Designblog

Probably the most famous screensaver software of the 90’s on windows. Something i instantly remembered seeing on the only computer screen we had standing in the living room, so seeing it again after so long in an exhibition was a nice nostalgic encounter.

Flying Toasters was released in 1996, designed by Jack Eastman and Patrick Beard and developed under Berkeley systems. The name gives it all away, classic toasters with wings fly across your black computer screen along with pieces of toast. In relation to the New Institute Exhibits and Flying Toasters being a screensaver software, in my opinion it leans more towards Act 3, FAUX. loosely related in the sense that the software changes the pixelated screen surface into a temporarily living scenario of an engineer’s imagination, sparked most likely by spending too many hours awake at night programming screensavers in the first place. as simple of a concept it may be, the visual aspects made huge impacts on subcultures within and outside of the programming world.

During the trip to the exhibition where flying toasters was screened among other screensavers, I noticed that not much detail was given about these screensavers. they filled up a dark space wall to wall and gave the impression one was walking through a slice of 90’s time-space. What’s fascinating about these old modulated screensavers, initially designed to prevent phosphor burns in CTR and plasma monitors, is their apparent animation style that provided hours of background distraction. The “designing the Surface” exhibition showed many different surfaces which are manipulated in many forms. The screensaver room felt the most intriguing because the screens weren’t just being displayed, they still served their adapted function in a very subtle manner, simply to distract and entertain. Having flying toaster, pipes 3D, aquatic realm, Geo Bounce, lasers and many other software lined up on big screens gave me a bittersweet feeling of how dead 90’s computing is in the progressive new Century. Yet there will always be an interest in whatever people feel nostalgic relevance for.

As soon as I walked to the exhibition, I was faced with two ‘fountains’ if you can call them so. Lex Pott [x], a Dutch designer, a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, uses UV-light and acidic water to explore the “inner colour’ of materials. First fountain is made out of copper, an element that has a green colour when found in nature,however the colour that I saw was orange due to the outer catalysts that accelerate the change of color. Same thing was happening to the fountain on my left that was made out of brass.

The Preservationist

Although I was never a big fan of Chemistry, the project that dealt with exploration of inner, unseen colours really attracted my attention. The two objects themselves are a marvelous visual as well as inspiring method of working. His project has a very close and even straight-forward connection to the Subject – Patina. By oxidizing the metal, the designer creates a thin layer that variously forms on the surface.  Colouring different kinds of metals requires accurate recipes. Pott’s project demonstrates the results of a research on metals and their true colours. By doing such, he reduces the material to its very essence.

The Resplendent

While losing electrons, it seems that the material opens up to the artist and the viewer giving an impression of acquirement of ancient wisdom that was hidden underneath the green surface. I believe that the viewer and the artist have a similar feeling of control evoked by the impression of nature opening its secrets to the human kind.

Lex Pott, True colors Dome / True colors Cone. exh.cat.no.4A/B

Vertically Aligned NanoTube Arrays – VANTABLACK, is the blackest matter known yet, with its capability to absorb 99.965% of the light projected on it in the visible spectrum. The vertical tubes that compose it trap the light inside instead of bouncing it around, until it dissipates into heat.

Patented by Surrey NanoSystems Limited, it is much easier to produce than its predecessors. A similar matter developed by NASA required 750 ° to be grown, whereas Vantablack needs only 400 °C. Still, it is very difficult to produce and thus quite a valuable material. Which is probably why it was shown in a glass case during the show “Designing the Surface” at the New Institute in Rotterdam.

The catalogue, that was published on the occasion of this project, was structured in acts of a theater piece, grouping designs and materials related to their common specialties or their physical or intellectual interactions. Vantablack was part of the Act VI, titled Slim; “In which the future is superficial”. The reason for that was probably that Vantablack is a human made, fascinating material that seems like it’s out of a science fiction movie or a fairytale; almost too strange to be real. What 21st century humans can achieve may be little in future perspective, but currently it can be quite fascinating. Laboratories are like alchemy labs of medieval sorcerers. Industries can make impossible a reality. Still, it all depends on the funding of course.

Vantablack proved very useful for various industries. Especially for astronomy and space sciences; since it can help the development of far better telescopes that can reach even further into the universe. It can potentially be used for the medical treatment for eyesight problems as well. Since it pushes the boundaries of the relationship between human, matter and light, it revolutionizes anything that has something to do with optics.

No wonder Vantablack is so fascinating for many. British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor licensed the use of its color and is currently the only artist who is allowed to use it. The RGB code for the black as we know it and are able to use freely is #000000. Although, with the further development of Vantablack, a slight change in the percentage of the absorbing power of the material can give it a different RGB code, making Kapoor’s license useless. Even though I am not sure if Kapoor would run out of money before purchasing the license of each step of Vantablack’s development, I certainly hope that this material with so many possibilities would become available to common folk so that I can also let my imagination run free with it.

Vantablack display sample Surrey NonoSystems. exh.cat.no.75

Warning: Do not scratch the surface.

The nail polish stand is linked to the Lustre section of the exhibition for the visually obvious reasons such as its shininess and sheen, but also for its historic link to car paint (also highly featured in the Lustre section) as an inspiration for the first nail polishes.

The exhibition designed to feel like a fun fair, is divided into pavilions. The Nail Salon becoming an attraction for visitors. Drawn to it like magpies, visitors are able to get one nail painted and glittered. Somehow promoting the addition of Lustre to ones body, to have one nail become like a car door, while you watch two screens flash lips dripping with gold and gloops of glossy colour, nails painted and paint peeled from pristinely polished cars. Somewhat hidden is a third screen. I must admit I did not catch it at first. Too distracted by the glitter goodies, to notice the children labouring in mines. Since I did not pay full attention to this third video, I am not sure what they are rummaging in the dirt for? How is it linked to getting your nails painted? To the lips pouting at you from the first screen and to the expensive cars in the second. How are these poor children linked to these items of luxury?

Perhaps they are mining for titanium dioxide or ground mica, which can be found in some glittery nail polishes? Why then was this screen placed out of view from the person sitting getting shiny minerals added to their fingers?

I wonder if the artist Jonathan Auch was offering a critique to lengths we go to to increase our lustre? These videos differ from the artists’ usual street photography style. Black and white photographs of real people in real settings. Rough, gritty, textured faces of everyday faces. Seems odd then, this choice of work for this exhibition. Accentuating the fake-ness of the surfaces we crave to have not only on our cars but also on our very bodies, and who in another part of the world this may affect.

Jonathan Auch for Koehorst in 't Veld, Nailsalon screens Mother/Father/Child 2017. exh.cat.no.24A/24B/24C

Fordite is a material left over from when car manufactures used to paint by hand. It is an incidental leftover material. Fordite comes from layers of paint being sprayed on top of each other on the bed the car chassis would sit on when its was painted.
 

It can be found mostly in America, especially in Detroit were all the old great car-factories were. The layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Eventually the paint would layer up so much that it had to be chipped off. The practice of spray-painting by hand started in the 1920s and stopped in the 1970s when the process was automated. Because of this fordite has gotten a nostalgic appeal, with people also remembering their old cars. Also it means that its finite with people looking around the ruins of old factories to find it. All the layers of different coloured paint end up making a unique looking product, striped, almost psychedelic to look at. Its hardness makes it possible to cut up and polish, making it ideal for things such as jewellery.

The name Fordite is of course made up, nobody is sure where it originates from. Maybe Ford-ite. Its also called other names like motor-agate, Detroit-agate. Agate is a gemstone, where the slow accumulation of sedimentary layers creates beautiful patterns and colours.

In the ‘Designing the Surface‘ exhibition, Fordite is in the second act of the “lustre” section. Part of the”pearly entourage” playing the character of the ‘The Derivative’. Lustre is a type of metallic glaze, that’s originates from the middles east and has been around for almost a thousand years. It is the first enamel if you will, while the car paint might be the last.

raw fordite v.s cut and polished fordite.[x]

A new material is rare, and what peaked my interest, is that fordite is a new material born out of chance. An accidental waste product. Alas it had to take some time before it was perceived as something much more precious, and beautiful.

I’m fascinated by idea that something like a massive industrial operation, such as the ford factories can leave something as complex and beautiful behind. I hope in the future that our current wasteland of factories might leave small nuggets of beauty like this behind in the rubble.

raw Fordite v.s cut and polished fordite.


Walking around Shinjunku, Tokyo’s district, one may have noticed the unusual buildings standing out on its east side.
The Ichiban-Kan (“building number one”) and the Niban-Kan (“building number two”) were designed by the architect Minory Takeyama in 1966. They were commissioned by a Korean Toyota salesman, asking him to design both buildings at the same time, and finally completed in 1969. Respectively, one was home of 49 tiny bars distributed through its eight floors, and the other hosted bars, clubs and sauna.

Slides from the 1970s, reproducing the two buildings. Domus Archive

In 1977, the cover of Charles Jenks’ The Language of Post-Modern Architecture features an enigmatic Japanese building. It raises the Niban-kan as an icon of Supergraphics, along with its adjacent brother building the Ichiban-kan.
Niban-Kan’s colored surface has been painted over by now, blending now with Tokyo building’s flat designs.
But what made this building so special, beside its colorful surface ?

In the 60’s, East-Shinjuku was the land of protest and porn, where one could meet the radical, intellectual, and other underground Japanese subcultures. This area’s hyper activity led to an important street competition, where signs and speakers had to be bigger and louder.
Minory Takeyama was challenged to implant a new architecture in the given context. It had to stand out of this saturation of lights and neons, while blending in with the energy of the district.

Entrance of the Ichiban-kan building

Japanese architecture is typically vertical, where each floor has a common area with entrances to shops and bars. As architecture was being more and more influenced by western design in term of multi-storey models, Takeyama exploited the local past of architecture and brought the verticality back to the front, creating a vertical street through the facade. The late-Modern “High Architecture” aim to reveal the movement directly from the outside, such as what’s going on, and how to get there.
The front shows the circulation, to arouse curiosity. This is completed by signs that bring an informative layer to the surface. At night, neons reflect on the glazed area, which emphasize the gap between the surface and the platform, and reveal part of the building’s activity.

Left: a view of the Niban-kan interior today. Right: The same space with the original flooring, as seen in a 1970s Japanese publication, Domus Archive

The Niban-kan and the Ichiban-kan are representative of Tokyo’s relation between private and public space. You can go from the street to the seventh floor without encountering a door. By directly opening to the street, those buildings breaks the boundary and transmit a feeling of public space from the street.

Entrance of the Ichiban-kan building, with a direct access to the outside

In the exhibition “Designing the surface”, The Niban-Kan was presented as an item from the, ‘agency’ category, through Charles Jenck’s 1977 bookcover.
Agency is an action or intervention producing a particular effect. Minory Takeyama’s colorful and ambitious buildings were possible to realize at that time, far from the actual strict rules of urban planning. This freedom made it possible to bring local tradition in the actual architecture and –promoted by Charles Jenk– become a figure of Post-Modernist Architecture.

Ichiban-kan and Niban-kan seen from Google street view 2016

Architecture became almost a banal experience, we are surrounded by buildings that we don’t question much, because the more we see them, we forget them. We take design for granted. But sometimes one stands out and makes you travel.
It’s fascinating how design, by small changes of the interface, can revolutionize the way we experience our environment.

Charles A.Jencks, The language of Post-Modernist Architecture 1977-1987, London. New Institute. exh.cat.no.61-agency

 
These works are created unintentionally over years, silently coming into form. The first work, a tin used to collect small parts of paint where after some years dust has assembled on the surface to grow on the paint and bloom into a totally new object. In the second work it is about the paint dripping down and forming stalactites. Both works that at first had no apparent form/function or where the object is somewhat misused, they had time to grow and form a skin that now attracts full attention. These objects have a certain relation to imitation (faux) where I assume that you would expect a different material at first, something that has a long thinking process behind it, and where technique seems to be funest to create such an ornamental artwork. These works hide perfectly behind being part of a long growing process where they just slowly and unnoticed can find their purpose. Also it is interesting to think about certain materials and their aging form where the possibilities and speculations seem to be endless. I think these objects have an interesting point of view where you have to think about an aging process. You wouldn’t be actually able to make something like this in a short amount of time and where you almost never really will be able to control the way it will grow. This way of designing that is more unintentional, often by accident, requires an eye on detail, tryouts and attention. For me personally these works that sometimes almost appear accidentally by just trying out things and looking closely to the options, combinations and faults, are the things that bring some depth or in some way a soul into the work where I want to approach it as a living form that deserves a place to get recognition.

Silent Witness 1 and 2, private collection C.Pompe. exh.cat.no.19A/19B-lustre

A cages, a theater, a library and research center – Gaza Zoo, the first one ever in the strip. It opened in January 2006, the same month Hamas, the radical Islamist, came to power

I have chosen to analysis what it is to be Authentic. Authenticity is the undisputed origin and not a copy; genuine. In my opinion, the artist chose to use the donkey as an analogy for the Palestinian people that their “authentic life” is to survive in extremely difficult living conditions. The donkey throughout history has been known to be used for labour by humans and are often overworked. In comparison, animals such as zebras and horses are always seen to be more superior than donkeys. Zebras and horses tend to have more rights and often protected from abuse as though they are on a pedestal. Similarly, the Palestinian people are represented by the donkey who have also been stripped of their true identity as they are not recognised by the Israeli government. Palestinian people have no citizenship rights in the west bank and in Gaza. It is as though Israeli people have superiority and the Palestinian are inferior and are left powerless.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/20436092)

faux is made in imitation, it is artificial, it is not genuine. Faux is the opposite to authenticity as it masks itself to look like the real deal, however underneath lies the truth. The chair, similar to the donkey is sat on by man and are used, changed and adapted. Sincere imitation is achieved through genuine feelings. Portraying these feelings of how you see the world and its changes are the keys to make it.

In the picture below, the man seen is Mahmod Berghote standing with one of Marah Zoo’s world famous painted donkeys. The zoo’s two white donkeys caused an international media frenzy after Mahmod and his brother spent three days painting stripes onto them using black hair dye. Unable to find an animal trader to bring a real zebra through the tunnels from Egypt, the Berghote family decided to make a fake pair using white donkeys. The story was reported all over the world as a feel good news piece and often used as an example of the Palestinian people’s resourcefulness during the siege of Gaza.

 The idea that imprisoned people can make a business out of smuggling, locking up, and exhibiting animals is deeply ironic. There are about a dozen Zoo’s in Gaza and their story is intertwined with world politics in a way that would be unimaginable anywhere else.

In 2005, Dr. Saud Shawa, a veterinarian, decided to establish Palestine’s National Zoo. For Shawa, this was about education and showing people how to care for animals. Supported by international donors, he built a spacious compound with big movement, won elections in Gaza. The border was closed and the initiative was halted before it could get started.

As of today, not a single zoo has been profitable. In fact, there is only one person in the Gaza Strip who benefits from the business: Abu Nadal Khalid, an animal trader. He has animals drugged and smuggled through the infamous system of tunnels leading from Egypt into the strip.

The Swedish/British Anastasia Taylor-Lind (Great Britain, 1981) is a photojournalist connected with the VII Photo Agency, with a special interest in the Middle East. She made this photo of the Marag Zoo Zebra, Gaza 2009.

Untitled photo by Anastasia Taylor-Lind. Exh.cat.no.32-faux

Reflecting on a reflection with a play within a play

Deer:               Hi, I can’t see you properly.

Albedo:               That’s weird, because we can see you very clearly.

Deer:               Why?

Albedo:               Because we made you like this.

Deer looks confused and wishes to walk away.

Albedo:               Wait! We’ll explain.

Deer:                   I don’t trust you, I am an individual and not made by humans like you. Humans are dangerous and all they do is kill us.

Albedo:               Exactly!

Deer:               I don’t get it…

Albedo:               Hold on a sec.

Deer:               I don’t have all day, I’ve got some cars to catch in accidents tonight.

Albedo:               This is precisely the point. So we made this retro-reflective coating. It is paint mixed with glass beads embedded in a mirroring material.
 

Deer:               This sounds really horrible.

Albedo:               It’s not, haven’t you noticed that less of your family friends got killed since we came up with this?

Deer:               Maybe

Albedo:               What we did is, we applied the paint to you antlers such that direct light is captured and internally reflected to brilliant effect.

Deer:               When did you do this exactly?

Albedo:               Not relevant.

Deer:               Okay, it sounds great, but to me it sounds even more dangerous than before I had this spray. Looks really unhappy.

Albedo:               How come?

Deer:               Well, for instance, wolves. They will see me since I am now glowing in the dark.

Albedo:               They can’t see you. The antlers glow only in car headlights so it’s not like wolves are scanning the forest with searchlights for flashy reindeer. Laughs.

Deer:               Hmm, still not convinced.

Albedo:               Hey man not to be rude, but between the moon, their natural night vision, and the snow, pretty sure wolves don’t need head lights to see a reindeer with reflectors on its antlers…

Deer:               True. Butt still.

Albedo:               What’s wrong now?

Deer:               I feel a bit like I am being used. Do I look like the patronus of Harry Potter?

Albedo:               No. You are not the only one we will use this paint for.

Anti-paparazzi handbags and clothing would also do great.

Deer:               That goes far beyond me. I am just a deer you know.

Albedo:               It’s slim. You are now somewhere where the future is superficial.

Don’t you think this is super cool?!

Deer:               Why would I think that? looks alarmed.

Albedo:               Because it’s like magic, like Harry Potter. We changed your life, we saved  it. Now there is less car accidents, which is a win- win for deers and for humans (and their cars).

Deer:               Okay man, I get it. I like it. But I do want to say, without humans nature would have done fine by itself.

Albedo:               I think humans are also part of nature.

Deer:               This is an endless discussion. We are done.

Deer walks away nodding and mumbling quietly.

Albedo:               Good luck. Waves.
 

THE END

 Reflective Spray Albedo 100. exh.cat.no.72/74B-slim

Hello there dear reader, do you remember that moment when – around the year 2000 – after a long period of watching your screen and you turn away in order to rest your eyes for a bit, or perhaps you went to the kitchen for a snack or a quick visit to the bathroom, only to find your screen being “saved” when you return. It grabs your attention, you might ask yourself how does it work and
why does my screen need to be saved…? 

So opening a program on your computer works within the operating system (.exe). Example; POWERPNT.EXE or OFFICE.EXE are word processing applications so when you create for example a .doc document (an executable file) it can only be viewed within the office.exe application or an external reading program. This is also the case for the .png, .jpeg etc. extensions. A screensaver is different (.scr); it will appear on top of its computer operating system and does not need another .exe  program to execute its script.
Back to the most common question: “what needs your screen to be saved from”? The first generation of monitors had a phosphor layer on its screen which was sensitive enough to get permanently damaged when the monitor was not triggered. So back in the day when it took more then seven minutes to start up a computer, it was more common to leave the monitor on for the rest of the day. If it was not for the screensaver, your screen would eventually show black spots, permanently. The animation in the screensaver made sure that there was enough movement for the screen to prevent this. Nowadays, it is used to save battery life or to protect your privacy. The reason I brought up this question is because at that time my personal experience was that my computer  was programmed to respond by itself. I did not consider what these screensavers were for, yet It was enjoying enough for me to accept its presence.

In the exhibition “Sleep mode – The art of the screensaver” on the second floor of the institute you will find some historical screensavers placed in the 2017 version of documentation. I experienced it like a gallery in system preferences but brought into the physical world. The room is divided by the screens which are life-size and square. Designing the surface… Is it really designing  a surface? OR rather “protecting the surface”. Their design choices, which were determinant within the computer medium, had to be as minimal as possible, the great thing about these animations is that there subjects were depended on technological limitations. This makes it not possible to categorise them in the “FAUX /PATINA /LUSTRE /TEFLON /AGENCY /SLIM ” line. 

The exhibition was brought together by Rafaël Rozendaal [x], an internet artist who got fascinated by the designs of the screensaver generation. Animation without a story is how he calls them.

All screensavers are part of the exhibition “Sleep mode – The art of the screensaver” Janiary – August 2017 at “Het Nieuwe Instituut” in Rotterdam. You’re Welcome, peace out.

Windows-screensaver

Sleep mode – The art of the screensaver, The New Institute, Rotterdam

Vantablack is know to be the blackest black made by humans. It is substance made of vertically aligned carbon nano tube arrays, that is also where it got it’s name from: Vertically Aligned NanoTube Arrays. The carbon tubes are grown onto a surface and absorb up to 99,9% of radiation in the visible spectrum, so when light strikes on Vantablack instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected among the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat.

The material was originally designed for space equipment, its ability to limit stray light makes it ideal for the inside of telescopes. Also a lot of luxury brands try to get their hands on Vantablack to use it in their latest products. Anish Kapoor has exclusively licensed the material for artistic use, which is an extremely cunty move. He says: “it’s effectively like a paint… Imagine a space that’s so dark that as you walk in you lose all sense of where you are, what you are, and especially all sense of time.” Vantablack isn’t a pigment but a material and due to its temperature and physical requirements is not practical for most uses yet.

Vantablack was featured in the last of all acts, act VI Slim (smart) which was about experiments and investigations into futuristic ‘smart’ materials.

What makes me personally intrigued about Vantablack is it’s ability to absorb almost all light which makes you lose your sense of depth completely, you stare into an endless pit of nothing, like looking into a black hole, unfortunately the material was put in a plexiglass box, so instead of looking into the depths of the universe, you are looking at the reflection of your own face. On the positive side by putting it in a box that you can pick up, you can experience how you lose your sense of depth. I’m curious to see how Anish Kapoor will make use of his artistic privilege and hope to get the opportunity to ‘lose all sense’ of where I am and ‘time’.

When I got home and stared writing this text I found out that the material was presented inside a cabin designed by Aliki van der Kruijs, which has a surface that changes it colour depending on the light that falls on it. Just like the Flippo’s I used to collect when I was a kid.

Vantablack display sample 2016. Surrey NanoSystems exh.cat.no.75-slim

The Russian artist Ekaterina Semenova work, Care for Milk, deals with the massive industrialization of milk and attempts to reclaim, or analyse the prior use and value of the popular dairy product. Semonva appears to be fascinated with milk, actually the dairies in general, she graduated from Eindhoven Design Academy in 2016 and it is possible that the Dutch admiration for dairy has reached to an extent by which it has begun to influence her work. The piece consists of various ceramic cups, plates and bowls that have been dipped in dairy products, resulting in a sort of faint dairy glaze that created various shades of silky brown. According to Semenova’s website, the effects of the dairy dipping also makes the clay more durable and waterproof, and depending on the amount of fat in the used milk, resulted in varying coloured remains on the ceramics. The dairy products used for the glazing come from dairy waste as the work also focuses on the over production of milk.

https://www.ekaterinasemenova.com/careformilk

Semenova’s work can be connected to the Faux subject from the little white booklet that accompanied the exhibition in which the dairy dipped cups were shown. Faux, meaning made in imitation, taken from the French word for false, suits Semenova’s dipping. Although the dipping of the ceramics is not a false act or trying to imitate anything other than what it actually is, as an object on its own disconnected from its context simply looks like beautiful colouring of ceramics. Thereby the faux subject is rather sweet suiting, as although it is not fake it might look fake. A reaction to the dairy dipped pottery could easily be that the cups are not dipped in dairies and instead in watercolour or some sort of ceramic glazing. Hence my choice of Semenov’s work, as it’s rather amusingly pretty and charming to know that the carefully flawless cups are simply dipped in varying fatty milks that constitute to the attractive brown shades. The idea was rather simple, to dip things into a substance as ordinary as milk, however the result was rather delightful. Although I found the display of the works along with the space itself uninviting. Semenova’s work sort of disappeared in the corner of the room behind the sweat-smudged glass. As discovered on her website, the work should be accompanied with milk and the pouring of milk, and viewing it behind glass made it seem as if it was an exhibit of ancient pottery at an anthropological museum.

Care for Milk 2016 Earthenware dipped in various dairy products, Ekaterina Semenova exh.cat.no3-faux

Mussel dish with marbled decoration, Delft 1846 : Openluchtmuseum. exh.cat.no.30-faux

The ‘Happening’

An appealing aspect of every city is it’s ‘happening’. This could be translated here as: there’s movement, conversation, and just plain interaction, negative or positive, whether that be the honking of the horn or just the ‘good morning’ to the elderly man reading the paper at the café. This has always been something that is somewhat comforting, at least to myself. An example of a ‘happening’ city could be Naples, because, the core sidewalk principal that we will mention further into this article is fully in effect, and despite the city having many problems such as waste management, or crime, there is an underlying sense of happening. And of course, something to keep in mind is also the level of comfort each person has when it comes to being close, or around, to borderline illegal activities. The streets are packed, scooters flying up and down the street, people talking, arguing, people exchanging services on the street and not just in shops, the list goes on. This sense of happening helps someone who could be a victim of social isolation feel grounded, balancing between the familiarity of being in cities, and knowing that if there’s something they need to know, if the word is out, the sidewalks will be the first place to find out.

The Internet also plays a part in this in 2017, as it’s a hub of information, but the one thing separates it from a city, is of course, it’s human interaction. And although the information that you get on the city sidewalk is conditioned to whom you’re talking to, and not to thousands of sources, the difference is that you are able to have a human discussion with this person, and not just the long deep stare into a screen, searching until you find something vaguely similar to the answer you were hoping to find from your search engine. This social isolation also occurs because a lot of times, we, or at least I, fall into the mistake of underestimating our fellow humans and assuming they don’t know about my interests, or about what I’m looking for. Chances are, if you risk conversation, they actually will. And if they don’t, oh well, that’s the beauty of discussion. And that’s the beauty of sidewalk chatter, conversation and interaction in the city.

This happening is present in the sidewalks of large cities and mostly the social structure of sidewalk life hangs partly on what can be called self-appointed public characters. A public character is anyone who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character. A public character doesn’t need to have any special talent or wisdom to fulfill his function – although he often does. He just needs to be present. His main qualification is that he be public, and that he talks to a lot of different people, instigating and creating interaction and discussion, leading us to conclude that news actually travels faster in these urban areas, seeing how sidewalks can serve as steady flows of information.

Social isolation in cities, and its virtues and disadvantages

I wanted to find out more about how different people handle stress. I read up on an article that explained that city dwellers’ brains, compared with people who live in the countryside, seem not to handle it so well.

The example given in the article was from a case study by Dr. Meyer-Lindenberg and his colleagues, where, as they were stressing out their subjects, they were looking at two brain regions: the amygdala and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC). The amygdala is known to be involved in assessing threats and generating fear, while the pACC in turn helps to regulate the amygdala. It turned out that in stressed citydwellers, the amygdala appeared more active on the scanner; in people who lived in small towns, less so; in people who lived in the countryside, least of all.

Here the important relationship was not with where the subjects lived at the time, but where they grew up. An erratic link between the pACC and the amygdalas is often seen in those with schizophrenia too. And according to the data, schizophrenic people are much more likely to live in cities.

Dutch Dr. Jaap Peen and his team found out in their meta-analysis that living in a city roughly doubles the risk of schizophrenia. To explain inner-city and urban–rural variations in psychiatric morbidity, there are two main theoretical concepts, which originated from the early ecological research of schizophrenia, and from the Chicago School of Sociology: There’s the ‘drift hypothesis’ and the ‘breeder hypothesis.’ The ‘drift hypothesis’ assumes that sick and vulnerable people are more or less doomed to remain in socially unstable, deprived neighborhoods, while better off people move away. On the other hand, socially deprived neighborhoods can also have a pull-function on sick and vulnerable people, as they move to these areas with low social control and greater tolerance towards deviant behavior, this being what they call the ‘social drift hypothesis’.

The second theory, the ‘breeder hypothesis’, assumes that various environmental factors cause illness. These can be physical factors (air pollution, small housing, population density) and also social factors (stress, life events, perinatal aspects, social isolation). A lot of the stress factors mentioned above are more common in urbanized areas. Urbanization is modestly but consistently associated with the prevalence of psychopathology. They even suggest that levels of urbanization should also be taken into account when planning the allocation of mental health services.

“Obviously our brains are not perfectly shaped for living in urban environments,” Dr. Adli says. “In my view, if social density and social isolation come at the same time and hit high-risk individuals … then city-stress related mental illness could be the consequence.”

Cities, the theory goes, might be part of the reason why a person’s dopamine production starts to go wrong in the first place. Repeated stress is thought to lead to this problem in some people, so if high social density combined with social isolation could be shown to do so, and thus to alter the dopamine system, we might have the first rough sketches of a map from city living that leads all the way to schizophrenia, and perhaps other things.

Many other possible impacts of city living on brain function are also being investigated. Aircraft noise might inhibit children’s learning, according to a recent study from Queen Mary University in London. (Although traffic noise, perversely, might help it.) Researchers in the US and elsewhere have also found that exposure to nature seems to offer a variety of beneficial effects to city dwellers, from improving mood and memory, to alleviating ADHD in children.

Privacy

I found that the perfect balance of social isolation between keeping to yourself and social interaction in a city was the ability to be able to wander and explore, go out on the hunt for information, but always have a private base to return to, to let loose and relax. Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. Perhaps it is precious and indispensable everywhere, but in most places around the world you aren’t allowed as much of it. In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. Whilst in the city nobody does, unless you allow them in. This is one of the attributes of cities that is unique to city dwellers, whether their incomes are high or their incomes are low.

According to Jane Jacobs, in her book The Death And Life of Great American Cities, “A good city neighborhood achieves a marvel of balance between its people’s determination to have essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or help from the people around them. This balance is widely made up of small, sensitively managed details, practiced and accepted so casually that they are normally taken for granted.”

The more common outcome in cities, where people are faced with the choice of sharing much or nothing, is nothing. In city areas that lack a natural and casual public life, it is common for residents to isolate themselves from each other to a marked degree. If mere contact with your neighbors threatens to entangle you in their private lives, or entangle them in yours, and if you cannot be so careful who your neighbors are as compared to people who can be, the logical solution will seem to then be avoiding friendliness or casual offers of help. Better to stay thoroughly distant.

It’s important to recognize that a lot of adults either don’t want to become involved in any friendship relationships at all with their neighbors, or if they do succumb to the need for some form of society, they strictly limit themselves to one or two friends, and no more.  And the individualism and privacy that comes with city living makes it possible to choose to be solitary, which a lot of people find hard to deal with, but for a lot of people it is actually a luxury. So compared to town living, where interaction with your neighbors is almost inevitable, city living provides a choice; whether to keep to yourself or to socialize, and this is a choice that for many people can be quite hard to handle.

In light of the increasing push for us to work at home, here’s an interesting statistic from Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist and the author of Bowling Alone (which looked at how social ‘glue’ such as bowling clubs, which were so prevalent in 1950s America, have almost disappeared). It comes from a New Yorker article about commuting: “I was shocked to find how robust a predictor of social isolation commuting is,” said Putnam “There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”

Conclusion

I’ve come to conclude that although I do feel like a very open and city involved person, I need to know that I always have a safe haven to return to, where I can shut the blinds and lock society out for whatever time necessary. And what’s interesting about this in today’s day and age is that although we shut ourselves out, we still have access to the Internet and social networking. Being connected to the Internet let’s us control our interaction with the outside public world. Comparing the Internet to let’s say, the sidewalk interactions of a busy city is quite simple. We have, of course, the human vs. screen interaction, but more importantly, the Internet enables us to be in total control of what we discuss, and more importantly gives us freedom to search for answers from numerous sources instead of resorting to information from whomever is around. This isolation can be healthy or unhealthy for some, depending on who you are and how you deal with it, but without a good balance, it all falls apart.

I start my search ,  analyzing everything  .  the information that gave the webpage . I did not know where I was going . But everything seemed super curious , there is so much information ,  and how the words played with each other . The connections that sent me from one page to another . It confused me a lot . I don’t know what I’m looking for.

I reaches a point that was lost in the network . Frustrated not knowing what to do , with a pen in the mouth that  i bit all the time . The pen entered my mouth and returned to the page and denied my mouth , repeatedly , unconsciously . The stress level went up completely. Looking for someting  that I’m going to make my blog about it .
I see myself with the surprise that i had a nervous tic . Without knowing that all the time i was in the network at the same time made recordings in my notebook . That was the moment that I realized that there was something that happens to me ,  when i was in a network , being frustrated, I relaxed doing doodles !

I did not know why ,  but it just gave me a moment of reflection . My question was would there be more people like me, who carries this type of anxiety whit the web ? Will the web cause empathy with the viewer? I do not think zo , but I wanted to solve it, it’s a matter of having a way of finding information that is more comfortable, pleasant, when one has to do a research.

Many times once being an adult you forgets the power of scribbling. I think being optimistic makes you remember being that child who did not know how to draw. Or questioned what  am i doing has a validity.  But this case what the hell I’m doing . You must disconnect what one looks on the web with your notebook full of notes giving a space to do what you want free doodle type.
Enjoy that moment with no matter. In these acts that one draws or scribbling  , just releases the endorphins. It help . This type of exercises are leading you to have a better experience. Know what you can do to improve your income and take into account a better satisfaction .

-HORMONES OF HAPPINESS, DOPAMINE, SEROTONIN WITH SCRIBBLING ?

Hormones of Happiness Our body is able to produce a series of hormones, three of which are responsible for pleasure and motivation (dopamine), relieving mood (serotonin) .  Endorphins are neuropeptides (small protein chains) that are released through the spinal cord and the bloodstream. They are natural opiates of the body that can be up to 20 times more potent than the anti-pain drugs that are sold in pharmacies. Activities such as listening to music, dancing, bathing, walking, staying with friends, etc. Increase blood levels of endorphins. The Mind of the Body produces at least 20 different types of endorphins, which are stored mainly in the hypothalamus.

By coloring, we are activated different areas of the two cerebral hemispheres. “Both the logic, the forms we color and the creativity in the mixture of colors, as well as areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor are involved. Provides acts by lowering the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotions that is affected by stress. 

Have lot of fun , and be HAPPY !

The online realm is one that is primarily and increasingly algorithm-based. With the growing use of the internet, the integration of our physical bodies with our technical devices, our access to the internet, algorithm is starting to take over our intuition. The more we use the internet the more we depend on algorithm and the less our intuition is trained. Sometimes I reach-out to my intuition in cases where algorithm could have brought a better answer, sometimes I reach out to algorithm in a case were intuition is much more fitting.
Today, I am going to bring intuition into a virtual space in which algorithm is the standard. I am going to do a simple PPF – past, present, future- tarot reading to predict the state of the Design blog over three periods of time. After I apply my own intuitive knowledge of the reading to the post I link the relative tag words to the post to create a calculated and contained interpretation, more algorithmic, perhaps more indicative and fitting.

The first card I pulled in the past position is the EMPEROR.

The Emperor implies a controlling and organizing expression. He follows the Empress who is pure creative energy, flowing and care free. He also embodies that creative energy but does so by managing it in a way which provides structure. Where the Empress is totally engulfed in a mess of energy, the Emperor- like the tag words- are direct and organized. I always compare the Empress to Art and the Emperor to Design. Pulling the Emperor in the Past position here, implies the Design Blog’s beginnings were introduced by someone with intensions to or with a need to establish a system in order to share creative energies.

The second card I pulled for present position is the SUN.

The Sun is about being bright and fresh. It implies a time when vague ideas become clear. For present of Design Blog, I would say this is implying a time when its intentions are clear. The connections and intentions set up by the Emperor are now thriving and totally obvious. It implies that maybe there was a time in the past when its state was in a jumble, but that time is over and the Design Blog is in its prime.

The third card I pulled for the future position is the WORLD.

The World card is the last card in the tarot’s Major Arcadia. It signifies an ending, a completion. Pulling The World in the future position is a very positive sign, as it implies that the Design Blog will continue to flourish in the Sun until it is totally complete and whole, and not a second before then. The design blog will never simply die out, like would be indicative by the Death or Tower card, but it will continue strong until it is time to evolve into something more advanced. A possible future outcome could be that the Design Blog evolves into something more fitting with future technologies.

Me: Mama, I’m laying in bed with fever. I caught the flu. Shall we maybe Skype later today?
My mother: me too and I think it’s time for a little more time to think about how I feel like to be a good mother.
Me: What do you mean?
My mother: my friend and my friend is the best friend and she was just so nice for you and me and my motherly motherland.
Me: Are you with her now?
My mother: my friend is a very nice person and she is really amazing. Yes let’s do this for you and me to be sure that you will be the best and most important thing to me.
Me: Is everything ok with you? I have the feeling that you are talking a bit strangely.
My mother: Me too and yes I’m sorry but it’s not really like that you don’t want to see me. You have a good time and then we can talk about it again maybe? I love you.
Me: Mama? You are scaring me. I want to talk with you now.
My mother: And I don’t know, what she would do if it was really bad but it was a really nice idea and then we maybe would be a great ideal.
Me: What?
My mother: me and my friend and she was so happy about it and now I’m just not really sure what to say about the other people.
Me: Stop!
My mother: When I see you and your sister I don’t know what to say to you but I’m sure that I can make it a good day for you too thank you for making me feel so amazing.

This dialogue is created with the predictive keyboard function of my iPhone. Everything that is said by my mother is Text that is created only by clicking the suggestions that appear on my screen. Even “My mother” are two words suggested by my iPhone. The parts that I say are my reactions to the generated text, acting as if it was my mother.
I did not research the mechanisms, that drive this predictive keyboard function, but I should state that my mother visited me 3 days before I wrote the dialogue.