© RJ Bruni / Inmist Media House (via Vimeo)
A story about a ceramic artist, Cathy Terepocki, and her journey to find purpose within her work. When most artists are seeking to further put themselves at the forefront of their work Cathy made a conscious decision to actually remove her personal touch.
I always enjoy watching craftsmanship, especially if it’s captured with such a pleasing –and extremly well-suited– granular and tactile aesthetic like in this beautiful short called Shared Earth.
Es fehlt ein Verb für die Tätigkeit, die im Halb-Zustand zwischen Programmierung und Gestaltung stattfindet. Es ist beständiges Tasten auf der Suche nach einem angemessenen Gefühl für ein bestimmtes Interface, nach der korrekten Balance aus Physik und Assoziation. Teils ist es Konstruieren, teils räumliches Entwerfen, teils händisches Formen des Materials. In dieser Tätigkeit geht es langsam voran, aber Konstruktion, Gestaltung und inhaltlicher Ausdruck entwickeln sich zugleich, die falsche Trennung der Disziplinen außer acht lassend.
Nature Track is a podcast that opens a window on the beautiful sounds of the Australian wilderness. […] Each unique track is carefully recorded on location in a different part of Australia by the ABC’s nature specialist Ann Jones.
The beautiful podcast Nature Track by ABC Radio collects different sounds from Australian nature (so no music or humans), which reminds me a lot of ‘Sanctuaries of Silence’ and the amazing work of Gordon Hempton I’ve mentioned before.
The radio station furthermore has another podcast –among many others– called ‘Off Track’, which combines equally soothing sounds of nature with fascinating stories of environmental science recorded in the outdoors.
Both series are great alternatives for the very handy background noise app noisli, that I’ve been using occasionally for some time now.
© Sam H. Buchanan (via Vimeo)
By far and away the silliest thing I’ve ever made, felt appropriate to make something silly this year [the short was filmed in 2020].
Loving this absurd short: Every Sport a Bowling Ball.
At times of change, the learners are the ones who will inherit the world, while the knowers will be beautifully prepared for a world which no longer exists.
Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Interesting essay by Stewart Brand for the Journal of Design and Science, outlining the strengths of a construct called “Pace Layering”.
Even though he focuses on human society and a six-layered structure (Fashion/art, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, Nature) as the basis of a healthy civilization for the most part of Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, Brand proposes all dynamic systems to be based on a structure made of multiple layers of different pace and size in order to be robust and durable.
In design –no matter the specific field, but especially in software and systems design, of course, we come across and/or form a lot of dynamic systems with the need to be adaptable, so pace layering might provide a valuable concept to build upon.
Analogue self-portrait taken with my Impossible I-1 on Polaroid Black Frame Edition, triple-exposure embroided with red yarn
© Jason Bruges Studio / Sam King (via Vimeo)
An interesting installation by London based Jason Bruges Studio for the past Olympic and the upcoming Paralympic Games in Tokyo:
The Constant Gardeners will create a new visual language to communicate and celebrate the motion of the professional athletes and their feats of physical prowess. The installation will produce dynamic, representative patterns, which ‘the gardeners’, a team of four industrial robot arms mounted on linear rails, will precisely rake into a large-scale gravel canvas, consisting of fourteen tonnes of crushed black basalt, surrounded by a further four tonnes of silver-grey granite. In a series of daily performances, ‘the gardeners’ will work together to create around one-hundred-and-fifty unique illustrations throughout the duration of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
© Go Project Films (via YouTube)
Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.
Acoustic ecologist –who’d knew, that such a profession exists– Gordon Hempton in Sanctuaries of Silence, a beautiful short film by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Adam Loften. The 360°-/Virtual Reality-film takes the viewer to the Hoh Rain Forest, a protected area in a National Park in the State of Washington, North America where Hempton has been documenting the sounds of nature for more than thirty-five years.
The website accompanying the short film, in addition, offers a nice little five-step exercise to practice listening and be present, open, and curious in a world increasingly polluted by noise.
Analogue self-portrait taken with my Impossible I-1 on Polaroid Black Frame Edition, wrapped in bubble wrap
Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.
Make good art.
I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art.
Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
Make it on the good days too.
© IntCDC, University of Stuttgart (via YouTube)
The bioinspired pavilion showcases how novel co-design processes that account concurrently for geometrical, material, structural, productional, environmental, and aesthetic requirements, together with advanced robotic fabrication techniques applied to natural materials, are capable to generate a unique architecture that is at the same time ecological and expressive.
The livMatS Pavilion is the latest outcome of a long-standing research collaboration between the Universities of Freiburg and Stuttgart. Developed by an interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers and biologists, the fibre construction in the Botanical Garden of the University of Freiburg utilizes robotics to create a net-like flax weave inspired by the wood structure of a cactus.
Besides being a strong believer in the interdisciplinary approach, I’ve been particularly hooked on design and architecture with an environmental focal point for quite a while now. The Pavilion reminds me of the visionary work of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Space10 or Neri Oxman, all of which I admire a lot, so I can’t wait to check the pavilion out in person.
intcdc.uni-stuttgart.de/research/building-demonstrators/bd-5
