"For the occidental tradition, the idea of God is intimately related to the idea of causality. That means that for any chain of facts it is reasonable to postulate an absolute beginning, which can be called 'God'. Nevertheless, if instead of explaining the universe through the principle of causality we decide to refer to the pure idea of a 'form' -as one can speak of 'rhetorical (or mathematical) forms'-, the chain ceases to be factual and becomes structural and iterative, like a grammar, and there is no longer any way to avoid the possibility of denying a 'real' beginning. The entities in the world become figures in a diagram, the ontological 'history' becomes a rhetorical 'texture' (trama), and God (written with upper initial) may always 'be moved' by some other 'god' (with lower initial), and so on, following a never ending texture 'of dust, and time, and dream and agonies'".
(Ivan Almeida, Cristina Parodi, 1996)
Almeida, I. and C. Parodi (1996). "Borges and the Ontology of Tropes." Variaciones Borges(2).
"We have long been familiar with the power of the Chinese to balance colours, but we were not so well acquainted with their power of treating purely ornamental or conventional forms ; and in the chapter in the Grammar of Ornament on Chinese Ornament I was led, from my then knowledge, to express the opinion that the Chinese had not the power of dealing with conventional ornamental form : but it now appears that there has been a period in which a School of Art existed in China of a very important kind. We are led to think that this art must in some way have had a foreign origin; it so nearly resembles in all its principles the art of the Mohammedan races, that we may presume it was derived from them. It would be no difficult task to take a work of ornament of this class, and, by simply varying the colouring and correcting the drawing, convert it into an Indian or Persian composition. There is of course, in all these works, something essentially Chinese in the mode of rendering the idea, but the original idea is evidently Mohammedan. The Moors of the present day decorate their pottery under the same instinct, and follow the same laws as the Chinese obeyed in their beautiful enamelled vases. The Moorish artist takes a rudely–fashioned pot or other object, and by a marvellous instinct divides the surface of the object, 'by spots of colour, into triangles of proportionate area, according to the form and size of the object; these triangles are then crossed by others."
(Owen Jones, 1867)
Owen Jones (1867). "Examples of Chinese Ornament Selected from Objects in the South Kensington Museum and Other Collections: By Owen Jones. One Hundred Plates", S. & T. Gilbert, 4 Copthall Buildings, E.C. Back of the Bank of England.
"Architecture as a material practice is predominately based on an approach to design that is characterised by prioritising the elaboration of form over its subsequent materialisation. Since the Renaissance the increasing division between processes of design and making has led to the age–long development and increasing dependence on representational tools intended for explicit, scalar geometric descriptions that at the same time serve as instructions for the translation from drawing to building. Inevitably, and with few exceptions, even in today's digital practice architects embrace design methods that epitomize the hierarchical separation of form definition and materialisation.
The research of the Institute for Computational Design explores an alternative, morphogenetic approach to design that unfolds morphological complexity and performative capacity from material constituents without differentiating between formation and materialisation processes. This requires an understanding of form, material, structure and environment not as separate aspects, but rather as complex interrelations that are embedded in and explored through integral computational processes.
The notion of material system constitutes one central aspect of this research. Material system does not only refer to the material constituents of a building alone, but rather describes, in a system–theoretical sense, the complex reciprocity between materiality, form, structure and space, the related processes of production and assembly, and the multitude of performative effects that emanate from the interaction with environmental influences and forces. This conceptualization of material systems enables the utilization of computational design processes. The ability of computation to simultaneously do both, stochastically derive and systemically process complex datasets within a defined or evolving constraint space, can be utilized to explore a material system's performative capacity within its materially determined limits. Furthermore, continuously informing the form generation with different modes of computational analysis enables a direct link between the ontogeny, the history of structural changes of an individual, and its interaction with external forces and energy respectively, that is its ecological embedding. This enables to conceive of material systems as the synergetic outcome of calibrating and balancing multiple influencing variables and divergent design criteria, which always already include the interaction with the system–external environment. The resultant environmental modulations can now be understood as highly specific patterns in direct relation to the material interventions from which they originate.
The design of space, structure and climate can be synthesized in one integral design process."
(Achim Menges, Achimmenges.net)
"Figuration itself is not inconsistent with the Modernist tradition since, even the most abstract of Modernist work makes references to things outside itself, yet, of all the features in Tomkins' work, the distinctive way in which he uses figuration seems to set it apart from the rest. Giacometti–like (although informed by Picasso and Matisse) troupes of figures edge around the paintings always playing some formal role but never solely in virtue of their form, scale, colour or location. Typically they point, both literally and figuratively, to formal elements in the Works, including, curiously enough, each other – but they also fly on trapezes, hold safety nets, dance and strike poses. None of the figures, however, are merely incidental to formal issues and although interdependent with them they have, as well, a life of their own. This invites interpretation, at least to the extent that we find ourselves reflecting on how and why the figures appear to us as they do – like mute vandevillians whose master, Tomkins, having rendered them onto some flattened proscenium, orchestrates their participation in a frozen theatrical tragicomic tableau. However, we cannot know the purpose of such entertainments beyond their capacity to intrigue and amuse us."
(Ted Bracey, 1987)
2) Ted Bracey (1987). Robert McDougall Art Gallery [now Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu].
"The concept of Universal Design goes beyond the mere provision of special features for various segments of the population. Instead it emphasises a creative approach that is more inclusive, one that asks at the outset of the design process how a product, graphic communication, building, or public space can be made both aesthetically pleasing and functional for the greatest number of users. Designs resulting from this approach serve a wider array of people including individuals with temporary or permanent disabilities, parents with small children, and everyone whose abilities change with age.'"
(Jane Alexander)
Jane Alexander, Strategies for teaching universal design, taken from Hubert Froyen, Crisp &Clear, Number 4, European Institute of Design and Disability, 2000.
"As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, DIETER RAMS (1932–) emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long–lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Copyright Dieter Rams, amended March 2003 and October 2009
These ten principles defined Dieter Rams' approach to 'good design'. Each of the hundreds of products he developed during forty years with Braun, was unerringly elegant and supremely versatile. Units were made in modular sizes to be stacked vertically or horizontally. Buttons, switches and dials were reduced to a minimum and arranged in an orderly manner. Rams even devised a system of colour coding for Braun's products, which were made in white and grey. The only splash of colour was the switches and dials.
Rams' objective was to design useful products which would be easy to operate. Yet he achieved much more by dint of the formal elegance and technical virtuosity of his work. Rams' designs always looked effortless with an exquisite simplicity borne from rigorous tests and experiments with new materials and an obsessive attention to detail to ensure that each piece appeared flawlessly coherent. Dieter Rams remains an enduring inspiration for younger designers, notably Jonathan Ive and Jasper Morrison, who have acknowledged his influence in their work at Apple and Rowenta respectively."
(Design Museum, UK)
"It lacks the rock chick cool of a Balmain blazer and the sexiness of Charlotte Olympia heels, but this $14.99 blanket with armholes could be the surprise fashion hit of the recession. The Snuggie looks like a combination of a fleece hospital gown (it's backless!) and Jedi robe, but since its debut in October more than 4m have been sold.
Sales surged after the first airings of a two–minute infomercial featuring a woman driven to despair by the difficulties of wearing a blanket. She couldn't answer the phone, play backgammon or eat popcorn without exposing her arms to cold air."
(Emily Rotberg, The Guardian, 16 February 2009)
"The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers 'Galerie der Gegenwart'.
Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself."
(Daniel Rossa)
Production: urbanscreen.com; Art Direction: Daniel Rossa – rossarossa.de; Technical Director: Thorsten Bauer; 3D Operator: David Starmann shineundsein.de; Sound Design : Jonas Wiese; Realized with mxwendler.net mediaserver
"This paper takes the concept of the 'Gameplay Gestalt' as advanced by Craig Lindley[7] as a basis for a fresh look at how games are read and designed. Disagreeing with Lindley's assertion of gameplay over narrative, it puts forward a model of the game as a construct of authored gestalt interplay, and concentrates on the links between the physical process of playing the game and the interpretative process of 'reading' it. A wide variety of games are put forward as examples, and some analyses of major 'moments' in classic games are deconstructed. The concept of the 'sublime' as applicable to games is examined as is the use of gameplay and narrative to generate 'illusory agency', which can make a game more than the sum of its parts."
(Brown Douglas, DiGRA Digital Library)
Lindley, Craig, Narrative, Game Play, and Alternative Time Structures for Virtual Environments, Springer, 2004
"Four carparks in Madrid are interrupted with a geometric primitive. Modeling, compositing, rendering and editing performed with Blender for Linux."
(Julian Oliver)
"Radiohead just released a new video for its song 'House of Cards' from the album 'In Rainbows'.
No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."
(Google)
[In the search for new ways of 'telling the same story' Radiohead have managed to provide the necessary spectacle through their redeployment of surveying technology in their 'House of Cards' music video.]
Hazel White's "work investigates how interactive jewellery can be integrated into our lives. Whilst most studies into wearable technology have focussed on how the technology can be miniaturised, the Charmed project looks into what exactly it is that users want from this technology – from storytelling to transportation devices to whatever else they may think of – and how it can be incorporated into users' everyday wardrobes in a way that allows an emotional involvement of the sort we might associate with 'ordinary' jewellery.
In order to address the question, Hazel has developed a series of 'charm' jewellery incorporating bracelets, necklaces, pins, or even keyrings. The charms were then given to a variety of different participants – from technophobes to technophiles, and from jewellery wearers to non–wearers – along with a pack that allowed them to log their responses. The participants themselves were allowed to choose the type of jewellery they received and how it would be worn, leading to a greater engagement with the pack and the project.
Through interviews with the applicants, Hazel was able to demonstrate that a user centred approach – working closely with the people who would wear the jewellery and responding and adapting according to their observations, values and needs – can lead to suggestions for interactive jewellery which can be experienced on multiple levels: from cultural, social and personal resonances to the narrative carried by the object and the physical interaction with the jewellery."
(AHRC, UK)
"Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert asked architects, city planners, and transportation engineers, 'what would you do if you didn't have to worry about budgets, beauracracy, politics, or physics?' Ideas from these conversations were then merged, developed, and perhaps mildly exaggerated by Steve and Packard to create a series of 6 posters for the San Francisco Arts Commission's Art on Market Street Program"
(Steven Lambert, November 2007)
"An U–Bahn–Knotenpunkten überkreuzen, zerren, stauen sich die Ströme des öffentlichen Verkehrs. Rudolf Herz 'stilisiert' diese ineinander fließenden Transportwege zu einem abstrakten Muster, einem sogenannten 'anamorphotischen' – das heißt verzerrt angelegten – Labyrinth. Bereits Hans Holbein d. J. hat die Anamorphose als Stilmittel eingesetzt: Auf seinem berühmten Londoner Gemälde der "Gesandten" (1533) gibt sich ein verzerrt reflektierter Totenkopf nur aus einer einzigen Perspektive zu erkennen. Wenn Rudolf Herz nun die weitgehend vergessene Idee der künstlerischen Anamorphose in einen U–Bahnhof des 21. Jahrhundert übersetzt, dann bedient er sich hierzu der künstlerischen Mittel des Minimalismus. Zwei diametral entgegen gesetzte Ansichten seiner schwarzweißen Streifenwand sind möglich: Was sich frontal als rhythmische, nur scheinbar unlogische Anordnung von übereinander gestaffelten Balken in Schwarz und Weiß herauskristallisiert, verschmilzt von einer seitlichen Perspektive aus zum Labyrinth. Erst der exzentrische Blick von den Zugängen aus fügt die Balken zu einem erkennbaren Motiv. Je weiter sich die Fluchtlinien vom Betrachter entfernen, um so kleinteiliger zieht sich das Ornament des Labyrinths zusammen. Der Art–Déco–Eleganz des Labyrinths antwortet auf der gegenüberliegenden Wand eine Lamellenfläche in dezent mattem Orange–Rot. An einem Ort der Ortlosigkeit wie der U–Bahn wird der Blick somit in ein spannendes Vexierspiel verstrickt."
(Birgit Sonna)
"Warburg always moved the books and re–classified them according to his personal assumptions and spontaneous ideas, for the significance of every book depended on its context within the library, its neighbourhood on the shelf. In this respect, the entire library was moving most of the time during its setting up in Hamburg."
(Mathias Bruhn)
[Warburg's impulses follow the logic of the hypertext – where multiple intersecting sequences are able to reside.]
"in 2001, Peter Wollen wrote a rather impressionistic piece on Situationism for the New Left Review, in which he discussed the Danish artist Asger Jorn and his 1948 essay, 'What is Ornament?'. Jorn, a founding Situationist and also an appallingly sloppy painter, had a quaint view of art:
For Jorn, the pairing of European versus oriental ran together with other pairings, such as classical versus spontaneous, idealist versus materialist, Apollonian versus Dionysiac, with Jorn supporting the second term throughout–oriental, materialist, spontaneous, Dionysiac, and so on.
Further, for Jorn:
the nature of art is not to imitate the external forms of nature (naturalism) but to create natural art. Natural sculpture which is true to its material will be identical to nature's forms without seeking to imitate.
Jorn thus compares a minaret to a horsetail, and a totem–pole to a chestnut branch; the non–Western forms are seen as more organic, more rooted in the natural world."
(Conrad H. Roth)
[A critique of a romantic and 'essentialist' view of art and design.]
"In Free Radicals Len Lye put aside his interest in colour and concentrated on a stark, black and white use of the 'direct' method, by scratching on black leader. He has described the film as 'white ziggle–zag–splutter scratches ... in quite doodling fashion.' The film's title is a reference to modern physics –– 'free radicals' are particles of energy –– but the visual style is still reminiscent of tribal art."
(re:voir vidéo distribution)
"by 'liquid' I mean involving the total but rigorous variability and the idea that form can be driven by both data and presence, both when we are immersed in information and when information is everted on to the physical world. by 'algorithmic' I mean both created by the algorithms and subject to a self–imposed principle of minimal manual intervention. Transarchitectures. The term transArchitectures stems from a discussion between architects and designers. Influenced by their experience with computer technology during the design process they are developing new concepts of time, space, shape, structure, construction, etc. It is about simultaneously practising architecture and media, combining design and machine, and about the shift from 'form and space' to 'process and field'."
(Marcos Novak)
Fig.1 Marcos Novak, screenshot, 4 views of a 4–dimensional transarchitectural
shape (2001).