It is a challenge when someone asks you to think outside the box, to look at the world around you in ways not thought possible, to find solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems. It means shedding fears, flaunting rules, accepting change. The exhibit, Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, now on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), offers just such a challenge. Whether it succeeds in fulfilling its own stated mandate, depends on a number of factors, including the show itself and how it has been presented.

The man behind the show, and very much in its foreground, is graphic designer Bruce Mau, who has become one of our blue globe's eminent graphic designers. His logos are to be found everywhere, all of them emanating from his design studio in Toronto. Mau, however, isn't satisfied with just doing graphic design; he is also busy working in architecture, and landscape design, and who knows, what else this restless, seemingly effervescent man will be up to next. As the curator of Massive Change, which is a collaboration between him, the Institute without Boundaries and the Vancouver Art Gallery, and also involves students from Toronto's George Brown City College, Mau tells us that "[i]n the broadest terms it was conceived as a statement on contemporary design and as a manifesto for its future use."

The exhibit offers narrated commentary as one wanders through the show. Mau reveals in his printed version of the narration, which he mostly executes himself, that he and his collaborators made two decisions that shape this show: "First we decided we would not organize this exhibition based on visual criteria; we would deliberately not consider what design looks like. Instead our principle [sic] concern is what design makes possible in the world — something we call design capacity. Second, we abandoned the classical design disciplines and instead began to explore systems of exchange, or what we are calling design 'economies'."

Big words, awkwardly phrased. But what do they really mean? There is another question that needs closer inspection before actually looking at the exhibit. What is the Institute without Boundaries? A little orange booklet stuffed into the media kit explains the institute somewhat, again with rather big phrases that come across like a lot of deliciously empty carbohydrates. It is basically a joint project between Mau and Toronto's George Brown City College. The institute's 12 students, drawn annually from across the globe, work out of Mau's studio where they are, in a sense, engaged in the deconstruction of design — if one interprets the brochure correctly. Among the subjects listed students are promised that they will learn are 'How to take risks', 'How to ask questions', 'How to read and research', and at the top of the list, 'How to write'. Hmm. Do they also learn syntax, how to be economic with words, and how to proofread? It may seem petty, but there is a difference between principal and principle.

The students, by the way, do not have to be designers. "Our ideal candidates might include: an economist who is also an ecologist, an architect with a penchant for poetry . . . a mathematician who writes screenplays, a musician with a background in photo-journalism . . . " the brochure informs.

Mau wants to shake up the world. In a manifesto he released several years ago, Mau stated we should capture accidents in research. Right on. There are countless products in use that were discovered by accident, including penicillin and aspirin. But then he has another maxim, "Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it." Follow that advise and the very thing that can save us, and our environment may well be destroyed. He tells us to go deep. One agrees, for something looked at deeply or closely may reveal what we need, and if not, something different or just as valuable.

Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO's director and CEO tells us: "The content of Massive Change, like all good art, challenges the way we look at the world." He then continues, "The exhibition gets people to talk about the possibilities and complexities of our planet, which is precisely the kind of dialogue the AGO strives to inspire."

Massive Change certainly has generated talk. One has to point out, however, that bad art also creates talk, causes controversy, and presents challenges. I do not say here that Massive Change is necessarily bad art, but there are aspects of this show that come close to it. Besides, each of the positive aspects raised by Massive Change, unfortunately, also has a negative side.

One wants to be challenged, but not with pie in the sky, nor with ideas that haven't really been worked out; nor does one care very much that a negative aspect of this show has been given an excuse by Mau because he tells us up-front that good design has been deliberately ignored. There is an unevenness to the displays that is disconcerting. Some look polished and professional, others are amateurish. The display about energy sources, for one, has the look of a minor student project, and so one wonders: What is it doing in the hallowed halls of the AGO? What I found so surprising is that most everything displayed in the show has really nothing new to tell anyone who reads and stays informed.

Let us start, however, at the beginning of the exhibit. We are greeted with a slogan: "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" Can we really do anything — meaning everything? I do not think so. We have not yet reached that utopian state, and I dare say, we may never because human nature is too diverse, too much influenced by traditions, by the mental state of individuals, and by personal ambitions as sometimes expressed in political power. No doubt one will now be accused of pessimism because this show oozes with optimism. But it is important to remind artists — designers are part of that illustrious group — that reality has to enter any application we propose.

Mau would like to redesign the world. A nice ambition, but as the experiments of the utopians from the 19^th century, such as William Morris, taught us it is easily said but hard to carry out. Yes, Morris gave us some lasting designs, but he and his kind were unable to reshape society. He wanted to create beauty where none had existed before, and to some extent he succeeded. In that respect, Mau and his group do not appear to have the same aim because some of what we get to see breaches all aspects of beauty or rules of design.

The urge to reshape the world into a better place for everyone is in most of us. It has to come from within us, though, not through the exterior application of design. Design is merely one aspect of our lives. Even literature, music and the other arts are mere sideshows to the shaping of society. Too many people just do not care for any of these, including design.

That is why slogans remind us too much of all the broken promises of utopian thinkers, who turned out to be mere humans with tendencies toward totalitarian authoritarianism. What really does it mean when we are greeted with "We will enable sustainable mobility," and, do forgive me if I smile, "We will create a global mind." That sounds like the McLuhanism: "Global Village." As we are learning now, rather than turning into a global village through TV and the Internet, the inhabitants of this globe are turning away from each other; they are choosing parochialism, regionalism, and ethnicity instead. The global mind is slipping away from us, despite of — or maybe because of — electronic connectedness.

The exhibit has been divided into 11 'economies', as quoted above. These are Urbanism, Manufacturing, Movement, Health and Living, Energy, The Image, Materials, The Military, Information, Markets, and Wealth and Politics. As applied to these subjects, the word 'economies' has certainly been very creatively used.

The visible icon of the exhibit is a naked 'designer' chicken. By that I mean a chicken that has been selectively bred (not genetically altered) to exist without feathers. Its creator makes the claim that in warmer climates feathers impede the growth and production of chickens. This may be so, but we also know that feathers, like fur on animals, are insulation against both heat and cold, as well as against disease. So, here we have a pro and a con that need to be weighed against each other. At the same time, the chicken begs the question: what does it have to do with design or art?

We must laud the use of potatoes and corn instead of petroleum oil for the production of plastic cups, plates and takeout containers. They are biodegradable. One just wishes that their display had been given some kind of artistic consideration. Besides, with the use of fairly new materials, one wonders why in a design show these containers look no different from their petroleum cousins. On display is also the inventive use of recycled plastic bottles, which have been turned into 'Synchilla', a fabric that has the touch of fleece. There is no art to the manner in which two Synchilla jackets have been plonked on the same wall counter as the containers.

Our guide points out all of the laudable items that have been created through recycling materials, including chairs, but he ill informs us. Referring to the massive recycling program in Germany through its coloured dot system, we are told how successful it is. What the guide failed to tell us, however, is the negative aspect of the program. Most of the recycled material collected in that country is shipped further and further east, and is not recycled at all, but left in dumps in some underdeveloped country. So, if one is a little cynical about this exhibit, there are not just visual reasons, but also factual ones. Even such little ones as Mau telling us in his opening speech — he holds up the bottle — that the water he is drinking has been recycled from Singapore sewage by a "Toronto" company called Zenon. Sorry, Zenon is not in the Toronto phone book. Its world headquarters are located in Oakville, ON. Where is that promised research here?

While I seem to be dwelling on the minuses of this show, there are pluses — and I emphasize here that there is no regret for having seen the show. One of these pluses is the well designed display area for The Image, about how images have influenced societies everywhere. Surely, there are few individuals who aren't awed by the night sky. Images of the sky, of far-off galaxies taken by the Hubble Telescope, in a darkened room show us, along with pictures of the ozone layers (or lack of)  that when well arranged, they are magical. It is just about the only time, though, when one encounters this kind of designer magic in Massive Change even if the images on display are not new.

The area showing urban centres in large bubbles has some positive visual impact. The slogans printed on the bubbles, however, give the impression that this show is really not meant for a place like the AGO. It appears to belong in a student graduation exhibit at some design school. Yes, we need to preserve our environment, we need to preserve nature, and farmland. That is the plus of the idea. The negative side is that by erecting more densely situated, ever higher rising housing in the urban environment we will create a human time-bomb. All across Europe and North America there are high-density housing complexes that have bred hostility, alienation, and destruction. There appears to be a lack of good research in many of the ideas presented throughout the show, not just in the Urbanism section.

What the exhibit does reveal, is that there are an awful lot of people out there in the design world, who are willing to disregard good design. The small vehicles section features perhaps some of the ugliest inventions in the transportation field since the invention of the chariot. These new vehicles disregard the inherent nature of design. Anyone who has even faintly studied the natural sciences will know that there is a law of design in nature. I think of the pod of the poisonous milkweed, the only food Monarch butterfly caterpillars can eat. Most people will have seen those pods spewing forth silken seeds in the fall. But, have they ever examined a pod before it breaks open? Inside, the seeds, with their silken threads are arranged most beautifully in an intricate pattern. There is a law of design to leaves, to trees, even those that grow asymmetrically; astronomers will tell you there is a law to the arrangements in the galaxies, physicists to the arrangements of even the smallest particles.

What are the conclusions one draws from this exhibit? One is that we should see it, even if only to learn how, and how not to break the rules once we have learned them. There is no doubt about that in my mind. It is good to see how people, who are not specialists in specific fields, approach the subject they have been given to present. Some do it well, some don't. What is, however, most prevalent in this exhibit is the lack of really deep research. Consequently, the unquestioning viewer, the young viewer, who has no way of making decisions based on experience or knowledge, may well be led astray by seemingly naive assumptions.

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