Week1
These two weeks have been about learning how to “rethink” — to reclassify and reframe things we usually take for granted.
In Week 1, I started with the Shipping Forecast. I collected ten days of forecasts, broke them down line by line, and analysed every descriptive word — moderate, rough, later, showers. I built spreadsheets, made charts, and studied the syntax as if I were a programmer or a scientist. It felt systematic but also a bit too rational. I often fall into this habit: treating design like research data and forgetting to use my designer’s eyes. I realised that while precision is valuable, I needed more imagination — something more visual, more speculative, more alive.
Week2
In Week 2, I tried to bring that creativity back. I asked my friends how they felt when hearing those forecast words and what actions they might take. Their answers were beautifully diverse: one thought rough sounded calm, another imagined a storm; later could mean ten minutes or half a day. So I decided to make a short video combining BBC’s forecast audio with my friends’ voices and animation. The video turned out to be less about weather and more about perception — how language becomes experience.
Working between Foucault’s theories and the everyday tone of weather reports made me see how cataloguing isn’t just an academic method — it’s a design tool. The Forecast organises nature through language, and I re-organised that language through human feeling.
For now, I’m happy that this project is helping me find a balance: between analysis and play, precision and intuition, order and uncertainty.
Written Response:
Inventory of the Preface — Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1966)
This written response uses the Inventory method to look at Foucault’s Preface through five lenses: topic, key argument, citing arguments, text structure, visual & layout.
Instead of summarising the text, it lists and examines how Foucault’s writing itself produces both order and disorder, the very tension that defines his idea of knowledge.
1. Topic
| Title | Function | Form |
| The Order of Things | Frames the book as an exploration of how systems of knowledge are organised. | Philosophical analysis presented through archaeological inquiry. |
| The Table | Serves as a central metaphor for the spatial organisation of thought. | Spatial and conceptual metaphor. |
| Language | Operates as the medium through which knowledge takes shape. | Dense and analytical writing style. |
| Man | Appears as a modern construct rather than a fixed truth. | Anthropological and historical reflection. |
2. Key Arguments
| Concept Term | Explanation |
| Order | Describes how knowledge is organised by cultural frameworks rather than natural laws. |
| Language and Space | Writing structures perception, turning language into a visual and conceptual space. |
| Episteme | Refers to the underlying system that defines what can be known in a particular time. |
| Representation | Explains how thought depends on resemblance and analogy. |
| Discontinuity | Suggests that modern knowledge arises through historical breaks rather than steady progress. |
3. Citing Arguments
| Thinker | Borrowed Idea | Source |
| Borges, J. L. | His “Chinese encyclopaedia” illustrates the limits of classification. | Borges, J. L. (1998) ‘The analytical language of John Wilkins’, in Hurley, A. (ed. and trans.) Collected fictions. London: Penguin Classics.Borges， J. L. （1998） |
| Derrida, Jacques | The concept of différance, where meaning exists through difference and delay. | Derrida, J. (1995) Archive fever: a Freudian impression. Diacritics, 25(2).Derrida， J. （1995) |
| Mattern, Shannon | Knowledge systems are built on material and spatial infrastructures. | Mattern, S. (2014) ‘Library as infrastructure.’ Places Journal, June.Mattern， S. （2014） |
| Bracewell, Michael | Describes discomfort and instability as productive conditions. | Bracewell, M. (2001) The nineties. London: Fourth Estate.Bracewell， M. （2001） |
4. Text Structure
| Motif | Description | Function |
| Laughter | Opens the text with a moment of disruption and reflection. | marks the emergence of a challenge to traditional ways of thinking. |
| Table | Represents the ordered space where ideas are arranged and compared. | Acts as both foundation and point of disappearance for knowledge. |
| Language | Described as the final space in which knowledge survives. | Demonstrates that meaning depends on linguistic and cultural structures. |
| Man | Defined as “a face drawn in sand” at the edge of knowledge. | Represents the human subject as temporary and historically bound. |
| Order/Disorder | The tension between structure and collapse runs through the text. | Reflects the fragile balance between categorisation and chaos in thought. |
5. Visual & Layout
| Feature | Analysis |
| Alphabetical enumeration (a–n) | The typographic listing creates the illusion of control while revealing the arbitrariness of categories. |
| Long paragraphs and dense syntax | The visual density reflects the complex and layered nature of Foucault’s argument, where reading becomes an act of analysis. |
| Parentheses and interruptions | Break the flow of argument and create small reflective spaces inside the text. |
| Repetition of motifs | Recurring ideas such as “table” and “order” build rhythm and reinforce key themes. |
| Spatial metaphors (“table”, “grid”, “surface”) | The text uses visual and spatial language to describe how knowledge is organised. |
In conclusion, this inventory reveals how Foucault’s Preface operates between the visible and the invisible—between what can be organised and what continually escapes organisation.
By listing the text’s components, the method of cataloguing makes form and content visible as interdependent structures: grammar shapes meaning just as layout produces thought.
Yet every act of ordering also exposes what cannot be contained—the gaps, repetitions, and silences that resist classification.
Through this tension, both Foucault’s writing and this inventory show that knowledge is never simply seen or said, but negotiated between what appears and what remains unseen.
References
Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso.
Borges, J. L. (1998) ‘The analytical language of John Wilkins’, in Hurley, A. (ed. and trans.) Collected fictions. London: Penguin Classics.
Bracewell, M. (2001) The nineties. London: Fourth Estate.
Derrida, J. (1995) ‘Archive fever: a Freudian impression’, Diacritics, 25(2), pp. 9–63.
Foucault, M. (1989) The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge. (Originally published in French as Les mots et les choses, 1966).
Mattern, S. (2014) ‘Library as infrastructure’, Places Journal, June. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/library-as-infrastructure/ (Accessed: 28 October 2025).
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