Designblog

The second book that I chose from the library was the ‘Extreme Interiors’. When I was looking at the previous tags, city, nomadic and reality, I created an image in my head, which represents a young man with a suitcase in his hand at a big city airport. The book’s width is greater than its height and it has a nicely finished cover containing bright and striking pink and yellow colours. The cover picture is displaying a man in a suit with his back turned away from us looking like someone that is probably driving a fancy car or piloting a space ship…

The book was exactly what I was looking for.

Book nr:145664

This second book the family of man attracted me in a different way. printed in 1955 it was at the time  – ”the most ambitious and challenging project with photography that had ever been attempted” (three million photographs were originally collected from amateur and professional photographers (not to mention more than a handful of gems by Henri Cartier Bresson). 10,000 of which were included in the MoMA exhibit while a further 506 photos from 68 countries were chosen for this publication (now that’s a die-hard archiving project!!)

“The Family Of Man” was originally produced for the museum of modern art in new york- not with the intention presenting the photograph as art but to show – ”photography as a dynamic process of giving form to ideas and of explaining man to man.” -to teach man about himself in all his various creeds and shades (this book was much before its time and although it did not have the intention of formenting multicultural acceptance it probably had a great influence and later gave way to books such as the 1968 random house publication The Colour of Man.) in the foreword Edward Steichen explains that his family of man was created in the passionate spirit of devoted love and faith in mankind.”.  and this i feel is what drew me to this book. pictures of birth, love, life and death shown with tangible empathy and passion. pictures of every possible ethnicity.  tribesmen from papua new guinea, native americans, french peasants, maori. this book although outdated is not without some degree of power still as can be seen by the frequency it has been rented out in recent years by people with a similar curiousity and interest to mine.

rietveld library number – 760.3 / stei / 1

Entering the room expecting to be overwhelmed by an overload of impulses. This was not happening this time. No screaming of flirting books. I looked at the place where the magazine was before. From where it was observing me and had tried to seduce me. Her replacer silently watching me with a smile. The change of time leaded to the divergence of being.

This time deliberately searching for the escape from reality. But how can you find one when you are in need. The books were deadly silent now I was the one who was screaming. Devastated by frustration. One book after the other moved through my hands. Attentively searching for a way to escape.

This time no hidden doors.
Time is jostling. Again the clock dictates my swiftness and need to precipitate. Entangled in the web of time. Paralyzing me. Feverishly starting to look for an escape.

Suddenly between all the books on a notable shelf a dim glittering. A sparkle of hope, would this be the one? Finely resting in the palm of my hand.

The opposite of absorption this time, the appearance of a reflection. For a moment I was captured in this image while seeing myself. This was no escape but fruitlessness of reality.

Boek nummer : 760 -bax- 1

The advantages of being a woman artist:

‘Being reassured that whatever kind of art you make it will be labeled feminine.’

‘Being included in revised versions of art history.’ (Guerilla Girls)

After listening to a presentation on feminist art I contemplate these statements. I find them funny, but they also make me uncomfortable. What is a woman artist? Are there specific issues she should address?

Later, in the library, I know I have to find a book on design, but first I wander around to find a book that addresses the subject on my mind. Intuitively, I pick up a pink book with feminist essays on art. Later, I return to my initial task and pick up a book on color theory. That book, now lying in front of me on the table, doesn’t speak to me at all. If this is a subjective library, I should just read about feminism instead.

708.4 Lip 2

The book I chose is all about it’s size and content. It’s is a big white book, very light and very thin. On the cover there is a broche of a beautiful lady in gold. Her legs are squatted, her torso upright and she holds her arms wide open. Her arms are part of very lush and colourful butterfly wings. She has two curly antenna’s on her head and her hair flows around her face and arms. She appears to be flying. When I saw her I knéw that my pinnocchio has found his Blue Fairy. It’s a book about Nouveau Jewelry. Because of the sheer size of this book, the pictures of the jewellery inside are very big and very impressive. Every page is full of color and has a vibrancy that really captures the attention and imagination. It’s like a box of candy’s this book. EYEcandy!

777.4 ber 1

Looking for theft, tiny and supermarket, I came across this old book about jewels. It is indeed tiny. You can steel jewels (or this book, however it’s not interesting). And about the supermarket; I link supermarket to housewives and my impression of this book so far is that it’s kind of prudish and suitable for housewives in their midlifecrisis. I can see them joining in little groups making bracelets and collars; bitching about their husbands. Maybe twenty years from now I will borrow it again, just after moulding class didn’t turn out to be ‘my thing’.

777.6 gil-1

(it’s not called “an introduction to juwellery” by the way, that’s just what it seems to be)

Something happened to me at the library. Not such an everyday thing.

A clear report of what happened at the library: The first book I took from the shelf was the right one.

You might think: “Okay. What a breaking news”, or you might have read my last post and know that I’m the girl that never picks the right book from the shelf, and that’s why your now thinking: “Chapeau chapeau!”.

Extraordinary it was. This book wasn’t a swindler. Not a library loser. Opening the book proved my thought, it was lend 29 times before. I trusted the people who had lend this book before me. They must have picked the pick for a good reason. Probably.

The book contained 846 pages of sketches of forgotten trees, endless forests, empty landscapes. It was sketched two centuries ago. Flipping through these, almost numb, pages made me feel like walking through a library. The feeling of being lost. The feeling of never finding the right book. The feeling of being a library loser. These 846 pages were a perfect resemblance of my library feelings. After thousands of failures, I found a book that fits me.

-frie- 3

Finding a new book with the tags; “alchemy, identical, metaphysics, mysticism and mythology” was more difficult then I expected.
Still, all the time my eyes lingered back to this one book lying on its back, showing on the cover naked classical looking ladies, who are eating grapes, playing the the Arabic ‘ud’, and generally having a good time.
Not to difficult to associate with my tags ofcourse, its only logical.
The title of the book is “Oriëntalisten (orientalism)”. The subject of the book tells about the western depiction of aspects of eastern culture by writers, designers and artists, which is hostile and inaccurate, and mainly based on stereotypes.
It sounds fascinating, but within all likeliness I will not read a single word of its content. A pitty.

905.2 sai

Waiting. For the next to come along.

I am plain, hard and angular, but soft and blue under the surface. Filled with interesting elements, like a little treasure – waiting to be found. A treasury of various jewelleries. Shape, material, colour and content. Judging from my appearance I look like something out of a dumpster or like I should be returned to a recycling station. If only people could see.

Looking aside or being abnormal does not need to be terrifying, but should bring forth curiosity.

Grab the book as it lies here on the shelf with its naked surface. It doesn’t seem all that interesting, but somehow you still feel drawn to it. A book where the content does not show, this must indeed be a disadvantage. Who would choose this book based on its external?

Do we choose the book or does it choose us?

777.6-cat-304

When DHL delivered the package with the traditional Zeeuws costume to the Bristol Hotel in Athens, Greece, I immediately ripped it open, only to find a stack of different fabrics in various sizes, textures and colours.
I had no idea what to do with these mostly two-dimensional pieces of cloth, what was supposed to go where and how.
This knowledge-gap became the works’ major point: what is the perception of a traditional cultural expression by someone from another country (and in this case I regard the city of Amsterdam as another country in relation to Zeeland as well) grown up in an era where self-examination and focusing on the present and future prevailed over historical awareness and/ or cultural pride.

In short: a young Danish woman of gigantic proportions who happened to pass by on the streets of Athens was lured into the hotel room, to be dressed and undressed in different combinations by an innocent Greek woman, using the separate elements of the costume to create a whole new image of national identity.

Barbara Visser, Winner of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art (2008) check out her new website.

Medium Girl (1996)
video, 6 x 30′

Looking at a books presence before next to a wide space of absence and how present that book was my next step was to look at a book that was remarkably present even though surrounded by other books.

The book i chose was chosen not because it was larger or a different colour than the other books but because it, the book itself was a paradox- the text, the material the book was made out of, the size. None of these things matched or linked up.

It was an odd book. And for me the books it was surrounded with all conformed to each other. They were all self explanatory and true to their own individual format.

DISORDER, word that I picked up in the book S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas, by playing my childhood game, haunted me while I was in a library second time. I knew that I wanted to find something that will help me compensate this strong feeling of mess and confusion that word DISORDER brings, something that will deal with it clearly and simple, something that tends to organize and systemize.

The perfect solution and pick was a book about simple system of visual organization: THE GRID, that provides rich overview of this purely proportion, symmetry and geometrical based system of organizing type.

Rietveld Library code: 757.3 -ella-

The action is quick. The ‚NEW‘ tag directs my steps to the transparent shelf with the top new books in the library. The first book that I see has:

–yellow background cover
–big, white and fat number 79
–long list of black titles, each one written with the different font
–straightforward title Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Everything is clear now, this must be the book on design ( I reassure myself that it belongs to the industrial design section), therefore fits for the project.I look at the hopefully new publishing date, and this is the only disappointing moment: 2007. I can not find any newer design book on the top new books shelf. The title of the very first essay says: Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content. If the librarian would read all the books they get, how should they react to such statement? What the amount of the Non-Design Content would move the book out from the design section? What date would put it out from the top new books shelf?

Non-Design Content

Rietveld Library code: 770.6-bie-1

Yet again I came back with a book about gold. About golden jewelry this time. It was not my intention to do something with gold again. Gold was one of my tag words, but I preferred to do something else. I had other tags to search for, like “meeting an old lover” “attraction” and “recognition.” So I went searching…. When I saw this golden jewelry book I could not take my eyes of it. I felt so cheap and wrong to take something goldish like again, but I felt really good in the same time. I could call this second journey “the irresistibility of wrong things” or “why we like to do wrong things?”, which sounds like the title of a novel. Interesting question actually. A question where you could have many thoughts about. For myself I didn’t found an answer to it yet.

Rietveld Library code: 777.6 cat172

A hole, a crack, a black space – consisting of nothing!

I came to the bookshelf to choose my book and what i found was a book on its own and a large space which seperated it from the main body of the other books. The absence of something was so present for me in its tension that it drew my attention to that spot right away. Like the suspense of quiet in between movements of musical symphony the quietness was pointing and preparing me for this one very special book.

Rietveld Library code: *7399*

The second time in the Rietveld library to search for a book that I know nothing about yet.
The only thing I know is the mantra I keep repeating in my head. The mantra consisting of my last tag words. I pull a few books from the bottom shelves but none of them seems to be the right one.
Until I pull out a thin, square book of which the library code consists of the letters e a t (might be “cat” but i still read it as “eat”).  The second thing I looked at was the back cover. It’s full of scratches. What happened with this book if you go beyond “it’s used as a cutting mat”?
I found it more then appropriate.

Eating; the everyday activity.
Square; meaning boring.

Thin book, bottom shelve; forgettable.

Scratches; popping up of questions.

My mantra of automaticlivesoblivionstorymaking was answered.

Rietveld Library code: 705.8 eat 12

Where in the fist book the absurdity of life is discussed in a very airily funny and positive approach, this books deals with the same theme, but in a very confronting real way. This book is about the things and facts of life as well. Most photographs are shocking and horrifying, but they tell the story of history since 1955. It’s a book about photojournalism. Despite all the nasty images there are also beautiful pictures included, some of famous photographers. Though there’s definitely a shadow hanging over this book and it’s called reality.

The search for a book with the same tag words was pretty hard. I was exactly looking for the other more confronting realistic side of the absurd things in life. In the end I think this is really a book that suits exactly that subscription and therefore the same tag words as my previous one. I think it‘s his serious brother.

Rietveld Library code: 761.6-pan-1