TED Talks: Jonathon Harris

I've been watching the TED Talks videos, a series of fascinating speeches by a variety of professionals in the areas of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The TED Talks have been going on since the early 1980s, but now they're available to everyone on the web. I like what their website says:

"Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole."

Jonathon Harris' lecture on his work was particularly interesting: check out his projects, which include WE FEEL FINE and UNIVERSE.

His graphic sense is so engaging, and the recurring themes he points out - feelings of love, special moments among family and friends, milestones in one's life - help to connect the sometimes isolated world of blogs and filesharing sites.

Planet Earth: Birds of Paradise

It's funny - I know there is life beyond my little hovel, but it takes something like a TV show to really make me stop and think about my life in relation to the rest of the world. What the hell am I doing here?

There is something magical about the Planet Earth series, something that gives me an overwhelming feeling of joy - just to see that these rare creatures exist.

Band Snobbery

I just read this post from the onion's AV blog, and I thought it was pretty funny. I'm not a total hater, but I do use "sucky band shorthand" among friends.

Wesley Willis

(via the Art of Wesley Willis website)

The other night I went out to ATA to see a film called "Wesley Willis's Joy Rides." Wesley may be better known for his music (and his claims of rock stardom), but what I really liked was hearing more about his drawings.

Wesley was schizophrenic, but in the film his friends talked about how he wasn't a victim to his disability. He took all that he could out of life, and his interactions with people changed them forever. Someone in the film likened him to a mast, or a person who is so intoxicated with God that he may appear insane. In the film, there were shots of Wesley on the bus and at Kinko's, shouting at the voice in his head. His friends knew he wouldn't hurt anyone, but outsiders shied away, ducked their heads down, and backed up. It made me wonder about all of the people I see on the street: are we in the presence of masts?

Wesley knew what he wanted: he wanted to be an artist and a rock n roll star. The thing is, by introducing himself as those things, he eventually became them. I sometimes roll my eyes at people who tell me they're great artists, but I'm starting to think they might just be following Wesley's lead. Where's the line between arrogance and force of will?

Kenichi Okada and Chris Woebken

The Royal College of Art recently showed work in progress, and this was by far my favorite. A collaboration between Kenichi Okada and Chris Woebken, these toys are collectively called "Animal Superpowers." I think they're so sweet and innocent - the type of things grown-ups want to play with too.

Here is the rundown from Kenichi's website:

Experimental series of toys as sensory enhancements for kids to experience animal superpowers. Those 5 devices are special tools allowing kids to feel how like an animal or experience special extra qualities how they perceive the environment.

• Bird - sense of direction with a head mounted solenoid compass
• Ant - feeling like an ant seeing 50x through microscope antennas on your hands
• Giraffe - a child to adult concerter changing your voice & perspective
• Elephant - shoes picking up transmitting vibrations from fellows
• Electric Eel - enhanced spatial vision through head mounted Theremin

Rather than creating a series of toys and super-heros with weapons, we are interested in experimenting with the qualities of changing the perception as well as sensory enhancements changing your perspective or creating empathy with animals.

We believe curiosity and exploration is one of the major desires of children and our goal is not just to create a series of devices for exploration and curiosity that might be just fun for one afternoon. Much more we are interested in providing tools seeing the world through a different lens and to learn more about ourselves. We believe those devices could possibly create empathy with animals, experiencing what they experience as well as providing an interface to communicate with them.

This is just a start of the experiment and we believe it is possible to create also tools for play with deeper layers, learning levels and more layered interactivity that could even become an extension of your body rather than just an traditional play-object.

Stuart Haygarth

Optical Chandelier (2007?)

Disposable Chandelier (2005)

Tide Chandelier, 2004 (detail)

I had seen Stuart Haygarth's work before, but this new piece from eyeglasses prompted me to check out his website. I like the detail shots on all of the pieces - you really get to focus on the colors and textures. Look at all that junk! I wish I had higher ceilings.

Hyggelig Places: The Parkway Theater

Last night Leah and Joe took me out to the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland to see Sweeney Todd. What a great place! They serve real food (pizza, salad, sandwiches), as well as beer and wine. You sit on couches or at the bar-like area in back, and they bring dinner out to you as you wait for the movie to start. I highly recommend visiting it - the interior, shown above, reminds you that you are someplace special. You are out for the evening! Maybe the denim slipcovers on the couches aren't so glamorous, but it's still way better than the multiplex.

There's one in El Cerrito too, if you're closer to that side of town.

Olafur Eliasson

Room For One Colour, 1997 (seen here in the Malmo Konsthall, 2005)

I went to the opening for Olafur Eliasson's show at the SF MoMA, but it was really crowded and we were shuffled out the door before I got to see the whole show. This week, a friend and I went back to take it all in again. This time around I got to see more, feel more, think more. I especially like "Room For One Colour," which turns all objects under the fluorescent yellow lights into black and white. It's one of those pieces that could be right at home in a science museum. I desperately want some of these light bulbs.

We also saw the Douglas Gordon exhibit, sweetly titled, "Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work From About 1992 Until Now." A darkened room, dozens of TVs scattered around the perimeter, and a clump of people in the middle, just watching. It took a while to look at everything - you're drawn to movement on screens near you, but you also want to find out what happens on this tense, slow-moving piece. I am not always patient with video art, but Gordon's work was really engaging.

Simple Design: Traps

I saw this article on Roger Arquer's simple and effective mousetraps. Not only are they easy to construct with a few household objects, but they are also humane. If you're the kind of person who escorts spiders out on magazines, you might give these traps a try. I am currently in a mouse-free environment...but I really like this idea.

Art is War

So my friends started a website called Artiswar - it's a user-based site for the discussion of design. As they (and I) see it, design has come to mean something sleek and commercial...but that's only a part of what it can be. They are hoping to engage people in a conversation about design's diverse impact. Art criticism is welcome too, as we all feel the line between design and art is best when left blurry. Come on over to the website and join up. Or just click around on their lovely layout.

Bo Young Choi

My friend Bo came over today and showed me some of her recent work, including this awesome piece on her website. She told me about the process of making it - how she waited around for another grad student to help her with the photography, and then how she decided to do it on her own with the camera's timer. She said a crowd of people came to watch, and they asked her questions and took their own photos. She even brought them down to her campus studio to see her other work. In a way, her whole piece changed. It became more than the still photographs of her in midair...it was also a nice hyggelig moment, a connection with the outside world. Grad studies can get tricky - you get all tied up in your work, in your studio space, and sometimes you need an afternoon of jumping around to make you remember what lies outside.

Baggage Claim

Yes, I'll take them all.

Valextra.

My sister is in town for a few weeks, and she's on the hunt for luggage. I started snooping around on the internet for timeless, durable pieces, but was quickly discouraged. I guess I like the trunks in the Samsonite Black collection, but on the whole, the market is geared towards someone else. I like the Valextra brand, but it's a little (okay, waaaaay) out of my price range. The briefcase above brings out this weird, covetous side of me...possibly similar to people who dream of fancy cars or fur coats. But dude - it's a briefcase. What's my problem?

Maybe the problem is my frustration with a market that has veered away from aesthetics in favor of perceived durability. I understand that we travel more frequently and that there is more machine assistance in the airports, but I feel like there must be a more handsome solution to our changing needs...ideally, one that looks more like a clever accessory than an oversized piece of coal with zippers.

Look at these handsome leather cases! I got this photo from the Arts and Crafts home, which features a nice history of the suitcase.

I know, I know - they don't have wheels...but I'm in the process of making a prototype solution. It may end up looking like those old-time rollerskates that you strap onto shoes, though hopefully more tasteful.

And yeah, I 'm aware they smell like mothballs inside. It's a problem. But look at the way the leather ages! It may get a little scuffed over time, but that can all be teased out with a little shoe polish.

So industrial designers and students, I beg you: reinvent the handsome travel case. Make it durable but simple, because in the end, it's just a box with wheels. It shouldn't cost a grand.

Blog of Note: things to look at

Things to Look At is one of my favorite blogs. I'm always excited to see what they post - the images they find are so inspirational. While I'm not sure what this inspires me to do, I am going to keep looking at it in the hope of figuring it out.

Gunvor Olin

I scanned these images of Gunvor Olin's work from an old design annual at the library. I looked Gunvor up online, but found a lot of heavy 1970s clayware instead of these charming animal dishes. Kind of disappointing. They seem like characters from a storybook - some forest animals searching for a lost friend, or a missing berry pie. I'm fairly sure the pig is a police chief and the fox plays the wry P.I.

Visual Arts Data Service

(images courtesy of the Material Collection, Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles at Goldsmiths College, University of London)

I can't believe I just stumbled upon this site! I'm really excited about finding the Visual Arts Data Service - it's a website with links to some very nice online image collections, mostly from university and museum collections. I like the site because you can get close-up shots of historical textiles, and the overall documentation for textiles is very detailed.

So if you don't see me for a couple of weeks, I'm probably just at home, glued to the computer.