Designblog

…a friend of mine told me at dinner that I eat really slowly. I was surprised , have not really realized that everybody but me was already finished. It bothered me.
When I was still living at my parents place the tempo of eating was always an issue. Everyone but my father ate really fast. From time to time I could even keep up with my mother and was proud to sit in front of an empty plate while anybody else was still eating. It was like a competition.

So what happened from then until now? Am I slowing down or are people getting faster? Is it me or my environment which changed? Who influences whom?
posting by Charlotte Beek

I prefer to walk. It keeps me calm. Every time I use my feet as transport I begin to notice unpredictable things in my surroundings. Simply by listening and watching more carefully everyday life becomes more valuable and interesting.

Restless behaviour. To wait for your turn, for someone or something takes a lot of our attention and patience. Slowness is often used as a negative characteristic. However, if you look at nature with all its complexity you understand what the process of time can bring.

Technology in daily life makes us more effective and increases quality time with family and friends. Consequently, tools for communication replace the physical bonding between people.

Telephone, Internet makes everything accessible 24 hours. Everything is in my reach with a couple of buttons. Furthermore, language has become simplified and straight forward, but more impersonal aswell. Our own expressions have been replaced with a combination of two symbols

What is slow? We can always be slow in reference to something
which is faster. Is life fast or slow? It depends how you see it.
I would like to bring your attention to noticing things. Generally we always notice something faster before than something slower. Get used to see the shoe on the other foot, get used to perceive slowness. If life seems too fast for you, give yourself some time. For example every day before going to work, wake up a little earlier and take some time for making yourself a nice breakfast. Be slow, enjoy the activity. Take your time for eating that, feel the taste and smell of your meal. Fix the mind on your food. Look out of the window, see what morning brings. Notice the details. Take a walk when you’re going to somewhere. Breath, be aware of doing that. Notice other people around you – Who is she? Where she’s going to? What she’s thinking of? Concentrate. You are surrounded by details, find them, play with them. Be interested in things.
Notice sun, notice rain, notice snow. Give yourself some time to notice!

As you might know, a natural sucking instinct leads some babies to suck their thumbs during their first few months of life, or even before birth. Useally  they stop doing that at an age of 6 months. That means I continued 21 years an 10 months too long. Babies do it to comfort themselves  when they feel hungry, afraid, restless, quiet, sleepy, or bored. And yes, that counts for me aswell. I need it to sooth myself and give my mind some peace. Sometime I caught myself standing in the middle of my room, thumb in my mouth, lost in my own thought, totally away from reality for a minute of ten. Its my way to escape from the sometimes stressed world around me and slow myself down from time to time. I forgot the realization of time. I recommended to all of you. You need some perseverance. Maybe 2 weeks of practise but I assure you its worth it. Say Bye to stress and Hi to your thumb.

1 month ago my brother and me got a new apartment, so a moving process started. I had to paint my new room and organize my stuff but because of my study I could spend only few hours a day to do that. Things went really slow, each day I was working in a small part of the room, moving my stuff from this corner to another. I did not finish organizing it but I am not in a hurry. Every week my room slowly changes from one shape to other. Slowly, but one day my room will be complete. At the same time I was sending photos of the apartment to my mom to keep her in touch with my daily life.

I like to be slow, ’cause it’s giving me time to see what’s going on around me.

Principally, I think I am relative slow… especially in doing my assignments… my brain is running the whole period… and I can’t close down… so I need typically too long to get to the point… to say “yes” to my idea… and the longer I think about it, the more difficulty it gets… from one element to the next… in the end thousand… once I felt in love with details and complicated schemes…
Then it is in the evening, one day before the deadline and I still have to work it out… working the night through… falling asleep in the middle of all the material… glue… scissor… cutter… ruler… pencils … waking up with a piece of paper glued on my nose or somewhere else…
Sometimes I love this nights… waking up and directly start to work and in between a short rest… a complete continued circle….
Never stop before perfection?

We all have expectations of what is going to happen in the future. What is going to be the next? It is impossible to figure out the unknown. The best way is to let time tell. As an experiment, I put a used shoe in an aquarium and let my friend draw his expectations of what was going to happen with the shoe through time. His drawings said more about how the water disappeared rather than the transformation of the shoe. The result after four weeks showed something completely different.

My conclusion is, we always have thoughts and ideas about how things are going to turn out. The fear of disappointment and the dream of the perfect end makes us forget the surprising. The so called “great” expectations.

FAST, BABY YOU HAVE TO THINK FASTER.
Because this will not work in OUR reality.
No, I can’t think like this.
That is what she said.
My answer was: my apologies, but i simply don’t have any time left.
Would you mind?
The next one please.
GOD what a nightmare.
Where are my feelings?
No not necessary they make me run out off time,
and time is MONEY AND THAT IS WORTH A LIFE, even your life realize that.
YES MADAM. I said.
A LONG LIFE WISHED FOR THE ASIANS,
said my boss.
AND WILL BE REPEATED BY ALL THE  BOSSES IN THE WORLD TODAY.
TOP SPEED MY BELOVED FRIEND.
CAN YOU GO 2000 k/m a hour?
DOESN’T MATTER THE MACHINE CAN.
RAPID.
BLACK.
WHAT A NATION
WHAT A LIFE.
And there it went.
MY TIME
MY LIFE.
MADAM it’s o.k now.
It is different here, they name it SLOW.
I can glance at you,
only you will not be able to see me.
AND I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TELL YOU,
THAT YOU WILL MISS THE ART IN YOU MY CHILD.

posted by Beties Sadaty

Traces of the everyday embedded in textile

Rietveld graduate (2008 TXT) Marie Ilse Bourlanges visited the Slow Design research class on Thursday 12 February to present about her graduation project, ‘Decay,’ a collection of sweaters exploring complex relationships of time, the body and materiality.  By taking the class through her project from concept to final product, Marie Ilse revealed the deep and mindful processes of research, design development, experimentation, and production that enriched her project.  She talked about sources of inspiration: the work of writer/biologist Midas Dekkers, the concept of Time in the work of Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela,  the symbiotic relationship of crumbling architectural forms and the natural forces that overtake them, patterns of cellular growth and decay, and the hidden treasures of a threadbare teddy belonging to her niece (among others).  She also described the evolution of her pattern, which derived from capturing subtle, everyday body movements and subsequently was subjected to fractal geometry, while also providing instructive detail about her various stages of experimentation with materials and techniques.  Marie Ilse’s project is a beautiful example of Slowness as a process of designing, and also Slowness as a more engaged and reflective experience of a designed artifact.  Her work on this project demonstrates how Slow Design tools and persepectives were supported and enhanced by the atmosphere of the Rietveld, and it hopefully was reminder to the Basic Year students about both the opportunities and intrinsic responsibilities of creative education.

 
download this thesis:  ‘Decay’  by Marie Ilse Bourlanges was

the Winner, of the GRA Thesis Award 2008

Generally I think of slowness as something nice, peaceful. Take your time so you can think it over. Take it easy. But it can sometimes be unnoticeable and maybe even destructive in some cases. Things can slip in and out of your life or work. You don’t see it at first, but it can have the most horrible consequences when you finally notice them. Maybe after the great slowness must come a lot of speed to catch up witch will end in an eruption of horribleness. Or just continue to be slow to the end.

posted by Tim Mathijsen

Everybody are always demanding of me to be quick.  But what´s the
hurry?  Time won´t go faster or slower.  If I´m late I embrace that
knowledge and think ” Oh well, I´m late anyway.  What are 20 minutes
more?”.  Of course that way of thinking doesn´t work when you have a
job or school.  But when I oversleep I rather take my own time in
eating, putting on clothes and making sure I have everything for the
day instead of feeling shitty in the rest of it.  But in the fast,
systematic world this type of thinking is not acceptable.  Doing
things in your own pace hardly exists anymore because we are slaves of
the time.  Even when I don´t have anything to do after school except
for getting my ass home I hurry to get more time to do nothing.  That
is kind of perverted.  Time for nothing.

posting by Thordis Zoega

listen to William Fitzsimmons while reading X

Saturday evening. I set up my alarm clock at 9:30, pretty early for a free Sunday.
It’s not that I want to be out of bed around that time. I’m going to watch Villa Achterwerk op Ned 3 in the morning. Before it starts I get a cup of thee and a sandwich. To have breakfast in bed, while watching Villa Achterwerk. As we did when I was littel. Walking to the bathroom on slippers and a soft bathrobe, having a relaxing shower to get fresh. Putting on a comfortable jogging suit. Lunch with a few sandwiches and if I’m lucky an egg. Dress up warm to have a walk outside, getting fresh air and watch the street outside. I see Cat’s sitting on the street, or sleeping on the heater behind the window. Moments where time isn’t important, i should have more moments like that.

“Slow” for me is enjoying life in the way I like it myself.
The slowest thing that I did, which I can remember, is to make an artwork.

Sometimes it takes months or years to finish it.
The process of being an artist is also slow for me, but I am enjoying this process a lot. The most unique part of an artwork is that not everyone can understand the meaning and feeling of it. During my research I have found sentences from Robert Hughes that made me very curious:

“What we need more of art: art that holds time as a vase holds water; art that grows out of modes of perception and making whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures”.
It makes an artist very special making this kind of art.

Somebody should not ignore the beauty of products, nether do I, but an overload of the visual and mental impact of consumption is forcing me to find a way to deal with this headache, which emerges from the stress of speed. Speed is arising from measurement. So the first step was to put down my watch to give myself some freedom. But “slowness” almost doesn’t exist in my life, what means that the stress is not erasable. What is left is to find a way out of this reality into daydream spaces, where I can have the total freedom of time in a self-chosen speed or system. “Daydream spaces, such as those generated by reading a good book, are often more commanding than physical spaces. While you read, you don’t even notice people who walk through the room because you are actually in the space that’s generated by the author. … the spaces generated by music can be much larger than the one in which you are physically…” here I totally agree with James Turrell. The same goes when he says that these are the spaces that we are inhabiting most of the time, much more then the conscious awake space that is called reality.

Which is everything I’m not. I like systems. I like structure. I like planning and going after the plan. I like schedules to follow and get annoyed with people who don’t. I’m always on time, and get anxious when I’m running late, even five minutes!
But why does all of this sound so negative?
I don’t find it negative though. I find it a quality. It makes sense and it works in a lot of cases. Like for instance in public transport, sleep, opening hours, work and even time is logical constructed for world structure.
And I don’t want to feel stupid waiting in the rain and my friend calls me, “ I’m late – sorry”! But I do – why?
Is it me – am I too controlled? Or is it everyone else who simply doesn’t care?
What is most effective – and again is effective good or bad. It’s like a circle I won’t get anywhere with.

posted by Maria Gondek Keller Pedersen

I will start with a beautifull sentence that has inspired me often. ”standing still for a moment, is actually a big step forward. So I stand still the whole day”. This sentence is a complete overview of what slowness is for me. But is this in connexion to any kind of design or art? For me in some cases this standing still adds a big layer in looking at things. By looking at objects and art for more than an hour and from the same perspective, it gives a new strength. But is there a way to make other people expierence this power of standing still. What could design/art add to this?