Tag: public

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authentic place

I love to find three articles in  the Sunday New York Times, and juxtapose one against the other. On Sunday December 2, 2012, I found three articles about three people that situated my mind into a particular place. In the Arts section, actor Bill Murray spoke to a writer about his unpremeditated career.  Thinking about who he is-or who he could be in a film he said, “I wouldn’t have cast myself.” Bill Murray and his identity intrigues me. I have been thinking about what it means to be authentic, without external pressures. What does it mean to describe, analyze, synthesize and render an authentic experience in life…in landscape?

I was surprised to learn about Agnes Denes, an artist with “more to say” beyond the confines of a canvas.  An identity might not be contained.  Many people attribute her to be the one to create “the first ecologically conscious earthwork, “Rice/ Tree/Burial, a performance piece that involved planting rice seeds in a field in upstate New York, chaining surrounding trees and burying a time capsule filled with copies of her haiku.” She is a living example of an identity unfolding. She changed her life to wake up each morning, roll out of bed to make art in the space that she lives. As her gallery agent, described, “It’s difficult to get your head around all the things she’s done,” Ms. Tonkonow added. “I do honestly think that’s why she hasn’t been a household name.” Has her identity become unexpected, uncategorized like Murray?

Artist Karen Rosenberg’s work in this section is an unfolding story, a spatial kinetic sculpture with people and movements designed “to rustle a giant piece of fabric.” Set apart from this is “a writer scribbling response.” It is literally a deconstructed story, conceptually occupying space and time so it can be comprehended.This is a  smaller story than the other two and perhaps less important today.

 

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Design Curation Environment

Gallery and museum directors were once the only curators. The idea of curation is changing and becoming public. Curation is no longer associated with a special person who carefully chooses art for galleries and museums. The word has become diluted and accessible to the public. Curation has come to include anyone who chooses images and then shows them to others.  In design, the constraints designers choose, and then how we respond is the definition of design.  “What is not there”  is  as powerful as “what is there.”

How I dress is an act of curation. What I choose to be in my house is an act of curation. These choices are a reflection of what I value.  Social media has forced us into being sorters of content and to think about curation. We decide what photos to upload and then if we choose to look, we are forced to see what others choose. Companies now hire visual image collectors to find and comment on utopian images. They are repackaged to a community or market; a collective design consciousness.  Streaming across my phone, I have seen that image just hours before. The images are perfect; where is the process associated with the design? I am not suggesting that designers walk around with blinders on or turn off the media to lock themselves in a library with a few select books. Although after looking at these words, this notion sounds rather wonderful. Maybe I could do this for a week or two. But in a matter of time, I would become antsy and look for a plug to reconnect and be a part of my culture again.

Designers must be must be careful to curate how images and content infiltrate their own design process environment. There are at least three important things to consider  with design curation. They are inter-related but have distinct meaning.

1. constraints-This involves deciding upon a few concise, elegant selection of ideas that doesn’t include everything in the kitchen sink.

2. editing- This is an active, yet flexible pursuit  that continually defines, clarifies and removes content.

3. discipline-Against the flexibility of editing there must be a honing of vision, a stick-to-it-ness that creates meaning and identity.

In the age of social media, designers must take the opportunity to think about constraints, editing and discipline.  In a sense, the designer is a fish, hovering between a few rocks, watching images and content float by. These rocks break the water and define the place in which the fish lives so others can know where he is situated. The fish is hovering between several stabilizing forces for a period of time. Some of the content floating past relates to the rocks. If the fish darts about between rocks, he is no longer situated in a place and his identity loses meaning. It takes discipline to pick a few rocks to hover against,  turning at times against the forces to have authority over the place.