My colleague Ruud van Vliet has presented the future of the information architect on LAC2008. One of his observations is that an information architect must be able to juggle with many worldviews at the same time. He must see many aspects of a universe of discourse at once, from several angles.

This calls for a holistic view and synthesis processes. But that is easier said than done. Is the human mind capable of doing this? Can I do this by looking swiftly at one aspect in detail, then switching to an other aspect, such that traces of the first view stay in memory for a while? And how do I present and base the results to stakeholders?

Possible answers I find in art. At the beginning of the 20th century painters start experimenting with several new image languages. One of them is formal abstract painting. Gradually, the figurative disappears. As in Mondriaan's flowering apple tree paintings. He changes from the real images of the visual world trees to the core essence of 'trees'. As if he looks for design principles and patterns. He seems to find the class of objects deduced from the instances.

Building on this first step Cubism came along. That seems to give the answer to my question. These artists are capable to make visable all aspects of one object at once. For example in Georges Braques violin. You see front and back of the case, strings from another angle, details of the neck, etc. The visable world is rearranged in new pieces and views. It breaks through normal boundaries to present lots of viewpoints. Sometimes even movement is visualised, as with Futurism. E.g. in the painting 'speeding car' by Giacomo Balla. These painters have left 'perspective' behind, resulting in multi-perspective or multi-context, just what I needed.

A spectator or stakeholder has to work hard to see the meaning and the order. No solutions there yet. Our next challenge: how to translate these art images into information architecture 'mood boards'. Not an easy task.

This blog has been inspired by the book Aardschok, Bliksemflits (in dutch) by Wil Uitgeest.

Rijk van Vulpen is enterprise architect at Caerleon.

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