© Kirby Ferguson (via YouTube)
Our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self made, we are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness —it’s a liberation from our misconceptions, and it’s an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves, and to simply begin.
As creatives, we are usually driven to chase what we think of as purely original ideas. While I was studying design, a video series called Everything is a Remix was making the rounds, offering another –presumably much healthier– perspective on novelty and inspiration.
A decade later, Kirby Ferguson is apparently redoing the series for 2021 and I recommend every creative to watch it —but especially those who are still in training.
© 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.
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.
I’d say slow down, find a quiet place and create time for solitude so you can hear yourself. It’s so noisy out there. And find the good ones around you –the patient, compassionate and interested– then elevate the conversation as often as you can. The things that nourish you are also the things that will nourish your work, give it purpose, depth and soul. It’s hard to say what those things may be, but life has taught me over and over that you don’t need to know if you are willing to ask.
The word ‘studio’ is derives from ‘study’. Our object is not to know the answers before we do the work. It’s to know them after we do it.
© Ed Banger Records / Because Music / Genesis (via YouTube)
We were really attracted by the epic visual appeal of cymbal making: bronze, fire, hammers —something almost mythological and elemental like Vulcan or the Nibelungen. We chose Bosphorus Cymbals in Turkey because they had this very traditional process that barely changed in centuries; in this video I am just a link in the chain of production and quality control, after all these cymbals have been melted, hand hammered, and lathed into a musical object.
I’m not sure why Gaspard Augé created only such a short teaser video for the first single from his upcoming solo album, even though Force Majeure is already out in the –seemingly– full version on Spotify and YouTube (without a proper video). Either way I really would’ve liked to see more of the shown traditional craftsmanship paired with the driving electronic music —probably because Augé’s music helps me to cope better with the recently announced break-up of Daft Punk.
© Six N. Five (via Vimeo)
Ordinary, everyday objects are the ones who rebel in a high-class house. Hidden, invisible, concealed, they disrupt the harmony of the calculated interior design. A true class revolution takes place, where the underdogs rise up against a so-called perfection.
I’ve been a huge fan of the beautiful, hyper-realistic CGI Six N. Five crafts for quite a while now and the latest short –of which a special version was sold as a NFT– is no exception. The Revolt features the clean and smooth signature aesthetic, the strong physicality and the excellent fabric qualities I admire within the imagery of the studio from Barcelona.
Besides the linked video, there’s a free desktop-application for this piece which enables the user to roam the house freely and discover the individual furniture objects with, alongside other options, Virtual Reality hardware. And while the visual fidelity naturally looses some of its high quality when experienced through a current VR headset, I’m still impressed what the small studio was able to pull off with the different set pieces here.
We shape our tools and our tools shape us. We are a product of our world and our world is made of things. Things we use, things we love, things we carry with us and the things we make. We are the product of our world, but we are also its designer. Design is the choices we make about the world we want to live in. … When we are gone, all that’s left of us is what we’ve made. The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth, but everything we make takes up space, creates noise, competes for attention. What do we want to spend more time with? What do we want to shape us? What nurishes us? What do we want to see grow? I think we all have an idea. I think we all have something we want to make for no other reason than we want it to exist. Something small but meaningful. … Things that nudge the world a little bit in what we hope is the right direction. We got to put a dent in the universe. This is a great job.
… a starting point for a more expansive, and more critical discourse on website design. The engagement of liberal arts, humanities and engineering present in the architectural discourse is more timely than ever. Considering and expanding upon these aspects when building and critiquing websites may help us fulfilling our responsibility as contributors to the global digital infrastructure today.
A very interesting and quite different approach to think of web design as architecture. It actually makes complete sense considering the ten associated statements by Malte Müller, though. Definitely something to keep in mind for future online projects.
Macht schöne Dinge. Macht Dinge, die man benutzen kann. Macht einfache Dinge. Hütet Euch vor zu viel Kunstfertigkeit. Hütet Euch vor zu viel Wissen. Das Werk sollte gesund sein. Achtet die Handarbeit. Seid darauf bedacht, den Preis niedrig zu halten. Macht Gefäße, die Ihr selbst gern benutzt. Das Werk sollte bescheiden sein. Innere Klarheit ist die Grundlage der Schönheit. Beachtet die Eigenschaften des Materials. Beobachtet die Natur intensiv. Das Gefäß zu formen entspricht der Formung der eigenen Persönlichkeit.