Russell Davies on the tyranny of the big idea.
Video: Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any), by James Houston.
Monthly Archive for November, 2010
Scottish fashion magazine Posed are looking for designers/artists/illustrators to design the look and layout of their forthcoming issues.
For full information, see the listing on Central Station.
The Really Open University links to current national protests and debates, but tries to offer imaginative alternatives to current university protocols and structures. Examining the connections between the economic forces that are currently at work, and different ways of learning, teaching and developing could create some interesting outcomes. ROU also links to the University for Strategic Optimism, see video above.
Also good to see Vis Com making its voice heard on the BBC website earlier this week:
(This blog post should be read aloud whilst listening to this).
This weekend I was looking through the highly impressive Ubuweb and stumbled upon this film, Production of Meaning, by Adbusters. I’m interested in this because while I broadly agree with the sentiment, I was really struck by how outdated and simplistic the analysis seemed to be. I used to buy and read Adbusters and have been away from it for a while, but wonder whether post Naomi Klein and No Logo, the arguments need to be more subversive and more sophisticated in equal measure.
The second benefit of roaming Ubuweb was that I came across a link to this download of the entire Ken Nordine album ‘Colors’, which wholeheartedly satisfied my jazz/colour analysis needs.
I’m interested in finding out what additional input you might like from a ‘digital’ point of view. I realise that already that opens a big can of worms — what isn’t digital? So aside from the inherant difficulties in the question, broadly speaking I was wondering what your thoughts are on the following;
If you’re pursuing a project with a digital technical/technology element what additional input might you like?
Do you think there are ways of further encouraging interesting/experimental projects at GSA?
What kind of environment do you think best facilitiates experimental digital work? Standard projects? Hacklabs? Workshops?
What kind of ‘theory’ and discussions would you like to expand on around digital/technology/networks?
If you have any other thoughts on digital at GSA, would be very happy, and interested, to hear them, either in the comments section here, or via email… the reason I ask is that GSA is looking at ‘digital culture’ and I’m interested in pursuing some discussions we’ve started on this blog and elsewhere, and to find out a bit more about what folk think. Thanks, Neil
(Image from Crosslab)
Fun and Games is a blog post showing the pitch work of design agency d8 for Glasgows Commonwealth brand identity implementation. This is interesting because of the comment it has generated around the politics of publicising pitch work — I’m still trying to figure out what might be wrong with an agency publicising work it has done on its own time and money, and it raises some interesting questions around multiple/parallel identities.
If you can’t make it, then it is at least a good, if short, index of studios / writers / artists that are making, on the whole, interesting work. (I’m aware I need a thesaurus for the word interesting).
This happened… Edinburgh #6: This Happened… are generally really good talks and a chance to meet people from a range of backgrounds doing things that are, broadly speaking, happening in the design/technical/art/digital/web/interaction sphere. Happens on 2nd Dec, tickets available from 1pm, 25th Nov. (Image: Simon Yuill)
This fantastic hybrid-essay (found via manystuff) is both a deft compilation of some interesting ideas and thoughts on copyright, and an intriguing piece of design in its own right. I’ve linked to it previously here, where you can also pick up a few other links and ideas of others etc.
This story caught my attention recently, reminding me of an op-ed piece by the late Tibor Kalman, proposing more or less exactly the same thing 20 years ago. As designers of ‘surface’ (amongst other things), it’s interesting to see designed identity controlled and manipulated in this way by the Government, acknowledging the perceived marketing (and political) importance of image. Are there possibly other surfaces worthy of the States attention? Of course this is pretty mild compared to the Death Cigarettes enterprises of eccentric design and marketing entrepreneur, (and smoker I think), BJ Cunningham, which takes that line of thought to its logical conclusion.
On Central Station, I found this nice collection from the GSA Archives, photographed by David Harding, former head of Environmental Art. He’s now working with Sam Ainsley and Sandy Moffat on AHM, and recently produced this interesting event around art and culture in Scotland today.
Saw this at a CrossLab lecture night (put on by the art school in Rotterdam). Interesting piece of very simple hardware, with a lot of scope for experiments. The films made so far really only demonstrate the what it can do, I’m interested to see ideas that exploit the strange hybrid of iPhone with basically an old fairground trick. I am sure you will be able to buy one soon, but you could just make one… Well worth keeping an eye on V2.
Part of the ongoing but highly irregular series of blog posts looking at the blog posts of other degree courses, Camberwell Illustration is well worth a look. Some really interesting articles and some other links to both a Research Repository and the personal blog of one of the tutors, equally interesting.
More info on longlunch, Event 41 – with Rodney Fitch, CBE, can be found there, in that hyperlink there, with links to buy tickets. As an introduction, you can see him talking at Central Saint Martins here.
BERG collaborator Matt Brown creates this interesting ‘mash-up’ which contextualises the scale of things in relation to where you are. Kind of like an interactive and digital update of “it’s as tall as 7 statues of liberty” or “as big as 4 football pitches.”
Artists Newsletter (A-N) are offering 1 year free graduate subscriptions to their publications in their online form: Student subscriptions | Join in | a-n. Applies to students in final year of UK applied or visual arts courses. Is vis com an ‘applied art’? – the debate continues…
Couple of interesting posts via manystuff.org. Firstly a new exhibition by M/M of Paris, the favoured graphic designers of any altermodernist. Secondly, an intriguing looking publication on ‘Image Aggregation‘. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks interesting, and (i think, probably) ties to an interest in the ‘semantic web‘, ‘aggregation’ (in general) and new approaches to tagging and indexing.
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