Designblog

Hello, i´m very very very small. But worth to pick me out of the closet. There is mold in me, but I can´t do anything about it. I will fit in your pocket. I´m grey but not boring. I can tell you many things but not too much. But sometimes you shouldn´t tell too much because you can figure it out by yourself. I want to inspire you instead of telling you everything. Did you ever thought a person that you met and told everything about their self is interesting? Well that´s the same with us books. Encyclopedia´s are so snobby. They are know-it-all. You don´t want to be neighbors with an encyclopedia on a shelf, believe me. A chick flick is also a nightmare. I think I prefer also the older books. But the more specific ones. I had an amazing neighbor it was an old ancient roman. But it was in pain. The cover was almost hanging of the pages. The conversations were interesting but in the same time painful. Because I could hear the pain. I can only hope that I will get to that age. That I´m interesting enough to be in a library instead of being sold or thrown away. E-reader.. yes, that´s our enemy. It´s getting harder every day. We are in fear. That´s why we don´t want to look old and dirty. Because the chance you will be thrown away will be bigger. Some of us has been thrown away or sometimes never returned. It´s always exiting to be picked in the library. It can be amazing but also be horrible. Some people put boogers in us. Or fold our pages. One of our neighbors had a lunatic that put his dick on every page because he knew people would touch it. It was traumatizing.

Because I was thinking why I always chose small books, this time I a took a bigger book. But it was thin.. I don´t even look at big books. The cover was grey and it looked so boring. Boring in the way that no one will take that book. The books that get forgotten. I wonder sometimes what if books could only talk, what would they say. I think this one will be the strange one. The older book and I think he would have white hair. I´m thinking this because on the cover there are Greek pillars. A wise old white hairy man. Would some books just scream like in Harry Potter: PICK ME! Or hide because they are so old and a lot of people already read them. I think the new books would be the one that scream pick me and appreciate what is inside of me. The date on which someone rented my book was in 1994. I´m wondering why she or he would have taken that book. That is such a mystery about books in the library. Who took them and where did the books travel to? I think if you take a book on holiday, they will hate the beach. Because there will be sand in it and they will be wet. I think they would prefer old people. Who still really appreciate a book and cares about how you threat them. That don´t use Wikipedia but look their information up in an encyclopedia. I think if books could speak they would feel much lonelier than 20 years ago.

The first thing that I noticed about the book that it´s a very small. Always when I have to pick a book I take the smaller ones because I am less scared of it because I know that I can always carry it around. Also that I don´t have to read hours in it to understand everything. But actually it doesn´t make any sense because one phrase of a philosopher could keep me busy for days to understand. The cover is made of marble paper. My brother use to make it when we were kids. In the country house we used to be busy for days playing with colours and patrons. What is it that when you grow older you are more thinking about the past? Sometimes I´m thinking of what will happen to all the old books in 200 years. Will people throw them away? Or will it be something to collect and cool to read instead of an e-reader. Or whatever people read from in 200 years. There is an etiquette in the book. I wonder about the days that people were so proud of their book that they put an etiquette in every book. Like they were treasure. I think this book is treasure because it´s gives me the feeling that is a kind of journal. Orange and yellow are strange colours to combine for a cover. A choice I didn´t see often. Also I never made that colour combination with the marble paper. I never had a journal. Maybe this book makes me wanna have a journal. Because you lose your thoughts. But at the same time you shouldn’t live too much in the past. I also wonder how many times a person that has a journal actually reads it after.

‘Symbols are more meaningful than things themselves’
Jenny Holzer

The definition of the word ‘symbol’ in the Dutch etymological dictionary says the following: ‘that which represents something abstract of absent’. To me, this is a very clear notion that there is no actual difference between letters and symbols. Both are representations of images we gave a certain meaning to understand each other in daily life.

Imagine ancient times where we communicated with sounds, clangs and certain movements. The visual aspect of life wasn’t half as important as it is now. There is no need for physical attendance of ‘the other’ to communicate your message. We live in our own virtual and visual bubbles where we are surrounded by symbols of many kinds.

In the last hundred years technology took over the world, physical labour will not be necessary in more than 50 years. Symbols ,the collective noun of codes, letters, numbers and icon’s, have become our life-force. Everything in our daily life runs on notably abstract ‘doodles’.

What stroke me of seeing this publication was that it is a clear example of the evolution we’ve been through. Alpha being cave drawings and Omega the clear letters and numbers on the spine of this magazine. On the one hand it makes me proud being a part of this species but on the other hand it scares the shit out of me that it is only a matter of time that we become a symbol ourselves.

This book is not from the Rietveld Library but my own.
If you want to know about Trans-Humanism look at this video documentary [X]

The  three figures on the cover reminds me of a person that is structured in life.

A person that is good in maths and can calculate a drawing.

M.C. Escher for example.

I’m the total opposite.

I just passed my maths exam with a 6,5 out of 10 and a lot of effort.

Some people are capable to make an other dimension with just a pencil, ruler and their knowledge.

Precision it what it takes and a huge focus.

The music of Nujabes a Japenese hiphop producer reminds me in the way of producing a whole other world.
[audio:https://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Nujabes-Aruarian-Dance.mp3|titles=Nujabes – Aruarian Dance]
His songs are for me a translation of certain feelings and atmospheres that we don’t even have a word for.

A lot of times people describe those moments as nostalgic.

But far away you know it’s something that you can’t describe.

Because there is no word existing for that feeling.

That’s why language always will have this barrier.

Rudolph Otto a German religious historian has a beautiful quote about the moment in history that people could provide their own food while none of the 3 monotheistic religions were there yet. The book which holds this quote is about the history of the three monotheistic religions.

quote: The symbolic stories, cave paintings and sculptures were a try out to express their amazement for the ubiquitous mystery and to connect it to their own lives. Nowadays poets, artists and musicians are driven by that same desire.
-'das heilige 1917'

For me that is the best explanation that I crossed awareness about what an artist is.

We try to translate fragments of the ubiquitous mystery that there is.

There will never be one work that will explain what the ubiquitous mystery is.

It can be the cliche question like why are we on this earth?

But for me the same mystery is that I can connect a song with a certain atmosphere for which there is not a word.

Such a translation of that atmosphere recognizable in a painting, sculpture or a song etc. is a mystery that doesn’t work for everyone.

So if you connect to and experience that certain feeling of recognition that is a fragment of that ubiquitous mystery.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 004 Lau 1

There is a Synesthesia exist.

As for information from the Wiki difficulties have been recognized in finding an adequate definition of synesthesia, as many different phenomena have been covered by this term and in many cases the term synesthesia (“union of senses”) seems to be a misnomer. A more accurate term for the phenomenon may be ideasthesia.

According to Richard Cytowic, sound ? color synesthesia, or chromesthesia is “something like fireworks”: voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends.  For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia. I’d like to have it. How is it to feel the sound with the color, or drawing with the sound?

Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Someone can see music on a “screen” in front of his face. Deni Simon, for whom music produces waving lines “like oscilloscope configurations – lines moving in color, often metallic with height, width and, most importantly, depth. My favorite music has lines that extend horizontally beyond the ‘screen’ area.”

I pretended being an synesthet while I was touching hundreds of books on the library’s shelves. I would like to see in all of this pictures a sound. To feel that the title of the book I chose is not a trick, and design made by machines is truly loud and 3-dimensional. Is it?

The art section of the library, this is where we have to choose our third book. This week again we had to take the key words of the last book that we chose, and then choose a new book taking these key words as criteria.

So my question this week is what do we consider the art section of the library of the Gerrit Rietveld?

To start with its all ready a small library in which they already have a small selection of book, and I would say the selection they have there is a selection made on books that would be useful to art and design students. It would seem weird if they had mathematics and science books cause they wouldn’t really be the most used books there, although it would be nice and maybe useful if they had science books.

So saying that I would say that the whole library of the Gerrit Rietveld is already an art library, with books about art, design and of course philosophy.

So that already makes my task easier, now I just have to pick my last key words which were distinction, yellow and stencil, and take these to choose a new book in the whole library (except the philosophy section).

So this is what I did, I entered the library started walking through the shelves picking up every book with an yellow cover, none of them had something with stencil so this keyword wasn’t really useful. All the yellow covered books were quiet boring and not at all distinct so I kept on walking through the library until I got to this book titled 1000 colors (since yellow is a color I picked it up) it had a traffic sign on the cover and an yellow sign that said END at the back. I flipped through the pages and it was a book with let’s say about 500 pages all about signs, a few known signs but also made up ones. It turned out to be an interesting book that shows that you could make a sign up for practically everything and you can make an art out of it.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 754.9

I like this one.

Or maybe not. Because it’s orange. I hate orange.

Or do I.

Strong feelings, dragging both ways. It hurts. No, I like this one. But it’s orange.

Since I moved to Holland I think orange is the colour of annoyance. It represents drunk and ignorant people with no sense for fashion, running around in the streets, pissing in my staircase and littering the veins of Amsterdam.

But also, the colour of my hair. Gingerlicious. Makes me wonder, is it so, that also I am one of those?

Well I guess a little bit yes and a little bit no. As in all deep cases in life, it’s easy to get lost in this grey area of orange. To be or not to be – a deuce.

No, I like it. Because it doesn’t say anything about what the author has between his or her legs, even though it’s tagged with feminism. I like it because it represents a feministic artist and not a gender. A genderless-looking book full of questions about gender. Orange, square and just a book. Perfect to sneak in to any chauvinist nearby. And then the chauvinist finds it and picks it up and is like yeah cool orange book gonna look in it. And then is all oh yeah cool book no way cool stuff oh my god and comes out from the situation a bit less chauvinistic and a bit more enlightened. Never thought about that when you picked up an orange, easy book huh? Nice one.

Yes, I like it because it’s orange. And sneaky. And smart. Like a fox. Fox-book.

Rietveld Library cat.nr:

to be continued ………..[X]

This search for a book was the shortest search in my life. I’ve got six tags. One of them is ‘rules’. So, I’ve set up rules for myself. I am allowed to check books only from top shelves. The third tag is ‘coincidence’. I have had no idea what kind of book I was looking for, which means it was going to be a coincidence any way. One of the first book I picked from the first top shelf from the art section is a book with a naked lady on the cover. I went thought the book. The artist was mostly working around naked human body. My search was going really well!
Inside of the book I found oily finger stamps and prints of cup of tea. Apparently some one had breakfast in front of the book and left all this marks inside by coincidence.  First book I took from the book shelf exactly fitted all the tags I had! It confirmed the rules I made for myself. The power of coincidence convinced me how important to trust your own intuition and used a bit of imagination.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: BECK 3

this time i dont have time for pretty small talk my eyes are hurting i slept i dont know 2 hours been at school drawing and making stuff all day even though im still sick and should be in bed but i cant cause assessments are coming soon. besides i read my last text and even though it was also written over one night i still kind of got ashamed cause it felt so pretentious and i hated this side of me that always pops up (stomp on it!!). so i just wanna find something quick to get this shit done, so what do i write about fine ill write about japan, i like japan, japan is interesting japan is fine. but i forgot to borrow the book of course so i have to make some shit up i guess? or what do i do
or wait i can go into the library online from my laptop at home while laying in bed in my pyjamas eating icecream awesome.
japanjapanjapn what do i find i want something crazy something wild to prove that i’m not boring or pretentious or just to have fun and not think too much while writing i guess now i find this book about araki and i guess that could be something cause i really hate that guy. sexist disgusting fuck. i remember when me and sara did our art coup in gamleby and he was one of our main targets.
here’s what happened: we snuck out early in the morning, completely overexcited and got into the school before everyone else. then we put up the speakers with the music blasting loud, and all the pictures of the most disgusting slimy sexist art ever made rolling in the worst slideshow made in history, BAM on a big screen in the entrance hall. (not that it actually was the worst slideshow made in history, i think rather that it was one of the best slideshow ever produced by humankind. only the pictures were the sleaziest).
it was araki micke berg araki araki anders zorn all these sexist artists (araki) portraying naked passive women as muses, all rolling around in our awesome slideshow to the sound of the most sleaziest sexist singer of them all: ULF LUNDELL.
the song was OH LA LA JAG VILL HA DIG /
 
OH
LA
LA
I WANT YOU
[audio:https://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Ulf-Lundell-Oh-La-La-Jag-vill-ha-digmp3hamster.net_.mp3|titles=song]
YES THAT’S RIGHT
when the first students entered the school early in the morning they could hear the music and see the flashing lights from faraway. it was like a bomb

and we were invincible

anyway, araki. i still really hate that guy.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: arak 2

Map.

I cheated a bit last time by picking a book that was not part of the design section. It could be, because it dealt with cartography, but it’s maps were torn apart and put back together in different ways to form new landscapes; or used as starting points for spatial installations; or written, painted and drawn on; folded, pierced and even torched to make up new worlds.

Water.

A lot on architecture. I drift off and think of how much I would like to go for a swim now. To take a dive in the cold fresh water. A bit muddy probably. The kind of mud that slithers through the space between your toes when you stand on it, before it gives way a few inches under the pressure of your body.

Memory.

Mixing up these keywords doesn’t lead to anything.

Computerwise. Librarylike.

Hitting “memory” does provide for some compelling outcomes. Like “Bodies Voices Memories”, a book that looks at the remembering, speaking and sensing body. Specifically on instances where these abilities are disrupted or displaced by traumatic or physical causes. The book is bursting with text. But I like looking in it. The text has fascinating accompanying pictures and every new chapter title is printed on the folded corner of the previous page.

I end up with “It Crossed My Mind”, a catalogue on an exhibiton of Marijke van Warmerdam at the Kunsthalle Nurnberg in 2000.

Funnily enough it has an abundance of water in it. From showers to bathtubs and lakes. The pages are split in two. A text, sometimes in white or black, but mostly transparent and glossy, moves over the featured photo’s of film stills, installations and sculptures. An empty attic room. A man in folkore with his mouth wide open, a woman doing a headstand in a dress. A red wall.

-NO WONDER IT SOUNDS LIKE LOVING-

,

Not laughing.

Loving.

It’s in fact a map. Of her mind.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: -WA- 1


Even though the title of the book that I will discuss here sounds like a cheap television-show, I am forced to be objective today. Therefore I would like to mention that the title of the book is, in fact, both good and bad. I’m totally neutral about it, really.

Xtreme Interiors – Courtenay Smith + Annette Ferrara;
is what the cover screams (the ‘X’ in ‘Xtreme’ covers most of the cover, printed in pink).
You might wonder why I am discussing the book with this particular cover at all. Well, dearest reader, with the three old keywords from a previous article (the keywords being: Bauhaus, contemporary, decoration) I have written for this site, I had to choose a book from the Art section in the Rietveld Library. As you may expect, the Art section in the Rietveld Library covers more than just one shelf. I even am under the impression that the Rietveld Library is an art-minded library rather than a usual library. Anyway, the three keywords in combination with the Art section of the Rietveld Library brought me to this book; since it’s full with contemporary architecture that does use decorations a lot.

The cover turns out to be very straightforward about its content: it’s a simple book filled with pictures of extreme interiors. Unlike the previous book, this book does look a lot like an art book: every two-pager has at least one image; every image is supported by some text. The book supports a wide range of architectural interests: it shows images from renowned architects to companies like IKEA, it shows interiors from all over the world and from many different movements/years – although it does not show any interiors from before the 20th century.
I think this book is more a fun-to-have, a visual page-turner to inspire your architectural designs once you found out that your designs are just as boring as the ones of most modern architects.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 14564


Choosing a book using the three words from the previous post was a tricky task, whenever I thought I had found a suitable solution, it failed on one of the criteria. This time I had to take more care and consideration in looking at every book individually. But as one of my key words was ‘small’ I started looking only at small books, but with no luck, so I decided to jump to the other end of the spectrum and only look at the oversized books.

Then I came across a book on Japanese prints. Japanese art is something that I have always for interesting but I know very little about it. The traditions are so different to those of the western world that I find a lot of it very hard to access. This book fails in all the areas the last book succeeded, It is made from this horrible shiny card which is almost sticky to the touch. It is bound just like 99% of the other books, it all looks a bit cheap in the end. But the one area where it is successful, unlike the previous book, is the content. The collection of prints are really intriguing, mostly black and white. Also included in the book is a lot of Chinese calligraphy, which obviously is very unclear for me, but nonetheless it as a certain elegance that is unique to the Asian aesthetic. But I can’t help but think that this book would be so much more successful had it been bound with the Japanese traditions, it would just make sense.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 1058


Looking through the aisle of books in the library and trying to find that one book out of hundreds that I could be interested in was a difficult task. So instead of picking out every book and inspecting it in detail, I chose to find a book that I found interesting purely from the spine. This meant I was looking for a unique bind, or a unique choice of material. Both these criteria are too often ignored in my opinion, for example if your book is in amongst thousands of books in a library, with only the spine visible, I think it is essential to give your publication that little bit extra to set it above the rest.

So I came across a small book crammed in at the end of an aisle called ‘Mechanisme’ and it stood out for three reasons. A) It was bound with a traditional Japanese binding. B) It was so much smaller than all the other books around it. C) It was made from a very textural recycled card. It’s no bigger than a CD case, yet it has more character than the majority of the books in the design section. There is something personal about it, as it is almost definitely handmade, so it has a delicate quality to it. So delicate in fact that it is falling apart slightly. To be honest I was slightly disappointed when I decided to check out the contents of the book, although it was made using very nice materials it’s design was far too bland and the actual purpose of the book wasn’t clear, as far as I could tell it was a book explaining the contents of different materials. The cover and general outer appearance gets 10/10, the content however 5/10. But at least it was interesting enough to stand out from the rest.

Rietveld Library cat.nr:


Didn’t I see this before?

Have you ever had this strange, but uncertain feeling that you have experienced something before? An overwhelming sense of familiarity? A moment you are not sure if something similar or the exact same thing already happened? Then you belong to the majority of people who have had a déjà vu. Scientists are still unsure how to explain this phenomenon. Some try to link it to memory functions, claiming that familiar events can trigger memories of forgotten information. Some say it’s a more like a “memory check” of our brain: a signal that there is a conflict between what we think we’ve experienced and what we actually did experience.

In a web app I created for iPads you can move along stories told by various images and collages of hands. Sometimes you end up at a point you think you have experienced before. But is it really the same, or does it just familiar? You might just have a déjà vu.

When browsing through the internet, we often experience this feeling of familiarity. Links and tags create a confusing net of intertwined information, often taking you back to a page you have been before. But because of the information overload we are exposed to, we are often not sure. Maybe you experienced it while surfing through the Design Blog, using the various tags. And you asked yourself,

Didn’t I see this before?

Have you ever had this strange, but uncertain feeling that you have experienced something before? An overwhelming sense of familiarity? A moment you are not sure if something similar or the exact same thing already happened? Then you belong to the majority of people who have had a déjà vu. Scientists are still unsure how to explain this phenomenon. Some try to link it to memory functions, claiming that familiar events can trigger memories of forgotten information. Some say it’s a more like a “memory check” of our brain: a signal that there is a conflict between what we think we’ve experienced and what we actually did experience.

In a web app I created for iPads you can move along stories told by various images and collages of hands. Sometimes you end up at a point you think you have experienced before. But is it really the same, or does it just familiar? You might just have a déjà vu.

When browsing through the internet, we often experience this feeling of familiarity. Links and tags create a confusing net of intertwined information, often taking you back to a page you have been before. But because of the information overload we are exposed to, we are often not sure. Maybe you experienced it while surfing through the Design Blog, using the various tags. And you asked yourself,

Didn’t I see this before?

Moving towards the theoretic department, exiting! or boring? the book “studio and Cube” caught my attention because i am currently writing an essay about curating, and the title popped in to my eye “Hello there, im relevant to you, the book screamed” and i took it without any consideration. futher more, the curating subject is to me imediate future, the book looks boring, but I think the opposite. the subject is no where near childish, but my method of grabbing it and running out of the library without any hesitation kind of is.

What turned out to be funny, and not funny as in “funny, haha” but a perculiar coincsidence, was that i imediately opened the book (which is mostly text rather than images) to page 61 (this is a guess or estimation as the book is to fancy to have page numbers on all pages) wich features a work of Andy Warhol, Silver clouds 1966 – wich. hold your breath, in my mind imediatly linked to the previous book of my choice with the ambient work of Hanna Jung of a cloud like bed with a cloud of whool over it. In Andys case, the clouds are made of aluminium something, and are shiny pillows floating around in space. If I had’nt had my previous reference of cloudy rooms the clouds would have had no signifigance to me but now they imediatly pressent something poetic, as light, but in another time frame. Other times, other clouds.

Rietveld Library cat.nr:

With three keywords in the back of my head, I had to search for another book in the Rietveldian Library.
I had chosen a book I new that I would hate – a book about modern architecture.

The keywords ‘Bauhaus’, ‘Contemporary’ and ‘Decoration’ had to give me a clue what to choose. Yet this time, I had to be objective. Ah well, when I saw the book entitled ‘Postmodern Urbanism (Revised Edition)’ it was easy to choose without judging. It was clearly the best book to choose for me, since Postmodern Urbanism is extremely contemporary, Bauhaus-influenced and therefore a-decorative (relating to ‘decoration’ as a keyword).

The first thing one could notice about the book, is that it feels a lot like a modern building itself. The book is solid, practical, safe, strong, linear in design, no decorations (except for the cover, however, the decoration is rather mathematical than baroque-like) and unpersonal. I estimate there are about 15 pictures in the book that counts almost 400 pages. This is definitely remarkable for a book about art, where the visual aspect is usually so important. It feels like a book written by a philosopher rather than an artist; rather focused on the inside visuals of one’s mind than the outside visuals of the physical world, in which all contemporary postmodern buildings are standing after all (if we forget about the people that say that what is in their brains is reality too, which of course is debatable).

Upon studying the book a little bit longer, one could notice it’s full of footnotes. The book really looks a lot like a scientific paper, it does not look like an art book at all. I feel the urge to complain about modern architecture again, how it is so different, so ancient, so non evolved compared to other forms of modern art, but let’s keep it objective here, hey!

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 14749