Designblog

New Tags for the Rietveld Library:

How do you find interesting books when you don’t know what you are looking for? How do you stray through the collection in search of inspiration? Can the library catalogue help you or do you better construct one yourself, Exploring connections in the library between design- and artbooks, students created keywords/tags that linked them together.
a recount of tagging the library

Click the keywords/tags from the Tag-list [purple column at the left] to see all related postings, or use a yellow keyword link [below] to read the postings and experience how they are connected together. Use these keyword links to navigate between the postings!

overview, freedom, animal, elder, identity, intervention, repetition, connection, tattoo, self sufficiancy, structuur, illustration, pyramid, leader, visual language, individuality, playground, best, give, beeld, independent, shelter, West Coast, time, neon, develope envelope, fragile, construction, wisdom, invention, oppervlak, culture.

Bailey’s exact term turned out being “montage” and, “compilation” standing quite close, came time to define the terms. Unfortunately, only Wikipedia was at hand and, as long as it hasn’t been functioning for at least two hundred years, I refuse to give credit any non-scientific information published on it.
Left with too precise requirements for search engines or flaneuring around, I asked for advices—leads on compiling art. I got back the exciting yet enigmatic book title approximated as Postmodernist exhibition. Of course there was nothing in the library, nor in the Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam or even on the internet.

Martino Gamper’s work—100 chairs in 100 days particularly—, questioned by Christian Brändle in the catalogue of the exhibition Wouldn’t it be nice… wishful thinking in art and design, could be related to that montage/compilation method. I would actually really like that connection, the emphasis on the blurry design/art shift, but I’m afraid it would be a little too much indebted to sophistry.

I’d rather come back to the ten books originally found. Four (as well) came from the art section—Local time and New York paintings and art of the steppes and vanishing animals. Out of these four is to be a postmodernist exhibition.

Within the previously defined grid they spell: Independent animal. Design books said: Animal gives.

cat.nr: 705.8-cat-184 + 707.8-sie-1 + 702.4-jet-1 + -war-9

keyword: give

Walking down the alleys in search of an appealing set of words proved itself being quite misleading, design-wise. Leaving me with the absurd yet strongly totemic ‘Independent animal west coast gives’.

I like to complain about the library’s limited scope. Tell about leaving the small glass room, heading to central Amsterdam’s libraries and bookshops, consciously neglecting a couple of very nice surprises, all of which I found sitting on the Z chair facing the catalogue computer.

When in doubt, turn to a search engine.

Independent, 2 entries: 705.8-cat-184 and 707.8-sie-1.
Animal, 6 entries: 702.4-jet-1, 593.0-muy-2b, 593.0-ell-2 (not to be found), 772.9-bra-1, -war-9 and 772.9-cat-59.
West Coast: No entries.
Give, 2 entries: 772.9-lam-1 and 777.6-cat-291.

Fitting within the given design field are two sober monograph-esque books: Lindfors: Rational animal: Selected projects from Stefan Lindfors’ first 15 years as an artist and Given: jewellery by Warwick Freeman, plus two more thematic publications: Domestic animals: The neoprimitive style and Perception and lightning as formgivers for architecture.

Of all the attempts to make these four books one—reference/number compilation, chance, arbitrary choice, sophistic attempts to relate one to textile design or sign language—the one I find most exciting on this Thursday night is graphic compilation. I’m humbly trying to keep in mind the cover of Wire’s On Returning, a clever mix-up of the band’s three first album covers Stuart Bailey coined as a rare artefact of valid graphic design (or something alike) in a semi-old (#11) Dot Dot Dot issue.

cat.nr: 772.9-bra-1 + 772.9-lam-1 + 772.9-cat-59 + 777.6-cat-291

keyword: independent

Unique, Traditional Techniques for the Modern Weaver by Marjorie Cason and Adele Cahlander

I’m quite good at misreading. Today’s appeared to have been Waving out of Weaving. The thing immediately came with a very clear image : Someone had wrote a book on visual yodelling. Ancient—it had to be ancient—technique from Bolivia’s vast highlands.

By when I kneed to grab the book my mind was already wandering among bits of sign language notions I could recall, considering amplified variations after the needs of long distance communication. The surroundings of my prey presented unexpectedly high occurrences of the term jewellery and the blown-up pattern on the book cover soon identified itself as woven cloth. So much for highland waving.

While flipping pages, I still got stuck by the amount of weirdly positioned hands, drawn and pictured struggling with threads. I drew them and asked a sign language student to tell me which parts of the series could made sense. It turned out saying : ‘Independent animal west coast gives’.

cat. nr: 779.1-cas-1

keyword: animal