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• Even if you enjoy only one story, a daytrip to “Super Stories” in Hasselt [B] will have been a day wel spend.
Tugged away on the attick of an the old Jenever brewery museum I found such a story, on which Malin Bülow wrote this essay.

On Azart and the “linguistic relativity principle”

Have you ever pondered about why time is a line, why it is horizontal and not vertical, why future is ahead of you and history behind you?
A fundamental debate in cognitive sciences is the extent to which our language influences or constrains our perception. Benjamin Whorf quite radically argues that “we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language”(1), meaning that language directly affects cognition, the way we think, how we look at things and experience reality. This way of thinking, referred to as the “linguistic relativity principle”, suggests that we can’t imagine things or events or anything else that does not have a corresponding word in our mental lexicon. Therefore our language influences the manner in which we understand reality and behaviors. Coming back to the initial pondering on our perception of time, the way we talk about time: “timeline”, “looking forward to tomorrow”, “ahead of time”, “behind schedule” etc, explains our cognitive reference of time being a two-dimensional horizontal line. The cognitive visualization of time is then secondary to the words describing time. One can say that our reality is trapped in words, physical letters, which forms and appearance are highly coincidental and not at all connected to the actuality they define. Quite an amount of studies on color perception (2,3), categorization (4,5) and numerical cognition (6) among others support this view.

Guy Rombouts, (1940-, Geel, Belgium) seems to make a comment on how the flatness of letters and words can create a reality and make that reality non-existing without the words, in line with what the “linguistic relativity principle” suggests. Rombouts does this by inventing a new alphabet; the Azart, a name that refers to A-Z art, but also to the French word “hasard” meaning coincidence. In Azart each letter is translated by a corresponding line, on the basis of the first letter of the word which describes the line. A is angular, B is barred, C is curve, D is deviation and Z is a zigzag line. When the lines are linked together closed forms or word-images appear. What is going on quite literally on the paper when forming Azart words, goes on in our mind when forming realities of alphabetic words. The arbitrary letters of the alphabet also obtain meaning in our mind.
Words written in Azart visually define them selves, forming isles of meanings, while words of the alphabet is defined by means of other words. These words, however, are formed by the same letters as the word they define. A circle of definitions are formed, referring again literally to the Azart circled words.

Sources:
Cassiman, B. (1989). Guy Rombouts, Narcisse Tordoir. (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery)

some other links: www.hanstheys.be/ (work, movies and interviews): La Paloma part 1 & 2 : SKOR (Art in the Public Space): De Appel (exhibition): Bridge (Java Isle Amsterdam): =vorm=word=image=content= : Guy Rombouts/Azart at Rietveld Designblog researches: at the MUHKA Antwerp: one final image~story……..

you can download this research by Malin Bülow: as a pdf

Welcome to part 3 of : tagging slow design. This is a worksheet on which all the link-topics and post-it tags collected on the “slowWall” are listed in relation to the research subjects as components of the ‘slow design project’. (researches can be downloaded as .pdf’s).

link topics.

Performance links the Morgan O’Hara research to the one on Julia Mandle. The Julia Mandle research links to the one on Richard Long on the topic street /nature & art, by slow movement to the Kunsthalle Bern exhibit and by sensibility & violence to the Psychogeography research. Psychogeography has the link topic urban life with the Karmen Franinovic research, consumption /destruction /life style with Futurisme, against and pro community with Wim Wenders, evolution of everyday life to Downshifting, and a anonimous link to Maria Blaisse. This anonimous link is not the only one linking Marie Blaisse. Link topics like art and left over, connect this research to Uta Barth. Karmen Franinovic links to Christian Nold by means of the topic mapping, and to Psychogeography by urban life, to Futurisme by life is getting faster & people are getting a social, to Julia Mandle by just stop & think and to Richard Long by the link a way to see. Richard Long links to many other researches: to Sophie Calle by self related art, to Christian Nold through a line made by walking, to Karmen Franinovic linked by the topic a way to see, to Downshifting by choosing slowness. Downshifting links back to Julia Mendle by the link topic us and them, to Psychogeography by revolution of everyday life, to Futurisme tagging the link with designed lifestyle, to Marie Blaisse by us and them, and to the Kunsthalle Bern exhibit by reflect /a closer look. The research on Futurism has some remaining links to Julia Mandle through the topic exploring / explosive / sculptural. Following links from Wim Wenders to Uta Barth is made possible by the topic notice the small things in life, to Christian Nold by moving /memories. Mapping links Christian Nold to the Ambient/Brain Eno research while that last one makes a link back to the Kunsthalle “The Half and the Whole” exhibit creating a take time to cook link.

Reading all the researches the links will surely start to make sense, as will their variety shed light on the specific nature of many of them. Some research subject however did not create any link at all, like in the case of Maison Martin Margiela. And it was 0nly after some discusion that the performance link was created between Sophie Calle and Karmen Franinovic. Uta Barth was anonimously linked to Richard Long which might have been an intuitively act

Post-it tags.

No links did not mean no tags. Time, Maison Martin Margiela for example was closely read and tagged with post-it. This created tags like memories, replica, time(less), can’t relate to it, time, physical picture of memory and the photographical tag to a picture by Mark Manders. Wim Wenders (present in our research list because of his beautifull documentary “Notebook on Cities & Clothes” about fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto) generated also many tags like sublime, I finally found time, hillbilly, surreal, the truth, place, moving. Sophie Calle tagged by the moderator with authorship, generated: life=art, stories, documenting life. Uta Barth looking was tagged: rainy day with half closed eyes, in between places, no left over, sunday. Ambient the research connected to Brian Eno tagged as big here long now was retagged as live the moment, loosing yourself, don’t think, sound. Christian Nold place-ness got tagged with keywords like biomapping, google earth, links, remapping memories. Linked to many, tagged by few. Julian Mandle pause, was tagged with pause from urban flow only. Morgan O’Hara gestures was tagged with trans, transforming, concert-art, transmission, energy of moments, reaction. Maria Blaisse architecture by border between self and not self. Futurism with fast life, life style, save time? Downshifting was tagged with life style too and change assumption. Richard Long tagged as a subject with landscape was enriched with the two tags: exploring fast and slow and perception of space, time and personal potency. Psychogeography with destruction of community, philosophy, socialism, anarchisme and urban live. Finally Karmen Franinovic subtraction, served as a hub for the tags: observe, spontaneous landscape, discover a realy nice place that never be online, easy fast, MTV generation, reflect, and observe. Some researches like Conditional Design re-mapping did not make “the slowWall” and were concequently not linked

added tags from the slow design lecture.

scale, gestures, measurements, relations, sustainability, evolving, creative activism, reveal, expanding awareness, reflect, engage, participal, deceleration, fresh connections, rhythm, probing, (im)materiality, metabolism, reflective consumption, live span, memories, community, record, tracing, (human) body, break (take a break), nothingness, inclusive, transparent, re-mapping, connection to scale

read also: >tagging slowdesign part 1

Brian Eno’s repetitive music. He is known as the creator of the so called ambient music which is a low volume music designed to modify one’s perception of a surrounding environment. That sentence is true in the fact that I stop being annoyed by all the people around me and I turn inwards. I notice my own heartbeat, the way I move through the crowd; all the little details around me seem beautiful and unique. Even the fat lady eating Febo is strangely hypnotizing.
That’s the thing about ambient music, as Brian Eno termed, it can be either “actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener”. If you listen to it in your headphones then you are alone in your own world but if it’s in the background ,for instance in a restaurant, it turns into elevator music. Eno used the word “ambient” to describe music that creates an atmosphere that puts the listener into a different state of mind; having chosen the word based on the Latin term “ambire”, “to surround”.

The importance of living in the right now, in the moment, seems to increase every day. Like Brian Eno talked about in his essay for The Long Now Foundation

“Now’ is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you’re in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes.”

I think what he means is that we should all live in the moment because who knows what will happen in the next 5, 10, 20 years. The glaciers might have melted and we could all be living in boats. Well, I certainly don’t want to be that pessimistic and I usually think about the future in a positive way. But when I start to think about this type of stuff I prefer to live myself in the moment. The dinner I’m going to eat in a few minutes, I need to clean the table first and then I might go to the bathroom. I love the fact that I don’t know what is going to happen so I tend not to plan too long ahead, although I have a plane ticket back and forth Amsterdam and Reykjavík months in advance. I know that I will spend my summer in Reykjavík with my friends and family and I will probably get a work in my mothers business. I think I know those things, but they are still 3 months away. A lot of things can happen in 3 months. Making a plan gives you a false sense of security that if everything is going according to the plan then you are safe. A plan gives you also something to look forward to, then you know that you won’t be stuck doing the same thing months ahead. Living in the right now while making plans is the perfect solution, to always have something to look forward to and still enjoy what you are doing in that specific moment.

link to Big Here and Long Now
link to Brian Eno
links to Ambient Music: Music for Airports interview on this subject

Ambient is a posting by Thordis Zoega

After lecturing on “slow principles in design and art” by Carolyn F. Strauss, students reflected upon their own work and process before starting a research into a variety of slow design and art related subjects. To clarify the effect slow design can have on the work in progress we invited Marie Ilse Bourlanges to present her work and share insight in her working process.

To present Slow Design a carefully selected list of research subjects was crafted. This selection presented “slowdesign” in various contexts of works and ideas (even ideologies), so that it could be recognized as a set of priciples against which ideas, processes, motives and outcomes can be interrogated. Much emphasis was put on the creation of specific keywords to accompany the students on their research. Keywords/tags that surfaced during the Slow Design Lecture and keywords/tags that were formulated at the slowLab website were added to the search subjects. These tags together with the ones created on the “slowWall” added meta data to the project

a physical process of linking and tagging with crèpetape and post-its.

Within this context adopting slow design as a working principle in our educative process, it became important to underline and make visible the relations between these student investigations. To emphasise a surfacing network between the subjects we did draw visible links between the research results, adding link topics. Additional tags could be post-it to each others research A4 to create shared keywords/tags.

Tags (trefwoorden [dutch] or entrances) are non-hierarchical keywords or terms. They make possible to search and find data. Tags create meta data. During the past years Web 2.0 applications like Youtube and Flickr added immensely by allowing users to add “free-form” tags as a tool for searching. The interesting thing is that tagging presents a system in which there is no information about the meaning or semantic of each tag. Orange might refer to fruit or color. Retagging found data even led to tag based social networks on the web. Tagging on this Designblog!

read also: tagging slowdesign part 3

wall tagging-linking methodology by Carolyn F.Strauss : slowLab

Our modern world is dominated by speed, we’re addicted to it. We try to squeeze in as much as possible in every minute of every day. All the mintues of the day are a race against the clock. The last 150 years everything seems to get faster, our world had turned into a race of the fastest, not the fittest. Quantity has become more significant than quality.
It’s time for a new approach on the time and the experience of it. Following this philosphy a cultural revolution has begun against the notion that faster is always better. It’s not about doing everything in a snail pace, but about doing things in the right speed. With the right speed you become more aware of the world around you.
Slow movement is also a strategy artists use to explore a new world, parallel to the real one. By examining and exploring the decelerated movement, you experience a completely new place that tells a totally different story then the movement would in a regular pace. The quick movement easily misses the essence of the being. New interpretations and other information occur by applying a slow movement strategy.
Art wants to be looked at closer and deeper, and not to function as a spectacle for the consumer. By engaging more with the work, you get introduced in the inside world, which is not visible in the beginning. It’s like reading a book, as the ‘halves of it’, instead of looking at the cover, the ‘whole’.



The Kunsthalle of Bern shows an exhibition of artworks focussed on the slow movement.. Reading about the slow movement and looking at the works made me rethink about looking at art. I’m not a person who takes the time to look at art more closely. I judge by the cover, the ‘whole’ of what I see.
Last christmas I visited Paris and went to Centre Pompidou. Mindlessly I passed the diffrent works, without truly engaging. After a while I realised I had no clue what I had seen. Then I forced myself to take a closer look and a stronger connection occured to me. Your experience a higher level of commitment, when you let yourself get absorbed into the work. Most people do not reach this level, because they crossmark the artworks they saw and feel satisfied by saying “I’ve seen a real….”. Again; it’s not about quality, but about quantity.
The quest for understanding works hand in hand with a process of decelaration. There are no routine practices that could be used to save time. Why hurry through art and miss it’s essence? An artwork was build out of energy, emotions and time and it deserves to be experienced with the same care.
“Slow Movement or: Half and Whole” means life before art and life after art.

by Bregje Sliepenbeek: download as pdf

Wonder where all the tagging started?……….

It was the 5th of February when we started a project moderated by Carolyn F. Strauss, designer, curator and founding director of slowLab. Together with the students of the FoundationYear’s D group she lectured and set of an investigation into slowdesign and related designers and artists. True to the principle of personal connection we started with a quick mapping of ourselves and our working process as designers and artists in relation to “slow” as a subject. Mapping to find keywords for processes and experiences that make up our conditions and inspiration for behaving and performing, to visualize that flow and determine specific tags to describe it. How do these tags symbolize slowness in our work and working process.
Ask yourself the question “slowMe”?
The results became clear instantly through a series of “slowMe” postings

read also: tagging slowdesign part 2