Designblog

you can see the full video here

Living in the 21st-century ‘internet‘ has become a big part of life where it is inevitable. With the help of the internet, humans were able to achieve a lot of accomplishments. Looking at the experiences that I personally use the internet so-called ‘surfing’, I encounter with so many random information, and the randomness that leads to different randomness gives surprises and joy of knowing and not knowing at the same time. There are many choices that we can make and at the same time even with definite choices on the internet you never know what you bump into. Just like the times we spend on google or youtube. It goes similar to the design blog, there are archives of the basic year students and Rietveld academie with a lot of projects and archives from 2007.

In the blog itself, there are so many clicks or icons that lead you to so many different destinations. The changes in the cursor and the icon changes may distract you or guide you to almost infinite time and loop in the designblog itself. When everything is a possibility and knowing the fact of encountering different experiences and the randomness, having a perspective may give you slight changes in the times on the blog. Like the internet that we use and the deep web, they both exist but it’s just the way we approach the internet.

When spending time on clicking and facing different pages on the web, you will notice that the links provided on the blog may not always lead you to the web you imagine. Some may be missing the links and the websites may have changed over time and won’t lead to the exact place as the writer of the post.

First posts starting from 2007, I thought it would be interesting to see how the web would be like, and look at the posts from the exact time when the posts were published. Just like a ‘time-machine’ what was it like in the past? The web and the internet changes a lot and we only face the recent and modified versions, the majority of the websites are updated to the latest version. Thus, we only see the brand new versions and changes. However, with the help of the internet archive service website called ‘wayback machine‘ you can go back into the times where the posts were first published and can see how the blog was like back in the past. The experience of wayback machine web to the past and browsing through the blog gives you a totally different time. The websites leading out of the blog has a different design and directs you to the exact place the links were first made to. The service guides you to the past to see the old versions of the blog and fixes most of the missing links.

The experience with the wayback machine was like looking at books in the library. For example at a library when you choose a book and read, the design, context, and the information are the same as the date when it was first published. Thus, looking at a book can be seen as taking a time machine and experiencing the past. On the other hand, the Internet gives creators the ability to change and update information directly and instantly, and thus it’s hard for the users to notice or remember how the web was like in the past. The web pages are always changed and updated to something new. Since the design blog functions as an archive of the rietveld students like a library, the use of the wayback machine can make you feel the experiences you have at a library, by positioning yourself back to the time the post was published and see how what it was actually like.

Even with the same act of browsing the same website, a slight twist in looking from the past can give a whole new experience and the way of seeing things, like the game spot the differences.

After I made my research on Michel Albert-Vanels innovative colour-system which pushed processes related to colour forward, I had a very scientific image on colour-systems.
After the announcement of creating our own colour-system, I remained being caught in a very theoretical and scientific image of the function of a colour-system.

When I look through my notes, I see a lot of short-living attempts of different approaches to the assignment.

First, it was mostly notes from already existing colour-systems, which should inspire my own one. The first idea was, to connect our free longterm assignment in mixed media with the colour system and looking back, I should have stayed with this idea. In our mixed-media assignment, we work with texts as a starting point. The text I’ve chosen is an excerpt of a dialogue between two friends: Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist and Matthieu Ricard which left a career as a molecular biologist to become a Buddhist monk. In their dialogue they discuss meditation-practice and it’s direct influence to the human brain.

I’ve started with the idea of making a series of etchings and silkscreen-prints on the topic.

I thought, it might be handy to break down this dense and complex article with the help of colour by, for example giving both of the positions – Singer and Ricard a certain color. So their points and positions are expressed in a certain colour tone of the print.

That would have created automatically a colour palette which is linked to their positions and a mix of new colours when, for example, they agreed on a point, so that both of their positions come together as one.

I wasn’t fully convinced of this idea and missed the systematical approach to it, which I thought is the centre of a colour system. To select some colours for both of the speakers was more of a colour-palette, rather than a system, through which I could „run“ these prints and which would automatically create a colour-composition.

This wasn’t the last idea which started to crackle when I was thinking about systems and probably it was this image of a programmed application like on a computer, which was standing in my way for a long time.

Soon, I realized, I could look for a Buddhist and neuroscientist colour-system and bring them in a next step together. But how would this look in the end? what would be the product and the outcome of this idea? I remained helpless and moved on from idea to idea until I rediscovered these promising systematics in music.

I’ve heard about micro-tuning systems a while ago in connetion with the Finnish DJ and producer Aleksi Perälä.

Perälä and his long-time friend and collaborator Grant Wilson-Claridge developed a musical tuning system, the „colundi sequence“. Despite that, Colundi has the character of a spiritual entity, which makes Perälä refering to it as the creator of the music he is producing.wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Schermafbeelding-2018-05-23-om-11.20.23.png

It remains a mystery for most of the people, including the journalist from the article I’ve read about it, what the „Colundi Sequence“ actually is, but what was very inspiring to me is it’s origin:

As we know, most western music is based on the 12-tone tuning system. All of these tones have a certain frequency in Hz, based on harmony.

Like other artists did before, Perälä started developing his own tuning systems in his music which resulted in the Colundi scale, a sequence, which is not a tuning system, according to Perälä.

The Colundi scale „is a sequence based on specific frequencies, often not related to each other in a traditional musical way“.

Grant Wilson-Claridge, Perälä’s friend which was mentioned before, came up with the frequencies for the colundi sequence.

“via experimentation and philosophy, each relating to a specific human bio-resonance, or psychology, traditional mysticism or belief, physics, astronomy, math, chemistry.” he told the music magazine „the wire“.

What he meant by that becomes more clear in one of his Facebook-posts:

“E.g. 90-111Hz – Beta Endorphin range. 126.22Hz – 32nd octave of Earth year, The Frequency Of The Sun, Color=Green, Tempo=118.3 BPM, centering of magic, Hara (chakra).” So the frequencies all have a specific origin in something natural.

This approach highly inspired me to do a colour system, which is based on specific frequencies, which then would be transformed into colours.

Around this time, the idea of creating a video came up, in which I would involve certain narratives, which carry the colour of their frequency, so there would be the ocean and the frequency of it’s currents as a narrative, as well as other positions like myself and the frequency of my heart-beat.

On the search of different narratives, I rediscovered a Youtube-Video, I used to watch very often as a child.

It is one of the first Freerunning-Videos I’ve seen, where Latvian Traceur (Word for people practicing parkour and freerunning) Oleg Vorslav climbs up buildings, flips walls down and jumps from roof to roof.

This video was probably one of my first experiences using youtube regularly as an archive. I was watching this video over and over again with my friends and it was very exciting to rediscover it after so many years.

I knew, I wanted Oleg Vorslav as one of the narratives, so I started to cut out short excerpts from the video to use them for mine.

I also started to go through my own video-archive and discovered alot of interesting material associated to colour. At the same time I didn’t know how to continue with my idea of frequencies and this system started to stand more in my way, rather than being a rich addition to the process, what made me decide to drop this idea and naroow it down to it’s essence: producing a video – in anyway.

During the whole process, I had a very thoughtful and conceptual approach to the project which often became an obstacle. At this point of the work, I had a need of a more free and spontaneous approach, so I started soon to edit the video and combine it with animations. I made my decisions quickly and intuitive, which opened up more possibilities for me.

Slowly, a system developed itself, where animations and moving images guide each other through the video, from colour to colour.

Looking back to this process, it was very much about handling disturbing thoughts and bringing me back to motivation in any situation or stage of struggling. In the end, I realized, that I could have trusted more into my own ideas and directions which I was attracted to.

I’m still a bit confused about the video I did, because I can’t really explain what it is and where it comes from. It’s been the first time, where I had to act on my gut-feelings out of emergency and tie-pressure, which was a unique experience. Under circumstances like this, great things have been discovered, so maybe we should appreciate stress and time pressure more as an opportunity to make us explore new grounds of our creative process.

One piece of the permanent exhibition at the Stedelijk that stimulated some form of internal reaction was ‘Cow Chair’ designed by Niels van Eijk in 1997 for his graduation project at the academy in Eindhoven.

At first glance it appears to be a thick legged kiddie chair with a cow hide pinned onto it, which is nice enough – I remember thinking how well it would go with my new old cowboy boots – however, much to my astonishment, as I drag my feet past the seat to check off the next object to admire that it was obstructing I sneak a peek into the chairs insides, where to my amazement was in fact no such chair supporting the skin! I began to pace from one side to the other, pushing my face as close as I could to the void within without drawing the attention of the eagerly hovering security, reassuring myself that it was truly self-supporting.

Curious, the way that it looks so flexibly drawn around a form, with bunched creases contrasting with the tautness in the extremities yet still feels that if you were to sit on the cloth would fall beneath you like a loose rag. When considering the properties of a hide I had no reason to consider that it was it’s own shape, rather than taking the form of a structure beneath it; after all, isn’t that what skin does? My perception of the design changed completely; a hollow, anorexic skin made rigid by the last moistness of life being drained from it, locked together by savage stitches pulling at the skin as both leathers shrink in opposition.

Rather morbid, really.

As oppose to being a complex object that requires calculated thought to attempt to understand, such as an optical illusion or some form of puzzle, this intense feeling of pure confusion is induced when a seemingly mundane, daily object or situation is not how you automatically assume it to be; so automatically  that you don’t even think about it, that’s what really puts you out of whack. This sensation is one that has fascinated me (or haunted, in some cases) since I can remember. One chair related experience almost brought me to tears, it was such bedlam. On a morning no different to any other I took my usual seat at my dining room table with my tea and toast, but as I slid my chair under the table the top of my thighs brushed against the underside of the wooden table; this never happens! I was simply overwhelmed, I just didn’t know why it had happened. I called to my mother to seek an answer, ‘oh, well it must be because one of the chairs is slightly lower than the others, they must have been switched’; what a cruel trick to play so early in the morning. It was such a minute change that upon reflection such a reaction could easily seem somewhat overdramatic, but in the heat of the moment it truly felt like the world was crumbling around me and the chair.

The experience with the cow chair was less of a painful confusion and more of an intriguing, encapsulating.. confusion.  An object to eradicate all other drifts of thought.  To be noticed above all other things, even if the intention of the design is to be discreet . To create an object capable of such engrossment is surely the target of all designs? I find it so refreshingly satisfying to experience such a concentrated distraction, allowing you to grant all focus to the subject at hand, being lost in thought for something that is really real. After all, how can you think in an unclouded manner when you’re constantly mentally multitasking?

Niels and Miriam, hangin’ out.

Mr. Van Eijk and Miriam van der Lubbe have been partners in design (and in [x] their personal lives) since they graduated from the Sandburg institute, leading them to found their design studio in 1998, which lead to their own label: Usuals. Whilst managing not to come close to making the same thing twice, these two capture Dutch design by collaborating humour with vast imagination and experimental works, ranging from spacial projects to product and furniture design; this creative combination attracted numerous museums and other collaborative design companies such as Droog, and many others.

‘Poodle Chair’ 2002, another example of humorous chairs by VEVDL.

The design was of pure inspirational birth. According to ‘Subjects’, one evening whilst Niels was admiring his shoes he was captured by the way the leather formed so beautifully around the point of the toe he thought ‘if this is possible, it must be possible to make a whole chair this way’. This notion developed my opinion on the design even more so; I like a good lump of leather around my feet and can absolutely empathize with the new found pointy beauty that the chair possesses. Why, I just want to wrap myself up in a crispy point of leather.

Although I am a great enthusiast in the field of pointy-leather-beauty, I can’t help but feel a mild disappointment towards the  lack of confusion in the way the design was conceived; it all seems a little too cosy. Alas, perhaps only few are subjected to the level of intense confusion that taunts me so heavily.

With the first design lesson we started to take inspiration from the Rietveld building. I feel quite overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities that it offers, rich in detail and at the same time simple forms.

Now almost a half year has passed but I still feel like I have only just touched the surface. I could go on for years getting inspired by him, he may have already become one of my idols.

THE GARMENT

We were asked to design a garment, inspired by the building, but also a practical piece of clothing for students or/and employees of the Academy.

I thought about the transparency of the building, which Rietveld used so that the students can spread freely in the premises to work non distracted. To connect the inside with the outside was his clear intention.

So I started with a pinafore with coated fabric from which the water or paint of the working students can drip off. In the front I placed a mood-board, like a display out of transparent fabric which you can use to demonstrate your current interest (connecting inside and outside). You can put a picture inside or you show your naked body, if you`re proud off it.

A detail that I wanted to use were the white brick walls at the front of the building, which protrude 15cm from the glass. Rietvelds intended each material to have its own space. So I made two padded retangles out of a white fabric. They can be used as a pad and at the same time as a pillow on which you can rest in the meantime.

I made a second piece because I also wanted to work just with an all-optical process without any useful effect.
I took the gray vertical bars that crossed with horizontal rows of far reaching windows. I tried to create something that respects the human body with the delicateness of transparent and thin lines. Translating the skeleton of the building in a second skin.

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