Earlier this month the Manchester based agency Young started the project Learn Something Everyday, which will hopefully continue forever. I'm torn between thinking it's the cute sketches that drive this home, or the random bits of knowledge that I learn and can intertwine in unexpected places.
Like Okakura, I know that tea is no minor beverage. When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?
This line from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery keeps coming back to me even though I finished the book weeks ago...
“We may need more than a singular big idea, but our little ideas better not be small. Our little ideas have to be Big Little Ideas. Otherwise they’ll never grab attention, be remembered, inspire engagement and drive results.”
- Creativity Unbound (via Something Changed)
Currency made into origami by Won Park. Beautiful! (via Rhys Isterix: rocketboom)
Personas, a Metropath(ologies) exhibit by the MIT Media Lab, creates a portrait of online identities according to algorithms that scour the web. A great concept, created by Aaron Zinman, and I was eager to see how it painted me. After entering my name, a quick check aggregated relevant online data and created a somewhat vague description of a person that is associated with books, news, online, and legal. Me, supposedly. Or, at least, the online version. The beautiful 'problem' is that my name brings up many references to 'Carly Simon' or 'Cameron Diaz', but the influence of mischaracterizations is part of the whole concept. Interestingly, this depends on the analysis, for every time I entered my name, I received a different assessment. A nice reflection of the liveness of the online world.
"It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world where digital histories are as important - if not more important - than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant - for now. Fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, and this kind of data is indispensable but far from infallible."
In Latin, the word persōna carries with it a connotation of the theatre, which is often carried over into the English use of the word. The persona is the mask or character that the actor assumes before taking the stage, or our public face. As individuals living out our lives (often simultaneously) in local and online spheres, this concept enters a new dimension where the multitude of scenes requires us to approach in full character at the blink of an eye. On LinkedIn, I am a professional. On my blog, I am a curious writer. On my bike, I am a local. At work, I am focused. At home, I am everything and nothing. This fascinating and sometimes exhausting fact of life isn't anything new. Anyone who has ever read a Jane Austen book sees the extent to which social expectations dictate the intricacies of our interactions. Propriety and sensibility become attuned to the expectations and norms of society and the responses they demand. We adorn ourselves in the proper persona in order to join the dance, to take the stage, which has been set before and the lines have been memorized. As T.S. Eliot said, 'Humankind cannot bear very much reality.' So, we assume our positions, even online.
"Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."
New York Times article about the implementation of an editorial review requirement for changes made to the entries about living people.
Saturday in Munich. I was just sitting down at a café in Frauenplatz when a quartet began arranging their instruments. A wonderful impromptu performance of gypsy style music by a group of Spanish musicians, Swing de Barrio (Swing Trotters).
A balloon was tumbling around the Biergarten, living up to its dictum:
I fly where I want to.
Last week, a team from work went over to the newly-opened Spa Zuiver in Amsterdamse Bos to check out the facilities and take in a bit of relaxation. Nicely designed interior, with sleek angles, vast pools, and toasty saunas.
“To enter the designer apparel arena and build something, that’s significant. I think the way to think about The Row is that it offers the perfect blank — the perfect schoolboy blazer, the perfect leather leggings, the perfect peacoat. So many designers are intent on the next great trend that some of the basics are neglected.”
— Jim Gold, the chief executive of Bergdorf Goodman, discussing Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsens' label The Row.
A not so warm and sometimes rainy week, but Pluk de Nacht goes on! Three more days to go for the open air film festival.
The latest in pet resorts now sits at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Goldfish Hotel, where travelers can drop off their fish while on holiday if they booked through the travel agency D-Reizin. In essence, it's a large tank with 'a swimming pool and a tennis court'. (via simonvanoldenbeek)
ColorSuckr is a snappy project from Paul Burgess: Upload a photo and it will extract the colors and create a scheme based on the image. (via unicornology: bebelestrange)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ky6vgQfU24&hl=en&fs=1&] As the opening frames reveal, Christoph Rehage planned to walk from Beijing to Germany (his homeland). This time lapse chronicles his journey from Beijing to Ürümqi, as part of his ongoing quest in the 'search for a place called home' that is now counting in at roughly 4 years, 7 months and 6 days. Not only is the time lapse beautiful, but the entire project is reminiscent of the (coincidentally) German concept of Heimat. The word 'Heimat' doesn't really have an English equivalent, but is usually translated as 'home' or 'homeland'. In media theory, it is often used as a reference point against the sense of absence induced by diaspora, urbanization, or personal isolation. Heimat is the ideal, the place that incurs nostalgia and is encapsulated in memories.
The Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser placed the emphasis more on the 'who' of the Heimat than the physical place itself. Although the sounds, smell, and sight of a homeland are of great importance, ultimately it is the people that make it so. I guess the beautiful thing about The Longest Way is the recognition that any search for home has to start with one's self. And maybe you will grow a grand beard and find Love (2:35) along the way.
"We're fighting against this whole idea that everything people do has to be constantly chronicled. People think that every thought they have, every experience — if it is not captured, it is lost...When it's off the record, you actually listen to the conversation, not just wait for your turn to speak."
— Michael Maline in a New York Times article about the rise of offline parties, where guests are not allowed to blog, Tweet, or take pictures of the event. It seems that talking about it is even discouraged. Perhaps 'offline' really can exist.
[vimeo vimeo.com/5826192 w=500&h=400] Max Records of Where the Wild Things Are interviewed by WLYS. Too cool for a seventh grader. But I guess that's what happens when you think bands from Portland rock.
It's my favorite time of the year in Amsterdam, the end-of-summer open air film festival season! Tonight Pluk de Nacht begins with the Estonian film Autumn Ball. Located at Het Stenen Hoofd, Pluk de Nacht is arguably the best of them all with a view of the water, comfy lounge chairs, and a great selection of international films.
Every Saturday in Seoul, when I was living there at least, there was an artist's market in Hongdae where the students from Hongik University would drag their latest creations to the street corners and put them up for sale. In this creative hub, I came across Keiichil who had an extensive collection of sketches and drawings featuring a sole angel shrouded in a black veil. Doing my part to support the apprehensive Korean art scene, I frequented Keiichil's collection over the period of a few months and sent black angel-etched journals and prints, along with other finds, to friends in other parts of the world. A few years later, as I realize his email is unsurprisingly outdated, I wonder if this emerging Korean artist still exploring the angel motif on the streets of Hongdae?
[vimeo vimeo.com/5878678 w=500&h=400] Nice video from Dan Vallins, a graphic designer from the UK who apparently likes to play with lights.
Flight Patterns is Charlie McCarthy's latest video, composed of 156 photographs of bugs circling a street lamp in a summer night frenzy.