ideas + images

curated by sierra gonzalez 

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban spoke at the Architectural League in New York in January.

Comments [0]

How to be a self-funding anthropologist

http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2008/07/how-to-be-self.html

Grant McCracken responds to an e-mail inquiry on becoming an anthropologist, starting with the need to look at both the trends that permeate culture and the underlying ideas and beliefs that allow them to exist.

If you choose to be a free standing anthropologist, there are two objectives: the culture below and the culture above. The culture below is the long standing ideas and assumptions with which we make the world make sense, the instrastructure, if you will, of thought and feeling. The culture above is the trends and innovations that pour through our world. We want culture above and below because too often anthropology is reduced to a kind of cool hunting, a search for the latest thing and an investigation of culture above. Certainly, we need to know what social networking is, but if that’s all we know, all we can report to the client, we have removed ourselves from usefulness.

McCracken goes on to cover the ups and downs of practicing anthropology outside of the ivory tower and ends with some inspiring advice to paint a picture of a fascinating (but intimidating) career path.

Comments [0]

Uxchbqt3tc3909kqbn40myek_400

California-based Skate Study House uses old skateboard parts to riff off mid-century furniture classics.

Above: Astro Clock, skateboard wheels and bearings with maple or branded deck.

Comments [0]

Uxchbqt3tc1pnj0sbvdi2qbm_400

Jang, Lila. Canape.  Recently shown at Parcours Saint-Germain in Paris.

Comments [0]

Uxchbqt3tc0vqa84ahcond1v_500

Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica, is producing a feature-length documentary about industrial design.

Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it’s about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don’t believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) Who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? All of these objects are “designed,” but how can good design make them, and our lives, better?

The film’s logo was designed by Michael C. Place of Build, who appeared in Hustwit’s Helvetica.

Comments [0]

Uxchbqt3tbzf41smvzbzgizd_500

There are some fascinating and beautiful historical photographs in Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, an online exhibition that launched last month.  Above, Paul Wright works on a sketch model of the American Bison Group.

Comments [0]

Unfavorable 'Chihuly' review sparks emotions

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/27/PKPP11P3II.DTL

The response to Kenneth Baker’s scathing San Francisco Chronicle review* of the Chihuly exhibit at the de Young was so charged that the journalist issued another article to defend his criticisms.

In today’s culture, people need not merely critics to tell them what art is, but also artists, curators, art historians, art dealers, collectors - and the viewers’ own education and sensibility. In the consensus as to the art status of a piece or a body of work, each such participant has something to contribute, and each type of contribution has to be valued differently. The critic owes his readers not reassurance or even judgment, but a point of view, and thus, an example of how a point of view forms. Hence, my practice of comparing one artist’s works with those made by others. Art is made of connections - connections available to any informed observer - not just of materials and good intentions.

*Says Baker of the response to his critique, “A few readers denigrated Chihuly as “the Thomas Kinkade of sculpture,” which even I consider too severe, though I also wish I’d thought of it first.”

Comments [0]

The Future Is So Yesterday

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR20080718008...

Joel Garreau channels Baudrillard in his observations of Disney’s Innoventions Dream Home. Disneyland’s representation of the future is so mild and reassuring that the fantasy of tomorrow melts into a hyperreality of today: the future has already begun.

That disturbing but dazzling future rumbling our way is distinctly different from the soothing one Disney thinks we crave. What does this disconnect say about us?

[Washington Post]

Comments [0]

Italy Moves to Save Pompeii From the Ravages of Time and Tourists

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/arts/design/26ruin.html

The cultural, financial, and ideological challenges facing would-be preservationists of Pompeii [NYTimes]

Comments [0]

Comments [0]