Designblog

I found the blog post “Chaos and Order” when I was looking at different tags on the design blog. I thought the tag and title “Chaos and order” seemed interesting and I started to read the blog-post.
The text is based on the Dutch architect and graphic designer Hendrik Wijdeveld’s exhibition ” To plan the impossible” [x].

Henk Wiljdeveld had a romantic viewpoint with a focus on nature and the universe in his utopian architecture. His project “Chaos and order” [x] was a proposal for an alternative expansion of Amsterdam. He wanted to protect Amsterdam from chaos from Randstad. In his plan Amsterdam as a perfect star shaped city with green surroundings from the city centre to the edge. He was searching for an universal model of urbanisation.

The blog-post “Chaos and order” starts with:

“Chaos and order in its most extreme form can be used as a formula for practically everything. From the beginning of time to the death of universe.”

” Chaos and Order” also refers to the Saussurean constructionist’s who believe that you cannot understand a word until you are aware of its opposite. To understand order you need a understanding of chaos. Saussure is the father of modern structural linguistics and he means that meaning is constructed by the use of the language. It is not fixed. Saussure divides the sign in the categories, the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the actual word or sign while the Signified is our idea of the concept.

A lot of focus in the blog-post is on the Universe and life/death in relation to order and chaos. To grasp this huge questions is not simple and I tried to relate the idea of chaos and order on myself.

If you see “order and chaos” from a personal perspective chaos and order are essential elements of daily life. It is impossible to have order everywhere. Chaos is somehow always present. It is as if you are just able to focus on order for some elements of your life at the same time. When you focus on one part and create an order other parts will be in a state of chaos. A very literal example is an article I read about that it exists two types of people the type who is spending a lot of time on cleaning and therefore can find everything fast and the type that is living in chaos but does spend a lot of time looking for things. Both types are spending the same amount of time but some are creating order and others do search in chaos.

uncategorized?

like not black
not white
not even gray
why can’t you define this time?
define define divide define
no category
what about you?
what’s your favorite category anyway?
well, what’s your category anyway?
feel better while categorizing, not this time
no gender, no nationality, no ideology, no what, now what?
no nothing
nothing
nothing
something
some thing
some think
thin thin thin thin thin
line between defined and undefined
they are neutral, they are lost, or just hard to define
that’s it

in the end not such a bad category.

Through my browsing on the designblog I stumbled upon different tags/keywords. Each played a vital part in leading to my final destination: https://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/?p=25122.[x] In this final state of my browsing I found a structure of several dimensions and connections, where each point leads to the other. I let this be symbol of my browsing by visualizing each tag as part of this structure. As the result I create the diagram of my browsing.
 

After clicking around this Designblog, I came across the post about Caroline Lindo’s thesis work ”The Surface of Protest”. The post is called ”Creating Destruction” which i find quite an intriguing contradiction. In her thesis project Caroline Lindo is investigating the meaning of protesting, different ways of doing so and which meaning they each imply. She essentially aims at answering the question: ”What is the most efficient – yet morally just – way of protesting?”

I would indeed like to know the answer to this question.

Lindo is directly relating the rules and structures of society and economics to the craft of weaving which apparently is also quit a rigid system (written in the attached PDF). Lindo tells us of have the warp (the amount of lengthwise yarns, that are held in tension within a frame, for threads to go under and over), within the art of weaving, has symbolized the basic structure of living which humans have to accept. The weft (the thread or yarn pulled through the warp) represents all the choices and decisions humans make for themselves in life.

I find this symbolism quite moving.

To me it seems that with this as the background, Lindo is reconsidering which weft to take, instead of using the one given to her by society. Can you even make a protest using the ”weft” given to you by society or do you have to cut all of these threads and come up with new ones yourself? Will anything constructive aspire from this? Is it hypocrisy to use the tread – the means, structure, environment given by society – in making protest? Or is it not? These are all questions she is investigating  throughout her thesis.

As a research field she attended Occupy Amsterdam, which went worldwide in 2008 as a reaction on the financial crisis. She is studying the way of protesting through the tent-cities, which occurred during the same events. I always find it quite striking whenever someone manages to making such an abstract theme tangible, as Lindo does.

Looking at the history of my browsing, I find the fact that every page and every single piece of data on the design blog has its own little index/address very interesting. I feel like internet lives its own life. It is very much like a non stop growing organism and it is also expanding so fast. The designblog is a little part of that organism/creator. This screenshot shows the contrast between that short moment of browsing through the designblog and the very rapid data reproduction during that short moment.

#interesting #easytofollow #slowfashion #slowcouture #painted #fashioncollective #processing #newfashionideology #slower #sublimitedfashion #wellwritten #spendingtime #takingtime #doingnothing #importantnothing #reflecting #understandable #makingbyhand #inspiring #bulgarianneedlepoint #timeisgold #nomultitasking #notime #forgottentechniques #hybridfashion #meditation #japanisetradition #repairclothes #workshop #brokenclothes #makingnew #startingagain #somethingdifferent #notcategorizing #ontheedgeoffashion #nocatwalk #nocollections #notrends #work #constantchange #fragility #history #inprocess #manydesigners #garmentgrows #noplans #collaborativefashion #story #handmade #value #questioningmoney #timeinvestment #imformative #links #endwithmusic #personalexperience #balanced #explained #2013 #research

#rediscover

#fashionwithagoldtread

Daaaaaauuuuwwwwww-iiiiiiiiissssssss-mmmmmmmmmmeeeeee the rhythm of Taoism. My target is in the horizon, going into the substance of the clouds. I’m not looking around for some initial solutions nor I want to expand my way of seeing things, but if you’re thinking about doing it, do it without limitations. I will not insult the standards of human being or pretend that I do not have any emotions. I just don’t believe in classification.

Follow my eyes through Designblog. Screen shot keywords. One image after another. In my collages each tag and image is connected. You can trace back the posts.

Jumping around through these images in Designblog,

back to essay this title ‘1-2-3 Jewel’ caught my eyes.

An essay about jewelry? Cool, lets check out.

Not only its pretty graphic design and pinky pinky makes you happy, the content is really good.

For me hand made jewelry is unique, you can feel so much more than mass manufactured accessories.

And it’s always a great gift option for special occasions.

It’s so nice to read about the graduates, after spending so much time in Rietveld and staying in the Jewelry department.

What is their understandings or maybe personal relationships and reflection on jewelry.

To see how they find their own way through different approaches, experiments and observations,

finally to see where they are standing now.

Are you an artist or a craftsman?

Are you making wearable jewelry or object for contemplation?

Does it matter? Does it not matter?

Sometimes I pass their department several times a day when I have to go to workshops,

then I start to guess how many people are working there on their table now:

Glue, hammer, burn, bang bang.

Pretty in color and form. Another jewelry is born.

I was scrolling my way through the DesignBlog, when I stumbled upon a tag I wanted to click on. “90º” it said. Just under the tag of “80’s”, but above “a priori”. Almost poetic those three together. You can imagine my curiosity.

But then, something unexpected happened. Clicking on the tag led me to the page  “Error 404 – Nothing Found” [x].  “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here” it told me. I’m looking for something? It isn’t there? Of course, these kind of bugs happen more often on websites or blogs, but it kept my already triggered fascination going. I imagined a world without 90º. The blog told me I was looking for right angles, but apparently they aren’t there. They do not exist.

I think a world without 90 degrees will change everything. Don’t know if it will make the world a better place though. Don’t know if it will be an advancement for design either.

My traffic while browsing through the blog, including the posts and their content with highlights of posts that evoke my interest to stay and read. This is to show the experience and to evoke curiosity for others to explore the blog and it's content.

Simply start scrolling from “A” until I find something that “pops”. Suddenly I come to this post, which makes me stay and actually read everything. I like when the science and academic world comes in together with design and art. Makes it interesting, and you learn new things and get a new insight. When you refer to natural things it is something everyone can relate to, and it makes you realize how present nature always is.

Ants are fascinating creatures, which are used in design and art too. The way the post is written is good and easy read, you get introduced in the subject immediately. These kind of posts that refer to other “worlds” and facts makes me interested in researching new subjects and other media. When a text makes you think and reflect, it is a good text and it reminds you too keep your eyes open to different subjects and how they can relate. Personal opinions together with facts is a good combination.

If you search for words regarding science and nature in art context, some things and facts might surprise you, as did post gave me new insights. Even if it’s nice to read and discover new artists through the blog, there is something very interesting about posts that concern other things that are a bit far from what you usually come across.

Therefore I suggest you not to just check the topics, but actually choose something a bit more random, or something that is far from your interest, as it could invoke something new in you. This blog offers many interesting topics, which are all worth to be explored. This post offers me a new perspective and curiosity to read further about the topic.

If you do as I did and don’t search for too specific subjects or are too picky and actually continue reading, you might get surprised of how many new insights one single post might give you.
 

[X]

One of the most immediate impressions one has of a Wendingen publication is of the format. It is ironically a very stout and conventional square shape, while not being a standard Din format. This is obviously a considered format, one which was chosen so as to fulfill a specific requirement. Similarly, once the publication is opened, the considerations of lay-outing the page as well as the type, is as immediate. The shortening of the printed area of the page reverts the visual shape of the page back to a more common rectangular format. The lay-outing of the type too is interesting as it plays along a similar functionality. With colour fields being constructed from smaller sets of shapes aligned together. This back and forth in format and form is something that may be interesting to play with on a digital platform such as a a basic webpage, where format differs from screen to screen, and browser to browser. Although this is fairly standardized, there is some variation. The lay-outing of individual elements in HTML then allows for a chance to reformat the page as desired by the user. While this is in no means a finished or particularly useful webpage, a more playful and relevant investigation into these issues is at least a potentially good starting point.

I went through dozens of Wendingen magazines, but what stopped me and caught my attention, after turning side by side of every issue i could get from the library of the Rijksakademie, was something that literally fell out of the system. A piece of paper that was stacked between the pages of one of the Frank Lloyd Wright issues. In that moment it didn’t matter if that loose inserted paper piece was connected to the text or not. It was something that woke me up, because it was something different. Not only did it change physically how the pages bended, it visually stood out. Within the machine printed optics of the magazine this personal little letter felt fresh, it felt original and uplifting, even though i didn’t know what the signs and numbers written on the postcard sized paper meant. When i talked to the librarian, she told me that very probably the original owner left it in the magazine and they want viewers to just leave it in. This means that this additional subjective extra piece became somehow a part of the magazine. For me however it was not only about just something additionally put in the magazine. It was as well the “ordered” appearance of the paper. The yellowed post card prsented a lot of different elements, like something cut out and glued, different hand writings in different material and color, different sizes and even something struck through. Overall however the card seems still ordered and almost thoughtfully arranged.

Wendingen x Rijksacademie Amsterdam