Tibor Kalman states, "Creative people are now working for the bottom line."
It was interesting comment that Sarah mentioned about the artists who worked for the commision of the upper class people during the Renaissance, and compare them with designers today. It's getting harder to express your own design concepts under all of those "restrictions" as a designer and I think we are becoming VERY generous about those facts as we start to get in the field. As the thinking designers, we agree with Kalman's view of losing independence of our voice and it reflects in the culture we are living in. The culture with ideas and tastes that seem like they control the trends of design. It will be the designer's responsibility to choose whether to gether with other designers and forget about his or her own ideas, or to keep the thoughts that can change the world and act upon it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Monday, March 28, 2005
Saturday, March 26, 2005
The Mixing of Type Etiquette
Seen in this link is an article by non other than Martin Majoor.
If yall recall, martin Majoor is teh man who designed Scala and Scala Sans.
I have never seen any wriitng from him until recently, but having mulled through halff off it i can see he has a lot to say specifically about type design.
In the article he goes into deep exploration about how one shoudl properly mix sans and serifs, and how he practices these ethical codes in his own design of type.
I post it on here because I feel it relevant to what we talk about relating to design ethic aesthetics, and Martin Majoor jujst so happens to be a bad ass.
Bon Apetite!
My Type Philosophy:by Martin Majoor
If yall recall, martin Majoor is teh man who designed Scala and Scala Sans.
I have never seen any wriitng from him until recently, but having mulled through halff off it i can see he has a lot to say specifically about type design.
In the article he goes into deep exploration about how one shoudl properly mix sans and serifs, and how he practices these ethical codes in his own design of type.
I post it on here because I feel it relevant to what we talk about relating to design ethic aesthetics, and Martin Majoor jujst so happens to be a bad ass.
Bon Apetite!
My Type Philosophy:by Martin Majoor
Thursday, March 24, 2005
vow of chastity
(from the DOGMA95 website)
DOGME95 is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.
DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.
DOGME 95 is a rescue action!
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false!
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!
Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!
DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticised to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded.
The “supreme” task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the “100 years” have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated? ... By the individual artist’s free choice of trickery?
Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters’ inner lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not “high art”. As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise.
The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love.
To DOGME 95 the movie is not illusion!
Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.
DOGME 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
below is the DOGME95 Manifesto referred to in this friday's reading. i remember seeing "The Celebration" when
"I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95:
1.
Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2.
The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3.
The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4.
The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5.
Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6.
The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7.
Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8.
Genre movies are not acceptable.
9.
The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10.
The director must not be credited.
Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY."
Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995
DOGME95 is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.
DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.
DOGME 95 is a rescue action!
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false!
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!
Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!
DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticised to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded.
The “supreme” task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the “100 years” have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated? ... By the individual artist’s free choice of trickery?
Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters’ inner lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not “high art”. As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise.
The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love.
To DOGME 95 the movie is not illusion!
Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.
DOGME 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
below is the DOGME95 Manifesto referred to in this friday's reading. i remember seeing "The Celebration" when
"I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95:
1.
Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2.
The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3.
The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4.
The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5.
Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6.
The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7.
Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8.
Genre movies are not acceptable.
9.
The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10.
The director must not be credited.
Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY."
Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Pre-fabricated Design
Hey again yall
Here is something to look at. The link I provide here is the main website for an architecture firm Located in New York. The reason I post it on the blog is because I feel what they do as architects somewhat relates to what we talk about in Visual Advocacy.
All their projects utilized prefabricated materials in new and innovative ways that no one else has ever thought of doing in this conext. I think it is an inventive way to reuse old industrial materials to a design advantage.
Check them out. Their work in awesome in my opinion.
http://www.lot-ek.com
(copy and paste the link in a new windo to view)
Here is something to look at. The link I provide here is the main website for an architecture firm Located in New York. The reason I post it on the blog is because I feel what they do as architects somewhat relates to what we talk about in Visual Advocacy.
All their projects utilized prefabricated materials in new and innovative ways that no one else has ever thought of doing in this conext. I think it is an inventive way to reuse old industrial materials to a design advantage.
Check them out. Their work in awesome in my opinion.
http://www.lot-ek.com
(copy and paste the link in a new windo to view)
Rite vs. Right
hey yall, I posted this blog a while bacck, but my account was messed up. So I am reposting it. The blog is a little old and the event I am talking about is long past, but I feel what I had to say is still relevant.
Bon Apetite!
What is the purpose of Ash Wednesday? History will give us the understanding that it is to commemorate repentance and humility and the sorrow for sins committed. It is a ritual that began around 590 BCE and has become a ceremony that is celebrated on an annual basis. There is a lot more to it, and if you are interested feel free to look at this link:
http://www.theholidayspot.com/ash_wednesday/origin.htm
My problem with this ritual of protestant decent is that most people are oblivious to why they actually partake in this ceremony in the first place. This problem goes farther than just Ash Wednesday and Lent, it includes any other holiday celebrations like; Valentines day, where people buy vast amounts of candy to express their shallow love to another individual; or Easter where the focus is more centered around a giant six foot bunny that sneaks into your house every March and hides hard boiled eggs in random places; or, god forbid, Christmas-the worst mass celebrated and bastardized holiday of them all. I won't even open this can of worms right now…
Getting back to my original point, I feel Ash Wednesday has lost its actual importance in society and has merely become a required ritual by those of that affiliated faith partake in. Essentially, what I am saying is that most people go to the Ash Wednesday ceremony, have some ashes of burned bamboo placed on their head in the form of a cross, then go about their day with no other connection to the ceremony except for the burnt remains inscribed on their forehead. My opinion of religion is that you have to buy the whole cow; you can't just nibble off small portions of your liking through the year as you please or else the meat will rot. I myself was raised Catholic, and after coming to my own realizations and development of my own ethos, I am no longer a practicing Catholic-so I no longer attend the ceremonies I did before. I have thought about going to Ash Wednesday in the recent years that have passed, but I realized that I would be a complete hypocrite if I did. Hypocrisy is most apparent in the modern day conception of religion, and in fact it has been apparent since its formation. What I am ranting on about is that people need to realize why they take part in these rituals, instead of doing it because they are socially and morally obligated. Individuals do not need to be the sheep of a religious heard. Think for yourself damit!
Now of course I know that there are people out there who celebrate and partake in this ritual because their faith/ethos is structured around this moral set of standards and the truly believe that what they are doing is right. Great, good for them. These people are not the individuals I am talking about. They have every right to believe what they want. I have full respect for individual beliefs as long as people practice what they preach and are not just going along with what is socially correct for the masses.
This may be one designer's opinions and I may be talking out of my ass, but I feel that people need to think for themselves and decide on their own if what society places as the norm is right for them. Break the mold that binds you! Be an independent speaker and thinker. If you don't know why, or care why, you put ashes on your forehead on the second Wednesday in February then don't do it-It is that simple! The same can be said for any other religious holiday.
I honestly could talk on this matter until I am blue in the face, but it is nearing two o'clock and I have class at 2:30.
Someone respond to this. Tell me if I am full of it or not.
Bon Apetite!
What is the purpose of Ash Wednesday? History will give us the understanding that it is to commemorate repentance and humility and the sorrow for sins committed. It is a ritual that began around 590 BCE and has become a ceremony that is celebrated on an annual basis. There is a lot more to it, and if you are interested feel free to look at this link:
http://www.theholidayspot.com/ash_wednesday/origin.htm
My problem with this ritual of protestant decent is that most people are oblivious to why they actually partake in this ceremony in the first place. This problem goes farther than just Ash Wednesday and Lent, it includes any other holiday celebrations like; Valentines day, where people buy vast amounts of candy to express their shallow love to another individual; or Easter where the focus is more centered around a giant six foot bunny that sneaks into your house every March and hides hard boiled eggs in random places; or, god forbid, Christmas-the worst mass celebrated and bastardized holiday of them all. I won't even open this can of worms right now…
Getting back to my original point, I feel Ash Wednesday has lost its actual importance in society and has merely become a required ritual by those of that affiliated faith partake in. Essentially, what I am saying is that most people go to the Ash Wednesday ceremony, have some ashes of burned bamboo placed on their head in the form of a cross, then go about their day with no other connection to the ceremony except for the burnt remains inscribed on their forehead. My opinion of religion is that you have to buy the whole cow; you can't just nibble off small portions of your liking through the year as you please or else the meat will rot. I myself was raised Catholic, and after coming to my own realizations and development of my own ethos, I am no longer a practicing Catholic-so I no longer attend the ceremonies I did before. I have thought about going to Ash Wednesday in the recent years that have passed, but I realized that I would be a complete hypocrite if I did. Hypocrisy is most apparent in the modern day conception of religion, and in fact it has been apparent since its formation. What I am ranting on about is that people need to realize why they take part in these rituals, instead of doing it because they are socially and morally obligated. Individuals do not need to be the sheep of a religious heard. Think for yourself damit!
Now of course I know that there are people out there who celebrate and partake in this ritual because their faith/ethos is structured around this moral set of standards and the truly believe that what they are doing is right. Great, good for them. These people are not the individuals I am talking about. They have every right to believe what they want. I have full respect for individual beliefs as long as people practice what they preach and are not just going along with what is socially correct for the masses.
This may be one designer's opinions and I may be talking out of my ass, but I feel that people need to think for themselves and decide on their own if what society places as the norm is right for them. Break the mold that binds you! Be an independent speaker and thinker. If you don't know why, or care why, you put ashes on your forehead on the second Wednesday in February then don't do it-It is that simple! The same can be said for any other religious holiday.
I honestly could talk on this matter until I am blue in the face, but it is nearing two o'clock and I have class at 2:30.
Someone respond to this. Tell me if I am full of it or not.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Road-Side Conglomerates
Greetings Yall.
Here is something to chew on. I recently left the land of barbeque and blues for Spring break to go to Chicago for various reasons. Well my trip has taken me through a total of four different states and there was on e key observation I made while driving along side each small town we passed. The observation and assumption I am making is that BP and Mc Donald’s are in cahoots. Almost every place we passed, both large and small, had a bp gas station right next to a Mc Donald’s.
This could be the first step toward world domination. Oh wait, what am I saying. These two conglomerates already own the world from a business perspective.
I am posting this blog to not really say anything profound, just to point out a disturbing observation I made while time passed on the road. Next time you leave KC pay attention and you will see what I mean. Even small red neck, one stop light, out-house in the center of it towns contained these two monuments to consumption.
Oh yeah, on final thing. Never EVER eat at a T+A truck stop. Worst service and horrid food. Especially if you don’t eat meat.
Here is something to chew on. I recently left the land of barbeque and blues for Spring break to go to Chicago for various reasons. Well my trip has taken me through a total of four different states and there was on e key observation I made while driving along side each small town we passed. The observation and assumption I am making is that BP and Mc Donald’s are in cahoots. Almost every place we passed, both large and small, had a bp gas station right next to a Mc Donald’s.
This could be the first step toward world domination. Oh wait, what am I saying. These two conglomerates already own the world from a business perspective.
I am posting this blog to not really say anything profound, just to point out a disturbing observation I made while time passed on the road. Next time you leave KC pay attention and you will see what I mean. Even small red neck, one stop light, out-house in the center of it towns contained these two monuments to consumption.
Oh yeah, on final thing. Never EVER eat at a T+A truck stop. Worst service and horrid food. Especially if you don’t eat meat.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
words from Jean Metzinger
props to Courbet:
Reality is deeper than academic recipes, and more complex also. Courbet was like one who contemplates the Ocean for the first time and who, diverted by the play of the waves, does not think of the depths; we can hardly blame him, because it is to him that we owe our present joys, so subtle and so powerful.
Reality is deeper than academic recipes, and more complex also. Courbet was like one who contemplates the Ocean for the first time and who, diverted by the play of the waves, does not think of the depths; we can hardly blame him, because it is to him that we owe our present joys, so subtle and so powerful.
pat yourself on the back
It is one thing to attend a school that is well known for the purpose you are going there for. It is another thing to attend a school that was well known for the purpose your are going there for...forty years ago. I am proud to be in the KCAI school of design for it's past, present, and future. For all the b.s. we put up with from our peers from across the way, for all of the frustration that comes with believing in something that others can't see. For all of the times we couldn't party with our friends from across the way because we had work to do. God forbid actually being productive at the KCAI. We are soldiers.
On sheep and shephards
(disregard my blog being called responsibility) - I am attempting to lay a foundation for those of us who really believe in the issues proposed in our Vis. Ad. class, as well as issues proposed by Citizen Designer. Personally, I am attracted to design and to becoming a life long designer because of the power we have to change the way things work - this said, I want to be one of the good guys whose work is under a different light, a responsible light, an admirable light, and an innovative light. So the problem is, I am struggling with putting my name on paper saying that I will do this and that in regards to ecologically minded design, when truthfully, I dont approach my work instinctively with these things in mind. So I am trying to re-evaluate my approach to my work, as well as trying to really think of ways to be a shephard in this pasture of responsible design, and not to be way in the back of the herd just because I know it is the right herd to be in. I'm not sure it is so black and white. On one side having the designer making work solely for the client disregarding their personal belief system, the other being one whose work reflects their ideals and standards in and out of work. There has to be compromises and other avenues of acceptable work both in and out of the design community. I think we are on the right path. We are a young profession, and one that will always be improving. We must be honest no matter where each individual project takes us. This honesty will tear down some barriers that I feel this movement of responsible design is making. We are all shephards by nature, lets use this to our advantage, honestly.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Karim Rashid can have it... I don't want it.
I'm talking about the world. Karim Rashid wrote a book called "I Want to Change the World". When I first heard about him several years ago, I was inspired by the power he saw in design and it's ability to "change the world". After I let it set in for quite some time, and especially after the discussions we've been having in this class, his ideas have come to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
It brings several things to mind. One, I assume Rashid has good intentions for the most part, and being a respectable person I also take assumptions that he isn't intent on destroying the planet or ceating any pain and suffering in his attempts to "change" things.
Also, how does responsibility fit into this kind of endeavor? As designer's aren't we responsible for the work we do and it's kinetic ineteraction with the world? Especially in industrial design and Architecture, which for the most part are purely luxury-oriented and the creation of new, unprecedented necessity driven projects is very low. These fields thrive on making existing things better, ie: new improved knee braces, toilet bowls, computer mice, exciting skyscrapers, new malls, etc [side: I see validity in these things too, but to what extent can we push the envelope of progress vs. the idea that a new product means new income]. It feels so greedy (I don't think Rashid is hiding this feeling) in wanting to effect the human race as one, but I think design can be so much more effective when the generalizations for HUGE audiences don't have to be made. When designers decide to focus their efforts to certain audiences, taking into account the context their work will be viwed/used in and the user's background, true connections can be made between the work( and the designer) and the user. When Rashid makes new neon curvy trashcans and tells the world (with reassurance from trendy publications) that they are inevitably better than *older* metal trashcans, while he is taking some chances (a choice I support) he is also insulting the inteligence of his audience by teling them what is beauty, telling them what kind of objects are in good taste and so on. A choice I don't support.
I think our discussion on Friday about beauty and its effectiveness holds true, and beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder, regardless of what Rashid thinks. As far as personal activity goes, I want to design for small groups of people, making sure that my work appeals to them in the way I want it to/the way {ithey/i} want it to. If Rashid wants to tell the world what good design is, he can sure try. I'll take the people who want beauty for themselves and have the state of mind to make that decision on their own, be it ceramic unicorns or beautifully constructed pieces of furniture or architecture or fucking rubber jar openers. Leave it up to humans to decide. I think we can help, and should, but we have no right to dictate what beauty is. We're just part of the fad anyway.
PS- I don't know how to code html in this thing. sorry for the funny punctuation.
It brings several things to mind. One, I assume Rashid has good intentions for the most part, and being a respectable person I also take assumptions that he isn't intent on destroying the planet or ceating any pain and suffering in his attempts to "change" things.
Also, how does responsibility fit into this kind of endeavor? As designer's aren't we responsible for the work we do and it's kinetic ineteraction with the world? Especially in industrial design and Architecture, which for the most part are purely luxury-oriented and the creation of new, unprecedented necessity driven projects is very low. These fields thrive on making existing things better, ie: new improved knee braces, toilet bowls, computer mice, exciting skyscrapers, new malls, etc [side: I see validity in these things too, but to what extent can we push the envelope of progress vs. the idea that a new product means new income]. It feels so greedy (I don't think Rashid is hiding this feeling) in wanting to effect the human race as one, but I think design can be so much more effective when the generalizations for HUGE audiences don't have to be made. When designers decide to focus their efforts to certain audiences, taking into account the context their work will be viwed/used in and the user's background, true connections can be made between the work( and the designer) and the user. When Rashid makes new neon curvy trashcans and tells the world (with reassurance from trendy publications) that they are inevitably better than *older* metal trashcans, while he is taking some chances (a choice I support) he is also insulting the inteligence of his audience by teling them what is beauty, telling them what kind of objects are in good taste and so on. A choice I don't support.
I think our discussion on Friday about beauty and its effectiveness holds true, and beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder, regardless of what Rashid thinks. As far as personal activity goes, I want to design for small groups of people, making sure that my work appeals to them in the way I want it to/the way {ithey/i} want it to. If Rashid wants to tell the world what good design is, he can sure try. I'll take the people who want beauty for themselves and have the state of mind to make that decision on their own, be it ceramic unicorns or beautifully constructed pieces of furniture or architecture or fucking rubber jar openers. Leave it up to humans to decide. I think we can help, and should, but we have no right to dictate what beauty is. We're just part of the fad anyway.
PS- I don't know how to code html in this thing. sorry for the funny punctuation.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Truth in Advertising
Since the beginning of this BND assignment, I've been struggling with the idea of using the same tactics advertising/marketing uses to promote mass-consumption. I think we articulated it well the other day in class when we called it "fighting fire with fire." Something about it just doesn't sit right with me. Anyway I came across this connection in a reading for another class which outlined the way that the DADA poet Tristan Tzara used the conventions of advertising to subvert its original intentions and accomplish his own. The article says:
"Dada also made use of the advertisement, but not as an alibi, an allusion, but as a utilisable material w/ aesthetic and suggestive ends...It used the very reality of advertising in the service of its own publicity needs."
Is this still a legitimate option in a day when advertising is not as new and its audience not so naive to its manipulative nature?
"Dada also made use of the advertisement, but not as an alibi, an allusion, but as a utilisable material w/ aesthetic and suggestive ends...It used the very reality of advertising in the service of its own publicity needs."
Is this still a legitimate option in a day when advertising is not as new and its audience not so naive to its manipulative nature?
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Designers with impact on evil side
The other day, I was talking to my friend who recently graduated from design school.
He mentioned, "What about the designers who creates guns, bombs, or even tanks? Are they responsible for their designs?"
I struggled. For the purpose of killing others, I can't say it isn't their responsibility however they only designed it. isn't it?
Design for good or evil-- that is really inbetween designer's morality and responsibility, I think.
He mentioned, "What about the designers who creates guns, bombs, or even tanks? Are they responsible for their designs?"
I struggled. For the purpose of killing others, I can't say it isn't their responsibility however they only designed it. isn't it?
Design for good or evil-- that is really inbetween designer's morality and responsibility, I think.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
low flow that is the tempo
standard toilets use at least three and a half gallons of water for each flush. many water districts offer rebates to those who switch to more efficient models, but if no such program exists where you live, look back to the 70s, when the groovy, homegrown solution was to set a brick or two in the tank.
each brick displaces about a third of a gallon of water, sending much less than that down the pipes.
(this message from readymade magazine, issue 16)
each brick displaces about a third of a gallon of water, sending much less than that down the pipes.
(this message from readymade magazine, issue 16)
Friday, February 11, 2005
manifestos: de stijl, novebergrueppe, first things first, futurism
Novembergruppe manifesto
1918
The novembergruppe was an organization of artists formed on 3 december 1918 in response to the German revolution of November 1918. Leading figures included max pechstein and cesar klein. Others involved were Rudolph belling, heinrich campendonk and otto muller. After the defeat of the revolution, and the establishment of the bourgeois Weimar republic, differences of opinion emerged about the group’s role and commitments. These early statements mark the utopian moment of the group’s enthusiastic foundation.
Manifesto
We are standing on the fertile soil of the revolution.
Our slogan is: Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity!
We are uniting because we have human and artistic convictions in common.
We believe that our first duty is to dedicate all our energies to the moral regeneration of a young and free Germany.
We plead for excellence in all things and we shall support this plea with all the means at our disposal.
We insist upon an unlimited freedom of expression as well as public acknowledgement of it.
We believe it is our special duty to gather together all significant artistic talents and dedicate it to the collective well-being of the nation.
We belong to no party, no class. We are human beings, human beings who work tirelessly at the task appointed to us by nature. It is a task, like any other if it is to benefit the whole Volk, which must take into consideration the general public good and requires the appreciation and recognition of that general public.
We respect every achievement in every sphere and we are of the opinion that the most competent men will assume the heaviest duties, submitting themselves to such duties for the sake and benefit of the whole Volk;
Our goal—each at his place in hard, tireless, collective, creative work.
We feel young, free, and pure.
Our spotless love belongs to a young, free Germany and we shall fight against all backwardness and reaction, bravely, without reserve, and with all the power at our command.
We send our fondest greetings to all those who have heard the call and feel responsible—Cubists, Futurists, and Expressionists. Join us!
De Stijl manifesto
The De Stijl group was founded in Holland in 1917, dedicated to a synthesis of art, design and architecture. Its leading figure was Theo van Doesburg. Other members included Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud, both architects and designers, and the painters Georges Vantongerloo and Pite Mondrian. Links were established with the Bauhaus in Weimar Germany, and with similar projects in Russia, particularly through contracts with El Lissitsky. The manifesto, principally the work of van Doesburg, was composed in 1918. It was published in the group’s journal De Stijl, V, no.4, Amsterdam, 1922.
1. There is an old and new consciousness of time.
The old is connected with th individual.
The new is connected with the universal.
The struggle of the individual against the universal is revealing itself in the world war as well as in the art of the present day.
2. The war is destroying the old world and its contents; individual domination in every state.
3. The new art has brought forward what the consciousness of time contains: a balance between the universal and the individual.
4. The new consciousness is prepared to realize the internal life as well as the external life.
5. Traditions, dogmas, and the domination of the individual are opposed to this realization.
6. The founders of the new plastic art, therefore, call upon all who believe in the reformation of art and culture to eradicate these obstacles to development, as in the new plastic art (by excluding natural form) they have eradicated that which blocks pure artistic expression, the ultimate consequence of all concepts of art.
7. The artists of today have been driven the whole world over by the same consciousness, and therefore have taken part from an intellectual point of view in this war against the domination of individual despotism. They therefore sympathize with all who work to establish international unity in life, art, culture, either intellectually or materially. […]
First Things First Manifesto 2000
This manifesto was published in Emigre magazine issue 51.
First Things First Revisited
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.
Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social market- ing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
Jonathan Barnbrook
Nick Bell
Andrew Blauvelt
Hans Bockting
Irma Boom
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Max Bruinsma
Si‰n Cook
Linda van Deursen
Chris Dixon
William Drenttel
Gert Dumbar
Simon Esterson
Vince Frost
Ken Garland
Milton Glaser
Jessica Helfand
Steven Heller
Andrew Howard
Tibor Kalman
Jeffery Keedy
Zuzana Licko
Ellen Lupton
Katherine McCoy
Armand Mevis
J. Abbott Miller
Rick Poynor
Lucienne Roberts
Erik Spiekermann
Jan van Toorn
Teal Triggs
Rudy VanderLans
Bob Wilkinson
The Futurist Manifesto
F. T. Marinetti, 1909
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.
Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.
Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.
`Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.'
We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel - a guillotine knife - which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `smell is good enough for wild beasts!'
And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch.
Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.
Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.
It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.
Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.
Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?
What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?
To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?
Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.
For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!
Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!
The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.
But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.
They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.
The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.
Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!
Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: `We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors,' it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!
Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!
1918
The novembergruppe was an organization of artists formed on 3 december 1918 in response to the German revolution of November 1918. Leading figures included max pechstein and cesar klein. Others involved were Rudolph belling, heinrich campendonk and otto muller. After the defeat of the revolution, and the establishment of the bourgeois Weimar republic, differences of opinion emerged about the group’s role and commitments. These early statements mark the utopian moment of the group’s enthusiastic foundation.
Manifesto
We are standing on the fertile soil of the revolution.
Our slogan is: Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity!
We are uniting because we have human and artistic convictions in common.
We believe that our first duty is to dedicate all our energies to the moral regeneration of a young and free Germany.
We plead for excellence in all things and we shall support this plea with all the means at our disposal.
We insist upon an unlimited freedom of expression as well as public acknowledgement of it.
We believe it is our special duty to gather together all significant artistic talents and dedicate it to the collective well-being of the nation.
We belong to no party, no class. We are human beings, human beings who work tirelessly at the task appointed to us by nature. It is a task, like any other if it is to benefit the whole Volk, which must take into consideration the general public good and requires the appreciation and recognition of that general public.
We respect every achievement in every sphere and we are of the opinion that the most competent men will assume the heaviest duties, submitting themselves to such duties for the sake and benefit of the whole Volk;
Our goal—each at his place in hard, tireless, collective, creative work.
We feel young, free, and pure.
Our spotless love belongs to a young, free Germany and we shall fight against all backwardness and reaction, bravely, without reserve, and with all the power at our command.
We send our fondest greetings to all those who have heard the call and feel responsible—Cubists, Futurists, and Expressionists. Join us!
De Stijl manifesto
The De Stijl group was founded in Holland in 1917, dedicated to a synthesis of art, design and architecture. Its leading figure was Theo van Doesburg. Other members included Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud, both architects and designers, and the painters Georges Vantongerloo and Pite Mondrian. Links were established with the Bauhaus in Weimar Germany, and with similar projects in Russia, particularly through contracts with El Lissitsky. The manifesto, principally the work of van Doesburg, was composed in 1918. It was published in the group’s journal De Stijl, V, no.4, Amsterdam, 1922.
1. There is an old and new consciousness of time.
The old is connected with th individual.
The new is connected with the universal.
The struggle of the individual against the universal is revealing itself in the world war as well as in the art of the present day.
2. The war is destroying the old world and its contents; individual domination in every state.
3. The new art has brought forward what the consciousness of time contains: a balance between the universal and the individual.
4. The new consciousness is prepared to realize the internal life as well as the external life.
5. Traditions, dogmas, and the domination of the individual are opposed to this realization.
6. The founders of the new plastic art, therefore, call upon all who believe in the reformation of art and culture to eradicate these obstacles to development, as in the new plastic art (by excluding natural form) they have eradicated that which blocks pure artistic expression, the ultimate consequence of all concepts of art.
7. The artists of today have been driven the whole world over by the same consciousness, and therefore have taken part from an intellectual point of view in this war against the domination of individual despotism. They therefore sympathize with all who work to establish international unity in life, art, culture, either intellectually or materially. […]
First Things First Manifesto 2000
This manifesto was published in Emigre magazine issue 51.
First Things First Revisited
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.
Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social market- ing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
Jonathan Barnbrook
Nick Bell
Andrew Blauvelt
Hans Bockting
Irma Boom
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Max Bruinsma
Si‰n Cook
Linda van Deursen
Chris Dixon
William Drenttel
Gert Dumbar
Simon Esterson
Vince Frost
Ken Garland
Milton Glaser
Jessica Helfand
Steven Heller
Andrew Howard
Tibor Kalman
Jeffery Keedy
Zuzana Licko
Ellen Lupton
Katherine McCoy
Armand Mevis
J. Abbott Miller
Rick Poynor
Lucienne Roberts
Erik Spiekermann
Jan van Toorn
Teal Triggs
Rudy VanderLans
Bob Wilkinson
The Futurist Manifesto
F. T. Marinetti, 1909
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.
Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.
Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.
`Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.'
We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel - a guillotine knife - which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `smell is good enough for wild beasts!'
And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch.
Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.
Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.
It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.
Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.
Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?
What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?
To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?
Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.
For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!
Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!
The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.
But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.
They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.
The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.
Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!
Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: `We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors,' it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!
Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Morris' Struggle
This popped in my mind during Design His. class the other day:
"At what point does 'pure' design philosophy/advocacy have to give in to society/industry?"
Why does any designer have to sacrifice integrity?
"At what point does 'pure' design philosophy/advocacy have to give in to society/industry?"
Why does any designer have to sacrifice integrity?
Sunday, February 06, 2005
of what use is beauty?
"With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. "
--William Morris
"If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
--William Morris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A couple of quotes to chew on from good old William Morris. When talking as we have about design responsibility, I think it is easy to make "responsible" design purely utilitarian. Morris seems to suggest, however, that beauty not only has the power to transform but also serves a valuable purpose outside of usefulness. Is there room for design that is beautiful but serves no real "justifiable" use?
--William Morris
"If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
--William Morris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A couple of quotes to chew on from good old William Morris. When talking as we have about design responsibility, I think it is easy to make "responsible" design purely utilitarian. Morris seems to suggest, however, that beauty not only has the power to transform but also serves a valuable purpose outside of usefulness. Is there room for design that is beautiful but serves no real "justifiable" use?
Monday, January 31, 2005
responsibility: exercise one
hi, all!
i've moved the responsibility postings into this one category. please reply to this one rather than starting a new post.
thanks!
Responsibility-
This is something that comes with being a leader. There are different levels and roles of leadership but each one has certain principals like ethics, trust, and accountability tied to it.
As the leader, the one in charge, you are the one held accountable for certain tasks, actions, or decisions and their repercusions, wether you carried them out personaly or insructed someone else to them.
tarvis
It comes with everything you do. As a designer it is quite relevant to take care of what you impact others by your own creation. Something like "tail-tag" that always comes with every single new ideas that can be advantage and disadvantage toward you. Be sure to know how this single word can affect you as a designer!
yi-ha
A conscientious approach to design (i.e., research, brainstorming, problem solving, etc.) with the intent to impact the user experience and promote either change or no change, whichever is relevant.
Woody
I think as creatives we have certain opportunities that other members of society may either take for granted or are ignorant of. Those "opportunities" thrive on our ability to observe, rationalize, contemplate and conceptualize, and they rely our abilities to apply these skills to solving (and defining) problems or successes in how things, in general, work. We have the skills and talents to see things differently from others. As members of this society, against our will or intent, we should take our skills and use them in a way that can serve ourselves and the greater concerns of said social order. I don't think we have obligations to do others needs or desires, but our skills to see those needs and our talents to help them should be excercised, for sake of feeling blood run through our veins. If we are designers, why should we NOT contribute to the rest of the world... ?
Jenks
Design responsibility to me is taking the innitiative to design for myself and others to enjoy and understand. this means designing with clarity, and expression, in a way that will help others understand and enjoy what is beeing designed. This is a responsibility because the designer has to take in many conciderations, and many different audiences, so the designer must take steps to do this in a very careful manor which works for every aspect of their design.
Maijken
What is design responsibility? For me two things come to mind over everything else, those two being honesty and ethics within the professional realm. I believe the problem with much of modern design, in any field of study, is that there is not enough focus on the social and long-term impact of what is being created.
Ethics are important to design; because when the effects design has on society are taken into consideration it is here when great design is created. It is with these thoughts in mind that I believe ethical design is design that takes into consideration the social impact it has and looks at the entirety of society, not just a small niche that sums up to about .01% of the worlds population and owns about 95% of the worlds wealth. This is where the true problem of practicing ethical design comes to light. In an ideal world design would focus less on the making of money and more on the overall impact and importance of its outcome it has on society as a whole. What should be of key importance to a designer of ethical intent is not the size of his pocket book nor the prestige he has among his constituents, instead the designer's actions and great accomplishments for a greater good should be most important because it is only accomplishments such as these that last. Essentially the designer's actions will speak louder than his words.
The_Diz
i've moved the responsibility postings into this one category. please reply to this one rather than starting a new post.
thanks!
Responsibility-
This is something that comes with being a leader. There are different levels and roles of leadership but each one has certain principals like ethics, trust, and accountability tied to it.
As the leader, the one in charge, you are the one held accountable for certain tasks, actions, or decisions and their repercusions, wether you carried them out personaly or insructed someone else to them.
tarvis
It comes with everything you do. As a designer it is quite relevant to take care of what you impact others by your own creation. Something like "tail-tag" that always comes with every single new ideas that can be advantage and disadvantage toward you. Be sure to know how this single word can affect you as a designer!
yi-ha
A conscientious approach to design (i.e., research, brainstorming, problem solving, etc.) with the intent to impact the user experience and promote either change or no change, whichever is relevant.
Woody
I think as creatives we have certain opportunities that other members of society may either take for granted or are ignorant of. Those "opportunities" thrive on our ability to observe, rationalize, contemplate and conceptualize, and they rely our abilities to apply these skills to solving (and defining) problems or successes in how things, in general, work. We have the skills and talents to see things differently from others. As members of this society, against our will or intent, we should take our skills and use them in a way that can serve ourselves and the greater concerns of said social order. I don't think we have obligations to do others needs or desires, but our skills to see those needs and our talents to help them should be excercised, for sake of feeling blood run through our veins. If we are designers, why should we NOT contribute to the rest of the world... ?
Jenks
Design responsibility to me is taking the innitiative to design for myself and others to enjoy and understand. this means designing with clarity, and expression, in a way that will help others understand and enjoy what is beeing designed. This is a responsibility because the designer has to take in many conciderations, and many different audiences, so the designer must take steps to do this in a very careful manor which works for every aspect of their design.
Maijken
What is design responsibility? For me two things come to mind over everything else, those two being honesty and ethics within the professional realm. I believe the problem with much of modern design, in any field of study, is that there is not enough focus on the social and long-term impact of what is being created.
Ethics are important to design; because when the effects design has on society are taken into consideration it is here when great design is created. It is with these thoughts in mind that I believe ethical design is design that takes into consideration the social impact it has and looks at the entirety of society, not just a small niche that sums up to about .01% of the worlds population and owns about 95% of the worlds wealth. This is where the true problem of practicing ethical design comes to light. In an ideal world design would focus less on the making of money and more on the overall impact and importance of its outcome it has on society as a whole. What should be of key importance to a designer of ethical intent is not the size of his pocket book nor the prestige he has among his constituents, instead the designer's actions and great accomplishments for a greater good should be most important because it is only accomplishments such as these that last. Essentially the designer's actions will speak louder than his words.
The_Diz
Friday, January 28, 2005
passion & integrity
As designers, we play the primary role of visual communicators in this society. It is our role, for sure, but it provides little direction as to what we are to communicate and in what fashion. In other words: what "kind" of designer are you going to be? (more appropriately...what kind of person are you going to be?). This opens the discussion to values and our responsibility to the people we live with & design for as well as the place in which we conduct these relationships. In a blind society, we are left to our own to find our own truth. Our fathers failed us; they made values relative (and many of them used this rationale to abuse or abandon us). But to even discuss values or responsibilities seriously, there must be a measuring stick. There must be some bedrock, some universal big "T" Truth. Only with agreement and joyful submission to a common Truth can we begin to live lives of integrity. Being integrated people is vital to being responsible designers. We cannot continue to separate and compartmetalize our lives where one truth applies in one area of our life but not another. Much discussion is required to resolve this essential question:
What is Truth?
In addition to being people of integrity, our other major responsibility is to live lives of passion. As men and women passionate about design we are the purveyors of the beautiful & sublime and I believe our society is consistently looking to us for inspiration. But to inspire, you must be extraordinary and all extraordinary lives throughout history have all loved deeply. This begins with seeing, something we as designers should be good at. We need to see ourselves for who we truly are, BELOVED. We will then begin to see this in others. From the security found here (as a natural out-pouring) we can begin to live and design confidently and responsibly.
What is Truth?
In addition to being people of integrity, our other major responsibility is to live lives of passion. As men and women passionate about design we are the purveyors of the beautiful & sublime and I believe our society is consistently looking to us for inspiration. But to inspire, you must be extraordinary and all extraordinary lives throughout history have all loved deeply. This begins with seeing, something we as designers should be good at. We need to see ourselves for who we truly are, BELOVED. We will then begin to see this in others. From the security found here (as a natural out-pouring) we can begin to live and design confidently and responsibly.
Monday, January 17, 2005
welcome!
hi, everybody!
welcome to our blog.
please use this place to post comments during our course
visual advocacy.
remember, each of you should post at least ten times during the semester with original thoughts as they pertain to design responsibility, the reading, respond to your peers' ideas, or respond to one of my questions posed during class.
happy posting!
brockett
welcome to our blog.
please use this place to post comments during our course
visual advocacy.
remember, each of you should post at least ten times during the semester with original thoughts as they pertain to design responsibility, the reading, respond to your peers' ideas, or respond to one of my questions posed during class.
happy posting!
brockett
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