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"discovery" Tag


From Inside


Sunday, May 26, 2019

FROM INSIDE

It’s like entering a never-ending tunnel.
I step in and I am lost.
I step in and I see such an excessive amount of possibilities that it becomes overwhelming.
It is extremely vast but there is only one right way.

After a long, long search when I find it, a bright light illuminates my path.
Suddenly, I understand everything, I am sure of my moves, I know how to continue.

 

A pair of pink ballet shoes shines in the dark and show me a new entrance, but inside I am still blinded and confused. Quickly I realize the pink slippers help me to adapt my body to the space and guide me towards the next opening.
I still cannot see clearly, but I feel. I feel smooth silk, tickling wool, rough cotton all around the wall. Am I in a costume shop? I choose a piece with a tulle fabric resembling a Ballet costume. I wonder, am I in Jaime Hayon’s house? Is this black hole that I am trapped in an art piece or the pieces inside are a creations in itself?
I am about to give up when a new light appears. It is a search engine and I type in « email ». Nothing fits me, I cannot find what I am looking for. So I try « futuristic ». And to my greatest delight a new gate opens.
The relief doesn’t last long. My body starts to tremble, I am dizzy and an echo is repeating the words « social » and « design », « social-design ». If that weren’t enough, guilt and uneasiness take over my body. I rewind my previous steps to find out what has changed. I have a new clothing piece! I ask myself: What is Vetements doing in fashion industry? And I quickly take it off. That’s when a new entrance, saying Jacob Jensen appeares.
However, when I enter, nothing looks like him. So I look for a multiplayer. I cannot find anyone, only a chess set. So I step in the role of a knight and find myself in the next cave: a library from the Middle Ages full of old books. Pick a goddamn book, I am told. Only if it were so simple. This choice will define my entire future, the new world I will discover. Quartz obsidian, how does it sound? I visualize a bright, colorful space to put an end to this darkness. Luckily, I wasn’t wrong. My new world constitutes a Responsive Color System.
Although this brightness is liberating at first, it blinds my senses. So I have to search again. The result is unspeakable. I cannot recognize my visual system anymore. I enter a world full of code names. It takes me a considerable time to figure out only the name of my new Earth: CIE-1931-System. It is hard because in that world I am only an x, a tiny, dull, lifeless particle of the system. Almost the youngest.
I am lost again, swimming in the fog. I am desperate to find a safe place, when a new concept is introduced to me: The Exform by Nicolas Bouriaud. I dive into this new opportunity with the hope of finally finding clarity.

But I enter again…

Touching the earth and the sky


Monday, April 18, 2016

 

 

book-in-window2_1100book-in-window2_1100

 

I sat by the bookshelf for less than a few minutes when it caught my eye.

 

Touching the earth and the sky. A small, thin, white book, with only the title on the cover and spine, in simple black type. It was squeezed between two books, towering beside it like skyscrapers, like a small alleyway just off the main road.

 

Somehow this book was meant to be mine for a day. Its small size meant I could easily slip it in my bag, pocket, under my arm, on top of some other books. Its blankness meant it didn’t clash with any of the covers of my other books or objects. A book that could manage to slip in anywhere, unnoticed, and hide comfortably for a while. I placed it on a pile of books I had lying around at home, and it looked like it had been there for years. I put it on the table in the living room with my notebook, so as not to forget to bring it the next morning, and it seemed to curl up its spine and go to sleep. I placed it in my bag and it slipped right under the cover, as if it had done it a thousand times before.

 

What made this book so naturally acceptable to its environment? I thought it was probably that it looked a bit insignificant: the combination of its small, thin shape; the white cover; the simple type. But this insignificance intrigued me. It was almost as if the book worked as a counter-weight: a blank page in all this information that was already surrounding me. Where each book I looked at was pouring out its message to me, this book seemed to suck its message back into itself, hiding it even when opened, and remaining its aura of blissful ignorance. It didn’t matter if I understood the book, if I had read it or knew what it was about, because its attraction was this mystery where I could read all that I wanted into its story.

 

I took the book to a place, and was curious how it would fit into a place that neither I nor it had seen before. I left my bag in a locker so the book travelled with me in my hand, clasped behind my back or dangling from my fingers. It didn’t seem to mind. The cleanness of the space fitted it surprisingly well, and it wasn’t long before it had made it clear to me that it wanted to be put down, in one particular spot by the window. At first, it looked slightly lost and vulnerable on the floor, but the longer I looked away and looked again, the more it blended in and seemed to breathe into its place. It managed to hide from my eyes at times, its reflection suddenly disappearing as I took a step forward, backward, but would suddenly reassure me by popping back into focus. I was losing it to its environment, and at the same time I had never seen it so in its place.

 

The moment came to take it back. I was convinced it would resist my touch, being so perfectly in its place by the window, but no sooner had I picked it up or the book folded into its position in my hand. Just as it had curled up on the table in my living room, now it rested in my palm as we travelled back to the bookshelf where I had first spotted it.

 

The books that had towered by its side before I couldn’t find anymore, the shelves having been rearranged with all the people searching through the library. But I knew now that there was no trouble in finding a new spot for this little book. Placed beside a window, a tower, a roadside or hovering in the sky, it would always manage to reflect its environment and tell the reader exactly what you had always wanted to hear.

 

In my library, you move your way through the books one on one. Each book functions simultaneously as a lock and key. You don’t know the doors it might open when you pick it from its place on the shelf. Even when you’ve skimmed the spine, recognised the author, taken in the title and flicked through its pages, you’re still under a false impression of knowing where the book might lead you. It’s only once you’ve managed to extract it from its place in the library, folded your fingers around the covers, travelled with it for a couple of days, immersed yourself in the letters and forgotten it on the train, that you start to discover what this book holds in store for you. And once the rhythm of opening and closing the story has come to its natural end, the book will lead you back to the library to be found in its new place, closing its door as softly as it opened, and unlocking the way to a new book. Only a system which has no system can enable this experience of true discovery.

 

And then you can touch the earth and the sky.

 

book-in-window1_1100book-in-window1_1100

 

Lamp Science


Saturday, September 28, 2013

 

Gispen’s Giso lamp (model 24)

A lamp, a simple product. A lamp only needs to give light, you have to turn on the light and after that you don’t have to touch it anymore. So a product designer is not really limited to the function of it, except the fact that it must give light. Or is this not true? Despite of all the possibilities to create a decorative lamp, Willem Hendrik Gispen made a really minimalistic lamp, the ‘Giso Lamp’ []. Only a white opal glass shade and a frosted glass above it, but that simplicity, I think, is the power of it. Willem Hendrik Gispen (1890-1981) was a dutch designer. In 1916 he began his own forge, called ‘W.H. Gispen & Co’, where he created crafted products. But in the twenties Gispen  became increasingly influenced by the design ideas of De Stijl and he switched from traditional to mechanized production. In 1926 he designed and produced the Giso lamps, it became a big success. The Giso lamp (Nr. 24) is a pendant lamp and  has a shade made of white opal glass that is 25 cm and a frosted glass disk that is 43 cm, the stem is made of nickeled metal. The opal glass ensures that the light is not really intense, but soft. The disk ensures that the light is not going up but only going down, the reason why most of all the lamps have a hood is interesting. Maybe a lamp is not only to give light, but also to give it a direction. There are a lot of Giso lamps [], but I think Nr.24 is one of the nicest, because of that disk above the shade.

This lamp is an interesting starting point to look at the vision of Gispen about de art of light. Gispen says that in the theatre the only place is where they control the light so good, that it became a real lighting art. This is because they focus on the most essential element: the light, and they are constantly occupied with the goal: lighting. If you want to make a lamp, you should be aware of the technique and also the goal: the right light on the right place. The requirements that must be set by a good lamp are  of different kind: physically, technical, economic, psychic. There are two groups that create lamps, but not with all the suspects. Architects and artist only focus on the psychic suspect, but then rarely on the main points of this suspect: colour and mood of the light. They only focus on the carrier of the light source, the lamp or ornament. The meaning of a lamp and the way to show it be interchanged. He thinks of all possibilities, an interesting way of hang up, or he creates lamps in the form of a square, instead of round, or a lamp out of wood. He thinks about everything except the fact that a lamp must be an object that light the space as good as possible. The other group is the group that only focus on the technical and economic suspect of a lamp, they want to create the best formula: the most light for the lowest costs. A lot of calculations and math, but a moderate result.

Gispen_Model24_redu

 
I will explain the different requirements.

The physic requirements: the light must be calm and not flicker, that is harmful to the eye. Also the light must not be too strong, that is also harmful for the eye. So you have to cover the light source. You can see how it is done in the Giso lamp. The shade is made of Giso-glass, the best kind of crystal glass, in minimal achievable thickness, (1mM.) covered with a layer of white glass, to a thickness of only 1/5 mM. They make the light pleasant and soft and only lose 10-15% of the light. Also the light must not be too weak. If the light is too weak it requires too much effort from the eye.

The technical requirements: the light out of a lamp can be controlled, by the use of reflectors, diffusers and light-breakers. The light can be absorbed and reflected, the way it absorbed and reflects depends on the material that is used for the reflectors, diffusers or light breakers. So you need to know about materials if you want to create a good lamp. There are also three different ways of lighting: – direct lighting. The reflector is so made that the light goes straight to one place, and is very concentrated. Examples are outdoor lighting or lights in a storefront.

-Indirect lighting: you get this light to let the light first been shined on to the ceiling. But the shadow it creates is so small that you get a surrealistic feeling, and also it is really expensive because the efficiency is only 35%.
-Half-indirect lighting: the best for general lighting. You’ll get this light if you put the lamp in a diffuser of a particular form. The light will shine in all directions . The Giso lamps are made to create this half-indirect lighting. But what you can see, the Giso lamp Nr. 24 has also a reflector above the diffuser, so the light won’t go up to the ceiling.

Economic requirements: maximum efficiency at minimum power consumption. Giso glass is perfect for this efficiency. It has a huge perseverance.

Psychic requirements: the place where a lamp hangs is of course important for how it looks like, a lamp in a living room must be different than a lamp in a party room or a storefront. As you have read there are many different requirements that a lamp must meet. They already decide what a lamp should look like, but you still can design a lamp as good as possible. For example Gispen uses soft gold bronze instead of dark bronze, so there is less contrast between the white shaves and the metal. The Giso lamp (Nr. 24) does not hang on a clumsy chain, but on a fine metal tube.

So maybe it was not true that a lamp is just a simple product. You have to be aware of all kind of different suspects if you want create a lamp, as Gispen did. But if you think it doesn’t matter at all, you can make whatever you want, without looking at all the requirements. (in my experiment I look don’t really look at the requirement, only at the atmosphere.)

 

Light experiment

Experiment

So now we know what Gispen thoughts were about light. I wanted to do my own light experiment. I changed my lamp into different forms, to look what will happen with the lamp and my room when I make small changes. I used my lamp in my bedroom that has a reflector above the lamp, so the light is more concentrated on the floor and less on the ceiling (like the Giso lamp number 24). I put all kind of different things under the lamp or covered it. The changes are huge, you can see it in the pictures, but it was even more in reality. If we look at the physic requirements I think Gispen would say that I made really bad lamps, because they are often too weak. Personally I like weak light, I liked the one with the white paper around the lamp, and the light concentrated on one point of my room and the rest of the room was less light. Economically it were also not really good lamps, a lot of light gets absorbed so it was not really: maximum efficiency at minimum power consumption. But my experiment was not about creating a good lamp. But about what little changes to a lamp do with the atmosphere of the room. I found out that it changes a lot to a room, but also really your mood. When found out that when the light changed, so my view at my room changed, so my mood changed. The best example was maybe the one with the color, the blue was cold and the red warm. Also the weakness of the light matters to my mood, the darker, the more I get into a mysterious almost melancholic mood. So I discovered through this whole research the impact of a lamp in a room. And that is bigger than I first thought.

 

Light experiment

 

Juxtaposition


Sunday, October 17, 2010



After a few days scanning through the book Radical Modernism
you start feeling a bit dizzy
from all the different theories within the development of design.
You head begins to feel swollen from all these different words and their definitions.
Paradigmatic, postnuclearism, electisism. All refering to the atitude and the meaning
that designing absorbs from.
But it all seems to lead to one specific word: Juxtaposition.
It triggers a linguistic imagination, a word scramble. Playfully putting things in the
wrong order
just to see if it can be better understood.
Drives you to imagine things such as twisted dictionaries, chaotic and senseless.
A whole other reality and a whole other perspective for the spectators
that are looking upon it.
Is juxtaposition the word that concludes the role of deisgners entering the 21th century?
Thus the solution lays in taking twist and turns until it's completely unrational.
Is that
the only
way we can
"rationalize"
all these enigmatic theories.
 
And if so,
Let's juxtapose ourselves in the flaws that embraced our creation.
A mental furniture in the waiting room of life perhaps?
Illustrating messages that aren't it's original meaning.
Collecting peoples confused gazes on what seems to be our contradictory selves.
Instead they will have to cope.
They will have to stand right beside what seems to drag them in confusion and frustration.
While thinking on how we use opposites to explain ourselves.
I wrap myself in this beautiful idea of being things that
can only be seen with eyes closed.
Feeling with just the mere idea of beauty.
My mind drifts in different directions.
I see myself becoming displaced messages to the universe.
Compelled by its matter.
So lets design a reason for our contradictions.
Let's yield to the aesthetic need of expression.
Let's design a symbol of the beauty our flaws reflect on while
we aren't starring or paying attention.


Rietveld>lib>cat.no: 772.9

Micro-organisms living in these typographies


Thursday, September 9, 2010

Hurry Up. Pick a magnifying glass before you miss it. Before you flip your page and the dust on the left corner falls off. Deeper in that letter. Deeper in the ink there is a whole other story to be told. A story that might or might not explain why these tiny books aren’t bond for the human eyes. It’s something to make you question. Raises up curiosity. Something to make you intrigued to dig deeper for results. You start to question why she wants you to believe that from these tiny dots a new creative perspective can be born. You can almost see yourself behind a microscope. Ready to believe that there is a tiny living organism in the “E” that spells Essence. The essence of what you have been missing with your eyes. It makes you want to wish that Alice’s potion existed.

It makes you want to be your fingertips. It makes you want to slip right through the glass box.  A glass box filled with tiny dots and endless possibilities. Just laying there. Ignorant of your presence. Not for you consumption. While you still look through the lens of the microscope. You can almost imagine that there’s these tiny species living together. Compromising with the closeness of each other. Zooming in, you can see why she wants you to make an effort and research. By discovering this you’ll look back and give credit to what you can’t read with your naked eyes.


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