Designblog

If you start a research without the desire to find anything does the result have any meaning? I think the purpose of this last research was to assemble all the pieces. Find a sense to this sometimes automatic, sometimes random, book hunting. When you are finally looking for the meaning behind your actions, I deeply think you actually limit yourself. Think about looking for the ultimate solution to all your trouble is probably one of the most stressing action. This time I walk around this books with actually no desire to find anything. Your eyes go around with this emotionless sensation toward the object you are looking at. Of course this is an assignment so I tried to respect the rules. Look for the words my other research led me too. I knew before entering this will be pointless.

Them let the meaning behind and let’s act past forward. The art section is now open to me. The first choice I ever did during this assignment is them accessible. And there is actually nothing that I can find today, which match more word in my head. This a book about Jacques-Henri Lartigues. This is a name I for long hear, but I could not related any image to it. And if during the past assignment the purpose was to describe our research, as a results it is here in the content that the sense appear. Why this book sounded interesting to me in the first place is quiet easy to understand. The name remind me of something. The tittle is french as well and probably could be link to some nostalgia i felt them. But if all the element are quiet random and actually boring the content offer an ultimate and unexpected resolution to the research.

Jacques-Henri Lartigues, have been an amateur photograph during all his life. From the age of 8 when his father offer the young boy, his first camera. The desire of taking image never left Lartigue. It is though only as a painter that he was well know during most of his life. The picture stayed a passion. An habits practice and repeat as an amateur. The meaning was kept by himself only.

The black and white image reveal a pure and simple beauty. Because at any moment this poet had no idea of the work he was making. It is as a “Flaneur” that he keep wonder around taking image after image out of the reality. There is nothing else to say from here, my choice might not been issue from the word it should have been, but the results couldn’t be more relevant.

But why to my eyes this is the case is not to explain. I discover trough a random research across words and envy, something I’m really glad to have in my hands. A piece of a life I never knew of. A unique expression of poetry as my eyes can read it.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 761* lar 2

“What is art?” would be a long discussion subject. So there is no discussions about it, I claim my own hypothesis on this question -art is an experiment of telling your personal motion /thought /opinion via any form of communication . Let’s stick to the word experiment.

What is experiment? Wikipedia says An experiment is a methodical trial and error procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. I think  everything you are giving to show to other person becomes an experiment based decision because you can predict but you’ll never know for sure how she or he will respond . So every story/ movement/ your daily life processes when viewer involved becomes experiment/art  …if you ever had doubts who you are –my congratulations you are an artist!

Let’s go deep in to the first steps of this kind hypothesis ART creating , the part that is before the “showing out on public” experiment. Richard Niessen (graphic design artist) gave me some background to start from with answering “What is your opinion on experiments ?”

-“Well, it’s not that I like to do experimental work because I want to experiment. It’s just that I need to do these experiments to find solutions that do not yet exist. I always believed in work that is very outspoken, but I do not want to lean only on style. So the experiment comes from the search to make something appropriate for the subject, in a radical way. The experiments are always design-driven.”

and “Do you prepare yourself for experiments or sometimes they just happens during the working process ?”

-“Sometimes there is little experimentation necessary, sometimes it takes a very long time and a lot of try outs before I come to the right solution. And talking about experiments: there is always this element of risk, like in scientific experiments, you never know if it really is going to work. In the case of printed matter, I only know this when the poster or the book is in the street or in the store. I have the ‘feeling’ that it will work, that’s the hypothesis.”

So process of making art piece is experiment based cooperation of doing and thinking.

One day on my back way home from academy I stopped with this thought:

Usually materials I am using are like viewers -they act, sometimes predictable sometimes not and my decision is based on the particular stage of creating art /so i become viewer for my own experiment/art. In this moment you can increase your idea to keep it going where it goes or change the way it goes to keep your idea.

So I could use more speakable materials like people to find out flexibility of my thoughts and acts in unusually open way in usual environment .

I decided that the simplest moment of our everyday life where we see other people is road (way home or to your job or somewhere, whatever you go) . You “meet” people on the road and you seeing them act somehow/for example you think about them – that’s already an act ,especially if you make serious face during this thinking process ><. The idea is that people can choose reaction or make it up to tell more /show more not just keeping on automate their reactions. I mean If we are an artists…than we are not really good ones. This moment of 3 seconds ,when you look in to the stranger eyes walking by you is used uncreative, it doesn’t go farther than a smile or “hy” I mean that’s great(!), but how much does it says about your mood, day and personality? I do believe you can even start conversation from that , but that’s not colourful on the level of act/standard experiment .But if you have new language involved that was made up on the spot  that’s freedom of expression what allows  to play with this moment as much as you can…as artists in museums playing with their art pieces viewers. Making them wander/questioning/screaming “HELL YEAH” or “NO WAY” !

Playing around with/conclusion of  this hypothesis:

like I wrote before: I want to try change idea by starting acting and change the way I am acting to keep the idea .

first part: I was pretty tired this morning and i started from showing my mood of willpower to stay awake (“look broadly”)

It came out good-people were smiling .

second part: I changed my expression of mood after their reaction on my “look broadly” act.

Second part was more communicable, although people where running on their job  and I didn’t interact with anyone longer than few seconds . So I didn’t wait for something more than a smile ,on which I reacted with my expression of happiness.

i approved my own hypothesis with getting  light motion like after visiting a museum ….and exhibiting the same time as well . Bit sad that people didn’t go wild in their own expressions.By reations of some people i did saw that there is difference between museum and everyday life –it’s criterion of insanity.

But if art (as an experiment) process is the same like life process why should we behave in boarders “to look sane”? ……

p.s.  For me personally I have a feeling that people I met that experimental day will remember this day how they meet my art like a day when they should shown their own.

KEEP IT EXPERIMENTING !

Have you ever wondered if there is something in common between offices in

New York, desert tribes and living spaces of Amsterdam?
In order to find out the answer for this question I went to the Rietvedl’s library.
When I was looking for a book I was keeping in mind two key-words : “focused” and “imagination”.
I had an incredible finding – a book about nomadic design and architecture. It tells that in today’s dynamic and global world more and more people are departing from the settled family houses tradition, where all the things are heavily rooted in a single place and don’t change for generations.
In order to keep in synch with the pace of changes people gravitate towards more agile and lightweight lifestyle that eventually unfolds into it’s own new ecosystem.
This phenomena is known as “nomadic lifestyle” and it has been around for ages ever since the first nomad tribes roamed from place to place.http://www.nomadicarchitecture.com

“Over decades people in western societies have experienced the world and their private lives as static with respect to their spatial and social coordinates. In the view of globalised and virtualised societies this felt security vanishes resulting in behaviour that falls back into strategies long assumed buried in the past: nomadism…One of the later stages of nomadism, called nomadic pastoralism. The concept of nomadic pastoralism celebrates its resurrection in industrialised nations in various forms, i.e. In management practices, social organization, or the composition of information. An example of nomadism in social organisation is the growing movement of RV lifestyle (RV = recreational vehicle), where people are interested in travelling and camping rather than living in one location.”
"Nomadic Information in Social Environments".Frank Nack and Simon Jones HCS,  University of Amsterdam.

Nomadic lifestyle develops it’s way in architecture and design starting from poorest neighbourhoods with homeless people all the way up to the yappy residential areas.
This design was inspired by utility of nomad life and has absorbed it’s plasticity to transform and adapt to the environment. It’s not trying to stand against something, it just follows the trend making any change easy and keeping it in human scale.
As proponents of the nomadic design say “We’ll share with you what we know about the process of going from work-at-home to work-anywhere-you-damn-well-please.”
http://www.knowmads.nl/

They call themselves “Technomads”.Technomads make use of work arrangements in which they enjoy limited flexibility in working location and hours, such as e-commuting, ework, telework, or telecommuting.
The main aspect is that the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Many work from home,while others utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or myriad other locations.

There are two core aspects of nomadism, namely mobility and individualism.
All nomadic design, architecture and lifestyle are about these very two words.Being inspired by this idea I’ve traveled to many places in Amsterdam from refugee areas to student campings and the downtown.
Here are a few moments:

If you want to read about how nomadic design develops itself in New York, try “New York. Nomadic design.” by Ronald Christ/Dennis Dollens.

Rietveld > lib. cat. no: 772.9 chr 1

Here he sitting with a tasteless pasta with melted cheese and watching MTV’s Real World to fuel himself and prepare mentaly for his journey to pick up a fancy girl in the 100 decibel Paradisco. With a body full of fast energy he install friends from Hennes & Mauritz. Mobile supplies that protect him from outside world and give him a illusion of good confidence. Shells that is massproduced by the third world. Sweat, blood and low payment in third world and the furious western mainstreamer can ones again upgrade his closet.
The former friends has now become parasites that won’t let him free himself from vanity. Here is a view from one of the many consumers of Hennes & Mauritz, but he now starts to wonder how the view is from the designers and producers side to us?
Article by Sarah Raper Larennaudie, TIME Magazine (english)
Article by Pia Gripenberg, Dagen Nyheter (swedish) – [to translate]