The museum itself was interesting enough, but the museum pedagogue with her engagement and ability to connect with the group, helped us to imagine and connect with people from the past. One of such people was Sondre Norheim who considerably improved design of skis about 150 years ago.Sondre’s family lived purely in a little cottage and did not own any land. They had to work hard in order to survive, and working and moving outdoors was not easy in winter time considering the large amounts of snow in the mountains of Telemark. Sondre wanted to move faster not only in order to fulfill his duties, but also to have fun beyond everyday occupations. He dreamt of speed, ski jumps, and easy maneuvers; He desired to draw curves in the snow while dancing across dunes. But skis of that time could not give him these pleasures.
In order to achieved what he wished for, Sondre had to redesign the skis, make them shorter, lighter, improve the lines and the way skis were attached to the foot. And in order to accomplish that, he had to understand how design qualities of these seemingly simple objects relate to different types of movements achieved through negotiations between human body, gravity and landscape; He had to understand snow and possibilities of own body, as well as to truly understand diverse qualities of wood. I assume that such kinds of understanding were not acquired by reading books, but through physical experience – “learning by doing”. Diverse qualities of natural materials (snow, wood, landscape and human body) gave him all kinds of resistances he needed in order to learn.
Referring to Dewey’s (1925) notion of “body-mind” and his intention to justify the importance of natural materials for learning (Dewey, 1956), as well as refereeing to my own experience with children and materials, I suggest:
“Natural materials offer diverse sensory experiences, multiple possibilities for exploration and transformation, motivation, ecological consciousness, and above all resistance. Through body-mind negotiation with natural materials a child [or an adult] can meet unexpected problems and experience what it is like to create unpredicted solutions” (Fredriksen, 2011 p.128).
In order to succeed, Sondre had to be engaged in negotiations between his hands, tools and wood and continuously remain aesthetically attentive to the material’s affordances and constrains. His motivation derived from his desires to dance in accordance with landscapes. However in order to succeed he also needed persistence in order to meet the challenges of not yet discovered design possibilities. Additionally, courage was needed in order to hold on his dreams even when people around thought he was crazy.
References:
Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court.
Dewey, J. (1956) The child and the curriculum. In J. Dewey (Ed.), The child and the curriculum & The school and society (pp. 31). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fredriksen, B. C. (2011). Negotiating grasp: Embodied experience with three-dimensional materials and the negotiation of meaning in early childhood education. 50, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo. (http://brage.bibsys.no/aho/handle/URN:NBN:no-bibsys_brage_25972 )
