Category: Art
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Sketchbook: Fabrica 2013 Informal Annual Review: Journalism/magazines: Colors #86 and #87
I'm incredibly proud of the work done by the COLORS team in the last year, from the "Going to Market" issue that launched just as I started, to the recent issues on "Making the News" and "Looking at Art" (with the pages of the fourth pasted up on the wall of the COLORS office as…
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Journal: Fabrica
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I’m writing this flying over the Alps, on BA579 from Venice to London. It’s a big blue sky lit by hazy sunshine, and the Alps look unreal. We just flew a few metres over a contrail, a perpendicular arc into the sunlight, hundreds of kilometres long, a surprisingly distinct temporary structure of curly vapour. Best…
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Journal: Proposals for Kiasma, by Peter Liversidge
I propose to take the following photographs of this book of proposals for Kiasma by Peter LIversidge whilst standing in Kiasma gallery bookshop, holding the book in my left hand and my iPhone in my right, enjoying the conceit and realisation of the book and valuing its existence but not enough in order to purchase…
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Journal: Annex, by Artek
‘Annex’ is a new magazine from Artek, the legendary Finnish design firm set up nearly 70 years ago by Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl. A while ago, I mentioned the “prototype”, the 'Manifest' publication commissioned by Artek for World Design Capital Helsinki, to which I contributed a short article on street…
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Sketchbook: Domus magazine on iPad
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(This is a slightly unusual entry in the Sketchbook series, as the end products are largely all the hard work of others, as noted below. Still.) For the last couple of years, I’ve been a strategic advisor to Domus magazine in Milan, principally on their digital aspects, where I’ve also led much of the design…
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Stadsmuziek, by Akko Golenbeld
Difficult to resist giving this one a quick nod, given the subject. A physical model of Eindhoven rolled onto a drum and attached to a piano. A form of player piano with the city as the score. [By Akko Golenlbeld for Design Academy Eindhoven, exhibited at Salone del Mobile in Milano.] Instantly triggers all kinds…
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More than “a mere building”: Kwinter on Beaubourg
After that entry on Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Beijing—and thanks for the feedback—I happened to be by chance reading Sanford Kwinter's Requiem for the City at the End of the Millennium (Actar, 2010). A beautiful little book in every sense, Kwinter writes wonderfully and perceptively about the city, and architecture and urbanism, and particularly its relationship…
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798 Art Zone/Dashanzi, Beijing
(Continued from World Design Congress 2009: Day three. Written at the time, last October.) 798 Art District was arguably the first creative cluster in Beijing, and with M50 in Shanghai, perhaps the most well-known in China. For someone who studies and works with creative clusters, then, it was a near-essential visit. I was in town for the…
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World Design Congress 2009, Beijing: Carsten Nicolai / Alva Noto
(Continued from World Design Congress 2009: Day three. Written at the time, last October.) As noted, I’ve followed Carsten Nicolai’s work for years, so it was a pleasure to see — and hear — him in the flesh. Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, is one of the stalwarts of the avant-garde electronica/noise/sound scene, but also works as…
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Journal: Contingent: recent films by BERG/Dentsu London and Keiichi Matsuda
Two (or three) recent films are worth watching for how they accurately depict the grain of the future. They are 'Making Future Magic' by BERG/Dentsu London: And 'Augmented City'/'Domestic Robocop' by Keiichi Matsuda: Both films – I'm counting Matsuda's as one film for the sake of argument – are interesting as they convey a sense…