banal quotidian the everyday ordinary mundane common
the everyday Â
“Even though it functions as a bustling bazaar, visually Amazon is a cold hard place devoid of images of people or the circumstances in which the goods might be used. These reviews provide the disembodied objects with human context — verbal mise-en-scenes — in which they can be imagined more vividly.” -Alice Twemlow, “Howling at the Moon”
the everyday: interrogating the obvious
It would have been less cumbersome, in the account I am giving here of a specific lunch hour several years ago, to have pretended that the bag thought had come to me complete and “all at once� at the foot of the up escalator, but the truth was it was only the latest in a fairly long sequence of partially forgotten, inarticulable experiences, finally now reaching a point that I paid attention to it for the first time. Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (New York: Vintage Books, 1986)
quotes from Oonagh  O'Hagan, I lick my Cheese (Sphere, 2007)
coffee table: repository of the everyday
the everyday Â
“The everyday is the most universal and the most unique condition, the most social and the most individuated, the most obvious and the best hidden.� Henri Lefebvre, 1987
things
things "the study through artefacts of the beliefs — values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions — of a particular community or society at a given time.” Jules Prown, Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method, 1982
things the “conglomerate clutter of artefacts that make up the totality of the physical world, not as a raw mass of matter, but as material culture with human association in as much as it is informed by meanings as fundamental as identity, life and death.� Judy Attfield, Wild Things, 2001
things may be “unobtrusive and escape attention” but “they are nevertheless instrumental in the literal and grounded sense of mediating the link between people and artefacts and therefore between the human worlds of the mental and the physical.” Judy Attfield, Wild Things, 2001
“The professional soldier dedicates himself to heroism. The army prepares itself for war; that is its aim and its purpose. And yet moments of combat and opportunities to be heroic are thin on the ground. The army has its everyday life: life in barracks and more precisely life among the troops… Henri Lefebvre, “Clearing the Ground,” 1961
This everyday life is not without its importance in relation to dreams of heroism and the fine moral ideal of the professional soldier. It is the springboard for sublime actions…There is a saying that army life is made up of a lot of boredom and a couple of dangerous moments.” Henri Lefebvre, “Clearing the Ground,” 1961
Jan Vermeer, Girl Asleep at a Table, Dutch, c. 1657
“[I’d] rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China."
Jim Jarmusch, Stranger than Paradise, 1984
“Design brings life into otherwise dull objects and tasks.�
Philippe Starck Juicy Salif for Alessi
“A common perception of design is that it is a special effect, a false nose added to the artifacts of everyday life, the invention of useless stuff.� Design-LESS, DesignInquiry 2009
OXO Good Grips swivel peeler
the straw: paper or plastic?
“Little bag for that?”
Small mom and pop shopkeepers…ins5nc5vely shrouded whatever solo item you bought—a box of pasta shells, a quart of milk, a pan of Jiffy Pop, a loaf of bread, in a bag: food meant to be eaten indoors, they felt, should be seen only indoors. But even aHer ringing up things like cigareIes or ice cream bars, obviously meant for ambulatory consump5on, they oHen prompted, “liIle bag?” “Small bag?” “liIle bag for that?”—bagging evidently was used to mark the exact point at which 5tle to the ice cream bar passed to the buyer.
[A] widely understood metaphor both for viewing and for being viewed. – John Maeda
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The Brasserie, New York City (2002) and The ICA, Boston
A screen which itself could be a filter; a frame; a lens; a stage; a mirror or a canvas; a window or a mask; a point of departure; or an inescapable destination; a civilization unto itself. – John Maeda
Taxi TV: New York City
the digital everyday
the everyday the “region where goods come into confrontation with needs which have more or less been transformed into desires.” Henri Lefebvre, “Clearing the Ground,” 1961