CORRESPONDENCE: From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe
Each letter head is hand drawn with pencil, a replica of official state stationary that makes me think about a nation's validity: What causes it to be seen as legitimate entity? The institutional capital that needs to be created in order to have a critical mass of legitimacy seems to be questioned here with these hand drawn letter heads, the wonderfully naive execution reveals the need we have for systems of uniformity.
Something strange about the image above? Something familiar? Andreas Gefeller, the German photographer, manages the scene one step at a time, laboriously mapping the ground beneath him by pacing across the terrain, carefully snapping as he goes, later to stitch each image together in a satellite view. And there you have it, something as familiar to us all as the cartographic image— a stitching of Google earth or maps (whichever you subscribe to) is making us more and more familiar with the skewed view of mapped manipulation. Everything is flat you see. Go on, take a look at Google Maps. You see that the surface has no real perspective, or should I say only one strange perspective. It's as if we're slipping back to a the pre—perspective paintings of the 13th Century.
But, and this is an interesting but, these are fucking beautiful images and although Gefeller may be a one trick pony, it's fantastic.
Here's some more photos from the series.
The London based studio YES has produced beautiful designs for some of the Penguin classics. If you've not read these then this is the time to get yourself some copies.
The work of Daniel Eatock doesn't exactly look like work, it seems more like a series of observations and ponderings or thoughtful interjections. Such as the work featured here, Tops 29 coloured plastic tops and lids arranged and rearranged , is as it's art like title suggests, 29 coloured plastic tops and lids arranged and rearranged. It's obvious really when you see it, why didn't you do it yourself? well, you didn't and he did, and the reason? that this is the result of his observation and considertion. Eatock is one of several people around the world who many say are a hybrid designer artist, blurring the bounaries of art and design. I find it anoying and somewhat uncreative to have to label him either or. As for blurring boundaries, well, that's another topic. I propose that
Designers often talk about their love of the typeface and layout some even talk with passion about the printed object, the matter. But it's work like this that really shows what can be done to enhance how we value a thing. What you see are 576 printed catalogues for the AIGA Philadelphia inaugural Design Competition/Exhibition featuring the best of Philly design. Designed by gdloft out of Philly and presented to
Some posts back I’d featured some images created by the remnant marks left from a month’s use of a computer mouse. At the time, the cacophony caused by my internet use had blurred my memory of where I’d originally seen the work, and more importantly whose work it was. I hope I can mitigate my forgetfulness by bringing forth the work of JK Keller who along with Keetra Dean Dixon perform their various design interventions on our world.
My mother was a tailor and I grew up sewing. The first technique I learned was what was called French knitting. I've no idea why it had that title however this reminds me strongly of the affect it had on me—making a three dimensional form from yarn.
Discovered at Fubiz
Last year's exhibition, Wouldn't it be Nice, at Somerset House contained an adjunct project entitled The McGuffin Library by artists Noam Toran
and Onkar Kular. This project used rapid prototyping to produce unique objects that took their cues and design direction from imagined movie plots. The end results were displayed within the gallery along with the SLA machine and an attendent operator. The movie synopsis idea had come from Hitchcock's practice of introducing what he titled a "McGuffin".
In this vein, I'll be joining Peter Stathis in teaching a summer course at CCA, within...
The BBC's Peter Day interviews Tim Brown of IDEO and Roger Martin of the the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada.
Listen to the AUDIO
This from the Boston Big Picture
This image is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and it is by far my favorite Hubble image. Starting in late 2003, astronomers pointed Hubble at a tiny, relatively empty part of our sky (only a few stars from the Milky Way visible), and created an exposure nearly 12 days long over a four-month period.
