Designblog

Everyone finds his or her own way of browsing through this blog. There are so many options to click on, which made me unsure where to start. I kept standing still on the blog, frozen on a single page, instead of moving through it. I wondered where do you start and where do I end? I almost got annoyed by the fact that the massive size of the blog was standing in my way, preventing me from looking at it. So I gave myself the assignment to browse through the blog randomly, within the time limit of ten minutes. After these ten minutes I asked myself: “what caught my eye the most?” What did really get stuck in my mind?

So there I went. I started at the base; clicking on the menu of the website. I kept clicking and clicking, without making a conscious decision about what I was clicking on. My most important goal was to make sure the page just kept reloading and changing. Slowly I begin to realize that I’m not even really reading the blog entries. Of course I don’t; I don’t even like reading… So I noticed that for me the most important thing is the visual appearance of the page. I’m interested in the way the shapes change and move when you click to go to the next page. I’m interested in the way the different colours are spread across the screen.

Time’s up. And I started reflecting on what I saw within these ten minutes. To be honest it was very comforting to just look at the constant changing of the page, which was the consequence of my constant clicking. There where two things that really caught my attention.

The first thing that grabbed me while looking at the blog where the colours.

If you leave out the white and look at the colours that remain, you get a combination of bright yellow, pink and orange/red, together with black.

These are colours that I often use in my own work. Especially the combination of the bright colours with the black is something I really like.

The second thing that grabbed me was that I clicked on a broken link. I clicked ‘subscribe’ in the left menu bar and it took me to a page that said it didn’t exist:

I felt like I found a little secret. This is in itself already nice, but it’s a secret that also pretends not to exist. I clicked a link and it took me to a page, but the page said the page does not exist. Which is of course a bit strange, how can I be on the page, if the page doesn’t exist?

These two things (the colours and the missing page) inspired me to create my own missing page. The one that is used now is funny, but does not really fit the style of the blog. I wanted to create a missing page that matches the blog. I tried to achieve this by using the colours from the blog. The image itself seems random, which it actually is. But this randomness fits in with the great diversity within the content that is present on the blog. The text that I added to the image is a reflection on the paradox that the page is there, but is also missing.

suscribe!

Hello, this http://www.bombsite.com/issues/0/articles/3117h https://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=762376 https://rietveldacademie.nl/designblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/texttextile_kimono.jpg http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/h/B/corkscrew4.gif broken links. 

Link death, link breaking, reference http://www.nest-rotterdam.nl/17-1.html, links https://annevet.home.xs4all.nl/onderzoek/right_to_copy/part-1_2.html nowhere. 

These are https://www.youtube.com/v/i-HVW-0eoe0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1%5C%22%20type=%5C%22application/x-shockwave-flash%5C%22%20allowfullscreen=%5C%22true%5C%22%20width=%5C%22425%5C%22%20height=%5C%22344%5C%22%3E%3C/embed%3E%3C/object%3E different names http://www.dantedifranco.com/DragKingFunRoyalBrands.htm definitions for when hyperlinks https://postuyhironnblqck.com individual websites are moved, taken down http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/h/B/corkscrew4.gif reorganized, resulting http://static.hugi.is/misc/movies/1984macintro.mov making links permanently http://www.designws.com/vormgeverpagina/wimrietveld.htm temporarily unavailable.  

http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2006/09/on-The-new-japa.html process http://images.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://charliebakker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/s7002318.jpg&imgrefurl=http://charliebakker.com/%3Fp%3D270&usg=__OX-IiT3S1ny-VojnR1BVZVj-xuQ=&h=567&w=756&sz=76&hl=nl&start=8&um=1&tbnid=5UnmYQK7eYd5FM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=142&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcharlie%2Bbakker%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dnl%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:oficial%26sa%3DN rot http://www.designws.com/vormgeverpagina/wimrietveld.htm nature occurs after https://annevet.home.xs4all.nl/onderzoek/right_to_copy/part-1_2.htm living organisms die. http://www.nest-Rotterdam.nl/17-1.html http://www.picasaweb.google.com/veriyanta/MyWeddingandHoneymoon#5072923308189265890 decomposition http://static.hugi.is/misc/movies/1984macintro.mov https://rietveldacademie.nl/designblog/?m=200806 https://annevet.home.xs4all.nl/onderzoek/right_to_copy/part-1_2.htm http://images.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://charliebakker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/s7002318.jpg&imgrefurl=http://charliebakker.com/%3Fp%3D270&usg=__OX-IiT3S1ny-VojnR1BVZVj-xuQ=&h=567&w=756&sz=76&hl=nl&start=8&um=1&tbnid=5UnmYQK7eYd5FM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=142&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcharlie%2Bbakker%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dnl%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DN http://www.theyellowdog.net/iam_bkp/ nitrogen http://www.terhitolvanen.com/html/woodland12.html carbon cycle https://slowlab.net/index.html nature.

Links break https://rietveldacademie.nl/designblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/blogspot_forweb.jpg different reasons. Http://www.designws.com/vormgeverpagina/wimrietveld.htm some ways its inevitable https://rietveldacademie.nl/designblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/andreasa_strangeattractors.pdf natural, just like http://www.topstad.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/rietveld_trekt_in nature. Old things die http://www.picasaweb.google.com/veriyanta/MyWeddingandHoneymoon#5072923308189265890 http://http//www.arcspace.com/gehry_new/ things occur.

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Nexus Architecture

The Human Centipede (2)

At the Boijmans Van Beuningen’s The Future of Fashion is Now (Fashion, Activism, Community and Politics), Lucy + Jorge Orta showed their work Nexus Architecture x 25 – Nexus Type Opera.tion. In Nexus Architecture (2001) they zip together the clothes of a group of volunteers. The idea is to depict the loss of individuality in a cluster of social relationships. We are all connected; “Each individual keeps an eye on, and protects, the other. One individual’s life depends on the life of the other. The warmth of one gives warmth to the other. The physical link weaves a social link.” I refer Nexus Architecture to the horror film The Human Centipede by Tom Six. ‘’A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a group of people in order to reassemble them into a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others’ rectums.’’ The victims basically have to wear each other to survive, of course an extreme version of “Each individual keeps an eye on, and protects, the other. One individual’s life depends on the life of the other. The warmth of one gives warmth to the other. The physical link weaves a social link’’.

Nexus (which means link or tie) Architecture is a symbolic work which I find to be a shame as there are examples of functioning clothes which actually do realize bond and equality, for example school uniforms. I wore a school uniform as a child and my experience was that wearing a uniform built team spirit and unified. Also prevented the pressure of having to have status symbols such as branded clothes and thereby made the economical differences less visible in school. However I did feel a lack of freedom to express myself. Other areas where uniforms are used is for example in the military, prison, finance and sports. The idea is that if you are wearing the same uniform you are friends and you help each other. But even if we wear the same fabric and colors we are not always friends and we do not always help each other. To tell how the world works Orta metaphorically connected the uniforms physically (what happens to me will happen to you) which automatically also becomes literal. The work is executed in a bold and direct way which I do admire. The doubts I have about the work not being applied to people in a direct (functioning) way may depend on the way it is presented…

At Boijmans Van Beuningen’s Nexus Architecture was presented as an installation. But during performances, Orta gives the participants commands, setting the whole group in motion, ‘’emphasizing the loss of humanity within the collective’’. Depending on the participants engagement in following the task it can either be or not be a working organism. I believe that Orta is not making a political statement but rather questioning the political ideology of today and the future. Maybe the importance of both communism and capitalism, the group and the individual.

In general I was fascinated by the room of Activism, Community and Politics in the The Future of Fashion is Now exhibition because I respect artists like Orta who try to break down and deal with these large and relevant questions. I have to make 10 designs on the subject Ebola for design class which is a subject far from my control, and to me it is a motivation to see how Orta can manage similar matters. Orta has an optimistic approach in both content and aesthetic. But I can not help but question if the work of Orta maybe is too playful? I feel slightly split about the fact that world issues are ”anesthetized” when artists take them on. As the beauty overshadows the message but at the same time maybe this is necessary when wanting to communicate to the western world. It is a paradox. In any case I think that it is couregous to deal with such serious matters. Later on one can argue if a work is successful or not, if the artist does harm or good. I may be cynical but it is hard for me to understand the motive of why Orta has cared for the complex of global problems such as the ecological environment/global warming, sexism, refuge and immigration policy, the hostility towards the Romani people, the biomedical ethics of organ donation and homelessness as these subjects differ so much from each other. But then again it is arguable that a team of two artists do not share the same mind and therefore bring different issues to the table. Anyway Orta has surely succeeded in raising some of  the spectators awareness or opinion as I have just written a text about this.