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.
-
-
filed under hyperlinks, design
![]()
© 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
![]()
filed under hyperlinks, music![]()
© UMG / Xavier Rudd / Axel Massin (via YouTube)
Music is a memory machine —one reason why I enjoy collecting records so much. Xavier Rudd for example was one of my favourite artists over a decade ago when I was still a student but already transitioning into a completely new phase of life. His old album ‘Solace‘ –I still own on CD– awakens a lot of happy memories of said carefree days whenever I put it on.
Currently my life is changing to a greater extent than ever before and even though I’m not trying to live barefoot, planning to move to Berlin and thinking about getting dreadlocks anymore –ironically I do have long hair for the very first time nowadays–, Rudd has been on heavy rotation again with his new song latterly. Now Stoney Creek for me will inevitable be linked to the life events of the challenging yet incredible fortunate last weeks.
Coz baby, the wind is blowing /
And there ain’t no other place I’d rather be /
And the wind owes me nothing /
But it’s blown me here with you /[…]
This is home
Your fragility is also your strength.
filed under hyperlinks, articlesI am on Twitter, still, despite my better judgment, and it seems to me to be The extremely unforgiving medium in my life.
It is risky compositionally. You can delete a tweet, but you can’t edit a tweet. You can add to a tweet, but it’s hard to improve upon it.
It is risky socially. Every tweet is an invitation for scrutiny if not consultation if not correction if not misunderstanding if not rancor. Forgiveness, even if we agreed it still existed in the wider culture, I think we could probably agree it doesn’t really exist on Twitter. (“Never Tweet” is not terrible advice.)
While Twitter still refuses to provide its users the repeatedly brought up and widely requested edit button, Austin Kleon has a point for Blogging as a forgiving medium —published on his personal blog of course. Reaffirms my suggestion to move back from the centralised social media structures to self-contained, more private digital spaces, instead.
Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.
![]()
© Aeon (via Vimeo)
A drolly cheerful celebration of the very ordinary, Born to be Mild explores the uncommon hobbies practiced by the members of the Dull Men’s Club – an online community that connects ‘dull men, and women who appreciate dull men’.
aeon.co/videos/the-dull-men-s-club-where-being-extraordinarily-ordinary-is-celebrated
To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.
Earlier this year Caroline Busta wrote a comprehensive –and very interesting– online article about counterculture in the time of social media hegemony, touching on politics, technology and culture. The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram.
![]()
I came to the same conclusion as Massimo and many other designers—I don’t need a huge range of fonts of questionable quality to choose from, I only need a few high quality ones. So I created my own list of 5 fonts that I use most often.
Not sure, if I’d be able to strictly limit myself to five fonts like Massimo Vignelli, but I certainly have a bunch of fonts I keep coming back to more frequently. Guess I’m going to make a list of my favourite ‘five fonts’ covering the cited criteria and then try to use them whenever I start working on something new, as Matej Latin suggests in All you need is 5 fonts.
betterwebtype.com/articles/2021/06/07/all-you-need-is-5-fonts/
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
![]()
© Above&Below and Einar Fehrholz (via Vimeo)
Aquateque is a short film and multimedia installation exploring the river Ruhr through a variety of new media technologies. The diverse ecosystem of the surrounding is captured through audio, visual and 3d modelling tools and transformed into a generative augmented space. The project explores themes such as digital material ecology and neural networks as artistic tools to dream about alternative and fantastical worlds in which nature, machines and humans collide.
