Human beings today exist in an environment almost completely structured by design. The spaces in which we live, the ways we move from place to place, the tools we use to accomplish our goals, even the things we eat and drink show the influence of generations of thought and planning. Whether they realize it or not, designers wield tremendous power.

Aware of the responsibility that comes with this power, Chicago’s Cannon Design decided to collaborate with Insight Labs to investigate the question of how we can make design more human. Specifically, what bad habits, conventions, and methodologies can we remove from the design disciplines to help them better serve humanity?

Labs Content Director Andrew Benedict-Nelson sought answers from representatives from a variety of design disciplines for answers in advance of the Lab. Here’s what Frank Maugeri of Redmoon Theater had to say. Click here to hear from his colleagues in other fields.

Andrew Benedict-Nelson: You are the co-artistic director of a theater company that stages “unexpected theater in unexpected locations.” Do you consider yourself to be a designer?

Frank Maugeri: Absolutely. Yes.

ABN: Where would you say the line between art and design lies in your work?

FM: I don’t think of myself as an artist, actually, at all, even though most people would want to frame me in that manner. I think of myself as a designer in everything that I do. The shows that I develop, the objects I create, or the events that I design, or the graphic materials I create or the website design that I do — it’s all design-based.

FM: That’s really 30 to 40 percent of my job. The other 60 percent of my job is management of other people, and that is also about something that to my mind is another form of design: strategy. So I think of myself as a designer and don’t think of much of a line there.

I think that, on some level, comes from the dangerous interpretation of what an artist is: someone who, theoretically, if not actually, is fairly self-consumed or limited by a tight, minor theme or isolated in their own kind of environment where they make the work, be there painter or animator or sculptor or filmmaker.

The collaboration is not as thick as it is for me. I am fundamentally collaborating with people. I am not off on my own imagining something from nothing and then bringing that thing into the world. Hopefully that is a fair and understandable response.

ABN: You set up something of a value distinction there — would you say that collaborative work is more valuable for you or in general?

FM: I think it’s more valuable in general. Like I am fighting against the notion of the artist, especially the artist as genius, I am also fighting for the notion that any one individual’s  ideas won’t be nearly as good as the collective’s imagination. I am a firm believer that I might be very good at beginning an idea, but that a group of people will explode that idea in ways I could have never imagined.

I also believe that the activity of collaboration is one expression of community. Fundamentally, what I hope for from my design and all of the art I’m involved in, is for community to somehow occur because of the experience of that design or that art. I think the same thing is true about collaboration. Collaboration generates community and that community generates further community.

ABN: Do you think there is a place for the “artist as genius”?

FM: Yeah, but it’s very rare. Of course there is a place for it. There is a place for most everything. But I think it is pretty rare and it has danger associated with it.

ABN: When you look at public event design, or the ideas, methodologies, and practices associated with that area, what qualities do you see that bring out the best in people or make us more human?

FM: As makers, I think what brings out the best in us is fundamentally the active art of collaboration with real honesty and integrity, meaning a large group of like-minded and talented or skilled individuals come together to forge something new. That in and of itself makes us better.

Now, that hinges on those two words — honesty and integrity — because there are lots of collaborations that are simply disguises for one person to get everything that they want manifested. That does not bring the best of us out, and that is a complicated, think, blurry line that needs constant attention. A healthy and productive collaboration will have that constant attention.

So I think that on its own the act of collaboration brings out the best in us. It challenges us. It pushes us. It demands we go further than we generally go. It forces us to work with other people who we either really admire or really don’t like. It makes us battle the ego constantly. It puts us in front of our own fears. If guided by honesty and integrity, collaboration is a spiritual activity. It demands a lot of us.

As an audience, I think what brings the best out in us are images or surprise, beauty, and transformation. That’s the experience that I’ve had with my projects and with other spectacle-based theater, primarily in Europe. What the audience is provided are not necessarily cerebral or conscious ideas that need to be interpreted, like the traditional stage play, which depends on the words between two people to help me understand the content of the moment. Instead, spectacle theater is based on remarkably vivid and exciting images, that ultimately at their best are operating in a universal manner around life or death or love or grace or faith and all the stuff we all face no matter where we are standing on the planet right now.

Those images result in either surprise – “I never expected that to happen!” – or some kind of transformation – the car becomes a ship, or whatever it is. That ignites the human imagination in a way that runs really, really deep, and reminds people of a number of essential things. One, human beings can make amazing things with their hands that happen right in front of you. Two, what you think is one thing can absolutely become another thing.

Three – Joseph Campbell often argued that the difference between advertising and art is that one causes aesthetic arrest. It is something so beautiful that you forget everything else. Maybe it is a second, maybe it’s five, maybe it’s more if you’re lucky. But in that little moment of relief, you are changed. So really all the stuff I said earlier about surprise, transformation, and beauty, is really expanding on this notion of aesthetic arrest and what it means for human beings.

ABN: What would be an example of a work that for you really embodies those qualities?

FM: I would probably say Royal de Luxe in France. “The Sultan’s Elephant.” This was a celebration they staged to observe the centenary of Jules Verne’s death in Nantes. They did a big celebration in the town. Royal de Luxe is a spectacle troupe based in France that does all sorts of amazing things. One of the things they do is build these three- or four- or five-story-tall animated figures that hundreds of men drive and push and pull and animate in public spaces. For example, a giant little girl walks down seven blocks of city streets, and then she sits down somewhere.

I think that’s a great example where the maker crafted something extraordinary, the collaboration is deep and remarkable, the use of public space is amazing, and it is absolutely carefully designed because of what it has to do. Then the audience experiences literally a kind of wonder-based shock. They can’t believe this thing is happening. They are able to see both the animation of the mechanical object and the human beings working very hard to animate the mechanical object. There is no backstage or front stage – it is all one thing. And they themselves are reminded of the power of scale and the power of a group of people coming together – it is generally 100 or 150 men and women that are required to move the creature. So they are reminded of what happens when a group of people gets together to accelerate something beautiful. It is an example of something that is simply bigger than everybody else. It achieves both those things I was referring to for maker and audience.

ABN: When you look out at your field, are there ideas, methodologies, trends, or bad habits that make us less human or dehumanize us?

FM: It’s interesting – I don’t think there is a lot of spectacle work that falls into traps that dehumanize people, quite honestly, because it’s such a rare and special medium – and a medium that emphasizes fundamentally the design of celebration and community. Now, much of the spectacle that we experience in America is limited to the halftime show at the Super Bowl or the Thanksgiving Day parade. Both fine I suppose, but the major flaw or limitation there may be the convention, the lack of cultural depth or cultural meaning, and ultimately lack of public celebration and an intention towards unity- unity in the sense of the great diversity of our culture is being thoughtfully and fully represented. Like the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics – which is an awesome example of successful spectacle.

ABN: I think of fly-overs by military aircraft at sporting events. It’s really impressive, but it doesn’t have much purpose except to say, “Look at our bombers.”

FM: That is one example of America’s spectacle. The effect of those things, I would argue with great risk, does not pronounce our humanity in a way that spectacle can and should. It pronounces other things – like strength or power – which is an element of spectacle and does unify some. But what does it really celebrate and for whom? Is it truly inclusive of the whole country?