Designblog

When picking up an unknown object, a book, the idea of it’s properities and contents start to form in my head even before opening the covers. The title and the graphics become like tag words in a jungle of random and anonymous ideas yet to be discovered. Sometimes, these ‘tag words’ speak so clearly about the content, that the idea forming in my head corresponds to the unfolding story, and sometimes the subject is so open that my idea and the idea of the author digress from each other so much that the ‘need’ the idea of the book created is left unfullfilled.

For the 2nd time in a row, the criterias whilst searching have been the same with a lot of influence by mere chance. There is something tempting and intriguing about the subject itself / which creates interesting openings in my mind / but when shifting through the pages I discover that the need it creates leaves me with a bitter taste of unfullfillment.

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Not one, but two books this time. I know that the assignment was to take one, but these two belong to each other. One is called “De geschiedenis van de schoonheid” (The history of beauty) the other one is called “ De geschiedenis van de lelijkheid” (The history of ugliness.) I took them because the contrast between those two seemed to be interesting to me. They also look really nice because they are really intended to be together. The really look like a couple. They are both the same size, same thickness, made of the same material, have the same typography and layout. Absolute contrast but still the same in some way. I also looked inside and it is funny that each book on itself is less interesting if you cannot compare it to the other one. They really need each other. And of course there is the old question “what is beauty and what is ugliness?”

700.6-eco-1 and 700.6-eco-2

The intuitive search mixed with subjective yet logical decisions has now became my little tradition. This time, my decision is to find a book concerning New Media. This is my a priori statement:

THE ‘NEW’ TAG + ART = VIDEO

I devote myself to the act of searching.

My eye is now attracted by another eye, stearing at me from the close up picture on the cover of the book. Its grainy texture seem to have a hidden message of not being the normal photo but the film still from the video. The Fast forward title can be associated only with this particular medium ( the era of fast forwarding audio tapes must have been long forgotten by such a contemporary looking eye from the cover). I’ve found the right book. Now, how can I connect it with DESIGN?

1. Subjectively:

• The ‘NEW’ TAG IS A BRIDGE – I like to look for new trends both in art and design.
• My choices are made through the VISUAL ‘ATTRACTION’

2. Objectively:

• The book was intentionally DESIGNED to make the VISUAL ‘ATTRACTION’ even stronger.

Every random opening of the book will attack my eyes with a great number of film images, shoot after the shoot. I’m totally amused. Nothing more exists except for me, the images and the big eye watching me from the cover.

Rietveld Library Code: 708-4 urb1

Again, I see myself wandering around the Rietveld Library being conscious of the way I pick up a book from the shelf. This time I was looking with in the back of head the tag ‘mysterious’. And mystery is what I found.  Interesting is that the book where I found mystery: Statische Fragmente by Hermann Gabler, again (like the second book) didn’t had a title on the cover. Only on the side of it. On the front it had an image of swans, and on the back a brief explanation about the book, by a friend of the writer Dick Higgins. For me, this explanation did not make the book less mysterious. Because when I flipped threw it, I only saw one or two sentences each page. On the left page English, on the right page the same sentence in German. Why this form? Why only one sentence each page? Why the explanation of a friend of the writer on the backside of the book?

Now I am back with some of the tags of my first post: ‘weird’ and ‘funny’, which does have a connection with mystery. The connection I just found in my last book.

Rietveld Acadamy Library: gub 1

First i discovered that the absence of something can be really present for me in its tension. Afterwards I was looking at a books presence in an other way. A presence which is there because the book was not true to it’s own individual format. It was odd.

Now I am standing in front of the library and I’m waiting for a book. I’m waiting for a person who will bring that special book back to the library. It will change from absence to presence  and because of that it will catch my attention. It is Wednesday the 2nd of December, 13.08 h and i saw this book returning to the library – ready to be recognised again.

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Never thought I could have a talent, but hey, I have one now because I consider my dumbness as a talent. Picking-out-the-least-smart-mind-opening-and-interesting-books-from-the-library.

When is something considered as a talent? Wikipedia says; “Talent is generally considered to be an innate, personal gift possessed by relatively few people. In essence, someone with talent has an aptitude to do certain things”.

I bet my talent past the talent-test.

Walked past the shelf to say hi to all my loser friends. Said hello to all the swindlers in the design section, said howdy to all the dumb books in the art section. All the books of the past four weeks. Met a new friend today. What a library loser. Wasn’t lend for twenty-eight years. I cherish friends like that.

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Does the Grid functions only in terms of putting things in order, or can it do the opposite, as well, in a great resulting way? Can Grids make a Disorder out of order?

The answer is yes and it is clearly proven by Erwin Wurm in his series of “One Minute Sculpture”. His simple drawings are instructions given to the models as a map into the absurd. They force the human body into a state of unnaturalness. Ordinary everyday people –by following them– are placed inside a grid made by this artist. This way they are becoming a sculpture of DISORDER.

Rietveld library code: -wur- 1

There I found myself once again, this time walking with a clear idea in mind.
In this case, more of an idea it was a name. I had began the quest of finding

“The new Anita”. It is Interesting how this name has been taking over my life these past weeks. I even came across a Facebook

application which is called “Anita has the answer of your future, click here!”. How did I manage to –somehow– give this name to the nameless images from forgotten archives.

So what do I know about Anita,
and what is there to know about her anyway…? Personally the name has no connotations. I once had a friend called  Anita when I lived in Mexico but how she is and where she is currently, is unknown. So I do not really know /where /why /how and /who.

As I am searching for faces I come across a few women, still no Anita.

Until, from the side binding of one of the books comes a portrait of a young lady: black and white image, what looks like red lips, tied yet loose hair, skinny bone structure, dark eyes, beautiful girl. Her shirt is loose, exposing her bare shoulders. Something about her strong persuasion turns her into Anita.

Once again I have picked up a book about portraits. This time the book holds a much older image archive from 1903-1917. So what is it that connects these two? Both archives of images contain a variety of portraits. Both seem to have a dominant female as their main attraction. There must be something about this women, something about this name that classifies, orders and places them in different categories.

Anita has truly become a tag and I have become the tagger; I have acquired the power to pick and chose.

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Some things are simple for us. You don’t have to think, you just Know things. Some answers don’t offer brainwork. How many answers are lying on our tong constantly? Easy how to build questions but not always easy how to create the answers.

The title of my book is ‘60+40 is probably 100’. We know the answer of the question of my book without thinking. It’s nothing to be proud of. It is simple. Everything can be simple or complicated.

We are familiar with everything we ever saw, smell, heard or felt. It’s not that we create an opinion immediately (maybe also not in the future), but it ‘flipped’ true our mind. It would be nice if we had a screen wich decides for us what we want to experience or not.

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Fauna, a word which brings sweet and fluffy images to my mind. Horrible. Especially because it’s always linked to the other half; Flora. The combination of those two words is a summary of almost all the things we see in our free time. (watching birds, taking a walk…). So for me it was quite easy to search for a book which was linked to my tag.

Although the intentions of my original tags were more general, I now ended up with a book named ‘The cat’s tail’ (De staart van de kat). Just a nice title made of simple words. Not too heavy or philosophic. The title and the cover fit well together. The book is white, small and empty. There are no images on the cover. It’s quite the opposite of images that sneaks into my mind when I think of fauna.

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To find a book with the tags “mass production” and “hand works” wasn’t really easy to find, because these two term are really different. Almost the same, as positive and negative.

But “Design of the 20th century” become the book which has both words. Inside you can find mass production but also hand works.
Originally design come from the industrial revolution. Before that, products are made by hand. The design and realization from the objects were most of the time from the hands of an craftsman. Because of the new industrial production processes, and the works, design become different from production.

In this book you can find photographs from famous designers as J. Hoffman, P. Strack, C. Scarpa, etc.
It’s nice to enlarge your vision on design with this book.

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For the first posting I chose two books, which ended up in six differend tagwords ranging from ‘tribe’ to ‘random’ and from ‘cheapfashion’ to ‘funny’. It was quiet difficult to find a new book corresponding with most of those tagwords. I ended up with a book which is really mysterious. The cover is white, except from the title: Zeven Dagen, houdbaar. Not even the author is mentioned on the cover. Also in the book there is no preface or explanation about what it is about and what is going on. Each page of the book contains three drawn objects or words. The drawings are really direct, kind of primitive which made me think of the tagword ‘tribe’. The connection between the drawings and the words is not always obvious, most of the time you have to guess what this connection would be. This reminded me of the other part of this project directed by Matthias Kreutzer, in which I am busy with this unclear connection between two images and a tagword. For me, an image doesn’t have a meaning for itself, you generate a meaning outside of the image, by for instance associatians, memory’s and certain conventions. When you place two images together, the meaning is generated between them. The same with an image and a tagword.

Rietveld Acadamy Library: No 758.3 dui 1b

My second book choice was based on my tag word that was yellow. I went for a book that was completely yellow and hoped that the contents of the book related to my other tags (dot, shapes and forms and jewelry). The book I ended up with was a book made by an artist called Toon Verhoef. I did not find many dots in the book, but there were some. There was no jewelry to be found in this book, but there were many super yellow paintings which had many shapes and forms that could be easily seen as beautiful shapes and forms, as you will find in many jewelry rings, necklaces, earrings etc.  I was happy with the book because it was really yellow so was the inside of the book.

Number: verhoe 3

The second book I choose is about the architecture from library’s and museums. Because my tags were “library” “arranging” “industrial” it isn’t a really big surprise that the book I find now is quite similar to the other one. But the most important difference is the fact that this book is about the architecture of the buildings.

It is a really interesting book because you will find out more from well known buildings and also discover some new. Off course the architecture is really important for the atmosphere in library’s and museums.

The reason that makes this book interesting for me is that they show every detail of the buildings. I like the fact that you can find maps, models, etc. In some way it almost looks like a hobby book, for self-made architecture. But to make one of the buildings myself, is not gonna work I guess…

Publik Library Amsterdam: 718.4
Bauten der Kultur: “Museen und Bibliotheken”

The Rietveld Library. I take a sharp left immediately after I enter. The art section. While still trying to figure out how I will find my third and final book, I am confronted with a bright colored cover. A book leaning against some other books, clear in sight. I might have even turned my head to see if this book was really looking at me and not someone standing behind me.

The happy colors are formed into vegetables on a plate. I take it from its shelve to have a look inside, where I find more food on plates, vases with flowers, some abstractions and many, many dogs, most of them sleeping.

I figured I should not even look further. This book was so clearly out to be found by me, I could not just put it back.

When I leave the library, I find myself in a state of happiness, yet a little tired and quite hungry.

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I have these tags: mystery, old fashion and first sight with me when I went to library, I really had no idea what’s kind of book would be found?I felt so mystery….

The cover of this book from Desiree Dolron didn’t attract me so much; I was chatting with someone and picking books randomly, so I think the first sight on this book was not the cover but a photo inside, it shocked me.

It was a black white photo, seems a pair of kid’s feet were burning in the flaming fire. “What happened?! ”I shouted in my mind. And I looked up other imagines in the book quickly, and I didn’t find a clear answer. All people (some were corpses) in the images seem to be in some mystery rituals, madly and bloody. Then I had a look at cover, “Exaltation Images of Religion and Death”.

I can’t forget that pair of feet, I borrowed the book.

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for my third choice of book i chose this monograph on the work of Maurizio Cattelan.

a donkey with a widescreen television on its back- the contradiction(the ancient donkey and the modern television) and absurdity of this picture got me into a conversation with the student returning this book who  strongly advised me borrow it. upon looking in it i saw a similar anarchistic italian wit to that of Felini (especially in the chaos of Amarcord).

the book features some of the very interesting projects that the artist has been engaged in from early 1990 to 2000-

Super noi(super us) where the artist has been portraited by 50 of his friends through a police sketch artist.

Spermini the artist created 500 molds/masks of his face, each slightly different representing sperm.

Torno Subito(i’ll be right back) due to unsatisfactory resulting work for a solo show the artist locked the gallery with this sign hung on the front door.

Stadium the artist elongated a table soccer game to fit 25 people, commenting on racist issues on immigration in itali, half of the players of north african descent and half of italian.

i have not finished this book yet but i really recommend it, in the projects as well as in the large, extensive,insightful interview with the artist.

Rietveld library code : -catt – / 1