Designblog

Unique obsession is my current and last goal.

This time it’s all about miniature textile. don’t ask me why.  It’s just a random what I put my hands on kind of thing.

I am flipping the pages of this miniature and unique book and I am amazed !

hundreds of miniature works of art that looks like collages, assemblage, sculptures, paintings, napkins and other abstractions.

than I go back to the title of the book and ask myself textile? miniature?  where are all the textiles? apart from two conseptual napkins I didn’t see any.

Confused and full of inspiration I go home, I flip through the pages of the book and I find myself impressed.

but is this a coincidence or am I drawn to miniatures ?

And why am I asking it now after more than a decade of working with miniature trees and other vegetables?

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My third search in the library, this time not limited to the design section. I wonder, if I should start looking at art, or the section ‘normal’ books in the library. It tickles my curiosity, what kind of ‘normal’ books would a library of an art school have?

The first books I see, are books about airplanes. One of them pops out of the bunch. It’s a thick green book, way too heavy to bring home. The spine of the cover shows part of the structure of a wing. Inside the book I see detailed, structured drawings of airplanes and other flying objects. It looks really old-fashioned, out-dated maybe. I see big machines, which sometimes look like alien-things, that don’t even exist. Especially drawings like the Apollo Lunar Module descending to the moon’s surface, or ‘Egg’s Folly’, a dolphin shaped balloon from the 18^th century. Probably this balloon indeed never existed. From the first human attempts to make flying machines untill the last.

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My second search in the library, this time with a whole list of tag-words in the back of my head. I try not to search for something precise, but rather let it come to me. I pick up a lot of books, not knowing what feels right. Then I see a book with an interesting structure on the cover. It looks like a computer-drawn structure, like a cheap 80’s wallpaper. On the first page I read that this publication is part of a numbered series, from 1-1000. While making this book, by using different techniques, 1000 different books were made. Each unique book has its own number, this one is numbered 756. I expected this book to be about production techniques, but instead it’s about human behaviour and how we perceive things. More human than the cover. More human, less machines.

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It should be here – here somewhere in the crowd. So small and delicate with it’s plain surface. A small rectangle to be overlooked so easily among the other squares: Rectangles, check rectangles, parallelograms and trapeze.

It’s suppose to be here – right here on the shelf! But others have taken its place. Pushed it from the archive. Where is it? with its special and beautiful exterior – it is fascinating like the other two.

I have it so clearly in my mind, but I don’t see it. Black spots all over – not the one I’m looking for.  

The small black dot on the woodlike surface you could look through whenever you have been allowed to look inside. Who really decides who? Why have the others dispelled it from its normal place? Maybe it wasn’t alienated, but someone found it and found it as interesting as I did. Maybe they chose it for the same reason – or maybe another just as reasonable. Who really decides who? The book or me? Or do we even get the chance if the others beat us to it! Hopefully it will be back!

The book is coverd with old dirty paper. You can find a title, if you look very well. The cover is strange binding the pages together. It gives a feeling you can swarm into it.

The book is old,

The book is different from normal,

Attracted me with the feeling to discover it.

The content is a way of questions. Why there are pieces of paper in it? What is this text about? Some kind of boring story. But because how it is made you want to read it.

The book is like an experience of the artist,

The book is a story without structure,

Attracted me because every page is so different.

Strange you, collage, experience, funny book!

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I entered the library with a goal to find a unique book, and I did.

But what is unique ? Isn’t it pretentious ?

A funny thing happened, I picked a unique book about one of the least unique subjects that I know. Shoe obsession, which is really almost every average woman’s obsession.

The book is a miniature with more than 500 pages of text and images with at least one image of some kind of shoe per page.

Pretty unique.

But what is unique ?

I came to a conclusion that :

Unique Is Not So Unique.

(Unique Shoe)

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If the three books of these postings would meet, they would be like strangers staring at each other seeking something in common to speak about. From the child in fashion, dating back in content and production, to the nomad designer in it’s contemporariness and the language of art drifting in between.

They were all connected by the same criteria of chance; being strangers by name, but not unfamiliar by the subject, books which I passed judgment on by their bare covers. In the end, a conscious (or subconscious) choice, they all became connected into a context. The links between the words and the pictures and the connotations which they created.

Maybe that’s why my last choice for a book is so appropriate – it fills out the gaps between this project even in it’s title. Taal in kunst/Language in Art

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When picking up an unknown object, a book, the idea of it’s properities and contents start to form in my head even before opening the covers. The title and the graphics become like tag words in a jungle of random and anonymous ideas yet to be discovered. Sometimes, these ‘tag words’ speak so clearly about the content, that the idea forming in my head corresponds to the unfolding story, and sometimes the subject is so open that my idea and the idea of the author digress from each other so much that the ‘need’ the idea of the book created is left unfullfilled.

For the 2nd time in a row, the criterias whilst searching have been the same with a lot of influence by mere chance. There is something tempting and intriguing about the subject itself / which creates interesting openings in my mind / but when shifting through the pages I discover that the need it creates leaves me with a bitter taste of unfullfillment.

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Not one, but two books this time. I know that the assignment was to take one, but these two belong to each other. One is called “De geschiedenis van de schoonheid” (The history of beauty) the other one is called “ De geschiedenis van de lelijkheid” (The history of ugliness.) I took them because the contrast between those two seemed to be interesting to me. They also look really nice because they are really intended to be together. The really look like a couple. They are both the same size, same thickness, made of the same material, have the same typography and layout. Absolute contrast but still the same in some way. I also looked inside and it is funny that each book on itself is less interesting if you cannot compare it to the other one. They really need each other. And of course there is the old question “what is beauty and what is ugliness?”

700.6-eco-1 and 700.6-eco-2

The intuitive search mixed with subjective yet logical decisions has now became my little tradition. This time, my decision is to find a book concerning New Media. This is my a priori statement:

THE ‘NEW’ TAG + ART = VIDEO

I devote myself to the act of searching.

My eye is now attracted by another eye, stearing at me from the close up picture on the cover of the book. Its grainy texture seem to have a hidden message of not being the normal photo but the film still from the video. The Fast forward title can be associated only with this particular medium ( the era of fast forwarding audio tapes must have been long forgotten by such a contemporary looking eye from the cover). I’ve found the right book. Now, how can I connect it with DESIGN?

1. Subjectively:

• The ‘NEW’ TAG IS A BRIDGE – I like to look for new trends both in art and design.
• My choices are made through the VISUAL ‘ATTRACTION’

2. Objectively:

• The book was intentionally DESIGNED to make the VISUAL ‘ATTRACTION’ even stronger.

Every random opening of the book will attack my eyes with a great number of film images, shoot after the shoot. I’m totally amused. Nothing more exists except for me, the images and the big eye watching me from the cover.

Rietveld Library Code: 708-4 urb1

Again, I see myself wandering around the Rietveld Library being conscious of the way I pick up a book from the shelf. This time I was looking with in the back of head the tag ‘mysterious’. And mystery is what I found.  Interesting is that the book where I found mystery: Statische Fragmente by Hermann Gabler, again (like the second book) didn’t had a title on the cover. Only on the side of it. On the front it had an image of swans, and on the back a brief explanation about the book, by a friend of the writer Dick Higgins. For me, this explanation did not make the book less mysterious. Because when I flipped threw it, I only saw one or two sentences each page. On the left page English, on the right page the same sentence in German. Why this form? Why only one sentence each page? Why the explanation of a friend of the writer on the backside of the book?

Now I am back with some of the tags of my first post: ‘weird’ and ‘funny’, which does have a connection with mystery. The connection I just found in my last book.

Rietveld Acadamy Library: gub 1

First i discovered that the absence of something can be really present for me in its tension. Afterwards I was looking at a books presence in an other way. A presence which is there because the book was not true to it’s own individual format. It was odd.

Now I am standing in front of the library and I’m waiting for a book. I’m waiting for a person who will bring that special book back to the library. It will change from absence to presence  and because of that it will catch my attention. It is Wednesday the 2nd of December, 13.08 h and i saw this book returning to the library – ready to be recognised again.

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Never thought I could have a talent, but hey, I have one now because I consider my dumbness as a talent. Picking-out-the-least-smart-mind-opening-and-interesting-books-from-the-library.

When is something considered as a talent? Wikipedia says; “Talent is generally considered to be an innate, personal gift possessed by relatively few people. In essence, someone with talent has an aptitude to do certain things”.

I bet my talent past the talent-test.

Walked past the shelf to say hi to all my loser friends. Said hello to all the swindlers in the design section, said howdy to all the dumb books in the art section. All the books of the past four weeks. Met a new friend today. What a library loser. Wasn’t lend for twenty-eight years. I cherish friends like that.

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Does the Grid functions only in terms of putting things in order, or can it do the opposite, as well, in a great resulting way? Can Grids make a Disorder out of order?

The answer is yes and it is clearly proven by Erwin Wurm in his series of “One Minute Sculpture”. His simple drawings are instructions given to the models as a map into the absurd. They force the human body into a state of unnaturalness. Ordinary everyday people –by following them– are placed inside a grid made by this artist. This way they are becoming a sculpture of DISORDER.

Rietveld library code: -wur- 1

There I found myself once again, this time walking with a clear idea in mind.
In this case, more of an idea it was a name. I had began the quest of finding

“The new Anita”. It is Interesting how this name has been taking over my life these past weeks. I even came across a Facebook

application which is called “Anita has the answer of your future, click here!”. How did I manage to –somehow– give this name to the nameless images from forgotten archives.

So what do I know about Anita,
and what is there to know about her anyway…? Personally the name has no connotations. I once had a friend called  Anita when I lived in Mexico but how she is and where she is currently, is unknown. So I do not really know /where /why /how and /who.

As I am searching for faces I come across a few women, still no Anita.

Until, from the side binding of one of the books comes a portrait of a young lady: black and white image, what looks like red lips, tied yet loose hair, skinny bone structure, dark eyes, beautiful girl. Her shirt is loose, exposing her bare shoulders. Something about her strong persuasion turns her into Anita.

Once again I have picked up a book about portraits. This time the book holds a much older image archive from 1903-1917. So what is it that connects these two? Both archives of images contain a variety of portraits. Both seem to have a dominant female as their main attraction. There must be something about this women, something about this name that classifies, orders and places them in different categories.

Anita has truly become a tag and I have become the tagger; I have acquired the power to pick and chose.

*12079*

Some things are simple for us. You don’t have to think, you just Know things. Some answers don’t offer brainwork. How many answers are lying on our tong constantly? Easy how to build questions but not always easy how to create the answers.

The title of my book is ‘60+40 is probably 100’. We know the answer of the question of my book without thinking. It’s nothing to be proud of. It is simple. Everything can be simple or complicated.

We are familiar with everything we ever saw, smell, heard or felt. It’s not that we create an opinion immediately (maybe also not in the future), but it ‘flipped’ true our mind. It would be nice if we had a screen wich decides for us what we want to experience or not.

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