Sunday, May 15, 2011

Milan 2011: Triennale


The Dream Factory: The Arcimboldo of the Italian Design Factories by Marti Guixe

Yii: Crafts and Design from Taiwan: Explosion by Camo Lin, made with bamboo, cold cathode light kit, glass tube, cast aluminum, and plastic.

Yii: Crafts and Design from Taiwan: Exhibition designers' Nendo suspended inflatable tubes around each platform.
The first piece of the MINI La Strada exhibit, "You" outside the Triennale visitors were invited to leave messages on it.




The Trennale Design Museum hosted numerous exhibitions during Milan's design week including The Dream Factory, Yii: Crafts and Design from Taiwan, infinite innovation: a multisensorial enviroment of 3M technologies for Ambient Culture, and the installation MINI La Strada.
It's times like these I wish I lived in Europe. I would have loved to have seen this exhibit. It seems very different from the exhibits we hold here in the US.

The Valorised Designer

Because of the development of technology in the past couple of decades, designers now create and research everything by using the computer. The division between academic and creative work has pretty much disappeared, which has led to discussions and models based on how designers of today define the relationship between practical and theoretical work within their practice.
Whiteley continues on by discussing two models: the collapse model and the continuum model. The collapse model is the distinction between theory and practice, and how it collapsed and they now go hand in hand. The continuum model is the theory and practice exist on the same spectrum. They overlap in the middle, but exist separately on either end of the spectrum.
Then Whiteley describes five educational models that he himself observed over the years as an educator. The first is the formalised designer and in this model the academic study is considered to be a distraction from designing. The second is the theorised designer, which is "no distinction is made between those studying cultural theory degrees and the design students." The next is the politicised designer, which is the model has developed from Russian Constructivism and Productivism. It holds a black versus white perspective. The fourth designer is the consumerised designer, the primary concern in this model is to prepare students to work in a business or industry and to develop important skills and ignore the role of a designer as someone who is influential over environment, social , moral or personal influences. The final designer is the technologised designer, which relates to the development of technology and it assumes that "the most up-to-date technology must, by definition, offer a better or more relevant solution than its predecessors."
The valorised designer, Whiteley adds, are the "independently-minded, creative, constructive designers who are not just 'capitalist lackeys', ideologues, or 'technical whiz-kids'. but who bring understanding, flair, sensitivity and a social conscience to their task… the academy's responsibility is to society as a whole, not just the company who directly employs the designer."
In the end Whiteley states that "the new academy of the twenty first century must ensure that design students receive a true education, and not a narrow training…" In saying so, he believes design students should have a more than just a broad and general education. They should explore all fields of design, which in the end would help them decide what field they would be better off with.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

New Toys




Amazing Sculpted Toys

"New Toys for Melancholics" is a solo show by "Pop Surrealist sculptor and philosopher" Gabriels. These toys are made from "polished hand-crafted bronze, life-like glass eyes, and scores of tiny internal intricate elements and organs." The opening is May 6th at the Toy Art Gallery in Los Angeles.

Gabriels stated, "Let it be clear: these are not sculptures, but toys and more precisely prototypes of Toys for Melancholics. They aspire to the industrial production on a large scale and to the indefinite propagation, in proportion to the planetary diffusion of the anguishastic-desperative Weltanschauung and of the consequent -- very legitimate, although not absolutely incontrovertible -- propensity to suicideness. In this sense, our Toys for Melancholics scrupulously respect all the standards of global melancholy quality in a petrified primeval landscape, addressing courageously to a public of adults, kiddies and lithopaedia."

I found this collection to be interesting. It looks like the art pieces could pass as home decor or even they could be minimized to be for worn as women's jewelry.

Metal Gate Makeover


A computer rending of the worms


Mary Heilmann




Jacqueline Humphries


New York Times Article


Metal gate makeovers will take place only at night in the "After Hours: Murals on the Bowery." This will coincide with "Festivals of Ideas for NYC." This festival will be held this Wednesday in NYC where artists from all different medias could show their work in what is called a "StreetFest." It is approximately two and a half days of workshops with speeches followed on Saturday and Sunday. It takes place along Bowery Street and in Sara D. Roosevelt Park by Chrystie Street.
The tents that the vendors will be under are also going to be a part of the art, artists are from the New Museum and the city Transportation Department and the Storefront for Art and Architecture competed to design tents. The winner designed "slinky-like structures" that resembled worms. The sections were 20 ft long. There were eight worms and they were raspberry and cyan colored. These will be set up along Bowery during the StreetFest between Prince and Rivington Streets. Inside the tents or worms will be 10 booths, such as the Hot Bread Kitchen booth.
The idea for the ideas festival began in 2008 when the New Museum was moving into their new building. "The festival 'seemed like it was something that was missing' from the city, said Lisa Phillips, the Toby Devan Lewis director of the New Museum" (New York Times).
"The idea for 'After Hours,' with the painted roll-down gates on the storefronts, came to mind as Ms. Phillips talked with Ms. Remen and Yvonne Force Villareal of the Art Production Fund, whose mission includes expanding public participation in art. 'The street has a different life when the stores are closed,' Ms. Force Villareal said, 'but how do you bring artists into the public realm?'" (New York Times)
I was intrigued by this article because I think it's a great idea in getting artists of different medias to come together and create artistic neighborhoods. It is also a collaboration of street art and street fairs.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Skeletal Jewelry



BoingBoing.com


Joyeria Osea by Sofia Sanchez is sold on the Etsy store website. This Argentine jeweler sells fingerbone rings, sternum necklaces, and bone cufflinks. The prices of her unique collection of "anatomical pieces" ranges from 80 to 345 US dollars. The pieces are Bronze Silver Plated. Even though this isn't the most desired materialistic item in the fashion world at the moment, it's still interesting how people are coming up with different ideas for jewelry and clothing.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

We should care about a species extinction.


CWA (Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder) asks "Why should you care about species extinction?" CWA brought a conference together of all different people in our society to ask this important question. The conferences held by CWA are free and open to the public. Lately, there has been word that a lot of coral reef have been dying. Coral reef may not seem like they play an important role in the aquatic life, but they do.
Peter Hildbrande (an atmospheric scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) states that, "Coral reefs supply a lot of the basis of the food chain in the ocean. If we wreck up the climate, then we change concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air, which means we're changing the pH levels in the water, and that chemical change damages the shells in the coral. As coral die, that damage has effects right up the food chain to the large fish that we eat."
If one food source is taken away from another source then that species will become extinct and it will affect the fish that we consume. Sooner or later this drastic change will affect us negatively and we will be the main cause for the destruction of aquatic life and later on, other species.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Business Cards

Layout:
  • 8 Cards (per sheet) for this one, 10
  • File new, letter size
  • Half inch on each side, 3/4 inch on the top and bottom (guides from ruler)
  • 2 inches down from the top guideline