. Reaching this state in  pataphysics, is a true state of independence and neutrality but a arduous and gigantic task all in itself.

Pataphysics is a branch of philosophy or science that examines imaginary phenomena that exist in a world beyond metaphysics; it is the science of imaginary solutions. Arthur Jarry, a French playwright and author defines pataphysics in a number of ways, including that it is “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments”.  Only those without imagination, and those in business, banks and the stock market believe in ownership of ideas. Pataphysics is even-tempered, and thinks not evil; it mocks not iniquity but tries to prevent it; it is enraptured with scientific as well as mythological truths; it supports everything, believes everything, has faith in everything and upholds everything, and everything has the chance to metamorphose from the worst state to a better state and excellences.

Unfortunately, I am also aware, and just like in Groucho Marx’s view, I must admit, I can’t join any discipline that does not want me as a member. Even though those are the facts – still I would not mind being accepted for any of my ideas, warped, convoluted, in and out of touch as they may be.