ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 1
ifc
Sweet paper that's good for you Sappi launches a new paper grade made from 90% agricultural waste
TM
sweet paper
The cover for this issue is printed on Masuga – a new, locally produced, uncoated paper containing alternative environmental fibres in a natural shade. Made from bagasse, a waste by-product from sugar cane, the paper boasts visible natural fibre speckles and is available in three text weights (100, 120 and 170gsm) as well as a 350gsm board weight. The paper is unbleached, with a natural shade and a very smooth print surface. It should appeal to a niche market looking for a sustainable alternative fibre paper.
Why Masuga? M&A Design were asked by Sappi to come up with a name, design and brand identity for the innovative new paper. The name ‘Masuga’ draws on M&A's local heritage and the fact that the paper is made from sugar cane waste. Incidently, it is also a play on the Yiddish word ‘Masugana’ that means ‘a little crazy'. Says Marjie van der Walt of M&A Design,"Who would have thought that such a delicious paper could be made from something that is discarded as useless or, at best, burnt. The logo was conceived around
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the paper-making process. It was fascinating to see how the bagasse gets pumped over the wall of the neighbouring sugar cane farm, transported on conveyor belts, stirred, washed and shaken into smooth and beautiful paper. The logo represents the pots, rollers and belts used in the making of this paper. The letters of the logo are also made from circles because sugar cane is round. Full circles, half circles and quarter circles were used to create all the letters in the logo." Masuga is an earth-conscious, innovative, sophisticated and professional paper. Says Marjie, "The brand image is fun, natural, highly moral and considerate to not only the earth and its creatures but also to its fellow man. If this paper could laugh, it would. If it was a person, it would recycle, support sustainable forestry, plant vegetables, collect rainwater, make compost and go toading!"
New directions "We are extremely excited about Masuga’s prospects, and that we have managed to deliver to the market a morally practical, fun and earth-friendly paper using Sappi’s unique ability to utilise an otherwise agri-
by
cultural waste product and convert it into something beautifully sustainable," comments Sappi's Marketing Manager for Brand Communications, Graeme Futter. "Our aim is to use the Masuga sustainability promise to inspire people to be comfortable with the fact that paper and print is a truly sustainable medium of communication in an overstressed world of environmental decay." "At M&A Design we like to educate our clients on sustainability and understanding the changing norms of the coming age. Being responsible and sustainable is not necessarily cutting back but rather adding value. It has become as much about personal quality of life as it is about the quality of the environment,"adds van der Walt.
Practical, too Masuga is suitable for all litho printing and finishing techniques such as varnishing, embossing, foiling, die cutting and thermography. It prints beautifully on digital presses, and has been certified for use on the Kodak Nexpress. Sappi Masuga is exclusively distributed by Antalis South Africa. www.antalis.co.za
ed.
Read ed speak As you've perhaps noticed from the cover for this issue, we're making a case for print
vs. digital with
a feature that catalogues all that we love about print. Perhaps it is best
Francois Smit
summed up by stating: "I
what I like." Whatever your stance on the subject – whether you think print is an elitist feel-good exercise
E
for the few, a necessary educational medium, or simply a somewhat futile exercise in vanity, the end result should always be instructive, thoughtprovoking and a little obsessive. Can
print only exist on a screen? I think not.
Small print
COVER Designed by Collette Wasielewski and Mzikayise Sithole of Grid Worldwide Branding www.gridworldwide.com/
PUBLISHER Softmachine Media, PO Box 91938, Auckland Park, 2006. Tel: (011) 640-3322, Fax: 0866 896 707
EDITOR Gregor Naudé gregor@enjin.co.za
PRODUCTION Enjin Magazine is produced with Adobe CS 5
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR CAPE TOWN Herman Manson herman@marklives.co.za
PAPER Cover printed on Sappi Masuga supplied by Antalis South Africa. Text printed on Sappi Triple Green Silk supplied by Sappi Paper and Paper Packaging South Africa
DESIGN & ART DIRECTION François Smit, QUBA Design & Motion francois@quba.co.za ADVERTISING SALES 084 445-5067, advertising@enjin.co.za EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS Herman Manson, Sarah Britten, Debbie Smit, Eran Eyal, Vincent Maher, Sean O'Toole, Albert du Plessis, Kevin Grant, Brandon Edmond
COPYRIGHT All due care will be taken with material submitted, but the magazine and publisher cannot be held responsible for loss or damages. The title ‘Enjin’ and logotype are registered trademarks. Neither this publication nor any part thereof may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher or editor.
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 3
CONTENTS
Inside IFC SAPPI LAUNCHES MASUGA 03 READ ED SPEAK 07 RELEASE NOTES TOFFIE FESTIVAL 2011 ANTALIS GETS CHARACTER ADOBE HONOURS STUDENT ACHIEVERS WOOLWORTHS MAKES A DIFFERENCE PUMA SHOE SHOP
46 REVIEW IJUSI 25 ARTY DECKS
12 AGENCY DERRICK
57 TOOLS ASUS LAPTOOL JAWBONE JAMBOX REFERENCE MONITOR LIGHTWAVE 10 3D ESCAPE STUDIOS JUST MOOFE IT
14 PLAKBOOK LURKING IDENTITIES 16 COVER FEATURE I PRINT WHAT I LIKE 20 FEATURE THE CHAMELEON-ARCHITECT 24 feature A HISTORY OF BOREDOM 29 PLATFORM TREVOR NOAH JACQUES COETZER BE PHAT MOTEL ROBERT WONG HOT MEDIA, COLD SOUP
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50 MEDIA 2.0 THE NEW AD WARS YOU ARE THE CROWD
64 BOOKS AN ANNUAL AFFAIR ART IN CONTEXT SPEAK WITH YOUR HANDS 69 directory CREATIVE SERVICES 72 EDITORIAL WATCHING FROM BELOW LABOUR OF LOVE
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release notes
Toffies for everyone The second annual TOFFIE FESTIVAL to hit the Cape Town City Hall in March
If, like most, you are fascinated by pop culture, the second TOFFIE FESTIVAL should be in your diary. Hosted by The President design studio, the festival is an interactive platform that sets it apart from other pop culture and design festivals – presenting the latest and greatest of South African and international pop culture packed into presentations, exhibitions, workshops and social events. The President’s Peet Pienaar says, "Participants are given the unique opportunity to forge real connections with top creatives in their fields, and all workshops and presentations are designed around this principle. We aim to create a festival that is not intimidating – and all this at an affordable cost." The first day will be filled with exhibitions by some of South Africa’s most exciting talent, curated by The President. Participants include What if the World, Marcii Goose, Richard de Jager and Word of Art. The first day will also see the start of the now-extended two-and-a-half-day conference. Speakers include an exciting showcase of SA pop culture, including Brandt Botes (graphic designer), Tumi Molekane (musician), Frauke Stegmann (designer), Francis Burger (artist), Kobus van der Merwe (chef ) and Richard de Jager (fashion designer/stylist).
Days two and three will see the rest of the riveting line-up of local and international speakers. The following speakers were confirmed at the time of going to press: Spanish designer Alex Trochut – the grandson of the famous 1940s typographer, Juan Trochut is known for his commercial and editorial work on the world’s superbrands Tokyo-based artist and programmer Daito Manabe – with more than 1.5 million hits on YouTube, Manabe has a cult following who can’t wait to see his latest physical interpretation of sound and programming experiments Belgian artist/designer Brecht Vandenbroucke – a young artist who believes that there is no difference between pop and underground culture Swiss inventor and designer Jürg Lehni – his creation, Scriptographer, is an Adobe Illustrator scripting plug-in used by designers around the world Argentinian filmmaker Javier Lourenco from Flamboyant Paradise – his innovative use of film-making techniques has the world watching. The second TOFFIE FESTIVAL will take place from 24 to 26 March 2011. Tickets at R750 for professionals and R500 for students. http://toffiepop.blogspot.com/
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release notes
The Paperman can Antalis gets character Paper merchant Antalis recenly unveiled a new visual identity and communication campaign. In line with the new identity, a special character has been designed in the form of an origami figure that will appear in all communication material. Antalis hopes that its new Paperman will acquire a special personality which will make it dynamic and people-friendly. Commented David James, Director of Marketing and Purchasing at Antalis, "The crux of the new approach is to focus on the diversity of our services – incorporating all our key areas of expertise – so that it becomes natural for our customers to call us whenever they have a problem to solve – hence ‘Just ask Antalis'. "It is important that we define and explain the diversity of Antalis’ activities – after all, we are a service company which provides comprehensive products and services to both current and potential customers," says Caroline Coughlan, Antalis South Africa's Marketing Manager. The new positioning will be promoted across various
mediums during 2011, including a short film aimed at showing the diversity of the group's activities, product brochures as well as press ads featuring the Paperman. Over time, the new visual identity will expand to include all communication channels, including booths, delivery trucks, building signage, product brochures and more. "We believe the slogan ‘Just ask Antalis’ will encourage customers to call us first," concludes James. www.antalis.co.za
Adobe encourages young minds The Adobe Design Achievement Awards celebrate student achievement that reflects the powerful convergence of technology and creative arts Adobe has announced the call for entries for the eleventh annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA), expanding its global reach to fifteen languages and adding new categories. The competition honours the best student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers and digital artists from accredited higher education institutions worldwide. To recognise teaching excellence, Adobe has introduced three new categories. It has also added student categories in game design, Web analytics and Mobile analytics. Free to enter, the competition is open to students, faculty members and staff members of higher education institutions throughout the world. Starting this year, the new faculty-and-staff categories are: Innovation in Education in Interactive Media, Innovation in Education in Video and Motion, and Innovation in Education in Traditional Media. In addition, students have more opportunities to be acknowledged. They can enter twice per category throughout the call for entries period and submit work for three judging sessions. Semi-finalists will be selected during each judging session in all student categories except Web Analytics and Mobile Analytics. The awards ceremony will take place during the International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei, Taiwan in October 2011. www.adobeawards.com/us/ The Adobe Design Achievement Awards recognize the best innovation in higher education students and faculty that AMAZE the world. Finalists will be rewarded with Adobe software and a trip to Taipei, Taiwan to participate and be recognized in an awards ceremony during the 2011 IDA Congress set for October, 24 – 26, 2011. Category winners will also receive a cash award in the amount of $3.000 USD. 2011 Judging* Schedule: 1) November 30, 2010 – January 28, 2011 – Semifinalists announced in February 2011 2) January 28, 2011 – April 29, 2011 – Semifinalists announced in May 2011 3) April 29, 2011 – June 24, 2011 – Semifinalists announced in July 2011 2011 Faculty and staff category submissions close on June 24, 2011. Semifinalists will be announced in July 2011 www.adobeawards.com
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*Web Analytics and Mobile Analytics categories require advanced registration and development kit download in order to participate. The Web Analytics category registration deadline is February 27, 2011, and the Mobile Analytics category registration deadline is January 28, 2011. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated, in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
release notes
Good business is a journey Woolworths makes a difference
Enriching education is part of Woolworths' sustainability programme, which they call their good business journey, while at the same time recognising the importance of teaching South Africa’s young people about the vital role creativity and design play in moulding our world. The Making the Difference Through Design initiative, which is a component of Woolworths' Educational Programmes, encourages young South Africans to explore their own creativity and help them develop a better understanding of the contribution design makes to the country’s economy – and to solving the critical social, economic and environmental issues facing South Africa and the world. Now in its sixth year, the Making the Difference Through Design competition, sponsored jointly by Sappi, invites entries
from Grade 10, 11 and 12 learners from schools in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape. The 2010 competition called on learners to form design teams and brainstorm a multi-faceted campaign for the launch of a new product or an event, or to raise awareness of a social or environmental issue. The campaign had to include designs for such elements as a logo and strap line, a mascot, merchandise, a TV ad campaign, a print ad campaign, a surface that could be used as part of the campaign, and an exhibition space. The competition called for creativity, imagination, originality, innovation, energy, dedication and passion as well as resourcefulness. The ‘Freedom Fighters’, a team of four talented Grade 11 and 12 design learners from Hoërskool Zwartkop in Centurion,
were named the national winners of the 2010 competition. Their winning campaign included the launch of a distinctly South African bespoke dress, a professionally executed TV ad campaign and accompanying print ad campaign."The judges were very impressed with the standard of work presented by the ‘Freedom Fighters’, which was thoroughly conceptualised, developed and presented," says Penny Luthi, Brand Manager: Woolworths Educational Programmes. The winners were presented with a handcrafted trophy designed and created by renowned South African environmental artist Strijdom van der Merwe.
www.makingthedifference.co.za/
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release notes
iPad shoe tool If the shoes fit, wear them in style Launched at the end of 2010, the PUMA Creative Factory is a new shoe customization concept that blends virtual and real elements to deliver an authentic sneaker design experience. Together with zooom productions, kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners, Spies & Assassins unit and Viget Labs, PUMA has created a tool for shoe customization using an old-fashioned workbench with an assortment of materials and fabrics together with an Apple iPad for rendering the final
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design on a custom-built application. Customers can use their creative savvy to craft a pair of one-of-a-kind sneakers in selected stores in locations such as Cape Town, Dubai, Mumbai, Bucharest and Moscow. "Shoe creation is inherently a tactile, hands-on experience. If you look at the desks of PUMA designers, they're covered with books of material and sketches, but then they use various digital technologies to bring the shoe to life. That’s what we wanted to bring to our customers," said
Antonio Bertone, Chief Marketing Officer, PUMA AG. "Providing the raw materials combined with taking full advantage of cutting-edge technology will give people a truly fun and authentic shoe-making experience." kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners’ Spies & Assassins unit in New York developed the global concept and strategy for the PUMA Creative Factory iPad retail solution as well as the architecture, project management, creative, CGI, software
release notes
development and quality assurance. Spies & Assassins used cutting-edge digital graphics to tap directly into the energy of PUMA’s customers, enabling and encouraging experimentation, co-creation, self-expression and sharing. "We’re really excited about releasing this first Creative Factory experience for PUMA," said Matt Powell, Executive Director of Creative Technology and Partner, Spies & Assassins. "It’s the beginning of PUMA’s push into the new social shopping space and Spies & Assassins' first foray into building digital experiences for specific physical environments." The in-store workbench fixture, designed by zoom productions, was inspired by the old look of a shoemaking studio, while the iPad application reminds you that the year is still 2011 and enables consumers to visualize billions of possible material and colour combinations. zooom production’s graphic direction for the Creative Factory project revolved around the deconstruction of the shoes into their individual components. This colourful, kaleidoscopic component-style is also reflected in all Creative Factory communications ranging from special shoe displays to banners and the unique "cobbler-style" table. PUMA Creative Factory has a permanent home at the PUMA Store in Canal Walk, with an online launch planned for early 2011 in selected markets. www.puma.com/creativefactory
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agency
Hitting the client-agency reset button A new Cape Town agency wants to grow a sustainable future for its business, and that of its clients Big thinking lies behind new Cape Town agency Derrick, which hopes to combine business sustainability with environmental friendliness, a collaborative approach to communication and media neutrality. It has been launched by Livio Tronchin (ex-Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town), Mark Stead (former CD at KingJames RSVP) and Myles Hoppé (former brand manager at the company designing SA’s first electric car, the Joule). Its laid-back style requires first-time visitors to squeeze Livio's cock (a plastic rooster that crows, thankfully), before exiting the trio's studio office at the Old Castle Brewery in Woodstock. It’s all quite refreshing. Like most agency entrepreneurs, the guys at Derrick wanted to escape the siloed thinking still prevalent in many ad agencies and marketing departments. Tired of endless meetings, of having to
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spend a clients’ budget before year-end simply for the sake of it, and had lost enthusiasm for what they were doing, says Hoppé. Derrick sees a return to their passion for advertising as it should be rather than as it is. Big-agency systems stem from a bygone era, the Derrick founders believe. Ad agencies no longer lead, they follow, says Tronchin, putting the agency business model and relevance in doubt. Change will be driven by a strategic consulting model that blurs the line between agency and client, says Tronchin. Research should play a foremost role in crafting communication, not kick in after the strategy has already been completed and placed in production, as often happens. The agency has already won pitches for the City Of Cape Town’s Electricity Savings Campaign, Oakley South Africa and Act II Popcorn, though Stead concedes the biggest challenge has been getting
agency
Its laid-back style requires first-time visitors to squeeze Livio's cock (a plastic rooster that crows, thankfully), before exiting the trio's studio office at the Old Castle Brewery in Woodstock. It’s all quite refreshing.
Derrick' s first ad for the City of Cape Town went viral as soon as it hit the web, and pictured Athlone's imploded cooling towers being rebuilt as a warning to what could happen if the city fails in its energy goals.
into the room with marketers. The first viral ad for the electricity campaign saw the implosion of the Athlone cooling towers rewinding to make it appear that the towers are being reconstructed rather than destroyed. Dozens more then dot the landscape to bring the point home that wasting electricity has a real-world effect on the environment. It's all part of hitting the reset button on how clients and agencies approach communication and client/agency relationships. Derrick sees a sustainable future, for its own business, that of its clients and, ultimately, the planet. It's big thinking from a small team. _This article first appeared on Squeezeback.com. Herman Manson is real-world marketing and advertising journalist
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PLAKBOOK
identities Illustrations: Francois Smit
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PLAKBOOK
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COVER
Leave a mark Print as we know it has thrown off its traditional garb of ink and paper and is set to make its mark on a tablet near you By Debbie Smit
If South African Tourism’s flagship publication for the 2010 World Cup were a person, it would be a colourful sort: a well-travelled favourite uncle full of uncensored stories to delight the imagination. Assigning a personality to the Loeries Annual (reviewed on page 62) is not quite as easy, since the tome is perfectly and inscrutably businesslike. Impressive in its yellow-clad heft and solidity, it nevertheless speaks in an edgy tone. It is a classy minimalist that might once have been a hippie, but over time has understood that less really is more. Both were designed by branding agency Grid Worldwide. The Loeries brief was clear: the book must focus on the business of creativity (hence the inclusion of agency stats and ratings). Perhaps more important: the book must have an enduring, authoritative presence, to last out a five-year tenure. The annual is the Loerie’s Speaker of the House. South African Tourism’s spokesbook for South Africa, christened Be Inspired, was a complicated birth. The client initially approached Grid to create a PowerPoint presentation. Grid managed to convince them that this medium was unlikely to convey the necessary information about South Africa, let alone inspire a sense of confidence in the ambassadors for the South Africa brand or its audience. Be Inspired crams as much as possible of the South African milieu into its 200-and-something pages. For Shelley Atkinson, creative director at the agency, the South African experience is best dished warm: the ideal would have been a two month sojourn around the country tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, but since this would have been prohibitively expensive, they settled on a book that would be brimful, cover to cover, with our South Africa. Still, producing a book of this kind does not come cheap.
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COVER
In creating something that will make an audience sit up and take notice what matters most is not newness, but trueness.
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COVER
To keep costs down, it was decided that it would have a limited print run. The upside, according to Atkinson, is that it lends the book collectible status and ensures that it is the keepsake it is meant as. Grid’s investment in the book was complete; they did the research, sourced the photographs (often on bended knee), wrote the copy and then put everything together in a package that won them Bronze at the 2009 Loerie Awards. For Nathan Reddy, founder and CEO of Grid Worldwide, the book was “a true labour of love aimed at inspiring each reader with a consistent voice and message for South Africa as a unified national brand”. Atkinson’s watchword for design excellence is relevance, a word that has its roots in 16th century Scottish legalese borrowed from medieval Latin. Back then it would have meant “legally pertinent” an issue that could hold its own, or be raised up (relevare) in a court of law. Atkinson’s take on the word in the context of branding is that relevance will always stand up to visual clutter – to a strong concept and good design merely a backdrop of “bland wallpaper”. In creating something that will make an audience sit up and take notice what matters most is not newness, but trueness. Building better, more memorable campaigns for brands and constantly evolving them is what keeps Grid in business. Their SLOW lounge concept for British Airways, hatched in tandem with interior design specialists, Tonic, won them a Grand Prix at the 2010 Loerie Awards. SLOW truly is design in 360 degrees and an exercise in integrity: from the finishes on the furniture to the table napkins to the way space is used. In the context of design of this calibre, which leapfrogs beyond the bounds of traditional advertising media (TV, magazines, outdoor), it is not unusual to see print materialised in less conventional forms. In the SLOW lounge, wood-clad walls and balustrades are suitable canvases to inscribe with the mood of a brand or the information we live by. The SLOW concept is gleaned in part from the global movement with which shares its name and similarly urges us to return to the tactile, the natural and the contemplative taking of pains to produce a satisfying result. But, the spaces Grid and Tonic have made are also a thoroughly modern spin on communication and accessibility. If the internet was a three-dimensional illustration, it might look something like a SLOW lounge with its serendipitous hints and pointers through the maze. If all the information in the lounge spaces could change on command or according to changing facts, like the Word Search
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clock on the lounge’s wall, it would come close to an Internet of Everything, where any object can be an access point to the digital cloud.
A MARK IN TIME To some, the idea that words might hound us, leaving us no choice but to read them, is a frightening alternative to the freedom implicit in opening a book, but the evolution of print beyond paper is necessary to ensure its survival. In its most useful form print is words and marks in motion; memes to be snatched out of books or heard and transcribed or sifted from the ether. Reading print is an activity: our eyes move across it, it becomes packets of neural data, it is uttered, copied and pasted. Perhaps if all print really wants to be is a continuum, an energy neither created nor lost, the fear that we will lose our desire to engage with it and that all will be destroyed someday in a great Fahrenheit 500 holocaust of the world’s book population, is banished. The bond between beauty, books and people is strong, evolved over centuries of commitment to true publication of thought, image and feeling. Our attachment drives us to condemn Comic Sans to hell and call David Carson God and wax lyrical about the smell of a freshly printed page or the must in a book that has not been opened for a while. It is hard to imagine life without the ubiquitous book, but the migration of print to digital media has begun in earnest and it is an evolution which we should embrace. We are mistaken if we insist that ink on paper can be print’s only incarnation. Our affinity for the printed word will likely only become more powerful as digital words become more available. In essence, to print is to make a mark, an impression. At its most naïve, print does not necessarily have a motive. It is mark for mark’s sake. Once the mark reaches the functional level, it is made to be seen, usually by others, and is meant to communicate. Marks to show direction and ownership evolve into story telling, with language and emotive imagery at their pinnacle. Design is simply a tool to show off the meaning and function of the mark. The better the mark, the better the communication. Here I will use Atkinson’s R word once more: the more relevant the mark, the better the communication.
COVER
The bond between beauty, books and people is strong, evolved over centuries of commitment to true publication of thought, image and feeling.
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Images courtesy of Don Albert & Partners
feature
THE ARCHITECT WHO PUBLISHED A BOOK Architect Don Albert dug deep into his pockets to produce a book showcasing his design work, then embarked on a road show to promote it. Sean O’Toole, who edited the book, tagged along with his microphone
The opening sentence in Don Albert’s architectural monograph, Sound Space Design, a self-funded, lavishly illustrated and scrupulously annotated overview of this 39-year-old Port Shepstone-born architect’s projects, offers pretty much all there is to know about his philosophical orientation as a designer. "In a world continuously destabilised by economic, social, environmental and political upheaval," begins his essay, "we cannot claim to know, not with absolute certainty, where civilization is headed, nor make absolute prescriptions about future realities." The essay, which bears the uncomplicated title ‘Not Knowing’, is notable for its forthright and uncompromising stance. "At present, many in the South African architectural academy frame their debates within an ideology of limits," he offers in language inflected by the urgency of the manifesto writer – "limitations of budgets, limitations of literacy, limitations of resources, limitations of implementation, limitations of the education system. This merely obscures a more pressing limitation, that of the imagination itself." Stylistically, Don is a chameleon-like architect. When not commenting on his drive, his contemporaries will often remark on his experimental and non-prescriptive approach to design. For those unfamiliar with his work, two early Durban projects, the Millennium Tower and Barrows factory, stand as representative examples. Both potentially banal design briefs – it is hard to think of more utilitarian architectural projects than a harbour port tower and warehouse factory – Don nonetheless managed to apply his imagination to the projects and offer his clients singularly distinctive buildings. Both projects are documented in Sound Space Design, a compilation of two-dozen projects, many of them existent and out there in the world, others intangible digital renderings entered into competitions in far-flung capitals. The following text is an edited transcript of some of the questions
posed to Don on a road show to promote his new book. Some of them are mine, but other voices included here include Nic Coetzee, a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Cape Town, Henning Rasmuss of Paragon Architects, and Mokena Makeka of Makeka Design Lab.
Durban, 17 September 2010 Nic Coetzee: Anyone looking at your work, both in the book and in general, would be struck by how different and divergent each project is. I think there are some recurring themes, but on the whole I don’t think there is a style – a Don Albert & Partners style. I think that, for me, I interpret that as your stance, of "not knowing", not predetermining a design project. What was very exciting for me, working with you on your book, was the process of putting the projects together – getting that revealed, and how that leads to an incredible richness, and surprises for yourself and your clients – that there is no bankable, predetermined building that clients know they’ll get. I think it is a wonderful journey that you take clients on. Don Albert: Thank you. [Chuckles] I hope clients feel the same way afterwards. Nic Coetzee: I think people might think of you as this heavy purveyor of digital design, and obviously having worked with you on the book, it is very clear that digital processes are just tools, like any other for you. You are not going to defend them, I don’t think, but I think it is something you might want to comment on. Don Albert: I think by now, if you actually look at what we’ve done in the book, we haven’t mastered any of those techniques, all we’ve done is dabble. I don’t know. The work that I’m doing at the moment is going to focus on a more intuitive connection between software and ourselves. It won’t be as stiff or abstract.
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feature SSD_CH9_300-309 Interview:Layout 1
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Vibration, Energy, Resonance
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Don Albert in conversation with Nic Coetzer
NC: Is there room for conceptual architecture in South Africa? Something more than a functionalist architecture? DA: Until we have better education and a collective understanding of the power of architecture and the proper role planning can play, I would say “No, there isn’t much space for conceptual architecture right now.” NIC: Your work operates in this zone of conceptual architecture so clearly there is some market for it?
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DA: For me the acceptance of conceptual isn’t broad enough, and I would like to see more architects engaging with their clients on a more conceptual level. We still have a long way to go before we can address social issues and fulfil functional requirements as well as fulfilling artistic and cultural needs – as only architecture can. NIC: Is it only an educational issue or is there something structural about poverty that reduces expectations of architecture down to a bare minimum? Is that justified? DA: I don’t think low expectations are justified. We can’t blame it all on poverty because many cultures and places around the world have gross poverty, even worse than South Africa’s, and yet in the public domain architects like Oscar Niemeyer are able to get away with extremely beautiful, poetic buildings. The notion of getting away with it. I must add, is a particularly South African perspective on the arts, and the root of the problem, where expressive design is seen as a vulgar frivolity! NIC:
What’s exciting about working in South Africa?
DA: We have a very liberal town-planning and development context in general, possibly too liberal, but it does help speed up opportunity and creativity even if the downside is often poor urbanism and irresponsible environmental impacts. Compared with Europe, Japan or North America, our climate is very mild and that means we can make richer and more interesting indoor/outdoor
buildings at a far lower cost than in the colder or wetter climates. Once an architect reaches a certain level in South Africa, there is tremendous latitude in terms of the formal possibilities of buildings. In general, what with relatively cheap labour and fairly lax safety protocols, a boer maak ’n plan1 attitude still prevails where contractors are keen to take on almost anything! This has been very encouraging for me. It has allowed us to push the envelope on extremely frugal budgets, budgets laughable elsewhere. Many architects argue that South African building skills are going down the toilet, but a lot of our engineering and design talent has simply been operating off-shore, in places like Dubai, including manual labour, so it’s not that we don’t have the technical skills to execute great buildings. We just need better ideas! NC:
Agreed…
DA: On the other hand, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and rampant crime in South Africa have fuelled a brain drain. Many of my university peers are now practising in the United Kingdom, Australia or North America. It has lowered the competition and potential discourse, which is a good or bad thing, depending on my bank-balance versus my need for having old buddies around! But seriously, it is sad to see the old guard, or a small new elite, churning out lacklustre buildings, while young talent has to emigrate. From a purely creative perspective, you are not going to find young graduates winning competitions for important public buildings anymore because those types of building are generally being put out on a different tender basis these days – one that is increasingly restrictive and orientated towards the bottom line, or worse still, racked by graft. At best government tender processes invite developer teams with proven track records, no matter how dull they may be. It is less and less about the architectural concepts behind the buildings. Opportunities for young architects are probably lower now across the board, more so for young white males who continue to be the highest number of graduates. The irony is tragic.
Vibration, Energy, Resonance
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We are moving into a new direction of more sensuous architecture, possibly less intellectual or academic. The book is unashamedly a catalogue of experiments rather than a manifesto, I would say. Nic Coetzee: For me, a monograph, I think, gestures an action of looking back at a life’s work. But I think your book is not a monograph in this sense. I think it looks forward. There are a range of things in it that are prompts. I imagine, although I don’t want to talk for you, that in twenty years' time you might disavow this book. Don Albert: Maybe. I don’t know – that’s not knowing. Sean O’Toole: Your book coincides with the end of a mini-boom in construction. In his essay, Nic uses the words "extravagance" and "excess" to describe, appreciatively, your architecture. To what extent is your book evidence of the boom years, its excesses and frivolity? Were you a culprit of it? Did you perpetuate it? Don Albert: We did have a project in Dubai once, if that’s what you mean. [Audience laughs] It went pear-shaped in February 2008. Um, no, I don’t think we have been at the trough of capitalism at all, thanks Sean. I think that all of our projects have been executed on extremely tight budgets. We generally haven’t done speculative kind of work. In terms of what Nic is talking about in his essay (‘Getting out of Ourselves: Metaphor and Analogy in the Work of Don Albert & Partners’) the "excess" is… I mean maybe Nic you should speak about that. Nic Coetzee: Well, I think, the work that you do is always seeking to squeeze as much out of what is given to you, and more. I believe that is an amazing and fundamental part of being an architect, to find within each project the excess or the exuberance, because I think it can so easily become a very mundane, almost engineered solution. For me, the drive to extract as much as you can from each brief is why I used those words.
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Henning Rasmuss: The making of a book is generous, and I think, well, why bother, because you’re only doing it for yourself. It’s not like people have been phoning you, I assume: ‘Don, where’s the book! We want to see the book, we love your work.’ I assume that didn’t happen. [Audience laughs] Don Albert: It did happen. [Audience laughs] Henning Rasmuss: Okay, I’m wrong. Maybe it just hasn’t happened to me. But really, why we are here is to say thanks for the generosity of bothering to share with us stuff that’s in your head. The buildings are easy, they are there, you can go see them, but what’s in your head is a whole other thing… Publishing takes a whole of guts… To write a monograph about your own work is a profound act of self-exposure, a bit like scratching through your handbag… When you as the author of your own works sit down and write about what you thought, you make yourself vulnerable, because then you can be properly challenged. This is probably why so few architects do monographs… More architects should bother, be brave, and expose themselves. The other thing with this book is that it is fun: it is big, colourful and messy. To me it is a completely Durban book. Sean O’Toole: I have a question that touches on what Henning just said. It’s that bath duck in your book – I mean, what the fuck? Don Albert: It was something we shot for the book and it got rooted out so eventually there was only one image. Essentially it is a reference to Robert Venturi [an American architect and theorist whose 1977 manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas coined the terms "duck" and "decorated shed" in response to orthodox modernism]. Well anyway, that’s how it ended up there. The other really pathetic story about those ducks is that they were given to me as a gift, and were in my bathroom. At the low point of my career, I had Top Billing come and shoot at my house. They were doing a feature on bathrooms. They brought champagne and strawberries, and seduced me into getting naked in my bath – with bubble bath and those ducks. I got one phone call from that bit of exposure, somebody asking where they could find the ducks. [Audiences laughs] That was rock bottom. After that I thought, I’m going to publish a book.
Cape Town, September 30, 2010 Sean O’Toole: The turnout in Joburg was rather dismal. South Africa is too small a place to talk about architectural regionalism, but are you a regional architect? Do you only have fans in Cape Town and Durban? Don Albert: Um, we have built once or twice in Gauteng. I think it was logistical rather than regional. We had Andrew Makin speak for 45 minutes over his time slot [at the Architecture ZA 2010 conference]. Maybe it was strategic. [Laughs.] Sean O’Toole: I interviewed David Adjaye recently. I am going to pose you a question I asked him. I’m interested in how architects learn, not formally, but experientially. Rem Koolhaas wrote a retroactive manifesto of his time in New York. Tadao Ando boxed and
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Henning Rasmuss: Okay, I’m wrong. Maybe it just hasn’t happened to me. But really, why we are here is to say thanks for the generosity of bothering to share with us stuff that’s in your head. The buildings are easy, they are there, you can go see them, but what’s in your head is a whole other thing… Publishing takes a whole of guts… To write a monograph about your own work is a profound act of self-exposure, a bit like scratching through your handbag…
went travelling. Le Corb drew. Robert Venturi, Paul Virilio and David Adjaye take photographs. What do you do to learn? Don Albert: I think I read a lot, travel a lot, and make music. And I collaborate a lot, so I am always learning from other people. Sean O’Toole: The first word in your book’s title is Sound. What is the relationship between sound and architecture? Don Albert: I think it is a classical one. Basically, I am very interested in harmony, the relationship of time is to music what space is to architecture. If you are playing with those fundamentals, you are basically in control of harmony, which is what beauty is. Fundamentally, I’m interested in beauty first. Sean O’Toole: Last week in Johannesburg an audience member said your architecture is just fashionable. What did you make of that? Don Albert: Well, it should be fashionable, but like all good fashion it should last and date. We appreciate a dress Twiggy wore in 1966 and we appreciate a baroque church that was built at a particular date and was true to its time. So I am very interested in art forms that can claim time and space. I’ve got no problem with that. Mokena Makeka: From my side, the question of formalism is quite an important one. When one looks at work and comes to immediate conclusions, I think it speaks to the broader issue of how illiterate we have become in terms of being able to read architecture, and understand the syntax that underpins the spatial planning and the devices used. I think if you look through Don’s book, you can see there is a circulation logic, there is planning logic, there is sense of hierarchy, and there is a sense of analysis. I think we need to get back to the point where we can understand that architecture can have incredible morphological impact, but yet still be underpinned by meaning and syntax and language and texture, which is not frivolous and merely fashionable. I think it is an indictment of our education system that we have come to be suspicious of buildings which excite us visually. I think it problematic that we believe, in order for a building to be taken seriously, it has to be a rectilinear box, where form immediately follows function. I would argue that function is more than engineering concerns – it is about culture and identity. I have always enjoyed your work, Don, not so much for whether you have found the answer to architectural identity or the perfect solution to a particular typology, but for the fact that you analytically engage with a problem and the outcome is the result of a process which doesn’t have predetermined conditions. The fact that you have
managed, in some respects, to articulate a trajectory where I almost don’t know what your next building is going to look like, I think that is a good thing. _Sean O’Toole is a journalist and editor based in Cape Town
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A brief history of
BOREDOM
Boredom is a provocation, a profound itchiness, writes Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Illustration: Francois Smit
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Boredom is not the existential state of eternal ennui or depression – if it were, it would act like the dejected robot Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Boredom means more than just the impetus for change. Here's what Siegfried Kracauer wrote about it in "Boredom:" But although one wants to do nothing, things are done to one: the world makes sure that one does not find oneself. And even if one perhaps isn't interested in it, the world itself is much too interested for one to find the peace and quiet necessary to be as thoroughly bored with the world as it ultimately deserves." Boredom's definitions over the last 2000 years include acedia, dejection, depression, sloth, laziness, immobility. We characterize it in the same manner as melancholia, tristesse, ennui, annoyance and wearisomeness. La Rochefoucauld wrote, "l'extrême ennui sert à nous désennuyer" (extreme boredom serves to distract from boredom). Séan Healy notes the paradox, asking, "How could an extreme form of something distract one from a lesser form of the same affliction?" In English, Byron first noted bores (someone suffering from ennui) in Don Juan, where he wrote, "Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored." Charles Dickens invoked boredom in his 1852 novel Bleak House, after which Healy distinguishes British boredom from the continental form: sullen and private as opposed to continental boredom's virulence and destruction. It has its own typology: situative boredom (waiting for someone or taking a train), the boredom of satiety (too much of the same thing), existential boredom and creative boredom (in which someone is forced to do something new or different).
Profound Situative boredom, the momentary ennui presented by a certain state of things, can be shaken off by action. Lars Svendsen writes, "To the extent that there is a clear
form of expression for profound boredom, it is via behaviour that is radical and breaks new ground, negatively indicating boredom as its prerequisite." He notes the example of Alberto Moravia's novel, La Noia, in which the narrator's father's boredom "does not require anything else to be assuaged than new, unusual experiences." Søren Kierkegaard, tongue firmly-in-cheek in that very Danish way, analysed the genesis of boredom and its effect throughout history. He presupposes boredom as the root of all evil, "ruinous" for man: "The effect that boredom exercises is altogether magical, except that it is not one of attraction but of repulsion." The impetus to build grows out of this boredom: humanity grows so bored, it builds a boring tower.
Tower of madness We can trace this from the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. From that time boredom entered the world and grew in exact proportion to the growth of the population. Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were bored in union, then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille, then the population increased and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of building a tower so high it reached the sky. The very idea is as boring as the tower was high, and a terrible proof of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then the nations scattered over the earth, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored. And think of the consequences of this boredom! Man stood high and fell low, first with Eve and then the Tower of Babel. Yet what was it that stayed the fall of Rome? It was panis and circenses. Martin Heidegger continues along the path of Kierkegaard's existential dissection of boredom. He studies boredom as part of his continual exploration of dasein (exist-
ence). He directly relates boredom to the passage of time, for in German, the word for boredom is langeweil, literally "to have long time". Heidegger derives his consideration of it from the notion of a "profound boredom;" its relation to time is key. Boredom leads to time, time leads to boredom.
Bored stiff Within such a frame, boredom is the "fundamental attunement", and at that an objective and subjective hybrid. It is a tricky concept since "we do not understand boredom in its essence," writes Heidegger, perhaps because it has never become essential to us. "Perhaps that very boredom which often merely flashes past us, as it were, is more essential than that boredom with which we are explicitly concerned whenever this or that particular thing bores us by making us feel ill at ease." He suggests not going out of one's way to make oneself bored, but rather learn "not to resist straightaway but to let resonate... only by not being opposed to it, but letting it approach us and tell us what it wants, what is going on with it." Boredom is also ideological. It converges with conceptual art in Brian O'Doherty's 1967 Object and Idea in his characterization of "high-boredom and low-boredom art." High-boredom art relies heavily on exhaustible optical effects, such as with Pop art. Low boredom art, the realm of artists like Donald Judd and Robert Smithson, does not force itself onto viewers. In fact, the sculptor and critic Patrick Ireland writes, "It tends to fade into the environment with a modesty so extreme that it is hard not to read it as ostentatious." Though he notes that the distinctions of boredom may sound arbitrary, they are useful because they uncover some of the main concerns of art of the sixties, "to the ironies they conceal, to the techniques with which they are executed... and to the 'mimicking' of the machine, which in the last few years has constituted a new orthodoxy of unfreedom and freedom."
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Computers don't help, for machines reduce the role of chance as a "built-in variable" to the most sophisticated – and literally most stupid of machines – the computer.
An itchiness Cyberneticist Gordon Pask invoked boredom routines when he created the Musicolour Machine in 1953 – a machine that accompanied live music with improvised light shows. When the musicians became too repetitive, the machine would get bored and stop responding, requiring the musicians to change what they were doing in order to reengage the machine.
Computers don't help, either, for machines reduce the role of chance as a "built-in variable" to the most sophisticated – and literally most stupid of machines – the computer.
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The idea reappears in Cedric Price's Generator (1976-79, not built). This series of cubes, walkways and catwalks could be moved around by a mobile crane on site. Price's collaborator, John Frazer, proposed that the cubes be outfitted with sensors that would report on the use of the components. If the pieces of Generator weren't moved enough, they would grow bored and design their own layouts, which in turn would be handed off to the mobile crane operator to put in place. The very least you would expect of a system, wrote John Frazer, is that if you kick it, it should kick back. In Generator, Frazer found the germ of an idea that would shift his concepts of computer-aided design
toward one where the computer took an active, not a passive role. Here, boredom serves as a challenge to use systems differently. He was so committed to the sensors and boredom routines of Generator that he continued to pursue aspects of the project in 1989, 1995 and, ultimately, shortly before Price's death in 2003. Anne Galloway writes in favour of boredom, in terms of it being a slow space for contemplation, against commodification. There is a panoply of possibility for boredom, too, as a button pushing, frustrating, provocation: an itchiness. _This article first appeared on activesocialplastic.com
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Illustration: Francois Smit
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PLATfORM A CULTURAL REVIEW OF SORTS
• • • • •
TREVOR NOAH JACQUES COETZER BE PHAT MOTEL ROBERT WONG HOT MEDIA SOUP
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Artist Jacques Coetzer in front of a painting by Dorothee Kreutzfeld, Blank Projects, Cape Town, December 2010 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 29
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14 theses on Trevor Noah 1. His self-serving semantics. On shilling for Cel C. "I get paid, but I don’t sell out. I don’t work for them – I work with them."
2.
His employers. Cell C is a company with dubious beginnings and controversial corporate masters. The lucrative third cell license was undergoing an ‘independent’ selection process in the late 90s. But the ANC had already "promised (the license) to the Saudis long ago as part of a wider package of weapons for oil deals". Cell C is 75% owned by Oger Telecom of Dubai. Oger itself was built by Rafik Hariri, who was charged with fraud and corruption, and ultimately killed with a car bomb in Beirut.
3.
His "ethnic ambiguity". It works for companies hungry for an emerging youth demographic ‘beyond race’. Noah joked on his show recently about being "cappuccino". The ‘aspirational’ mall-going multi-cultural crowd is the target of lifestyle-companies and Noah’s right in their arc.
4. His suits. There are many great suits in
Comedy. Chaplin’s tramp suit. Groucho’s tuxedo. And Steve Martin, as Flydini, the magician. But Noah’s suits communicate little more than social mobility – an I’ve arrived professionalism. The equivalent of a wine cellar or Italian tiles.
5.
His indifference. "Some people have tried calling me to complain about me working with Cell C – I couldn’t hear them though, the call kept cutting."
6.
His audience betrayal. Trevor Noah pretended to be Chomsky in his corporatescripted rant about cellphones when he was really on the side of the side he’s criticizing.
7. His dimples. Dane Cook has dimples.
And he also sucks. He and Noah are both
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too pretty to be funny. They don’t need to be funny to get laid. Ugly comics do. Belushi needed the funny to get laid. Jackie Gleason. Don Rickles. Whoopi. Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison, Louis CK, Patton Oswalt, David Cross. Needing the funny to get laid separates okay comedians from legends.
8.
His overexposure. When your name makes people make the stepped-in-something face – it’s time to slow down. Being everywhere all the time just shines a light on the mediocrity of local marketing. It has nothing to do with talent.
9. His clean-cut image. Where are Noah’s
addictions? His flaws and excesses? Welladjusted is comedy poison. Doug Stanhope endlessly drinks beer onstage and sleeps with angry transsexual hookers. Dylan Moran chain-smokes with endless glasses of red wine. Richard Pryor got so high he set himself on fire. Literally. Then joked about it.
10. His complicity in marketing gumph. Here’s the real Cell C CEO, Lars, on that ©: "The C in the centre is based on our vision of understanding the way of life of our customers better (C is for customer) and tailing solutions around them (indicated by the ring). And there’s no significance in the Cell C logo bearing a resemblance to the copyright symbol". Copyright issues are at the center of web 2.0 culture. Intellectual property is a battleground. The company has already leveraged the integrity of a promising comedian. What’s next? 11. His silence on the truth. Cell C spent R150m rebranding and a further R150m on upgrading stores. It made R1.4 billion in 2009. Vodacom spends around R440m on advertising and MTN R470m. All of it deflects the fact that South Africans pay
some of the highest cellphone call rates in the world.
12. His silence on debt. Cell C has a lot of it. More than R13bn until recently. It’s debt to earnings ratio is very high. The company halved its debt through a massive debt-forequity swap agreed to by shareholders. In other words, the whole re-branding song and dance is simply proving to shareholders their money’s safe. There are multiple perceptions being serviced here. Noah is not only talking to us, the local SA consumer, but Saudi Arabian capital. The persona he’s selling, hip, opinionated, well groomed, has something of the glib young prince about it. Now we know why. 13. His accents. An accent in comedy is really just saying don’t listen to the content of the joke, listen to the way I’m telling it. Noah’s over-insistence on accents, rather than good material, ironically parallels the smoke and mirrors of the Cell C campaign. Noah’s method as a comedian is the same as the cynical bluff his bosses pulled! All show and no substance. 14. His tarnished image. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Cell C’s use of the 4Gs logo and found its networking speed and service to be "on par" with competitors. The company was essentially branding a competitive advantage it "did not possess". Cell C tried to sell us the illusion of ‘greater speed’ and ‘greater service’. The well-paid purveyor of that lie was Trevor Noah.
_Brandon Edmonds
Illustration by Jason Bronkhorst
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platform
This is
" Charlie Oscar Echo Tango Zulu Echo Romeo" By Sean O'Toole Over the past year or so, artist Jacques Coetzer has been commuting between his eccentric Danish-styled home in Riebeek Kasteel, north of Cape Town, and Moshi, a town in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region. The reason: coffee. For much of the past decade Coetzer, aka the lone guerrilla aka the reluctant sculptor aka boetie from Pretoria aka the man without medical aid, has been a consultant designer and source of amusement for Martin Fitzgerald and Dale Mazon, the enterprising duo behind Tribeca, an independent coffee company and supplier to Woolworths. One of Tribeca’s suppliers is the Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union (KNCU). Founded in 1930, KNCU is Africa’s oldest co-operative; it claims a membership base of around 61000 smallholder coffee growers in the Moshi region. Coetzer has been lending his technical know-how – he designed and built his cantilevered home – to the construction of a coffee shop in Moshi. The idea is to give the town’s residents a place to hang out, chat and sample their export commodity. Getting from Riebeek Kasteel to Moshi is a bit of mission, explains Coetzer when I drive out to his "sustainable middles class home", which he has also dubbed a "white man’s shack" because of its use of corrugated iron cladding. Typically, he has to fly from Cape Town to Johannesburg, connecting from there to Nairobi, with a further flight to Moshi. Arriving in Johannesburg on one of his now routine great treks north Coetzer realised that his guitar was missing. He asked a lady at the airline help desk to find out where it was. The uniformed woman picked up a handset and called someone in baggage services. "I have a customer here looking for a bag," she said. "His name is Jacques Coetzer." Silence. "Coetzer." More silence. Ex-
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asperated, she still managed to flash the tall man with grey-blue eyes a corporate smile. "Coetzer!" Silence. "CHARLIE OSCAR ECHO TANGO ZULU ECHO ROMEO," she shouted into the receiver, using the phonetic alphabet to spell out Coetzer’s name. More silence. And then the fatal answer: "Nothing." A few days later, Coetzer, dressed in military fatigues made to measure by a tailor in Moshi, headed into the lush growth at the border of the Kilimanjaro National Park with a military radio. "This is Charlie Oscar Echo Tango Zulu Echo Romeo. Do you copy?" he enquired into a hand-held microphone connected to a backpack radio. Silence. "This is Charlie Oscar Echo Tango Zulu Echo Romeo, do you copy?" repeated Coetzer, looking uncannily like a lost tro-
Images courtesy of Jacques Coetzer
epie from the Border War trying to find his way home. Still nothing. The broadcast was, of course, a hoax. The radio Coetzer used in his performance, evidence of which is currently on view at Blank Projects in Cape Town, is a fake. "I fabricated it," says Coetzer. "There is a megaphone inside." "Did you do this in your spare time?" I ask. "I always do," he responds. "I never go anywhere without doing something. I don’t fly to a place without doing something – I must use the petrol. So I always keep making art, always. I never cease doing it." I’m seated Coetzer’s studio when he tells me this. Studio is perhaps an overstatement, niche is closer the truth, his work area a screened-off section next to the bathroom in the open-plan, upper level of his home. The view north from his work area looks out to rural farms and mountains, the view south blocked by a wall decorated with, amongst other things, two guitars and a vinyl record featuring the smiling face of Elvis. The record was the first piece of music Coetzer shelled out money for as a youth growing up in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria. "How important is music to your art making?" I ask the artist. "Jus, it is moer of a important. Because music has always been a way of mine to really tap into the written word and poetry and ideas."His acoustic guitar, lost but then magically found when his insurance claim was lodged, features in a number of Coetzer’s deadpan public performance works, which are shown as video documents on New Adventures. One work in particular stands out for me. Playing guitar for Goats is based on the Swahili saying, "Sawa sawa na kumpigia mbuzi gitaa", which translates as "It’s like playing guitar for goats". The title to his per-
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Coetzer, ever the melancholy absurdist, sits playing his guitar to a trip of goats. They bleat; he plays. Nothing else happens. It is Ali Farka Toure meets Buster Keaton – melancholy soul blues that makes you smile and feel good about life.
formance pretty much says it all. Coetzer, ever the melancholy absurdist, sits playing his guitar to a trip of goats. They bleat; he plays. Nothing else happens. It is Ali Farka Toure meets Buster Keaton – melancholy soul blues that makes you smile and feel good about life. In another performance work, we see Coetzer rolling down a sandy embankment to the accompaniment of Papa was a Rolling Stone, the sublime early 1970s hit song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and made famous by The Temptations. The song includes a four-and-half minute instrumental lead-in, which is ample time for Coetzer to explain why he is pretending to be Sisyphus. (Technically it is a rock, not Sisyphus, who rolls down the hill in the Greek legend, although in 1970s Pretoria a "rock" was understood to be an Afrikaner, a detail Coetzer would no doubt appreciate.) "It is man art," is his explanation of the performance piece, which is presented as
a video document at Blank Projects. "It is middle-aged man art." Coetzer is not being ironic. "It is all about not having medical aid, falling by the wayside and not being like my dad who was such as very amazing man. He had such good medical aid. I am very aware of my mortality." Coetzer’s explanation, unvarnished and to the point, is revealing. If there is a serious message underpinning his works, which variously toy with political activism, identity politics, global warming, cultural displacement, medical insurance, Elvis in Zanzibar, Coetzer avoids a leaden approach to these zeitgeist issues in the construction of his work, which is routinely informed by humour, absurdity, bathos and silliness. In this, his work eschews the earnest and ultimately fatal impressionism that characterises so much South African art employing moving images. The artist shows me another video on his computer, a YouTube clip of late career
Elvis, bored and indifferent, stumbling through his repertoire. We laugh. Later Coetzer shows me a piece of software that is functionally a thesaurus but also visually a free association map of ideas rendered as words. In a way, the logic of the software offers a key into Coetzer’s work, which can seem random and disassociated, but is in fact driven by the free-spirited logic of enquiry. Who else but Coetzer would connect – quite logically it turns out – philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to composer Richard Strauss to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to Elvis and Freddie Mercury? "It makes amazing sense to this pluck that I’m on at the moment," smiles Coetzer as Elvis reveals a cape with a motif linked to the ancient faith of Zarathustra. "What is your pluck?" I ask. He laughs. "I’m not sure, I’m figuring it out as I go along." He laughs some more. www.jacquescoetzer.co.za/
Page opposite: Coetzer performing his work ‘This is Charlie Oscar Echo Tango Zulu Echo Romeo’
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The lights are on at the Be Phat Motel When they get to where they want to be in life, Be Phat Motel will show all their films in a giant cinema. In a motel. With naked girls and whiskey. People would be allowed to smoke. It is, after all, an industry built on make-believe. The young film production company has been working on a range of projects – from commercials (they spent a year developing viral concepts with Velocity), to documentaries, MTV work and concept pieces for the Loerie Awards, as well as music videos for some of SA's top talent. Their primary aim, however, is to exclusively produce cutting-edge, progressive feature films. Be Phat Motel is more of a collective in a sense – there is a core team that produces the work, but also an extended team that includes skilled young creatives in all fields, working together.
Vacancies There are many rooms in the motel, each filled with talent and originality, which is why the group members have more or less remained the same over the 4 years they've been operating. Producing partners, director Michael Matthews and screenwriter Sean Drummond, are the core of Be Phat Motel, along with cinematographer Shaun Harley Lee and editor Daniel Mitchell. The extended team includes composer James Matthes of Pressure Cooker Studios and sound designer Morne Marais of Sound Surgeon Studios, while designer and animator Floyd Paul is a regular collaborator. That said, Be Phat Motel is constantly trying to make the circle bigger.
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Timeless Sweetheart, a 27 minute- film starring Inge Beckmann, Anthony Oseyemi and Andre Weideman, is a contemporary update of the old American sci-fi films of the 50s, transposed into a South African context. It's finished in black- and-white and styled sort of retro-future, or future-past, like an alternate history – where it looks and feels like Cape Town of the 1950s, but with a timeless quality. Inge Beckmann plays a young housewife whose family doesn’t return to their farm after a typical trip to town. It’s the height of cold war tension, and with strange events over the horizon she eventually manages to break free from her daily routine and sets off to find them. What she finds is a landscape and city almost desolate; something world-changing has happened – and the story is her journey of discovery. Be Phat Motel has also been hard at work developing their first feature-length film. Called Five Fingers for Marseilles, this time around
they're drawing on the conventions of the Western – from the 50s Ford era through to spaghetti and revisionist eras – and fusing them into a contemporary South African Western that will play in Xhosa and Sesotho. According to them, it’s important that there’s priority of authenticity over 'gimmickry' (both as a Western and a contemporary African story.) The film touches on current SA politics, as it chronicles a small rural town's twenty year fight for freedom – first from an oppressive police force, and then from a whole new threat altogether.
ing them, they worked Five Fingers for Marseilles into something hard-hitting and thought-provoking – while at the same time being a cool, edge-of-your-seat Western. The script is getting good feedback and the team is busy trimming it down into the slickest version possible. Hopes are to take the film into production towards the middle or end of this year.
On the road again
In late 2010, Be Phat Motel brought the shnit international shortfilmfestival to South Africa for the first time. shnit is an international film festival of shorts that has been running in Europe for 8 years. Together with Berne, Switzerland and Cologne, Cape Town joined the festival as the fourth host city. Over 200 films from eighty countries around the world were shown. The shnit Cape Town festival team and selection panel were made up of a diverse group of filmmakers, creatives and organis-
In late 2010, Michael and Sean took a 7000 km research trip around the country, and found a catalogue of amazing locations and people. At that point they had a great concept and all the building blocks, but with real locations in mind, and being able to spend weeks within communities, getting to know the real issues affect-
Images courtesy of Be Phat Motel
shnit festival
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 37
Trying to make concept films, an international audience is more likely to show up than a local one. However, there is a definite shift at the moment in how South Africans view local content.
ers. They are already planning shnit 2011, which will include a Best South African Short award (a great opportunity for local filmmakers!) and shnit's reeltime programme, already successful in other host cities, where local filmmakers compete over the festival weekend to produce five-minute shorts from the same script and with the same actors – with a prize presented to the winner selected by the audience at the end of the weekend. They're also hoping to extend the festival's reach, having added Vienna as a host city and looking to Australia, the USA and South America for more partners.
Collective sold Challenges remain, however. Money, of course, is a problem, or the one that people often raise first. The problem is not one of a lack of resources, as there are pools of untapped capital around. It’s more a lack of development initiative to create and package projects that are commercially viable. If people create projects that make money, investors would follow, and the industry would transform into a self-sustaining system, where profits from one films is invested in the next. It’s a process that is becoming more viable as some local films become moderately big hits every year. Throughout history, there have always been periods where energies and groups have found themselves aligned – encouraging and influencing others into spawning change. The only way to make commercial con-
38 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
tent that succeeds in worldwide markets is to break negative mindsets and push harder. In short, by being more innovative and ambitious.
www.bephatmotel.com/
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COMING SOON
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ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 41
platform
Finding Wong The search continues for Google Creative Director Robert Wong
Finding Robert Wong, Executive Creative Director and co-founder of Google’s Creative Lab, is not as simple as one would imagine. It seems logical that the person who, for the past two years, has been responsible for communicating Google magic to the world would be the first to pop up if I googled (yes I said it) the name Robert Wong. It was not to be. If I had not known which Robert Wong I was
42 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
looking for, I might have ended up writing about Robert Wong the photographer, or Robert Wong, speaker, trainer and corporate magician. Robert Wong is not listed on Wikipedia. In the same way as there are many famous Smiths, there are many famous Wongs: actors, film producers, musicians, figure skaters, entrepreneurs, footballers, photographers, explorers and folk heroes.
platform
Paris Love is a study in serendipitous interaction with what Wong calls "free tech goodness": the tools Google gives us to make our lives easier and more interesting.
Bob Wong or Robert Charles Wong is a Canadian cabinet minister: wrong Wong. Denied a blow-by-blow account of my Wong’s life, I thought I might try Facebook. Robert Wong is on Facebook – around six hundred times. Later, in an interview I watched online, Wong says something that sums up this phenomenon: "The best results don't show up in a search engine, they show up in your life." While there are short bios online that reveal Wong’s origins – born Chinese, grew up Dutch, was Canadian, and is now American – and the fact that he was once a bean counter, the real Robert Wong is not defined by the facts of his life, but by his life. One cannot help but think that the online Wong is a deliberate illustration of Google culture. Wong’s blog, The Fab Wongs, which includes video and photographs of his daughters, Stella and Lucy, was begun specifically so that he could stay in touch with his family during his frequent business trips. His Facebook Wall (although he is no FB junkie and the posts are few and far between) reveals a down-to-earth, straight-talking Wong. His last post (7 January, 2011) is a call for an executive assistant: "Anyone know anyone great?" "Great" in Google terms is a fairly broad requirement. When online magazine ihaveanidea asked Wong what was expected of a person that Google would hire he pointed to "Googliness" – an amalgam of "ambition, humility, altruism, entrepreneurialism and sense of scale. Googly people are big thinkers who feel like they can really impact a lot of people." Wong’s brainchild, the Google Creative Lab (www.googlelabs.com) is part laboratory, part incubator. It is where Parisian Love, Google’s first big TV ad, aired first at the Super Bowl last year, was conceived. Its parents are The Google 5, five diversely talented young students recruited to, in Wong’s words, "fuel the ecosystem of the industry". Parisian Love tells a search story that begins with a search for opportunities to study abroad, develops into a love story and ends with a wedding and finally, a search for a crib. The 52-second ad captivates its audience emotionally through the love story, but the subtext is a guide to Google. When you start typing something into Google’s search bar, it will prompt you: "study abroad" becomes "study abroad paris france". If you misspell a word, Google will correct you. Google will translate English into French for you. If you type a flight number directly into the search bar, Google will provide you with all details for that flight. Parisian Love is a study in serendipitous interaction with what Wong calls "free tech goodness": the tools Google gives us to make our lives easier and more interesting. Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story.
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 43
platform
Hot media soup A young media outlet takes to the ether. But will snacks help ease the pain, asks Brandon Edmonds
There’s gazpacho at the JRNL launch held recently in the Vault below museum gallery in Woodstock – a once lowly borough that has apparently morphed into Cape Town’s "artistic nucleus" behind our backs. The gazpacho is perfect for a summer night and unexpected summer soup bodes well for the country’s newest online magazine. Gazpacho is uncomplicated, stylish, refreshing and delightful. All things a thrusting young media outlet wants desperately to be. It was good soup, though it lacked seasoning. A jibe chiming with the overall impression of the new site so far. JRNL is an "online magazine experiment" conceived over 3 years ago by one Dylan Culhane, a connected Cape go-getter (he co-owns the gallery housing the launch of his magazine, suggesting how deep he’s plunged into the business literature on synergy) with family money and rakish good looks, best known for the local version of Vice magazine. He left that gig annoyed at the amount of great local content that was going to waste given Vice’s abrasive tone and post-everything shtick. JRNL is his attempt to find a home for all that good stuff. He promises original content sourced from all over the land in every official language and hopes to re-animate the fading art of investigative, in-depth journalism. Promoting work that shows writers have left their computers and actually engaged with social reality. Real stories rather than yet more recycled bloggy opinions. He wants seminars by near forgotten journalists to imbue young writers and emerging talent with the basics: tenacity, curiosity, hard work. He says an "idealistic vision" is his guide. He’ll need it. The media climate is tough. Advertising is an ongoing challenge for new media. But Culhane is effortlessly convincing in person. Affable, earnest and easy-going. You sense he can turn a room on and corporate ‘creatives’ are gonna love him. We’re certainly impressed by Dylan’s pulling power, the connective reach of his social network. Ambitious, pretty people are here. The Vault space is packed. Skinny couples in plunging V Ts. Ravishing art students with a kind of what’s next air. Black people thank God. There’s a model in shorts whose waist aligns with my sternum. She’s showily tall. I’m just about the fattest person in the room. A pretty bartender rations ice cubes in the heat. It’s as if the photogenic ‘creative-industries’ junta of Kloof Street got stuffed into an icing gun then splooged out here for the night.
Which is the cardinal fear for JRNL. What’s its likely reach? Will it go mega or be an online boutique, occasionally distracting a fickle coterie of insiders? If it goes mega how will it remain vital and interesting? If it stays tiny and particular how will it attract and retain talent without major revenue? These concerns are eventual hurdles. Solutions will emerge or not. A friend asks if I want to write for them. With so few inspired avenues in the local media, who can resist? I tip another bowl of gazpacho and burp to JRNL’s success.
Photographs by Michael Ellis for JRNL
44 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
platform
Will it go mega or be an online boutique, occasionally distracting a fickle coterie of insiders? If it goes mega how will it remain vital and interesting? If it stays tiny and particular how will it attract and retain talent without major revenue? These concerns are eventual hurdles. Solutions will emerge or not.
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 45
review
The pen is mightier than Word Celebrating the genius of the humble ballpoint pen
The ballpoint pen: diminutive cylindrical plastic ink repository. A lightning conductor of the mind. But the skies are clear. No clouds. The weather report says no lightning due for days. Oh fuck. What the hell am I going to conduct? The page remains blank. I stare at it. It stares back at me. Its empty sneer says: "So are you gonna write something or what?" And I am afraid. I am very afraid... The peal of fear has been resonating through the universe ever since the divine hammer hit the almighty gong of The Big Bang. The sentient species of planet Earth are fundamentally defined by fear: from the first coelacanth eaten by an ichthyosaurus to the 11 168 791st victim of crime, disease, famine or misfortune, we all basically exist in a state of abject terror. Here in the good old R of SA fear is an essential ingredient of the collective mindset. It squats ominously on the shelf between some tins of Lucky Star and the Mrs. Balls chutney. From our soiled past to our sullied present, the most robust instinct passed from one generation to the next is that of fear. We’re a nation of high walls, razor wire, electric fences, attack dogs, armed response, violent townships, stoned suburbs and closed communities. It ain’t paradise but it’s our dystopia and we love it. Although some prefer to avoid it completely, the climate of tumult and trauma in which we live is an intensely fertile one for the creative soul. For, as Marcuse observed, without conflict there can be no creativity. Just look at Europe. All the great conflicts have been resolved and society is floating upon
46 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
Images clockwise from top: Richard Hart, Richard Moir, Rudi de Beer, Anton Kannemeyer, Lorcan White, Matthew Kay
review
a frictionless plateau. When fear has left the building, creativity becomes redundant. Instead of devising innovative ways to slay the dragon or unseat the despot, the most vexing question facing the continental populace is that of whether the foie gras in the fridge should be for lunch or dinner. For the creative individual, fear is a potent weapon, which assumes the seemingly unimposing shape of the modest ballpoint pen. Yet, like any weapon, the damage it is capable of doing depends upon the hands that hold it. So, in the 25th issue of iJusi, Garth Walker and his crew salute that most democratic and non-discriminating of weapons, the ballpoint pen. Unlike its more cumbersome predecessor, the dip pen, and its inherently leaky brother, fountain pen, traces of the ballpoint can be found everywhere: from the crude porn of a toilet stall to the first tentative sketches of the blueprint for a shimmering skyscraper. Ballpoint pens are used every day to gouge into the soft wood of school desks; to perform amateur tracheotomies; to create strange and beautiful drawings and to pen the lyrics for the next feel-good hit of the summer. For Simon & Garfunkel, the words of the prophets may be written on the subway walls and tenement halls, but we believe that the true magic of the age is to be found in our ballpoint scrawls. Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the penholder. _Jess Rogers
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 47
review
48 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
review
All decked out Moving with the times
Images from left: Wesley van Eeden, Bruce MacKay, Black Khoki, Alice Edy, Drip Logo, Jordan Metcalf, 35ten73
According to the press release, Verb is a "collaborative initiative to encourage and promote a positive change within society. Activist at its core, Verb is about creating, evolving and empowering – aiming to spread a DIY ethos to encourage people to build a better future for themselves." For Verb, art is a medium that has no borders or boundaries, and "only by working together can the message of change be spread far and wide." Thus Verb works with creatives and activists to make their message accessible to the youth which, in turn, provides them with a platform to get their initiatives across The collective successfully launched its first range of artist skateboards, T-shirts, limited-edition serigraphs and collectible skateboard works in early 2010. The range featured works of prominent artists Kronk, Alice Edy, Wesley van Eeden, Jordan Metcalf, Bruce Mackay and Black Koki. The second range of artist-series skateboards and clothing launched at the end of 2010 – featuring the work of established illustrators and artists such as Theory One, Louis Minnaar, Chemistry101, 35-ten-37, Christian Mugnai and Bison. With each range a limited edition-run of ten skateboard artworks per artist was released. The boards feature special black ply-laminations and a top pass certificate print, hand signed and numbered by the artist. Launching this February is a limited edition Verb collectors zine, featuring interviews and works of all twelve collaborating artists, team skateboarders and other creative partners. www.revolutiononline.co.za
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 49
MEDIA 2.0
THE NEW AD WARS How Apple is putting more sheep in the walled garden. By Vincent Maher
D YOUR A
HE R E : )
Illustration: Francois Smit
50 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
media 2.0
Maybe advertising agencies will embrace it simply because it’s Apple and that’s the logo they have been staring at for decades. Most likely.
It has not been long since Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless and their clamp-down on location-based mobile advertising. At the time many industry analysts questioned this decision and what it would do to the global volume of targetable location-based mobile advertising. Now it all makes sense with the announcement of Apple iAds, their new advertising platform for in-app advertising delivery. As per usual, the industry has gone wild with the news of Apple’s new ad platform that will theoretically give Google a run for its money in this space, but is it really good news for advertisers and publishers?
Be afraid Let’s look at publishers first. At the moment figures like 60% revenue share are floating around which is okay but not great. There are ad networks that share a much higher percentage of revenue like InMobi (who responded very cleverly to the iAds announcement) and there are also ad networks like Admob who deliver rich iPhone ad experiences, and then there is Google, in my opinion the best ad network for connecting people with concepts. But the sheep-like mentality of Apple fanatics dictates that they must take a lower revenue-share for their inventory lest they risk thinking for themselves (or differently). Most sane publishers, however, would prefer the option to choose an ad network that returns the best results in terms of both the revenue and the integrity of the advertising. In the integrity category Apple will no-doubt provide peace-ofmind, but that is going to come at a cost to advertisers if Apple approve ads at anything like the same pace they approve apps. Advertisers need rapid response to the creation of campaigns and changes to the creative and the message. Historically, Apple have been slow to approve apps and there have been many questions raised about potential conflicts of interest in this area and there is no reason to assume this will be different for advertising – the clampdown on location-based advertising is a case in point. In this area Apple’s standard fall-back is that it is in some way protecting the user-experience, but sometimes it simply looks like an abuse of power and the protection of its own interests.
What emotion? The argument that Apple iAds is going to be more valuable to advertisers because it adds "emotion" to advertising is puzzling but let’s explore it a little. If you exclude all the hype, what adding "emotion" to ads means is just that you don’t have to open the browser to see the end-point of an ad. Make no mistakes – it’s still the browser doing the rendering. If the idea of a full-screen ad is the ultimate intervention that will change the face of mobile advertising forever then I guess the job’s done and we can all go home. Somehow I don’t think that showing a 12-yearold a pretty-looking life insurance ad is going to make any difference at all. The concept of relevance is still relevant; otherwise Google could not make a killing delivering those ugly text ads. Rest assured, in marketing excos around the world the full-screen Apple ad will make managers wet their pants because they still think TV ads are cool. It’s the poor line-manager down the hierarchy who has to answer to the campaign performance questions who will be feeling the heat.
The big picture There is a bigger picture that I will probably be accused of missing. Maybe that bigger picture is that advertisers will be able to embed transactional functionality in their ad pop-ups. Well, that’s nothing new. We (the developing markets and Western Europe) have had that for a long time. Maybe removing the pop-up will make people click more ads even if they are less relevant. I doubt it. Maybe advertising agencies will embrace it simply because it’s Apple and that’s the logo they have been staring at for decades. Most likely. _Vincent Maher is a founding partner at Motribe
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 51
match on press
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ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 53
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tools
Meant for your living room It seems ASUS has been spending some time with Bang & Olufsen's chief designer to create one smart laptop. There's no denying this is one sleek looking machine with its polished aluminium exterior, but sporting some pretty cool tricks, including dual touchpads that purportedly gives you a DJ turntable-like experience. The high-definition 18.4-inch display is flanked by B&O ICEpower speakers and is clearly meant to live in your living room. It's not all looks here, though. It's got a Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 334M graphics, support for up to 1280GB of storage (with dual drives), a slot-in Blu-ray drive and USB 3.0. We've no idea what this thing costs, but stay tuned as we hope to do a hands-on review soon.
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 55
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tools
Don't stick this in your ear Jambox is the world’s first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone – it quickly and easily connects with mobile phones, computers, tablets, iPods and other Bluetooth devices in addition to working as a full spectrum radio. Users can share and stream music, movies, games, phone and conference calls with the Jambox. Working from the palm of your hand, the Jambox is completely wireless and can be updated with apps, software and new features at Jawbone’s industry-first online platform, MyTALK. With packaging that looks like minimalist art, the Jambox is sturdy, portable and versatile. "Jambox exemplifies Jawbone’s obsession with ensuring that form is always integrated with function," says Yves Béhar, chief creative officer of Jambox. The construction ensures full exposure of the speakers, for a richer and louder sound spectrum. Jambox comes in four colours: Blue Wave, Black Diamond, Grey Hex and Red Dot. www.jawbone.com
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 57
tools
Just moofe it moofe provides some of the best location photography for use in commercial CG
It probably hasn’t escaped attention that more and more creative ad campaigns, particularly those for automotive brands, are being produced with a little help from computer graphics (CG) applications. Or perhaps it has, and understandably so. With the latest software and CG assets making incredible photorealism possible, well, maybe you just didn’t notice? Take a car ad from any weekend newspaper’s glossy magazine. The gleaming vehicle, its curvaceous bodywork reflecting the chic city background, oozes must-have quality. But is the image you’re looking at the result of a photographic shoot or CG artistry? The answer is increasingly the latter, as today’s powerful software and skilled artists erode the boundaries between the real and digital worlds. So what happened? Did advertisers fall out of love with photography and car shoots? Not exactly, argues Eoin O’Connor, CEO of moofe.com – photography has just moved with the times.
Great location shots Founded by commercial photographers Douglas Fisher and Carl Lyttle, moofe answers a need for the flexible photographic assets demanded by today’s CG-savvy creatives. moofe aren’t CG artists, photographers or advertising experts – they’re a combination of all three. At its heart is highly accomplished and technical location photography, informed by years of experience in all three disciplines. And with more than half the world’s leading automotive companies having used moofe imagery to date, O’Connor says the rationale to use CG is compelling. "Take a typical car shoot – you’re looking at days if not weeks of organising and planning, a small army of staff from the photographer right down to people ensuring things like road closures are enforced, to make the actual shoot run smoothly," he says. "With traditional car photography, If the weather’s good and there aren’t any hitches, retouching the final images could start a day or two after the shoot ends. "Our clients – predominantly advertising agencies, in-house marketing teams and product designers – don’t want those headaches, delays or costs. "As well as being a cost-effective solution it’s incredibly flexible too. If a client changes their mind and wants a completely different location, or the car model needs to reflect the spec for different markets, CG means you don’t have to go back to the drawing board." So what makes moofe.com’s imagery capable of stunning photo-
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tools
FREE RESOURCE
realism? The key to successful CG productions, O’Connor says, lies in the quality of the high dynamic range image (HDRI) that every location comes with as standard. moofe’s HDRIs not only capture an entire location in a 360 degree panorama so 3D models reflect their world authentically, especially objects behind the camera position that are likely to be prominent, but also contain critical environmental information so that lighting is reproduced naturally and accurately in final renders. Unusually, moofe provides HDRIs shot at the same time as their location photography, rather than offering a ‘best-fit’ compromise.
Custom shoot service Keen to offer the widest choice to their clients, the company has also recently launched a ‘custom shoot’ service, allowing clients to focus moofe’s know-how and expertise on a location of their choice for significantly less than commissioning photography. The process of capturing HDRIs is unashamedly technical, but fortunately not for the user, O’Connor says. moofe’s HDRIs comprise
Get free access to a commercial license for a moofe package, which allows you to do print and web communications, but not advertising. You need to register on moofe.com and enter the promotional code ENJIN1. You can then download the images from there.
a range of exposure times as well as a full 360 degree sweep of the environment to ensure no detail is lost. A typical moofe HDRI file runs to a 70MB 32-bit file, underlining the depth of location information captured. moofe imagery also features useful tools to help artists create the most photorealistic work possible. "Every background image has a ‘target’ in it somewhere," continues O’Connor. "These targets are physical devices that allow artists to understand depth, scale and perspective in our images. This ensures 3D models fit perfectly into the scene without appearing to float or appear disconnected to its environment. Coupled with an HDRI the results can be breathtaking." moofe’s imagery from around the world becomes even more appealing at a time when creative budgets are facing sustained pressure globally. O’Connor says services like moofe are just the tonic. "moofe’s complete package – a great choice of cost-effective and stunning location photography, incredibly detailed HDRIs, the highest technical specifications and tools like our in-shot targets – is helping creatives to get more form their budgets and spend more time focusing on what they do best," says O’Connor. Check out more of locations on www.moofe.com – hit the 'inspire me' target-shaped icon on the top right of each page.
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 59
tools
Hard core LightWave 10 delivers groundbreaking tools for 3D artists
VPR split screen with Open GL overlay showing bone setup.
Lightwave has been the step child of the 3D industry for many years, the family member no one really talked about. But for those who know this software package and make use of its incredible toolset, it is a faithful companion that gets the job done time and again. For a long time Lightwave consisted of Layout and Modeler – the two modules making up the software as we know it. Being one of the oldest 3D packages around, hailing from the days of the Amiga, it has become necessary to bring the codebase into the 21st century. The new version of Ligtwave is named Core and is available as a module in a suite consisting of Core, Layout and Modeler in the new version of Lightwave. Building software takes time, and it was decided to not include the current version of Core in the Lightwave 10 release. It will, however, be released for free to owners of Lightwave 10 later in 2011. A preview beta is available to Newtek Hardcore members for download and testing. The advantage of Core is its use of the latest technologies – fortunately older versions of Lightwave also benefit.
60 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
Key technologies of Core transferred to Lightwave and ready to be used are: n Real-time OpenGL views of Ambient Occlusion, Bloom and HDRI background images n Python-based expressions and scripting n Bullet rigid body dynamics and sophisticated UV mapping capabilities. LightWave 10 benefits artists with unique new capabilities not found in any other 3D application, like instant feedback from the Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR), the precision of a complete Linear Color Space Workflow, real-time Anaglyph Stereoscopic Preview (3D) and Virtual Studio Tools that deliver real-time virtual walkthroughs while using the InterSense VCam virtual camera system used in feature film Virtual Art Departments. For those on a budget unable to afford an InterSense VCam, support has been added for 3Dconnexion's 3D mouse that enables you to move through the virtual world and interact with models and scenes controlling cameras and lights in real time. LightWave 10 ships with an updated and refined user interface, delivers extensive
new data interchange tools that provide seamless integration into multi-application pipelines, which us especially useful for those that make use of other packages to enhance their work. From personal experience, Lightwave 10 is the most stable and fastest version on the Mac to date. The speedup in OpenGL is very noticeable and all the new tools make it a pleasure to work with. At first glance one may ask what’s been changed but the more you make use of the software the more you realize how many small problems are just gone. Of particular note to Mac users is the full rewrite in Cocoa with 64-bit support. This of course means you need to get updated plug-ins, an unfortunate inconvenience to all software that’s been ported from Carbon. PC users have both 32- and 64-bit versions. Download a free trial version from the Newtek website.
www.grafx.co.za/ _Albert Du Plessis runs his own animation studio
tools
Display case The reference monitor for creative pros
The NEC SpectraView Reference 241 monitor is aimed squarely at design professionals. According to the company, for maximum image quality and stability, the new model features a hardwarecalibratable, wide-format LC display that offers 10-bit-per-colour performance. This allows it to output colours that cover 98 per cent of the Adobe RGB colour space. The monitor has a 3D LUT (LookUP Table) for more precise colour space emulation, while a 14-bit LUT for each RGB channel provides high-end colour control and gamma correction. NEC's Digital Uniformity Control (Color-
Comp) and ‘Backlight Ageing Control’ ensure controlled and peak performance throughout the entire lifecycle, says the company. The SpectraView Reference 241 has an IPS panel – which NEC says is designed specifically for colour-critical applications such as pre-press, soft proofing, DTP and professional photography. Citing its 178-degree viewing angle and minimal visible colour shift, the company says that the P-IPS technology offers greater viewing stability than any other LCD panel technology, and is the technology of choice for users who care about colour accuracy.
The NEC SpectraView Reference 241 is available in black at a price of R22 220. The package includes NEC’s SpectraView Profiler 4.1 software on CD, a hood and an individual SpectraView certification report, providing proof of the individual performance of each screen. www.mustek.co.za
Escape the ordinary CG training for aspirant escape artists Training provider Escape Studios has announced a series of lowcost online training courses in packages such as Maya, aimed at cultivating the skills of students, aspiring 3D artists and amateur Computer Graphics (CG) enthusiasts. Courses are aimed at preparing people for a career in CG, and cover packages including Maya, ZBrush and Nuke in areas including VFX, character animation, game art and compositing. Trainees can access the materials at any point for a year from the start of their training. "We are proud to announce the launch of Escape Studio's selfdirected online courses", says Leigh Pearson of local distributor Touchvision. "When we looked for global partners, Touchvision was an obvious choice for us in the South African territory. Their close ties with industry and the academic world are much akin to our own. We look forward to our new partnership in bringing the best training materials to the market space," says Mark Cass, Commercial Director of Escape Studios. The Online Self-Directed Courses offer the same in-depth 3D animation tutorials as their full-time courses and provide a flexible way to teach yourself CG. Users can purchase a 12-month access pass for any of the courses. Touchvision is currently offering a
further 5% off Escape Studios' online courses (commercial) as well as a free online Escape Studio course module with any commercial purchase of Autodesk Maya or 3ds Max Entertainment Creation suites. This offer is valid until 28 April, 2011. Each course features ten hours or more of training materials; prices start from R1 000; most courses are priced R1 395 or thereabouts. Full-time students can also purchase the Educational Autodesk Creation Suite through Touchvision, which comprises Maya, Mudbox, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder and Softimage and is available for under R2 500. They will also benefit from educational discounts on Escape's online courses. www.touchvision.co.za/
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 61
tools
Shiny inks Mimaki introduces new metallic inks
Mimaki Engineering, a leading manufacturer of wide-format inkjet printers and cutting machines for the sign/graphics, textile/apparel and packaging/industrial markets, has released a new eco-solvent metallic ink for its award-winning JV33 large format printer and CJV30 compatible print+cut machine. The metallic ink is perfect for digitally printing attractive and eye-catching shortrun digitally printed labels, POP displays, packaging, decals, posters seals and T-shirt designs. In combination with standard full colours, gold, bronze and other effects can be printed, resulting in stunning effects customers are sure to admire.
Contour cutting Mimaki has also introduced a unique solution to the problem of making consecutive contour cuts by integrating the JV33 and CG-FXII cutter series with continuous crop mark detection ability, which not only ‘kiss cuts’ but also die cuts. The CJV30 series is an integrated printand-cut device that automatically contour
62 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
cuts without any steps in between. This delivers a seamless workflow, which utilises Mimaki’s vast experience and expertise in print-and-cut technology. Since the news of the new metallic inks, Graphix Supply World, exclusive distributors of Mimaki in Africa, have sold more than the usual numbers of CJV30 print + cut machines to the packaging industries, to use for samples and digital short run labels and packaging designs.
Print with white In addition to the new metallic ink, CJV30 technology allows for printing with white ink which means that printing onto transparent substrates like water bottle labels is easily achieved. Mimaki's White Ink Overlay Print function uses high-density white ink and offers simultaneous white and full colour printing. It creates vivid full colour images on both opaque and transparent substrates. "GSW Mimaki Africa is very excited to be able to promote this ink for the CJV30 and JV33 Series: the best machines a print
shop can wish to own. The internationally best selling machines are compatible with full solvent, eco-solvent, aqueous and dye-sublimation inks, which does not limit our customers to one particular industry or application. If they choose to enter a new market, they do not need to change their machine, simply their ink" says Robert Franco, Managing Director of GSW Mimaki Africa. "Mimaki is always one step ahead of the competition, while supplying affordable quality to keep your business profitable," says Francko. Printing with silver ink requires no special knowledge or technical skills. Users can just choose the appropriate colour from the metallic colour library in the Mimaki RIP software Raster Link Pro5. In addition, Raster Link Pro5 enables output of all shades of metallic colours by calling up the feature chart for silver ink. Users can also devise their own or customers’ colours and metallic shades. Mimaki is exclusively distributed in South Africa and Africa by Graphix Supply World. www.gsw.co.za/
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 63
books
An annual affair A handbook for the industry, the new Loeries Annual is also very heavy, writes Sarah Britten
2010 Loerie Awards Annual edited by Andrew Human 379 pages R595 excl. VAT www.theloerieawards.co.za The first thing you notice when you pick up the 2010 Loeries Annual is how heavy it is. With its textured yellow cover and subtly embossed pages, it is a book that is not just designed to be read, but handled too. In a world in which everything seems to be shifting to the virtual realm – digital personas, digital friendships and, of course, digital ad campaigns - the volume that has been published to showcase last year’s Loeries winners is reassuringly solid. "The design of the new annual is a departure from previous annuals since 2005," explains Andrew Human, CEO of the awards. Rather than being part of the Loeries ad campaign, the annual is now integrated into the corporate identity of the awards. "The reason for this is that, going forward, the annuals will form a set – a comprehensive reference of the best of brand communication." The categories in the annual are organized according to media type and include introductory comments by some of the judges as well as official rankings. The latter, which cover every category of individual and agency, are printed upfront on pages which are likely to be very well-thumbed by art directors and writers looking to see where they feature in the creative pecking order. As expected, the agency responsible for the Allan Gray and Kulula campaigns, King James, tops the agency rankings, followed by Net#work BBDO, Draftfcb Johannesburg and Ogilvy Cape Town. The Loeries have long since moved on from a world where creativity was about advertising, and advertising was about being on TV just before Michael de Morgan read the 8 o’clock news. The winners detailed on the pages represent almost every type of communication, from traditional through-the-line campaigns to digital, experiential and architecture. There’s even a cookbook in here: Justin Bonello’s Cooked in Africa won a Silver Loerie in the publication design category. Every piece of work in the Annual had to pass a peer-review process consisting of 160 local and 3 international judges. "There’s no paid advertising in the book, so there’s only one way to be there: be the best," Human says.
64 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
Of cultural significance The annual is not just a record of which campaigns won what; it also serves as an archive of a significant aspect of South African culture. First held in 1978, the Loeries are a local institution, and advertising played an important part in fostering a sense of national identity after 1990. As Trevor Manuel once said, culture is formed in a forge, and advertising has much to do with raising the temperature of that forge. While politicians made history, it was the advertising that presented us with succinct illustrations of our fractured sense of national self. To understand a country, as Argentinean Loeries judge Pablo Del Campo suggests, that is where one should look, for advertising not only sets trends, it shapes our dreams. During the World Cup, it was the ad campaigns that championed the cause of South Africa: Kulula mocking British tabloid stories of poisonous snakes and earthquakes, Nando’s with its tongue-incheek introductions to local culture for "ama-visitors". Working-class white culture was the target of two campaigns for fast food outlets – the bronze-winning Wimpy ad featuring an East Rand family performing a bizarre version of Funky Town is especially sharply observed and witty, while remaining sympathetic to its characters.
books
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Stand a chance to win one of two Loeries annuals up for grabs. Send you name, contact details and a daytime phone number to gregor@enjin.co.za. Winners will be notified telephonically.
Some of the most engaging and innovative campaigns can be found in the experiential category. Campaigns for brands from Adidas to Citi Golf were a reminder of the importance, not just of showing the public a piece of marketing communication, but physically engaging with them too.
Ubuntu category A relatively new category, the Ubuntu Award, showcases campaigns which demonstrate a special focus on social responsibility. Here, work for brands as diverse as KFC and Gun Free South Africa were recognized. While there is clearly a significant shift from conventional abovethe-line channels to new media such as digital and mobile, it was a traditional big budget TV ad that picked up one of the three Grands Prix awarded. The Legend campaign for Allan Gray is a reminder that a great ad still has the power to move the public. The subject of articles in You and Huisgenoot, as well as a feature on Top Billing, the campaign was as much a success with the mainstream public as it was with the Loeries judges. As expected, Allan Gray was the leading brand in the rankings, scoring above Comair/British Airways, Volkswagen and Vodacom.
Creativity is effectiveness That big, mainstream brands should feature at the top of the list was an encouraging sign that the age-old argument about the perceived gap between creativity and effectiveness is for the most part just that – a perception. Clients are investing in innovative work, and it is paying off. Globally, awards for creative excellence are shifting away from awarding so-called scam advertising – ads that were not funded by the client, and were not advertising in the proper sense of the word – to acknowledging those campaigns that delivered results as well as demonstrating creativity. As Experiential Jury chairperson Colin Nimick of Ogilvy One explains in his report on the judging, "To win, campaigns had to be good creative that was responsive, effective, groundbreaking and setting a standard for the industry
locally and worldwide." "Creativity in brand communication is a business tool with one simple goal – sell, and do it better than your competitor," says Human. The Loeries uses five parameters to measure creative excellence: the expected innovation and quality, but also relevance to the brand, the medium and the target audience. "If you want to see effectiveness, you can look in here," he says of the book. Asked if he has a favourite campaign, he offers the Grand Prix-winning work done by Grid Worldwide Branding and Tonic Design for Comair/British Airways’ Slow Lounge concept. A winner in the mixed media category, the work is tactile and full of quirky touches, much like the book itself, and it makes sense that Grid is responsible for the design of the annual too. Providing an overview of the best local work in a wide range of categories over the past year – there are international winners, but for the most part the Loeries remains strongly South African – the annual is an essential resource for creatives and marketers to use when planning their own campaigns. Anyone who picks it up and pages through it will be left with an impression of the energy and vision of South Africa’s creative community. Ultimately, however, the work is measured not by admiration, but by action. As Colin Nimick reminds us, "The truly groundbreaking work that was incredibly effective at getting people to do something they normally wouldn’t do – that won." The 32nd Loeries annual can be purchased at selected Exclusive Books stores, from Pulp Books (www.pulpbooks.co.za) or via the Loeries online store (www.theloerieawards.co.za).
_This article was originally published in the Saturday Star
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 65
books
In context A new volume presents views of some of South Africa’s most prominent artists and thinkers
Positions: Contemporary South African Artists edited by Peter Anders and Matthew Krouse 296 pages R280 incl. VAT www.jacana.co.za How does the local contemporary art scene respond to the worldwide dynamics of globalisation? Which social, political and cultural positions do individual artists adopt? Positions: Contemporary South African Artists presents views of some of South Africa’s most prominent artists, writers, choreographers, photographers and musicians. Produced in direct dialogue with journalists and cultural scientists from the respective art scenes, developments within today’s cultural flashpoints are illuminated in interviews, portraits and essays. Throughout, the focus is on the artists’ individual perspectives, not theoretical or historical concepts. With their specific approaches and different forms of expression, they give insight into the pressing issues of South African society, showing how political art is positioned in the post-apartheid era. Artists featured in the book include: Zapiro, cartoonist/Sue Williamson, conceptual artist/ Robyn Orlin, choreographer/Brett Bailey, theater director/Mpumulelo Paul Grootboom, playwright and director/ Guy Tillim, photographer/GALA (Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action)/Ismail Farouk, urban geographer/ Michael McGarry, graphic designer, conceptual artist and avant-garde musician/Boyzie Cekwana, dancer and performance artist/Peter van Heerden, performance artist/Hasan and Hussein Essop, photographic artists/Kudzanai Chiurai, painter/Nandipha Mntambo, artist/Lesego Rampolokeng, spoken-word poet. The book is published by Jacana Media in association with Goethe-Institut South Africa and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Kudzanai Chiurai, painter Nandipha Mntambo, artist Ismail Farouk, urban geographer 66 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
Artists' portraits by Sally Shorkend
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 67
BOOKS
handy A handy new guide helps you navigate the planet with ease
Don't Get Me Wrong! The Global Gestures Guide by Julia Grosse and Judith Reker 100 pages R190 incl. VAT www.dontgetmewrong.co.uk/ Don't get me wrong! takes all those by the hand who are curious about the diversity of communication. Two journalists, Judith Reker in Johannesburg and Julia Grosse in London, have gathered everyday hand gestures from around fifty countries – from Australia to Zimbabwe. The result, beautifully captured in nearly 80 colour photographs, are often amusing and always instructive. Designed by Heimann und Schwantes, awardwinning art book designers from Berlin (with photographs by Florian Bong-Kil Grosse, a portrait and fashion photographer, also from Berlin), the result makes for a cool, compact travel companion. The authors decided to self-publish the book in order to control each aspect of production. Not wanting to compromise on things such as book title or paper quality, they founded a publishing house just for this purpose. The book quickly became a best-seller in the German language countries, and a decision was made to publish an English edition. It hit South African stores in January. An iPhone App of the same title, with the same content but different functionality, is soon to be released on the App Store.
Two.
Belgium
................... Liechtenstein
................... Netherlands
................... ................... ................... ...................
Your wife is cheating on you! The two outstretched fingers symbolise the horns that the two-timing wife has placed on her unwitting husband’s head. In 2002, at the European Union summit in Spain, the Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi came under criticism when he made this gesture behind Spain’s Foreign Minister, Josep Piqué, during the group photo shoot.
Italy
................... ................... ................... ................... ................... ...................
Loser! You can rest assured that if someone shows you this gesture, the number “two” is definitely not what is meant! This sign depicts a capital “L” for loser. We have seen it in Kenya as well as in the USA. The person we have to thank for this one is probably the American actor, Jim Carrey, who gesticulated with the “L” in the 1994 blockbuster “Ace Ventura”.
Great Britain
................... Kenya
................... USA
................... ................... ................... ...................
68 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
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directory
Silvertone International
Art Board Creative
Silvertone International was established specifically for the discerning artist and photographer – those demanding the highest standards of image reproduction for books, art catalogues, digital fine art prints (in colour or black & white), B&W film processing and hand prints. Fine art printing Hand printing Scanning
Art Board Creative is one of the largest suppliers of art and graphic materials in southern Africa, distributing to popular retail stores nationwide. Since 1994, Art Board Creative has boasted an extensive range of fine quality products of all varieties, catering for the artist’s every need.
t: 011 482-7413/4 dennis@silvertone.co.za www.fine-art-printing.co.za
Graphica Supplies Graphica Supplies offers innovative cover materials of the highest quality and value, and is the leading supplier for the book, stationery, speciality packaging and jewellery industries. Publishing Stationery Packaging t: 011 493-6833 sales@graphica.co.za www.graphica.co.za
t: 011 450-2418 www.artboardcreative.co.za
Vega School of Brand Communications Vega offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in creative brand communications and in brand management and leadership. The degree programmes aim to produce a new breed of thinkers that provide creative and innovative approaches to building brands. In addition, specialist full-time photography qualifications are available for students wanting to pursue careers in the field of photography. The education and training at Vega is outcomes based and highly interactive, making for a great learning environment and real experience. All programmes are taught within a brand context. t: 011 521-4600/012 342-4770 t: 031 266-2595/021 425-7491 www.facebook.com/vegaschool
Vega Orbit Great! Stock Great! Stock is a leading South African image library offering many of the world’s finest international collections, in addition to its comprehensive local image collections. Rights-Managed Royalty-Free Editorial & Research t: 011 880-7826 enquiries@greatstock.co.za www.greatstock.co.za
Learn2 Learn2 Digital Media Academy can help you to transform your artistry into a rewarding and profitable career in animation, visualisation or visual effects when you earn your Autodesk certification. Autodesk Authorised Training Centre Full-time courses Part-time courses t: 021 421-5501 info@learn2.co.za www.learn2.co.za
Vega Orbit is the Continuing Professional Development division of Vega. Specialists in Strategy, Branding, Marketing, Creative Communications and Innovation, Vega Orbit offers innovative parttime qualifications and short learning programmes. Orbit provides you with new levels of awareness, creativity and skill, preparing you for a future when great ideas will be the only global currency. t: 011 521-4600/012 342-4770 t: 031 266-2595/021 425-7491 www.facebook.com/vegaschool
The Training School The Training School offers creative training solutions to enable you to master the skills needed to get the most out of your Adobe software. Their mission is to empower you. Adobe Authorised Training Centre Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator Adobe InDesign t: 011 442-5136 pam@thetrainingschool.co.za www.thetrainingschool.co.za
Friends of Design
Concept Interactive
Friends of Design offers full time certificate, part time evening and customised digital courses in Print, Web and Motion Graphic design. Recognised as a trendsetter in the industry, students immerse themselves in a unique blend of art and digital, where technology and creativity come together under one roof and ultimately prepare themselves for a fulfilling career in digital graphics through practical, live projects and exposure to international trainers. Adobe Authorised Training Centre Apple Authorised Training Centre MAPPP-SETA accredited Provisionally recognised by the Department of Education as a centre of Higher Education (until 2013).
Concept Interactive is a leading digital design school situated in Cape Town. We have been providing internationally accredited training since 1992 in areas such as print and web design and, more recently, new media and programming for design. Our students receive expert, personalised attention from industry professional lecturers within a creative and stimulating environment. This means that they're highly skilled when they graduate. And highly employable. Provisionally registered with the Department of Education as a Private Higher Education Institution and as a Private FET College. SAQA Registered 3-year Diploma SAQA registered 1-year National Certificate
t: 21 461-0971 info@friendsofdesign.net friendsofdesign.net
Adobe Authorised Training Center MAPPP-SETA Accredited t: 021 461 3371 info@conceptinteractive.net/www.conceptinteractive.net
ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 71
editorial
Watching from below Jaron Lanier believes the internet is making us poor, writes Kevin Grant
Jaron Lanier understands the internet as well as anyone on Earth. He did, after all, help build it. Over the past thirty years, Lanier has been a force of nature in the digital world, inventing the concept of virtual reality in the 1980s and (as chief scientist of Internet2) helping to build the backbone of the Web in the 1990s. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world this year. And now, one of the world’s great digital inventors issues a stunning warning: his co-creation is turning us all into paupers. Speaking at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the heavyset, dreadlocked Lanier said: "As machines get better, people ought to be able to earn a living from their hearts and brains. Because the alternative to that is as the machines get better, the people who aren’t needed will become peasants, will be forgotten, and will become lost." Lanier has been named the Innovator in Residence at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, providing a new academic home for the Renaissance man. A sceptic of the economic underpinnings of the "Information Economy," Lanier sees the current power structure of the Web to be extremely dangerous: social networking sites (like Facebook), wikis (including Wikipedia), tech-savvy investors (like hedge funds), and Google create "privileged nodes, spying on everything and pulling money out of the system". At the same time, Lanier argues, these "resource-sucking applications" encourage users to contribute their labour without compensation, known to many as crowdsourcing. Professional labour is devalued, as is personal intellectual property. And as social media replaces paid creativity, so web users become products, eyeballs to be sold to advertisers. Revenue flows up to the privileged nodes, while everyone else is left out in the cold. The end result, Lanier warns, could be a collapse of the middle class, a scary and dystopian vision from a man known for accu-
72 ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011
rately seeing the future of technology. "The present designs are very shortsighted; they trade our future for trinkets, more or less," Lanier said. Part of the problem, as Lanier sees it, is that Web 2.0 companies built their business models on creating artificial divisions between people. "There’s a perverse incentive to undo the whole reason why many of us worked so hard on the internet for so many years. We’ve created a world in which there’s now a disabling of the natural powers of the internet, in order to create a commercial opportunity for re-enabling them." In other words, popular sites aim to separate people into communities and then profit by reconnecting them. A Silicon Valley insider himself, Lanier says that most of the latest offerings are manipulative and bad for society: "If you’re buying into social media, you’re becoming [Silicon Valley’s] pawn," he said. "I want you all to become rich and buy things from us on that basis rather than us picking pennies off of you while we’re all in a downward spiral." Not everyone sees things as darkly, however. Reviewing Lanier’s latest book "You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto," Slate Magazine’s Michael Agger ripped into the "hippie-shamanguru." Agger wrote: "[H]is critique is ultimately just a particular brand of snobbery. The talents and insights of Lanier and his peers were aimed at a tech-savvy elite whoste impact will never be the same again. The innovative momentum is now about democratizing the Web and its users – Flickr, Twitter, and, yes, Facebook. Lanier is used to being disagreed with, and it’s pretty clear he relishes the humanness of social debate. Just don’t call him a Luddite. "I’m a profoundly nerdy, geeky, optimistic techno-utopian without apology and anyone who says differently is looking for a fight," Lanier said. "I love working with gadgets; I just don’t think you’re one of them." _Kevin Grant is a Silicon Valley correspondent
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ENJIN 52 FEB/MAR 2011 73
editorial
Labour of love Learn to love your ideas – they might be all you'll ever have, writes Sarah Britten
It's probably true that most of the effort you put in to your work will be expended in coming up with ideas that the client will never buy, or your creative director rejects, or the agency does not want to sell. At least half of what you do, and probably more – half of the passion you put into your work, half of your soul - will be utterly futile. So how do you stay sane? How do you keep going back and trying, again and again, knowing that all the energy you invest in a particular project may well be in vain? The response of many might be: deal with it. But the sense of satisfaction we derive from the work we do matters more than the accountants might think. Researchers are demonstrating that meaning is important for productivity – and that meaning is often independent of financial compensation. In his book The Upside of Irrationality, behavioural economist Dan Ariely created a number of experiments to see how meaning impacted on the effort that people put into what they did. His experiment involved building Bionicles – the little Lego robots – but the principle can be applied to creating ad campaigns or coming up with new logo designs too. In Ariely’s experiment, subjects were told that they would be paid on a diminishing scale for every robot they built. They divided the research group into a "meaningful" and a "Sisyphean" condition. As soon as people in the latter group constructed a robot, the researcher would take it apart and instruct them to make the next one, which in turn would also be dismantled in front of them the moment it was complete. Though both groups were paid the same per robot – and so should have been equally motivated by money – subjects in the "meaningful" condition constructed an average of 10.6 Bionicles, while subjects who were in the "Sisyphean" condition constructed an average of 7.2 Bionicles before giving up. "What this analysis tells me," Ariely notes, "is that if you take people who love something… and you place them in meaningful working conditions, the joy they derive from the activity is going to be a major driver in dictating their level of effort." In contrast, put people who love what they do into conditions that lack meaning, and the level of effort declines dramatically. For creative people, work really is a labour of love. So now we know that working in conditions that lack meaning – for example, coming
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up with a campaign idea you think is brilliant, but which is never implemented – has a significant impact on motivation.People who love what they do, and get to do what they love within a meaningful environment, are more productive, and more likely to work for less reward. That’s why companies that offer satisfying and fulfilling working conditions are able to keep employees despite not paying as much, and why people who leave for higher salaries often return to employers who are able to offer more meaningful work. Everybody needs to feel a sense of satisfaction in the work they do, whether it’s sweeping floors or managing hedge funds, but a meaningful condition is essential for people to be inspired, so its existence has real financial implications for any industry that relies so much on creativity. Even if we do change the way the marketing communications industry works, even if agencies do put their foot down when it comes to pitches, for example, there is no easy answer. Let’s be honest, it’s likely that producing vast quantities of work for nothing will continue to be standard practice. So, how do we deal with it? When it comes to grappling with meaninglessness, I find the work of psychologist and creative coach Eric Maisel to be quite useful. Maisel is a realist. Life is hard, he acknowledges. It often makes no sense, the chance of success in most cases is minimal and it is all too easy to feel defeated. But no matter what, we have to keep going. "The facts of existence can’t be counted or halted," Maisel advises. "But those are not our tasks. Our tasks are to reckon with them and to refuse to let them defeat us." Keep on pushing that rock up the mountain. There’s a chance that, one day, it won’t roll back. _Sarah is Strategic Planning Director at Young & Rubicam Joburg
GIVE IT BAG combines cotton and recycled rubble bags to create a wide range of designer handbags, laundry bags and wine coolers. Each item comes with a unique 5-digit code and owners are encouraged to visit the GIVE IT BAG website to share stories about their own charitable acts.
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