Notes + Links on creativity, art, & design by Casey A. Gollan
Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new —be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine— over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17th.
A pretty interesting lineup. Includes Tauba Auerbach and Evan Roth, as well as Matt Mullenweg and David Karp, the creators of Wordpress and Tumblr, respectively. The others I am not familiar with, but look cool also.
“We procrastinate when we’ve forgotten who we are.” —Merlin Mann
I’m not synesthetic and you probably are not either.
Samurai Tree 1M, 2006, by Gabriel Orozco
For a year, from late summer 2004 through early fall 2005, Orozco worked “shoulder to shoulder” with Picoli, who had not been trained as a painter. But once Picoli’s skills were finely honed, and the project of turning the Invariant diagrams into paintings had been firmly established, Orozco departed. The work of painting is now one that he delegates to Picoli in Paris and Christian Macia in Mexico City.
All the genius mythology that once went together with the studio—isolation, inspiration, struggle, ecstasy, despair—is absent in the making of Orozco’s paintings.
—Ann Temkin
Untitled by Anish Kapoor (2009)
BLDGBLOG has a great post, full of images, on an upcoming Guggenheim exhibition called Contemplating the Void.
New York’s Guggenheim Museum “invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space.”
In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment.
These and many other images will be on display when the exhibition, Contemplating the Void, opens February 12, 2010.
As a (too good to be coincidental) prelude to this exhibition, the space has already been transformed by Tino Sehgal, whose current exhibition has removed all of the visual art from the rotunda. There is literally nothing that screams ART! on the walls or in the void. However, if you stare from the top down, you will notice one unmistakeable couple that can’t stop making out and the rhythmic pattern of people-in-conversation ambling slowly upwards.
In one of his last typewritten letters, he observes, “This machine is delicate as a little dog and causes a lot of trouble—and provides some entertainment. Now all my friends have to do is invent a reading machine: otherwise I will fall behind myself and won’t be able to supply myself with sufficient intellectual nourishment.” Nietzsche feared his own typewriter might outproduce him.Rob Giampietro — Lined & Unlined » Blog Archive » Serial Series, Part 6
This story sounded suspiciously wiki.” The obvious colloquial analogue would be “the story seemed fishy.” But note the distinction. A “fishy” story, like a “fish story,” is a farfetched story that is probably a lie or exaggeration that in some way redounds to the teller’s benefit. A “wiki” story, on the other hand, is a story, perhaps farfetched, that is probably backed up by no authority other than a Wikipedia article, or perhaps just a random web site. The only advantage it yields to the user is that one appears knowledgeable while having done only the absolute minimum amount of research.
I dunno… seems a little “wiki” « Snarkmarket
Sometimes I love new words.
Craft is defined in its excess—in the element of work that is not required or demanded, but through which the maker makes a gift—unsought, unreciprocated—to others.Mandy Brown — On craft / from a working library (nicely paraphrasing The Craftsman by Richard Sennett)
[Everyone] (with the least bit of inclination) should write a novel, and society would be much better off for it. Like so many forms of introspection (in many ways the enemy of fundamentalists and political zealots of all stripes), it can be one of life’s great pleasures, but (unlike many others) is not one that falls into the category of immediate gratification (like say, that mammoth black-and-white cookie I just scarfed down). It’s sort of like running a marathon; you have to train to build up to it and maintain some discipline, but ultimately, when you cross the finish line (even if you had to crawl the last __ miles or walk part of the way), you’re going to feel a great sense of accomplishment (even — or especially — if you didn’t win), and for at least a few seconds have some warm fuzzies about being alive and completing something that nobody will ever be able to take away from you. Whether the novel will be ‘good’ or not — much less successful, however you want to define that (but let’s think about it in crass, commercial terms as opposed to a sense of accomplishment) — is a completely different question, and I tend to think that not so many people have it in them to be ‘great’ novelists, much the way only a few runners can ever expect to win a marathon, because I think it requires a certain obsessive personality that falls way outside the boundaries of what most people would consider ‘normal’ and often borders on the psychotic.Matthew Gallaway
(via Tomorrow Museum)
Kenya Hara, famous designer and creative director of Muji, on Japanese aesthetics:
A central aesthetic principle in Japan is simplicity, but it is different from simplicity in the West. Let me explain the difference by comparing cooking knives. The knives made by the German company, Henckel, for example, are well crafted and easy to use because they are highly ergonomic. The thumb automatically finds its place when you grab the knife.
Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.
The knife’s simple shape is not seen as poor or raw. Beauty beyond fanciness is an aesthetic principle that is sleeping at the bottom of Japanese perception. A guiding principle also to Japanese high tech architecture and the minimal products of Muji.
(via iA)
Kids can remember hundreds of Pokemon characters but very few animals. The solution? The Phylomon Project is an open source initiative aiming to make Pokemon-type cards for actual animals.
This is a great idea, except for the fact that “African Fire Millipede, I choose you!” doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it as “Go, Pikachu!” But, in all seriousness, it’s brilliant.
(via Kottke)
Mule Design Studio’s Blog: The Failure of Empathy
Fact:
As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service.
In other words, the iPad is (once the geeks get over it) the computer for people who don’t really care about computers. It sounds kind of antithetical because the device has caused such strong reactions among nerdy-types, but in the long term it opens the door for designers to create mind-blowingly intuitive, user-friendly* interfaces to accomplish simple real-world tasks (think reading, drawing, organizing; not hacking).
(via jenbee, who must’ve been reading my mind about what I was about to post)
* Where have we all heard that term before? It was, forever—and maybe still is—how most people describe the difference between Macs and PCs. Now “more user friendly” is the reason to switch from laptop to iPad.
A new class of content for a new class of device
In which Robin Sloan nails it,
Apple: you did not invent a magical and revolutionary device so we could read books in ePub format.
Think about what the iPad really is! It’s the greatest canvas for media ever invented. It’s colorful, tactile, powerful, and programmable. It can display literally anything you can imagine; it can add sound and music; and it can feel you touching it. It’s light and (we are led to believe) comfortable in the hands. The Platonic Form of the Perfect Canvas is out there somewhere—it’s probably flexible… and it probably has a camera—but the iPad is, like, a really amazingly good shadow of that form. And this is just the first one!
So, we’re gonna use the Perfect Canvas to… watch TV shows?
Seriously: ePub?
Now, connect the dots. For all its power and flexibility, the web is really bad at presenting bounded, holistic work in a focused, immersive way. This is why web shows never worked. The web is bad at containers. The web is bad at frames.
Jeez, if only we had a frame.
Now we do.
The way [Pandora] hooked me in with the free hours made me feel like this is something I should probably pay for because I clearly value the service they are providing. Thinking about it more, this perhaps might be an interesting model for publishers. Not sure how it would work or if tracking time spent on a website is the way to go or not, but it would be interesting if content producers could come up with easily digestible measurements to show consumers how much they value the service or content that’s being provided. This would weed out the fickle viewers and for the power users it would make them realize how much they actually value the content they are consuming. The goal is always to hook your dedicated power users.
There are clearly some challenges to something like this, but from a psychological point of view Pandora has put me in a position where I understand how much I value their service and the great benefits I will receive if I subscribe. Regardless if I end up paying a subscription fee or not, they have made a compelling offer, and no matter what, that’s what content producers and service providers need to do. Make compelling offers and show consumers how much they value the content or service that’s being provided.
Bryan Formhals — la pura vida: You Are Running Out of Free Hours
The $6 purchase price of the McSweeney’s iPhone app comes with delivery of free iPhone formatted web content everyday forever and six months of exclusive, bespoke (designed) content once a week. It’s totally worth it. If they keep up the good job, I have no qualms about renewing for another $6 (from within the app, charged to iTunes!) when my subscription lapses…I’ve been hooked.
I jotted down some thoughts on the night of the iPad announcement about why it’s awesome but my opinions have basically been reiterated across the web. This is an incredible opportunity (big screen, touch based, app store, always online) to design interactions!
I was skimming through Apple’s iPad Human Interface Guidelines last night (Google it if you want to find a leaked PDF) and one part that struck me as particularly interesting was to let users play with your application before asking them to provide any more information than the system provides. If it’s still necessary later, do it as soon as you can, but not until the user has gotten a test drive and run into a situation that requires filling out a form—or in this case, buying a paid subscription.
Finland’s Unnamed Islands, 2000, by Nina Katchadourian
Paper map fragments between microscope slides on aluminum shelves, 1 foot x 8 feet
I cut out hundreds of islands that were nameless from an atlas of Finland. These clusters were placed between microscope slides on long aluminum shelves.
I am partial to this because of my heritage, but also because it is awesome! One of the few standout pieces in the otherwise laborious but predictable show Slash: Paper Under the Knife at the Museum of Art and Design.
