Simple Is As Simple Does

Today's designboom daily email highlighted a lamp that caused me some irritation. The lamp was said to focus on simplicity and honesty in design.  

I agree with the observation of honesty. Its construction is transparent. It is straightforward, direct.

Simply said, it did focus on simplicity. It consists of three elements: a clothes pin, a hanging bare bulb and a lamp shade. But I like my simplicity to be a little neater, a little cleaner, a little subtler, a little quieter. By using an object (the clothes pin) for an unintended purpose (as a base for a bulb AND to clip the shade), this lamp is speaking rather loudly and it is saying: "Look at me, aren't I clever? Bet you wouldn't have thought to do this." And so on. It is quite proud of itself. It is anything but simple.

Commenter Charles wrote: " I made the very same lamp 40 years ago as a student because i had no money to buy a proper lamp. Mine used a thin plastic sheet and a heavy spring clamp like you see in a woodworking shop. I also made a light table just as simply and never considered these to be good design, just acts of desperation in poverty."

He continued: "The lamp is in fact not great design."

Commenter J Jones wrote: "What constitutes great design, if not simplicity and novelty in the use of every-day materials? It doesn't depend on "it's been done before;" it depends on its current attractiveness and the appreciation it generates."


Charles is right. Simplicity and honestly in design is obviously a worthy goal but if we are going to praise something and hold it above other things, we need better standards than just those two criteria.

J Jones is wrong. If simplicity and novelty constitutes great design then my use of used chewing gum as a rest for chopsticks during dinner would be a good idea. And oh so clever.

Is Anybody Out There?

I see that my last post was in July of 2011. That was just before my deep descent into thesis land started. After all the flailing, near downing, and gasping for air, I have finally surfaced with my MFA in Design Criticism from the School of Visual Arts firmly clutched in my grubby little fingers. It doesn't mean I get to be snarky about ugly things and gush over cool things. It means I can analyze and evaluate design through a lens that is social, cultural, and historic. It means I can peel back layers and look at the implications of the things we make, from single objects to embedded cultural beliefs. I have learned to look harder. I have a new set of tools to use now. Of course, I will still go after ugly things but with better reason. Hee!

The Bowery Hustle (reprint)

Here is a post I did for Metropolis magazine.

Living as Form

From e-Flux (DO IT)


Living as Form
September 24–October 16, from 12–8 PM Thursday-Sunday

Historic Essex Street Market, southeast corner of Essex Street and Delancey Street (entrance on Delancey), NYC

Creative Time Summit 3: Living as Form
September 23
NYU Skirball Center, 566 Laguardia Place, NYC

www.creativetime.org/livingasform
www.creativetime/summit

Living as Form
September 24–October 16, 2011

Over 100 Artists and Projects, 25 Curators, and 9 New Commissions Highlighting 20 Years of Socially Engaged Art

Plus, the Third Annual Creative Time Summit to Take Place September 23

This fall, Creative Time will present Living as Form, an unprecedented, international exhibition exploring over twenty years of socially engaged cultural works that blur the forms of art and everyday life, emphasizing participation, dialogue, and community engagement. "Increasingly, we find socially engaged projects that exceed traditional categories of art by utilizing sociality, pedagogy, community outreach, architecture, publishing, and numerous other methodologies to engage the peculiar spectacle-driven thing we know as civic life. Living as Form is an attempt to take the temperature at this particular historic moment to encourage profound forms of social-based action that can alter the course of history," states Nato Thompson who conceived of the exhibition with the advice and assistance of twenty-five curatorial advisors, including Caron Atlas, Negar Azimi, Ron Bechet, Claire Bishop, Brett Bloom, Rashida Bumbray, Carolina Caycedo, Ana Paula Cohen, Common Room, Teddy Cruz, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, Hou Hanru, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind, Chus Martínez, Sina Najafi, Marion von Osten, Ted Purves, Raqs Media Collective, Gregory Sholette, Superflex, Christine Tohme, and Sue Bell Yank. Living as Form will document over 100 artists' projects in a large-scale survey show at the historic Essex Street Market building, commission nine new projects, and provide an online database of nearly 400 projects addressing this complex field of cultural production. Living as Form will be open September 24–October 16, from 12–8 PM Thursday-Sunday.

The show's opening weekend will feature participatory events and tours with artists featured in the show including nine commissioned projects located in dedicated spaces inside the Essex Street Market and the surrounding neighborhood. Featured artists include Bik Van der Pol, Carolina Caycedo, MadeIn Company presented by the Long March Project, Megawords, OurGoods, Surasi Kusolwong, Superflex, Temporary Services, and Time/Bank (Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle). Ranging from performances to public interventions and installations, the projects will explore topics including public shrines and ceremonies, mind/body consciousness, the dynamics of power, vertical development and air rights, and alternative economies. For more information and an updated schedule of events, visit creativetime.org/livingasform.

Audiences are invited to engage with some of the artists behind projects in the Living as Form exhibition—as well as critics, writers, and curators—at the third annual Creative Time Summit: Living as Form, on September 23, at NYU Skirball Center. The conference brings together an evolving community concerned with the political implications of socially engaged art to discuss how their work addresses pressing issues affecting our world. Expected presenters include: Alternate ROOTS, Appalshop, Common Room, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Decolonizing Architecture, Jeremy Deller, Darren O'Donnell, Laura Flanders, Theaster Gates, Hou Hanru, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Shannon Jackson, Long March Project, Alan W. Moore, My Barbarian, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)/IRWIN, Ted Purves, Gerald Raunig, Navin Rawanchaikul, Katerina Šedá, Chemi Rosado Seijo, Andreas Siekmann, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ultra-red, United Indian Health Services, Urban Bush Women, Dan S. Wang, WochenKlausur, and Women on Waves.

Tickets to the Creative Time Summit are available at web.ovationtix.com. Living as Form is free and open to the public.

ABOUT CREATIVE TIME
Since 1974, Creative Time has presented the most innovative art in the public realm. The New York-based nonprofit has worked with over 2,000 artists to produce more than 335 groundbreaking public art projects that have ignited the public's imagination, explored ideas that shape society, and engaged millions of people around the globe.

SUPPORT
Lead project support for Living as Form and the Creative Time Summit is provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Danish Consulate, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mondriaan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.

Not a design related post

UNITED HEALTHCARE/OXFORD DOES NOT COVER MAMMOGRAMS. "The services you received are not covered by Oxford."

I hate insurance companies. They are pure pure evil. So people who cannot afford to pay for expensive procedures will begin to opt out of care. I will be one.

Maybe it is a design related issue. Designed either to make Obama pay for trying to regulate or to kill those without the money to pay for these services.

My talented friends...

Another amazing book cover from my friend, Katya Mezhibovskaya...

Curation. And junk like that.

I love the verb to curate. It implies something done carefully, lovingly and with great consideration. Curation is something done by museum experts, shop owners and anyone who decorates his or her home. The act suggests choices of thoughtful inclusion and exclusion.

So I am quite irked when the word curation is used cavalierly. When the writer thinks that by simply using the word, she has implied that care has been taken in the selection of objects. When I see that a grotesque hodge-podge of items offered in a shopping venue has been “curated”, well, I am ready to jump through my computer screen and down the throat of whoever wrote that. (possibly now might be the time when I should switch to de-caf)

Perhaps an example: a day or so ago, the online shopping site, Gilt Groupe, offered “a line of décor in that jetset style”, which had been curated by the “famous designer Matthew Patrick Smythe”.
























Now I am not within the economic demographic to know who Mr. Smythe is and I am sure he is a wonderful interior designer (for some people. the room photos shown on the site looked a little too precious and insincere; i.e. books as objects). I wonder about the people who are buying this stuff online. Do they really like these things? Do these things fit in with what is already in the home? Are the items being bought simply because Mr. Smythe put them up for sale? Are you really going to put this on your mantle?




All of these items are random, like someone’s front yard junk sale. Curated? Hardly.



(readers, i am sure you are just as shocked that the high prices are not accompanied by any historic documentation as i am)