Mohawk Maker Quarterly #13 | Disruption by Mohawk

Featured in this Issue:

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter Future Islands Art & Algorithm Give It Away Course Correction Chopped and Screwed Hacking Time Look Again Paper Grades 3

Featured in this Issue:

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter Future Islands Art & Algorithm Give It Away Course Correction Chopped and Screwed Hacking Time Look Again Paper Grades 3

Illustration

David Weber B

Photography

Morgan Satterfield, Courtesy of Lindsey Adelman Studio C

Julia

Courtesy of Melissa S. McCracken D

Photography

Matthew Christopher, Courtesy of abandonedamerica.us

This print is unique. There is not another one like it.

We worked with artist Merijn Hos to create a work of art with 20,000 unique variations, one of which is tucked into this pocket. Share your print and check out others with #MMQ13

Featured in this Issue:

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter Future Islands Art & Algorithm Give It Away Course Correction Chopped and Screwed Hacking Time Look Again Paper Grades 3

Illustration

David Weber B

Photography

Morgan Satterfield, Courtesy of Lindsey Adelman Studio C

Julia

Courtesy of Melissa S. McCracken D

Photography

Matthew Christopher, Courtesy of abandonedamerica.us

Issue 13

Disruption

Illustration

Photography

Morgan Satterfield, Courtesy of Lindsey Adelman Studio

Julia

Courtesy of Melissa S. McCracken

Photography

David Weber

Matthew Christopher, Courtesy of abandonedamerica.us

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Conduct

UM Project and Flavor Paper Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

Artwork

Merijn Hos

Illustration

Olivia Ward

Photography

Dunja Opalko, Courtesy of KUFstudios

Issue 13

Disruption

What Will You Make Today? E

Welcome to the

Mohawk Maker Quarterly Issue 13—Disruption

“Ideas that shake up the norm are often hiding in plain sight. Are you looking?”

As we start to develop each issue of The Mohawk Maker Quarterly, we settle on a single word that provides a creative framework for the content. The word that guides this edition may be the most challenging one yet: disruption. That’s because it’s so commonly used that it’s lost its meaning. Disruption (and its cousins disruptor and disruptive) emerged from the tech industry and spread throughout business culture. CEOs earn eye-rolls from employees when they talk about their latest “disruptive products” or “brand disruptors” during corporate meetings. Consumers largely ignore the moniker.

Despite its ubiquity, we opted to focus Quarterly 13 on disruption—to recapture its essence of exploration, discovery and revolution. Let’s shed our assumptions about disruption and get back to its fundamental concept: that opportunity often hides in plain sight. Sometimes, of course, products or ideas or systems that reshape the status quo are radically new. More commonly, though, they emerge when people who are simply curious look at what is and ask, “What if?” Disruption happens when we pay deeper attention to what we think we know, look at it from different perspectives and find possibility we hadn’t previously considered. Disruption is sudden and unexpected—that’s what makes it so powerful. And it’s ephemeral—disruptive ideas and products eventually become ordinary, so enmeshed in our culture that we can’t remember life without them. We at Mohawk have never lost sight of the word’s meaning and relevance; disruption is part of our DNA. In an industry that some people consider outdated, we have a history of introducing new technologies and products even before the market recognizes their potential. 3

In that spirit, we went looking for thinkers and doers who are upending the world as we know it. They are reframing the way we consider such basic concepts as time and ownership and success. They have U-turned from what’s expected. They’re redefining images and spaces in radical ways. When we strip away the cliché, this is what disruption looks like in real life, outside corporate walls. In order to road-test these concepts and demonstrate disruption’s power to surprise, we undertook an experimental art project with this issue. Thanks to variable data printing, each Quarterly in this edition features a different fine art print, generated by algorithm and serendipity. Its design and production forced us to give up control over the finished product and taught us that randomness creates beauty in unexpected ways. The Latin origin of the word disruption is “to break apart, split, shatter, break to pieces.” It’s messy, unexpected, visceral, shocking. We’re here to reclaim it, on behalf of everyone who thinks to ask, “What if?” —Tom O’Connor, Jr.

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Future Islands

Issue 13

Disruption

John Dugan

Fed by post-war dreams of a good life (stoked by fears of racial integration in the city), and made possible by the proliferation of the affordable automobile, lowcost mortgages and mass construction techniques, the American suburb flourished in the 20th century. The U.S. suburban population doubled between 1950 and 1970, from 37 to 74 million people, while most of the nation’s biggest cities lost population. In the fifties, Suburban Nassau County, NY doubled its population and Orange County, CA tripled its population. Government policies favored the suburban boom. Publicly-funded construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways enabled more Americans to raise families further and further from the city. Short-term depreciation spurred mall development and as developers sought out cheaper land beyond established neighborhoods, shopping malls catalyzed the development of more new suburbs. The suburban model ate up lots of land, initially cheap farmland like the potato fields on Long Island that became suburbs like Levittown, but also lots of forest. In the process, America and our vision of it was transformed from a land of lush green vistas to one cut with serpentine grey highways connecting big boxes and grids comprised of similar dwellings. From 1953 to 1997, most states lost forest area and between 1982 and 1997, 23 million acres were deforested on non-Federal land. On the east coast, for example, the sprawl between D.C. and Boston has grown by 90 percent since 1970, claiming 4.7 million acres of trees. There were upsides to the ‘burbs boom’, an energized economy, jobs, relief from a housing shortage, and millions of Americans enjoying modern conveniences that were out of reach just a few decades earlier. But the downside, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with the rate of outward expansion outpacing population increases in most U.S. communities, was unnecessary sprawl. The mall, an American invention, was developed by the Austrian immigrant Victor Gruen, as a third place between home and work for these newly optimistic, mobile suburbanites to shop and congregate. Gruen based the enclosed mall on the Greek Agora, medieval

markets and the town squares of Europe—he envisioned dynamic, walkable places with art, animals, spectacle and community. One of his first malls, in Minnesota, had fountains, an aviary, and boasted a Harry Bertoia installation. But the enclosed malls looked inward, enabled sprawl and were accompanied by massive parking lots that were like moats around them—they ended up as symbols of aff luence and abundance but also disconnection. Today, malls are dying—chiefly because online shopping is decimating the once reliable anchor stores such as Sears, JC Penney and Macy’s, but also because of an emerging American preference for a lively walkable urban experience. Then there are our thin wallets. A recession cut mall visits by half and they’ve never recovered. This is not entirely Gruen’s fault. It’s a correction. We built too many malls to begin with— their numbers grew more than twice as fast as the population for decades and we ended up with five times more leasable area per capita than the U.K. and 10 times more than Germany. Of about 1200 enclosed malls in the States, about 400 are likely to fail in the next few years, and some experts say of the hundreds that remain, most will struggle. To which one might say, well, good riddance, but not so fast. When a mall deteriorates, the surrounding community usually suffers—as rising crime and more vacant buildings follow. No one wants to live near a big empty late 20th Century eyesore, as it happens. What to do with malls presents a huge creative opportunity for remaking American society—it’s also a bit of a chance to apply urbanist thinking to a non-urban space. The adaptive reuse of malls is already well underway as a survival strategy. With retail shuttering, developers have, often in desperation, turned over mall space to everything from grocery stores to

Repurposing dying malls could spark a rethink and redesign of our outmoded suburbs. Future Islands

A 5

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

“What to do with malls presents a huge creative opportunity for remaking American society—it’s also a bit of a chance to apply urbanist thinking to a non-urban space.”

C 6

Issue 13

synagogues, newspaper publishers and community colleges to office spaces and city halls. Malls now play host to medical centers, colleges, elementary schools, and churches. A sickly Austin, Texas mall was bought by Austin Community College and now features STEM, digital media and culinary arts training. Ohio’s Euclid Square mall rents out to various religious congregations. Urgent care has been in malls for decades, but as demand for healthcare is rising, it makes good sense for healthcare facilities to meet the people closer to where they live and prevent disease before it happens. Cheaper rent and ample parking are bonuses of mall reuse. Vanderbilt University Medical Center snagged the entire second floor of a struggling Nashville mall. Elsewhere, medical institutions are choosing to locate new cancer treatment in malls rather than build new. We could see entire healthcare campuses moving into struggling malls very soon. Bored teens once recreated in malls and kicked ollies in office parks, what if these spaces were turned over to them semi-officially? Danish NGO GAME takes abandoned warehouses and industrial spaces and makes them into vibrant, raw-edged sports complexes for youth, with activities ranging from parkour to indoor soccer and of course, skateboarding. Their approach could easily be applied to suburban zombie structures—promoting radical physical activity where consumerism once reigned in membership-based or publicly run indoor/outdoor future gyms.

Disruption

Returning mall real estate to a wild natural state might be a stretch, but there’s something very attractive about a once sterile mall revival that respects nature. The City Center Mall in downtown Columbus, Ohio is now a park boasting bocce courts, gardens, and cafes. Seattle’s Northgate Mall, reborn as a mixed-use development, takes storm-water runoff and channels it to pools and foliage while filtering out pollution. So we’ve got ideas for malls, what about the rest of suburbia? Golf courses were also overbuilt— younger people are not taking up the sport so much and closings outpace openings in the States. Look to Japan where Kyocera is turning 1980’s golf courses into solar farms—the first project will go online in 2017 and power around 8,000 homes. But that still leaves us with vacant big boxes, banal strip malls, soul-crushing traffic and bland office parks—not to mention cookie-cutter residential developments for the car-dependent. While the mall reuse ideas might seem revolutionary, they almost certainly don’t go far enough. In the book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, Ellen Dunham-Jones and D

A new consciousness about where our food comes from could inspire a sensible reuse of mall space for growing some of what we eat closer to where we live and with minimal waste. Chicagoans and other city dwellers can already buy produce and fish grown in vertical farms, often converted warehouse spaces. A combination of techniques such as LED lighting and recycling of waste and water allows these vertical plants to produce organic fruits, vegetables and even tilapia at high efficiency for local delivery. Vacant mall space may already have the temperature controls and other infrastructure that could favor conversion to indoor farming. Soon, more of us may even live in (former) malls. America’s first shopping mall, the historic Arcade Providence, has been turned into a mixed-use space with 48 micro apartments and restaurants. Dead malls are showing that they can even revive communities. In Colorado, Cinderella City, a moribund sixties mall was recently reborn as a real downtown, with walkable parks and plazas, and residences. In Toronto, malls will be preserved as lower levels for ambitious vertical housing developments—creating large mixed-use hybrids where retail islands once stood. Mall reuse could be good news for seniors. With a demographic bubble looming, senior housing is an area ripe for rethinking—large-scale long-term facilities could be replaced by smaller living quarters in revamped malls, each within walking distance of food, shopping, the pharmacy and smaller retail medical facilities. 7

June Williamson outlined a more holistic approach to making the suburbs more people-friendly. Their strateg y is to focus on adapting the least sustainable areas—the nastiest bits—and turning them into more walkable and resilient places of higher density with more green, more walkability in a “multi-centered network of infilled centers and corridors within existing North American metropolitan regions, replacing the pattern of everoutward sprawl.” Where we once built islands for shopping, we really need archipelagos for living.

A,D Cinderella City

Photos by Ron Pollard

B,C Randall Park Mall from the book “Abandoned America: Dismantling the Dream”

Photos by Matthew Christopher Courtesy of abandonedamerica.us

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Give It Away

Patrick Sisson

Issue 13

Disruption

Open-source isn’t just a community system for better software; done right, it’s a creative catalyst that rewards, not robs, the creator.

“Some people think we actually made this rebrand in the belief it would change North Korea, but we wanted to see if we could show change through design and branding,” Snask’s Frederik Öst told Dezeen.

Give it Away

Photography

Justin Marr

Photography

Claude Missir

Photography

Mavis Jean

Photography

Lauren Coleman

All photos courtesy of Lindsey Adelman Studio

for promotion. Snask, a design studio in Stockholm, took the idea to the extreme earlier this year when it rebranded an entire country, North Korea. Their new identity system, which includes plans for a f lag and currency, f lipped the image of the totalitarian Democratic People’s Republic of Korea upside-down by incorporating the Korean symbol for love. The studio also offered up the entire concept to the regime (as well as other designers) free of charge, an open source project that symbolizes the power and potential of flexible, copyright-free creation. While the graphic symbolism is overt, the designer’s methodology also makes a potent political statement.

Sharing is never a simple act in the design world. Since great ideas are the currency of creative talent, designers cling to their creations. Even when collaboration with the crowd can lead to inspiration, there’s always hesitation. Won’t trading away a designer’s traditional omniscience in the creative process make them obsolete? In a world rife with rip-offs, unsanctioned riffs, and creative robbery in the form of copyright infringement, protecting creative capital has become second nature. This instinct makes open source—the royalty-free technology framework for designing applications and programs and sharing your creations—an awkward fit for the traditional creative class. If designers create value with ideas, freely sharing designs and inviting remixes and reinterpretations seems careless at best, economically self-destructive at worst. But in an era where new networks and technologies make sharing and soliciting feedback exponentially more powerful, a protective view of creativity and collaboration may paradoxically be a limitation. Forget the myth of solitary genius: the reality is that social genius often reaps rewards. Many creatives have found that “giving away” ideas via open-source projects, even sharing entire blueprints or plans for products, not only gains them attention, but adds value, makes money and attracts a new audience.

Open-source as a symbol sounds progressive, but how do shared values help designers build their own brands? Since 2006, New York-based designer Lindsey Adelman built a career as a creative lighting designer while becoming a leading figure of the city’s resurgent maker scene. Her hand-blown glass-and-brass fixtures, eschewing organic grace, made her famous. And she’s happy to give the idea away. On her website, she offers five free plans for “you-make-it” lighting systems based on her unique style. Hobbyists who have completed the plans say it costs just north of $100 to make an Adelmanesque chandelier. Giving fans who can’t afford her standard pieces a chance to not just purchase but truly own an Adelman design builds her brand and serves as a type of gateway sconce (costing her nothing but the time it took to share goodwill). Adelman is embracing the reality that in a digital, worldwide marketplace, fakes are a price of doing business. Her work has been the subject of ripoffs and cheap knockoffs by overseas companies; why not share in a way that puts her in charge of the exchange, heightens an appreciation for great design, and grow an audience that may eventually make her money in the long run?

To achieve the benefits of open collaboration, designers need to look at the creative process in a new light. Like those in the tech world, they should see that open source’s true value is it’s role as a utility, a process or product, such as coding language or GitHub, a code-sharing database that functions as a community good. Instead of viewing social sharing as a Napster-like process of free access to creative goods, view it as an online community for critiquing, collaborative editing, and adding value.

Designing with creativity, not ownership, as the first priority can lead to intriguing results, and provide designers with a more accessible platform 15

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Other designers have seen sharing has a more immediate monetary value. Teenage Engineering, a Swedish firm that designs electrical instruments, offers everything you need to fix and run their popular OP-1 synthesizers online, from repair tutorials and user guides to schematics to 3D-print replacement parts and accessories. Their new Pocket Operators portable devices even feature an open circuit board for easy customization (which the company encourages by posting schematics and how-to guides online). Teenage Engineering allows users to customize their gear and fix it without paying them benefits by giving fans agency and ownership. By establishing an open relationship with a devoted fan base of musicians, designers, and tinkerers, the company encourages loyalty and feedback in the form of new hacks, design ideas, and improvements (and saves on the cost of shipping and stocking a full warehouse of spare parts). This back-andforth makes sure that regular customers, especially musicians who become attached to their instruments, have a stake on the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roadmap. This culture of engagement and equality helps build the perfect audience for a progressive designer; an enlightened consumer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our ideal customer is somebody who appreciates all the smart features that we built in,â&#x20AC;? says company founder Jens Rudberg.

You Make It Chandelier YMI.001 A Do — It Issue 13

Disruption

Some designers even believe that open-source design, on a massive scale, can also become a social and ecological good. Dutch fashion designers Martijn van Strien and Vera du Pont have proposed an open-source fashion manifesto, a rallying cry for clothing designers to embrace sharing and collaborative culture to cut down on waste and pollution.

These open source advocates believe creators can cultivate a direct relationship with clients where design “becomes a shared effort with input from everyone involved.” By sharing plans for clothes online and creating a decentralized, consumerdriven production system, a dress pattern from an independent designer can be downloaded, modified, fashioned at home, and then re-shared within the network.

Pocket Operater

PO-32 B

Teenage Engineering Logo

Pocket Operater

PO-32 D

Portable Synthesizer

OP-1

All photos courtesy of Teenage Engineering

Van Strien has already seen success with her Maker Sleeve, a made-to-order laptop sleeve inspired by open-source philosophy that provides customers with design and assembly instructions.

Not only does this open-source sharing directly connect designers with customers, but by reducing costs, it can open up design to those who may have not been able to afford it before. Few projects offer to democratize access to design more than the WikiHouse project, an open-source design community seeking to bring customized architecture to the 99 percent of the world that traditionally can’t afford architects. The idea of sharing and allowing so-called non-professionals to build off shared blueprints may seem like an attack on the primacy and role of the designer, but these kind of initiatives really give designers a bigger potential marketplace.

Yourself Lighting Fixture “Designing with creativity, not ownership, as the first priority can lead to intriguing results, and provide designers with a more accessible platform for promotion.”

WARNING

The promises designers have traditionally heard from devotees of the digital revolution often revolve around the vague idea of “exposure,” that simply trusting in the increased reach of digital networks will magically results in success. Open-source exchanges at their best, truly realize these utopian visions by engaging others in the creative process and democratizing ideation and production. Designers who focus on protection will miss out on the rich possibilities of participation.

Lindsey Adelman Studio Provides this information solely as a guide and cannot be held liable for any consequences whatsoever. DIY can go wrong, and therefore it must be stressed that nothing should be attempted without applying common sense, as well as confidence in your ability to carry out the job successfully and with safety (both your own and others). Please remember that this guide has been given to you in good faith for free and neither its accuracy nor legality can be relied upon.

LINDSEY ADELMAN STUDIO T 212 473 2501 INFO@LINDSEYADELMAN.COM 17

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

FIG. 1 A

B S P K

O F G

S K

D R

FIG. 2

N M E

F A

N M

FIG. 4 D

Teenage Engineering allows users to customize H their gear and fix it without paying them benefits by giving fans agency and ownership. By establishing an open relationship with a devoted fan base of musicians, designers, and tinkerers, the comI pany encourages loyalty and feedback in the form of new hacks, design ideas, and improvements J E, F (and saves on the cost of shipping and stocking a full warehouse of spare parts). This back-and -forth makes sure that regular customers, especially musicians who become attached to their instruments, have a stake on the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roadK map. This culture of engagement and equality helps build the perfect audience for a progressive designer; an enlightened consumer.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our ideal customer is somebody who appreciates all the smart features that we built in,â&#x20AC;? says company founder Jens Rudberg.

Issue 13

F G

Wiring the Sockets OP-1

These open source advocates believe creators can A Arm All photos courtesy of Knurle nut Teenage Engineering cultivate a direct relationship with clientsB where C Socket cup design “becomes a shared effort with input from D Set screw everyone involved.” By sharing plans for clothes E Strip wires, twist around screws online and creating a decentralized, consumer and tighten screw down. driven production system, a dress patternF fromGold an screw G modiSocket cap mounting screws independent designer can be downloaded, H Socket cap fied, fashioned at home, and then re-shared within I Phelonic disc the network.

K J

15”

15.5”

20”

Silver screw Socket

Inside plug

Van Strien has already seen success with her Maker Sleeve, a made-to-order laptop sleeve FIG. 3 inspired by open-source philosophy that provides How to Wire and Suggested Wire Lengths customers with design and assembly instructions. C

WikiHouse is free; designs become part of a largeFIG. 4 scale Ikea-like catalog for homebuilders. But it’s Inside the Cluster Body easy to imagine that by creating a similar network and instituting payment for designers, those in A Gather all white wires together. creative industries can make a little on a lot Strip of ends. Twist together. Cover with wire nut. sales instead of a lot on a few blockbuster clients; B Repeat with black wires. it’s like the long-tail for design.

“Designing with creativity, not ownership, as the first priority can lead to intriguing results, and provide designers with a more accessible platform for FIG. 3 promotion.”

J K

Not only does this open-source sharing directly Details on FIG. 5 connect designers with customers, but byB reducing Inside the cluster body. costs, it can open up design to those who may have Use orange wire nuts. Details on FIG. 4 not been able to afford it before. Few projects offer C to democratize access to design more than theRayon wire runs from the cluster body to the plug. WikiHouse project, an open-source design comD Inside the small cluster body. munity seeking to bring customized architecture Use blue wire nuts. to the 99 percent of the world that traditionally Details on FIG. 4 E and One black wire and one white wire can’t afford architects. The idea of sharing runs from each socket to the next allowing so-called non-professionals to build off cluster body where it is spliced shared blueprints may seem like an attack on the together with other wire set(s) using primacy and role of the designer, but these kind a wire nut. A of initiatives really give designers a bigger F potenInside socket cup Details on FIG. 2 tial marketplace.

12”

Details

A Pocket Operater Some designers even believe that open-source PO-32 design, on a massive scale, can also become a 1 FIG. social and ecological good. Dutch fashionExploded design- View B Teenage Engineering Logo ers Martijn van Strien and Vera du Pont have See next page for parts list proposed an open-source fashion manifesto, C Pocket Operater PO-32 a rallying cry for clothing designers to embrace B sharing and collaborative culture to cut down FIG. 2 D Portable Synthesizer on waste and pollution.

FIG. 5

Disruption

12”

The promises designers have traditionally heard FIG.5 from devotees of the digital revolution often revolve Attaching the Plug around the vague idea of “exposure,” that simply trusting in the increased reach of digital networks A Cloth cord 16” B Use a screwdriver to pry rubber will magically results in success. Open-source cover over the plug interior. exchanges at their best, truly realize these utopian C Black wire visions by engaging others in the creative process and D Strip wires, twist around screws democratizing ideation and production. Designers and tighten screw down. who focus on protection will miss out on the E rich Gold screw F Tape the rayon covering to keep possibilities of participation. G H

cord clean. White wire Silver screw

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Parts List

Refer to Figure 1

NAME

PART NUMBER

QTY.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V

Wire, Cloth Covered, Gold Plug, Black Cluster Body 3-Sided Cluster Body Splitter 2-Sided 2in. Brass Arm 3in. Brass Arm 4in. Brass Arm 6in. Brass Arm 7in. Brass Arm 10in. Brass Arm Brass Socket Cup Medium E-26 Twin Socket Adapter Adjustable Friction Swivel Brass 0.5In. Steel Nipple Knurled Brass Nut 1/8Ips Female Male Loop 1/8Ips Female Brass Reducer 1/8-.1/4 1/8Ips Brass Plug Button E-26 Tubular Clear T-10 Bulb E-26 40W 2.125In Globe Clear Bulb Medium E-26 Socket Small Brass Splice Cluster Body

WI18POG-C PL183PBK BOLG3 BOT2 PIBR02-0X8 PIBR02-0X8 PIBR02-0X8 PIBR02-0X8 PIBR02-0X8 PIBR02-0X8 CU578 SO128W SV140 NI0-1/2X1/8 NU431 LO100 RE1/8FX1/4MS FI1/8PLUG BUET10C40 BUEG16C40 SO10045 BOS0X8

12 Ft 1 1 3 1 2 2 2 2 1 5 1 3 3 5 1 1 2 5 1 5 1

Not W X Y Z AA

Shown Wire Nuts, blue Wire Nuts, orange Electrical Tape Black Wire White Wire

WINUTB WINUTO TAE060 WI18AWMBL WI18AWMW

2 2 1 Roll 10 Ft 10 Ft

All Parts were sourced at Grand Brass

grandbrass.com Other designers have seen sharing has a more immediate monetary value. Teenage Engineering, a Swedish firm that designs electrical instruments, offers everything you need to fix and run their popular OP-1 synthesizers online, from Stripper repair tutorials and1 userWire guides to schematics 2 Small Philips Head Screwdriver to 3D-print replacement parts and accessories. 3 Small Slotted Screwdriver Their new Pocket Operators portable devices even 4 board Pliers feature an open circuit for(optional) easy customization (which the company encourages by posting schematics and how-to guides online).

Tools

Assembly Steps

Teenage Engineering allows users to customize their gear and fix it without paying them benefits by giving fans agency and ownership. By establish1 Assemble partsfan according ing an open relationship with a devoted base to the illustration and exploded view to get a rough sense of how it will go together. of musicians, designers, and tinkerers, the company encourages loyalty and feedback in the form Breakdown fixture at all junction points. of new hacks, design2 ideas, and improvements of(elbows, bodies, etc.). (and saves on the cost shippingsplice and stocking a full warehouse of spare parts). This back-and 3 regular Removecustomers, and wire socket -forth makes sure that espe- assemblies according to Figure 2 become with suggested cially musicians who attached towire theirlengths. See Figure 3 for wire lengths. Figure 3 shows the suggested instruments, have a stake on the company’s road- lengths of wire for each socket and section between splice points. Extra length is given to feed wires to map. This culture of engagement and equality audience cluster body. Cut wires to even length once fed through at cluster helps build the perfect for a progressive bodies for splicing. designer; an enlightened consumer. Slide socket cup over wires and around sockets. Thread onto “Our ideal customer 4 is somebody who appreciates that corresponding arm comassembly. all the smart features we built in,” says Repeat for all socket assemblies. pany founder Jens Rudberg.

Feed wire through connection points: i.e.: elbows, splitters, and splice bodies. Thread arms to splitters, connect elbows.

Repeat for all assembly sections, splicing where specified. See Figure 3 and Figure 4. For clusters, gather all black wires together and all white wires together, strip ends, twist together and c over with wire nut

Splice in cloth cord at cluster body. Feed through stem and loop.

Attach plug like shown on Figure 5. Hang on ceiling with appropriate hardware.

Please note that while it is possible to build the fixture by yourself, it is much more enjoyable with a partner.

Stay safe and have fun!

Never, ever make any adjustments or attempt wiring while fixture is plugged in.

Issue 13

“Designing with creativity, not ownership, as the first priority can lead to intriguing results, and provide designers with a more accessible platform for promotion.”

Disruption

Pocket Operater

PO-32 B

Teenage Engineering Logo

Pocket Operater

PO-32 D

Portable Synthesizer

OP-1 All photos courtesy of Teenage Engineering

Van Strien has already seen success with his Maker Sleeve, a made-to-order laptop sleeve inspired by open-source philosophy that provides customers with design and assembly instructions. Not only does this open-source sharing directly connect designers with customers, but by reducing costs, it can open up design to those who may have not been able to afford it before. Few projects offer to democratize access to design more than the WikiHouse project, an open-source design community seeking to bring customized architecture to the 99 percent of the world that traditionally can’t afford architects. The idea of sharing and allowing so-called non-professionals to build off shared blueprints may seem like an attack on the primacy and role of the designer, but these kind of initiatives really give designers a bigger potential marketplace.

WikiHouse is free; designs become part of a largescale Ikea-like catalog for homebuilders. But it’s easy to imagine that by creating a similar network and instituting payment for designers, those in creative industries can make a little on a lot of sales instead of a lot on a few blockbuster clients; it’s like the long-tail for design. The promises designers have traditionally heard from devotees of the digital revolution often revolve around the vague idea of “exposure,” that simply trusting in the increased reach of digital networks will magically results in success. Open-source exchanges at their best, truly realize these utopian visions by engaging others in the creative process and democratizing ideation and production. Designers who focus on protection will miss out on the rich possibilities of participation. D

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Course Correction

Disruption doesn’t always come quickly. Sometimes it takes years to ferment. In the case of Lou Preston’s family winery, bucking an era of unfettered expansion to bring grape growing back to basics took its own sweet organic (and eventually biodynamic) time. By

John Capone

Preston planted a patch of grapes that grew to 350 acres in Dry Creek Valley on the western edge of Sonoma County some 45 years ago. His path from U.C. Davis enology student to Stanford-educated winemaker wasn’t at all unusual for 1970s Northern California. The so-called Judgment of Paris, the famed 1976 tasting in which a few wines from Napa (Sonoma’s now glitzier neighbor) were rated 22

more highly than their French counterparts in Paris no less! By Parisians!) brought a new kind of gold rush to the Bay Area—except this time it came in the form of a f lood of grape juice. Preston rode this wave of vitis vinifera distillate straight through the go-go 1980s, where the wine industry was as much defined by excess as the rest of the decade. Young professionals in pastel-colored blazers sipped seas of White Zinfandel (probably color-coordinated with their slouch socks and scrunchies), and the wine industry boomed. Preston never made the sort of massproduced Red Vines-f lavored vino guzzled by the gallon out of jugs and boxes that some of that era

Issue 13

Photography

Preston Gannaway

Disruption

epitomized—the focus had been on quality from the start—but demand pushed him toward larger and larger production. The small family winery Preston had envisioned he and his wife have lived on and farmed the land from the very start) began sprawling out of control. Preston found himself living “Life on American Airlines.” Lou Preston dutifully carried his bottles state-tostate and sold his wine through a network of distributors and wholesalers across the country. “Back in those days there was no internet,” he says, “so that’s how you had to sell, you had to travel the U.S.” The motel rooms bled together, and he spent more time shaking hands and pouring samples in dimly-lit restaurant bars than he did tilling the soil in the sunshine. By the early 2000s the winery was producing 25,000 cases a year, and had hit a wall. The wholesalers and brokers and distributors all took their cut of the wine sales. So the winery was having to produce more and more to make the same or less. “It was sort of counterproductive,” Preston says. “I was really interested in farming and the creative side here.” He’d made a decision out there on the road somewhere. He’d hang it up before becoming a wine-soaked Willie Lohman. But he wouldn’t quit making and selling wine. He’d just quit doing it the way everyone else did. The Direct-to-Consumer market for wine was still small to nonexistent, but Preston calculated that by more than halving his production he’d have all he could sell locally (from Sonoma to San Francisco), make higher quality wine and get more for it

(because the brokers and wholesalers and distributors would no longer all have their hands in the proverbial till). It was a move that predates and somewhat predicts the maker and farm-to-table movements that would follow soon enough. When Preston started tearing out vines, eventually uprooting half his acreage and replacing it with vegetables, fruit trees, livestock and open space, grape-growing neighbors thought he’d lost his mind. Production went from 25,000 cases to 8,000. “The thinking was—and it’s worked out pretty well—by being more selective in our vineyards, instead of crushing everything, we crush the best,” Preston says. “Duh, that’s kind of an obvious thing to do.” Of the original farm, 125 acres are still planted to vine, while with the other half are now committed

Course Correction

to food production. The practice has become a bit more common in the past decade, with other producers beginning to follow suit, though in mostly more moderate ratios. Still leading the way, Preston Farm and Winery (as it is now known) has continued to blaze a trail. The farm and vineyards have been CCOF certified organic since 2002 and was Demeter U.S. biodynamic certified in 2015. It’s had a jug wine program for locals to come by and fill up every Sunday since 2002 (before even Williamsburg bars had them). The farm grows its own grain for Preston’s breadmaking program and classes, and makes its own olive oil and now apple cider. The staff stays on year-round, which is quite unusual for vineyards in the area—showing a commitment to sustainability that goes beyond restoring the riparian watershed (which, yes, Preston has also been involved in). “We have sheep for meat and hens for eggs and we practice rotational grazing. All of which is crazy,” Preston admits. “Other people who are growing grapes in the area look at us and say, ‘God, why are they doing that?’” There’s no pat answer.

How Much Success is Too Much? 23

Preston, set against the backdrop of ostentatiously burdened stone fruit trees with birds fluttering among them, gives the matter his characteristic thoughtful inhale, and then, referring to taking things to the extreme of biodynamic practices, “At first it’s a matter of faith: You say, ‘ok, let’s play along. Let’s do it.’ And then you start to see results.”

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Chopped How groundbreaking innovation (and creative hacks) democratized music making. By

Erin Osmon

In The Jazz Age of the 1920s popular music became centered in cities, played and recorded in metropolitan theaters and studios large enough to house orchestras. New hit singles were often pegged to dancing, and fans scooped up recorded singles to learn the accompanying steps to the Charleston, the Fox Trot, the Black Bottom and eventually the Lindy Hop, which they spun on recently electrified phonographs that no longer required cranking by hand. The sound was cosmopolitan, and centered largely in wealthier urban areas like Chicago and Manhattan. Marketing efforts were concentrated here, too, leaving many Southern regional performers to sing in a vacuum of regional obscurity. The popularity of orchestral jazz didn’t mean creativity and soul burning oral tradition weren’t spilling out beyond the Big Apple. A move by the record industry, initially centered on greater reach and subsequent profit, resulted in a disruption of the entire musical landscape, shifting popular music from a social vehicle for the elite to an egalitarian medium for everyone. In an attempt to reach America’s far corners not tuned in or interested in jazz, the majors like Columbia Records, Edison Records and the Victor Talking Machine Company partnered with Western Electric Company for use of its new, portable recording equipment—a lathe that could be carried to live performances in small town community centers and outdoor spaces. Western’s lathe was ostensibly the same technology used to cut recording masters in a studio, but it used a weightdriven pulley system to carve its grooves, instead of electricity. Label representatives descended upon the bucolic South—from Virginia to Texas—in search of new talent, and recorded them on the spot. The songs were pressed 78 and 45 rpm discs, which could only accommodate about three minutes of music. It’s the very practical reason popular music

compositions fell within this range of time going forward, increasingly truncated human attention spans notwithstanding. Victor scouts captured classic country acts like the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers for the first time in 1927, which inspired and captivated legions of fans across the country, not just in Tennessee and North Carolina. Though the broader attention initially surprised the record labels, they welcomed the income and made a point to continue in its searches for singer songwriters outside of jazz. Bluegrass was documented in West Virginia for the first time in 1928, as was creole, gospel, delta blues and country blues music in Mississippi and Louisiana. Listeners revelled in the opportunity to hear their region through the deeply personal performances of local artists, and country and blues music became popular. This uptick in interest paved the way for the earliest and most heralded sessions by greats like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House and Robert Johnson in late 1920s and early 1930s. These self-taught guitarists howling of human experience over minimal acoustic riffs were the very antithesis of cosmopolitan jazz, and audiences who’d never heard such naked confessions for the first time heard themselves and their comrades in the pain and triumph of these early blues pickers. The very visceral and emotional connection to these performers spawned legions of blues enthusiasts and imitators, and opened a metaphorical highway from the rural South to northern recording studios, many artists traveling with hopes of cutting a hit single in a major’s massive studios. It was a trend soon bucked by burgeoning innovation.

spreading the gospel of their new trades to friend and foe alike. After hearing singles from local musicians broadcast on the radio—the product of major label sojourns down south—amateur songwriters, machine tinkerers and general music enthusiasts began sinking savings into early reel-to-reel setups produced by California-based electronics company Ampex, which were used to either capture or playback sound recorded to magnetic tape. The earliest reels held one or two tracks on quarter-inch tape. By the end of the 1960s Ampex had built machines sophisticated enough to capture up to 24 tracks on much wider two-inch magnetic tape—a revolution that changed recorded processes as we know it by allowing artists to play alongside themselves or another musician’s part on the spot. Ampex representatives had seen the potential of the recording technology during the war, and based its machines on German innovations initially used to capture intel and broadcast propaganda. Other American companies like Presto, who’d played in the disc recording sandbox, rushed to follow suit. These companies’ earliest machines allowed anyone with a little bit of savings and an enthusiasm for electronics to record sounds and songs, as the new machines were far less unwieldy, of a much higher sound quality and more intuitive to use than the earlier lathes. The tape reels were more portable and less breakable to boot. After recognizing a bevy of local, underserved musical talent in the emerging fields of rock and roll and rhythm and blues—innovations on country and blues sounds aimed at youth culture and pop marketability—entrepreneurs across the country invested cash and a bit of elbow grease into building local studios with newly available tape machines tethered to accessible soundboards. Sam Phillips of Sun Records in Memphis started his earliest recording outfit with Presto’s earliest tape machine, a PT900. Meanwhile, Jim Stewart set up what would be the home recording studio for legendary R&B label Stax, in an old movie theater on the south side, after investing in an early Ampex machine with a loan from his sister. Berry Gordy Jr. purchased the building that housed the iconic Motown recording studio and headquarters Hitsville U.S.A. at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit in 1959, and shortly after placed a newspaper ad for a local electronics enthusiast with knowledge of Ampex gear. Twenty-one-year old Mike McLelan responded, and Gordy hired him for $50 a week as a maintenance technician. McLelan’s name went on to become synonymous with the Motown Sound, Detroit’s signature style of soul music that features smooth vocal delivery, orchestral accents and a pop sensibility. His expertise and build-it-yourself savvy proved infallible and essential to the label’s early recording success. McLelan not only knew Ampex equipment, but improved upon the technology with his homespun machines crafted in their image. His innovations aided in the purity of each recording, and emphasized cleanliness, clarity, negative feedback and low distortion in each song’s production value.

Screwed By the end of World War II masses of young men who’d trained in audio and machine technology as it pertained to battle returned home with an innate desire to apply those skills in everyday life, 24

Issue 13

Disruption

In the 1970s multitrack recording equipment birthed legions of home studios, bedroom engineers and an entire landscape of indie music, crafted outside the grip of major labels. Amatuer appetites became even more rabid with digital and computerbased recording technologies of the 1990s. But in 1972 DJ Kool Herc introduced one of the most impactful innovations in songcraft completely outside the confines of a studio, and even instruments. His “Merry-Go-Round” style of playing records, largely at park jams in The Bronx, brought sampling to the forefront of new music. There, he loaded two turntables with funky records by the likes of James Brown and The Incredible Bongo Band, and played only the instrumental, drum break portion of the song. He switched back and forth between tables to create a five-minute loop that local youth, dubbed B-boys and B-girls, could dance to. Outside of the tables, records and speaker, all he needed was a nearby lamp post to plug into. Artists like Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa followed and the blueprint for hip-hop was set. Musicians became increasingly autonomous from studios and traditional instruments, too, as synthesizers and drum machines were incorporated in songcraft in the late 1970s and early 80s. Bill Hemsath and Robert Moog created their first synth, the Minimoog, as a means of encapsulating the technology and sounds of its somewhat arduous forefather—the modular synthesizer. For the first time musicians like free jazz iconoclast Sun Ra and German experimentalists Kraftwerk were able to tour with the synthesized sounds once only available in the studio via complicated equipment. Shortly after Roland developed its TR-808 in 1980, an exhausted and drug-addled Marvin Gaye stowed away all but alone in a Belgian studio with the drum machine and crafted “Sexual Healing,” away from the interruption of session players and label types. Much like streaming today, historical innovations in music have made its reach increasingly democratic and autonomous from big industry. Its acceptance of forward-thinking and natural cultural inertia has pushed its capability and impact beyond the realm of the moneyed, for artists and consumers alike. Recorded music has incubated technology and fostered disruption from the start, whether intentional or not, and long before the overwrought term was even a consideration.

Illustrations

Olivia Ward

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

In his short essay “A Worthwhile Life Defined,” protagonist John B. McLemore, from the podcast S-Town, makes a sobering calculation: Of the 25,000 days an average person will live, one gets a meager 4,500 waking-hour days of beneficial life, after subtracting for sleep, work and other basic necessities. This naked, cold calculation blindsided me when I first heard it, and left me alternating between despair and panic. The power of the projection is that it exposes the limitation of the most universal metric of our mortality: time. Time’s finite nature is hard to argue against, but if we accept a quantitative relationship with time, we are left with little option but to quest for more. Luckily, as it turns out, the entire mindset may be wrong. An outwardly objective, data-driven relationship with time underwrites much of our contemporary mindset as applied to the intersection of technology and lifestyle. The sales pitch is as follows: We will fine-tune the knobs and dials of life in order to win back more time. As a full-time Creative Director at a busy studio, a parent and a generally curious person, this pitch holds a certain appeal—time ditches me

at every opportunity. Behind the convenience of most apps and services, I don’t see technology, but rather the promise of temporal control. Household outsourcing, Netflix binging, automated anything, Google Maps—all these products tune our relationship with time to improve lifestyle efficiency and put time back in our hands. “More time for what matters” is a common theme found in such industries. But this concept is only half-baked, as the “what matters” part is up to us. In other words, how are we spending our time? By

Caleb Kozlowski

Illustration

David Weber 26

Time and Technology The existence of a connection between reclaimed time and technology isn’t a new theory. In the 1960s and 1970s, the common sentiment in American social forecasting held that automation and computerization would eventually create an overabundance of leisure time. As technology advanced, freeing human hands from more and more tasks, we would reclaim that time and be at liberty to spend it as we pleased. As with most utopian visions, however, this future never came to pass. In fact, since that time period, American

Issue 13

Disruption

working hours have steadily increased. You likely work on average over one month more a year than you would have in the 1970s. In this light, the quest for more time becomes a kind of temporal quicksand: one step forward, two steps back. As technology generates time through efficiency, that saved time gets reabsorbed by our most powerful routines. Time and Perception However, all hope is not lost. The above calculation assumes that time has a set value, like a resource to be mined and increased through quantity. Yet within that paradigm, a key component of time is missing: our perception of it. While the ticking of a clock is the collective metric we use to measure time, memories are our personal metric—and more powerful than we give them credit for. Memories are responsible for how much time we perceive to have. Considering that our perception of the world is as close to reality as we can get, this metric is all-powerful. And unlike the ticking of a clock, our perception of time is wildly variable.

Time is more fluid than we realize—and we may be thinking about it all wrong.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman puts it this way, “Time is this rubbery thing. It stretches out when you really turn your brain resources on, and when you say, ‘Oh, I got this, everything is as expected,’ it shrinks up.” I n essence, not all experiences are created equal. New, impactful experiences require additional time to process because of all the fresh, unfamiliar information. Others are routine and largely redundant, so our brains zip through the processes. The time required to make sense of an experience corresponds to the strength of the memory it creates and, by extension, to our time perception.

In this way, strong memory-creation is the ultimate time disruptor, stretching time beyond its quantitative measurement. Still, powerful memories are only born within the right conditions. Newness, contrast and impact are keys to creating experiences that stretch out our perception of time. But take care not to associate this phenomenon too closely with the concept of “quality time,” because the relationship between quality, time and memory is more complex than might appear at first glance. Experience, Quality and Memory Recently, Lost Spirits Distillery set out to accomplish a different kind of time hack: Create the flavors of a 20-year-old rum in a mere six days—and they succeeded. This technological feat begs the question: If everyone can have 20-year-old rum daily as opposed to yearly, what might be the benefits and consequences—beyond consuming too much rum? Will drinkers get 365 times the enjoyment? A computer multiplying outcomes would say yes, but of course as humans we know this isn’t true. Instinctually we understand that ubiquity will rob the experiences of impact. Quality will be subverted by familiarity, thus ceasing to deliver a memorable experience. Our memories have little use for volume.

Hacking Time

Researchers at Stanford and Caltech universities took this relationship between perception, experience and quality one step further with a study of wine drinkers. Participants were given a blind tasting of a set of wines identified only by their (made up) prices. While tasting, each person was hooked to an MRI machine that monitored his or her brain’s pleasure centers. Researchers found that participants’ brains registered more pleasure and professed more enjoyment of the wines labeled “expensive.” As you’ve likely guessed, the wines labeled “expensive” were not, in truth, necessarily costly. In fact, they were often the same price as those wines labeled “inexpensive.” But to participants’ brains, there existed a measurable difference. Our perception of quality as well as scarcity changes our experiences, independent of the actual merits of a product. This is not to say that quality isn’t real—just that our minds have the power to make things real as well. In processing all this information we can draw a line connecting our minds to a way of understanding time that has nothing to do with quantity. Our 27

perception rules our experiences, which rule our memories, which in turn rules time itself. Day to day, it’s easy to feel oppressed by the limitations and scarcity of time. Still, it’s also important to remember that perception of time is (somewhat) within our sphere of control. As long as we seek out contrast and new experiences, accept challenges and question our patterns, we can take back time. To quote Aziz Ansari quoting Diane Sawyer, “Patterns are the work of the devil.” And as people in creative industries who make objects and craft experiences, we should seek to create the same kinds of powerful memories in others—not only to be effective communicators, but to give them back some time as well.

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Disruption

Again

Look

Issue 13

T he Movement

Imperfect Produce

Perfect Imperfection By

Jessie Kuhn B

Perfection. It drives us whether we realize it or not, and is the underlying tone in the materialistic nature of consumerism. When we pay money for something, we expect a standard to be met. Those items that don’t meet that standard often find themselves returned or worse yet—they never even make it to market. The supermarket is no exception with its pristine rows of ruby red apples and f lawless pyramids of perfectly rounded peaches. What you may never realize is the vast amount of fruit and vegetables that never even make it to the showroom f loor because somebody along the way graded it as ugly. Not putrid or tainted, but simply possessing an aesthetic f law. Thanks to Imperfect Produce, a California-based produce delivery service, the idea of perfection has been stripped away and as a result there’s hope for that crooked carrot, misshaped strawberry, and tiny cucumber. Reducing food waste is just one of the reasons why Imperfect Produce rode in on a valiant steed, so to speak, to rescue this doomed food. The produce delivery service connects these fruits and vegetables to consumers for a reduced cost. “People are conditioned to see uniform, perfect-looking produce in the grocery store but once they realize how much food is needlessly wasted every year because of minor cosmetic quirks, their minds open pretty quickly,” says Emily Carter, Imperfect Produce community associate. “Once we’ve made it clear that we’re not sourcing rotten or moldy produce and are helping make a positive impact on the environment, folks are won over, either by the cost savings, the convenience, or both!” Emily admits that the biggest hurdle is

totally altering people’s perceptions in terms of how they have been taught to think about fruits and vegetables. That includes educating them that this abandoned produce is just as nutritiously sound and f lavorful as its perfect siblings.

Left Illustration

Kyle Platts

A,B Photography

Courtesy of Imperfect Produce

As a result, not only have the Imperfect Produce subscribers been able to tap into a convenient delivery method of fresh food for less money, but it’s benefitting the farmers. “Historically, they would have to waste 10-20% of a given harvest because it wasn’t up to supermarket appearance standards. Even when they could sell their ‘ugly’ produce to a processor or as animal feed (which was never a certainty), they often lost money or barely broke even,” Emily says. “We help farmers make a better living off of what they grow by paying them a fair market price for produce, which they typically have to throw away or sell at a loss.” As an added bonus, those fruits and vegetables make it to the tables of consumers as they were intended to. By spotting a blind spot in how good food was not making the cut, Imperfect Produce opens new doors for consumers and farmers. As a result, nearly 120,000 lbs per week and 5 million lbs to date of quirky fruits and vegetables have found a new home in California kitchens.

imperfectproduce.com 29

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Courtesy of Emerging Objects

@zero_likes

Courtesy of @sam_hains

Oil sands tailings pond Fort McMurray, Canada

Technology, design, architecture, engineering… Emerging Objects, a 3D printing design studio, brings all of these disciplines together and the results are stunning and instantaneous. “It allows the designer to also be the maker—no time is lost between design and fabrication of prototypes,” says Ronald Rael, Emerging Objects CEO. “The designer is no longer restricted to a single domain, but instead can participate in the design of the machine, the software, the material, and the final product, empowering the designer to innovate at the highest level.” emergingobjects.com

Prototype of the P_Ball

San Francisco, USA

Zero Likes

Emerging Objects

Zero Likes explores the outskirts of the internet doomed to be forgotten—Instagram photos with zero likes. “Likes’ are one of the primary metrics used by social network algorithms to quantify what is good, interesting content vs. bad, uninteresting content,” says founder Sam Hains, who wrote a script that collects these posts, generates an image and caption in response, and shares it on Twitter (@zero_likes). “They are outside profiles, feeling their way through an unfamiliar system,” Sam speculates.

Photography / Illustrations

twitter.com/zero_likes

The Movement Look Again

Pieces of crumbling buildings and houses that were often on the chopping block for demolition were extracted in the late Gordon Matta-Clark’s “anarchitecture” work of the 1970s. Each removed building piece revealed new beauty in both the material out of context and in the newly revealed gaping hole. The buildings often were destroyed shortly after Gordon would perform his work, sparking even greater interest due to its f leeting nature. At the time, it represented the American Dream in decay.

jhenryfair.com

Photographer and environmentalist J Henry Fair knows that photographs must be beautiful to grab attention in an over-stimulated world. By changing the point of view and using aerial photography to show the destruction caused by pollution in a mesmerizing way, J plays into multiple ironies in his latest book Industrial Scars: The Hidden Cost of Consumption. “The irony of making beautiful images from something horrible [and] of our material culture wreaking havoc on our life support system,” J Henry says. New York City & Berlin

J Henry Fair

Conical Intersect, 1975 Gelatin silver print; 10 5/8 x 15 5/8 in. (26.99 x 39.69 cm)

Gordon Matta-Clark San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund: gift of Frances and John Bowes, Collectors Forum, Pam and Dick Kramlich and the Modern Art Council © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photograph by Don Ross

Conduct by UM Project and Flavor Paper

Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

C D

Design Fair, New York City, USA

Gordon Matta Clark

New York City, USA

Flavor Paper x UM Project

umproject.com/conduct flavorpaper.com

Disruption

A collaboration between Flavor Paper & UM Project yield a wallpaper that begs to not fade into the background. Conduct features a water-based conductive ink and striking design elements that come alive with sound, light, and motion as viewers interact with its fixtures. A light box can be activated by a touchpad, a fan sets off a gentle breeze, and a shutter box illuminates materials to create an effect that resembles an American f lag. This is certainly a wallpaper that doesn’t fall f lat.

Issue 13

Melissa McCracken Kansas City, USA

kouheinakama.com

Tokyo, Japan

Kouhei Nakama

kufstudios.com

If you ask Kia Utzon-Frank, the three-tiered sponge cake adorned with flowers is so passé. “So I designed these sculptural looking geometric cakes with gradient f lavours that change throughout the cake so no two pieces look or taste the same,” she says. Aesthetics and functionality collide with transformation, leading these luxury KUFcakes to appear at first glance to be sculptures. Conversation erupts and deepens with each bite. For Kia, this simply is another material to work with and manipulate in unexpected ways. London, UK

Kia Utzon-Frank G

The human form is a source of fascination for visual art director Kouhei Nakama, who mines the abstract and unseen to create entrancing videos and animations. In the series “Diffusion”, Kouhei portrays the human body as “artificially remodeled” by using incorporated DNA from creatures like luminescent corals and shellfish. In the series “Makin’ Moves,” particle-based animation techniques make 3D figures twist, peel, unravel, and move in the most unusual ways that are completely counter to their nature.

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Imagine if the visuals associated with music that awe you at concerts manifested themselves in your mind when listening to music. This phenomenon—known as synesthesia—causes artist Melissa McCracken to interpret sound, such as music, in color. “When you see music rather than hear it, you’re invited to travel through the experience,” she says. “What I enjoy about my work is that it allows the audience to connect to something [they’re] familiar with in a way they didn’t previously know existed.” melissasmccracken.com

F F

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Disruption

Photography / Illustrations F

KUFstudios

Photos by Owen Silverwood

MAKIN’ MOVES

Courtesy of Kouhei Nakama kouheinakama.com H

Love’s in Need of Love Today

Courtesy of Melissa S. McCracken

Next page Coal combustion waste at electricity generation plant Pineville, SC

H 33

Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Issue 13

Disruption

Production Notes Main Book Paper Mohawk Options, Navajo Smooth, Brilliant White, 130 Double Thick Cover (352gsm) Mohawk Superfine, Eggshell, Ultrawhite, 70 Text (104gsm) Mohawk Skytone, Vellum Parchment , Pink Ice, 60 Text (89gsm) Inks 4cp, 2nd black, match blue, match fluorescent pink, match fluorescent purple, mirror foil, spot dull varnish

Fat Tire Flyer

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Mohawk Via, Smooth , Natural, 70 Text (104gsm) Mohawk BriteHue, Vellum , Blue, 60 Text (89gsm)

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Merijn Hos Print 1 of 20,000 variable designs Paper Mohawk Superfine, Eggshell Digital with i-Tone , Ultrawhite, 120 Cover (324gsm)

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Paper Grades Quick Reference

Mohawk Paper Selector Mohawk Fine Papers are designed to bring craftsmanship, tactility and impact to all the ways you print. Be it digital, offset, packaging or even letterpress, the Mohawk product portfolio has the perfect paper to bring your project to life.

Superfine

Carnival + Via

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The Ultimate Paper

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The Luxe Paper

Loop

Options + Navajo

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Curious Collection

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The Versatile Papers

Mohawk Superfine is the finest printing paper made today. No other paper has the same reputation for quality, consistency and uniformity. Superfine inspires great design with its superb formation, lush tactility, archival quality and timeless appeal.

Mohawk Loop is a complete collection of extremely high PCW recycled papers to support sustainable design. With a range of print surfaces and a fashionable palette of whites, pastels, jewel tones and earthy fibered shades, Loop enables environmental responsibility the Mohawk way.

Extraordinary papers for those special projects where you need saturated color and unusual texture. Choose from seven unique surfaces and an expansive palette of colors. The Curious Collection is manufactured by Arjowiggins Creative Papers and distributed solely by Mohawk in North America.

Carnival + Via represents the most comprehensive and economical family of premium writing, text and cover papers in the market today. The combined portfolio offers a FSCÂŽ certified choice for virtually any design project with many shades of white, a palette of fresh colors, ten distinctive textures and an extensive offering for digital printing.

Options features Mohawkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exclusive Inxwell surface technology, combining the tactile feel of uncoated paper with the ink density and sharp detail of coated. Now including ultra-smooth Navajo, Options features six premium white shades to complement a range of styles.

Whether in stock or custom made, Mohawk Packaging Papers bring versatility and f lexibility to every project with nearly endless combinations of sophisticated texture, beautiful color and thin-to-thick caliper. From folding board to hang tags and box wrap to bags, this is the ultimate collection for luxury packaging.

Setting the standard for design and innovation since 1892, the Strathmore Collection is a diverse assortment of cotton papers, colors and finishes that honor tradition while striking new ground with contemporary colors and surface technologies. They add an image of luxury to all print communications.

Since 1998 Mohawk has led the market with innovative substrates for digital printing. Today, this offering includes our legendary fine paper brands, coated and uncoated production papers and an extensive range of specialty substrates. All are carefully engineered for reliable performance on every major digital press platform including wide format inkjet.

Learn more at Mohawkconnects.com

The original Fat Tire Flyer was written, edited, designed, laid out, stapled, folded, and occasionally mutilated by Denise Caramango and Charles Kelly, with help from various artists and associates.01

Fat Tire Flyer By Charlie Kelly

In the late â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70s a group of hippies in Northern California, skidded their way into history and changed the bicycle industry forever.

W hen I ride my ex pensive, f u l l-suspension, d iscbrake modern mountain bike down a trail, I often mar vel that human beings evolved both the physica l ability and machinery needed to ma ke this tra nscendent ex per ience possible. A nd my m i nd slips back to the exact angle of the sun and smell of damp earth of a fall morning, on a trail we locals called Repack, when my friends and I first started

01 This intro was taken from Issue #6 of the Fat Tire Flyer and modified to fit these pages. Left: Repack Map Detail

Dewey Livingston, courtesy of the Marin Museum of Bicycling

racing mountain bikes.

The introduction of the mountain bike is

arg uably the twentieth centuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most signif icant development in cycling. Du ring the 1970s, two Fat Tire Flyer

04 new concepts ex ploded out of Ca l i for n ia: BM X a nd mou nta in bi k ing. The ma instrea m of bicycle ma nu fa ctu r i n g a nd ma rketi n g i g nored both, so people li ke my friends a nd I who showed ea rly interest in these movements went on to establish ou rselves a s new players i n a n i ndustr y gone stag na nt. Five yea rs a f ter the debut of mass-produced versions of previously handmade bicycles, the new style of mou nta in bi kes bega n to outsell every other form of bicycle.

A l l the elements that beca me mou nta i n

bi k i n g were i n pla ce for deca des before the spor t was born. Both racing bicycles and old balloon-tire bicycles had existed side by side, so it didn’t seem like rocket science to ask, “What if a balloon-tire 02 bicycle were bu i lt to the sa me precise sta nda rds as an Italian racing bicycle?” The answer to that question beca me today’s moder n mou nta i n bi ke, but the path leading to that answer is the more interesting part of this story.

The mid ‘70s. A couple of hippie bachelors

shared a rented house in San Anselmo, Ca lifornia. The house doubled as the bi ke clu n ker capita l of the world. (I ncidenta l ly, the “ world” at th is ti me consisted of, at most, a few dozen modified, 40-yearold bikes scattered around Marin County.) The house’s porch was festooned w ith used bike parts. Inside, tools hung from nails driven into wa lls, a nd a work bench occupied the spot where most homes ha d a d i n i n g table. Bob Ma rley a nd the Wailers blasted impossibly loud background music.

In this house, I assembled old coaster-brake,

balloon-tire bikes with my roommate, Gary Fisher.

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Opposite: Charlie Kelly

Courtesy of Charlie Kelly 02 A balloon tire is a type of wide, largevolume, low-pressure tire that first appeared on cruiser bicycles in the USA in the 1930s. They are typically 2 to 2.5 inches (51 to 64 mm) wide. Below is an example of a Specialized Bikes Balloon tire advertisement.

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The Marin County Crew, Crested Butte, Colorado

ÂŠWende Cragg Marin Museum of Bicycling Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Left to right: Gary Fisher, James Macway, Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze, Wende Cragg

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They ser ved as tow n bikes, good for any short trip that didn’t require a racing bike. Our tow n bikes were cheap and low-tech, while the others were the epitome of racing-bike design, so my two bicycle forms represented opposite ends of the spectru m. Nothing in the vast g ulf between them appea led to me or my friends.

Most members of our bike-racing club had

40-yea r-old ba l loon-ti re tow n bi kes. We ca l led them clunkers,03 and we formed a subset w ithin the club. Eventua lly, a few of us ventured our clunkers onto the Marin County f ire roads. We found that even on—or especia lly on—a rugged bike, coasting dow n a dirt road was insane fun. If it broke, the bike was cheap and easy to repair.

W hen Ga r y Fisher bolted a derailleur 04 —the

bike mechanism that lets you change gears—and gears onto his clunker, it started us dow n the path

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Above: Inspiration Point, Mt. Tamalpais

©Wende Cragg Marin Museum of Bicycling 03 A clunker describes a type of vintage cruiser bicycle with a steel frame and balloon tires. 04 A derailleur moves the chain between sprockets (gears) for easier or harder pedaling.

09 to mou nta i n bi k i ng. I made the sa me conversions to my bike over the next year, and these modified machines opened a new reality: we explored every trail and f ire road we could f ind. Rides grew in number to a dozen or so riders, and soon a pattern emerged. Every ride started at the bottom of a hill or slope and worked its way to the top, where efforts were celebrated with Frisbee games and

05 Exploded view of a coaster brake A coaster brake is a type of drum brake integrated into the back hub with an internal freewheel. Freewheeling functions as with other systems, but when back pedaled, the brake engages after a fraction of a revolution.

ref resh ments. T hen one r ider wou ld i nev itably move toward his bike, and thus the rush was on—an undeclared race to the bottom. Though exhilarating, th is was nevertheless serious business: la rge g roups scrapi ng over the best l i ne on the tra i l often found themselves in hairy predicaments. We were all looking for the fastest path to the bottom. Bigger or more agg ressive riders had a n edge. These weren’t fa i r races, but then aga i n, no one had claimed other w ise.

As road racers, we were familiar w ith the

concept of a time trial, also called a “race of truth,” since the maneuvering of other riders couldn’t in f luence you r time. Time tria ls were true representations of you r ow n streng th a nd sk i lls. On October 21, 1976, I assembled with a few friends at the top of Repack hill for our own time trial. (The name Repack came from the effect this hill had on a coaster-bra ke bike designed for a 70-pound kid on level streets, when the r ider i n fa ct wei g hed closer to 200 pou nds a nd descended 1,300 feet i n roughly five minutes. That cooked the brake lubrica nts to the poi nt of need i ng a a complete rebu i ld, wh ich wa s for tu nately a si mple procedu re: a “repack” with fresh grease.) 05 On that day, aided by

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10 Charlie Kelly on Repackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Camera Corner

ÂŠWende Cragg / Rolling Dinosaur Archive Marin Museum of Bicycling

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Ballooner Blastoff Race Flyer

Pete Barrett Mohawk Maker Quarterly

Repack Poster

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This map of Repack was compiled by Joe Breeze and illustrated by Dewey Livingston.

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05 Mohawk Maker Quarterly

06 05 Vol. 3, No. 1 06 Vol. 2, No. 4 07 Issue #7 08 Issue #2

All covers courtesy of Charlie Kelly

08 Fat Tire Flyer

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Previous Page: The original drawing for Joe Breeze’s “Breezer” matched with a studio image of the bike produced for Photograhper Wende Cragg.

Photo by SFO Museum

06 Charlie Kelly’s Dress Code

Gary Fisher

“By creating our own form of racing, we freed ourselves from those rules and became our own governing authority. Repack was a personal adventure that did not require a dress code or any other restriction.” Charlie Kelly

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25 ou r cr ude ti m i n g equ ipment, we a i med to settle who among us was the fastest.

Far from settling anything, the race started

a movement thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sti l l rag i ng. A new bicycl i ng sport was born, approximately one hundred years after the appearance of the first bike races. There now exists a world championship contest in the discipline we invented to settle an arg ument.

Bicycle racing is more conser vative than

the industry at large. Manufacturers demand innovation, but by restricting the boundaries of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a llowed in terms of equipment, internationa l rules discourage alterations that fall outside the narrow pa ra meters that def ine a racing bi ke. Road racing wa s therefore fettered by more ed icts tha n a re found in the game of baseba ll. Professiona l bicycle racing is ultimately a show put on for spectators, so ma ny of its reg u lations stem from that rea l ity. Improving machinery was not the primary goal of road raci ng, thus the bicycle itself had to con form to r i g id sta nda rds, a s d id the r ider. Socks were white, shorts were black, helmets were mandatory, and jerseys had to be of an approved design. The bicycle itself needed to fa ll w ithin specif ic parameters of wheelbase, handlebar w idth, and other precise measurements.

By creati ng ou r ow n form of raci ng, we

freed ourselves from those rules, and became our ow n governing authority. Repack was a persona l adventure that did not require a dress code.06 It was independent of restrictions. A lthough the initia l pu rpose was not to i mprove mach i ner y, that goa l did quickly surface as competitors sought an edge

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26 over other riders. “Run what ya brung” was the on ly r u le, so riders showed up on whatever they had that would survive the ride, then added persona l mod i f ications. A l l successf u l i n novations spread immediately to other competitors.

In 1977 I answered my question about what

m ight happen if a bi ke w ith big tires were bu i lt like a European racing bike. My friend Joe Breeze, a designer of road-racing frames, accepted my com m ission to bu i ld such a bi ke—the f i rst rea l mountain bike—although this term had not yet been coined. His first production totaled ten bikes. His own, number one, is now part of the Smithsonian’s collections. I have number two.

Joe’s bikes opened a door no one even knew

existed, and suddenly there emerged a demand for bikes with high-quality frames and balloon tires. A mon g the th i n gs you ca n’t bu i ld i n a ga ra ge a re bicycle r i ms a nd ti res, but i n response to the growing BMX market in Southern California, manufacturers introduced lighter rims and modern tires in the sizes we needed for our bikes. In 1979, Ga r y Fisher a nd I rented a ga rage i n wh ich to assemble high-tech, balloon-tire bikes built around famed designer Tom Ritchey’s frames. We came up w ith what we believed to be a catchy company na me, Mou nta i n Bi kes. Si nce we were the on ly people m a k i n g such bi kes, components d id not ex ist for ou r use, so we used pa r ts orig i na l ly devised for other purposes, including motorcycle parts. Our bikes sported components from Japan, Ita ly, France, Germany, Sw itzerland, England, and the United States.

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07 Companies such as SunTour (right) started making component groups (gruppos) for these high-tech balloon tire bikes. 08 Joe Breeze’s explorations for the “NORBA” logo

Our inf luence on the industry was immediate. Within two yea rs, component compa n ies bega n add ressi ng th is m issing market need by launching complete â&#x20AC;&#x153;gruppos,â&#x20AC;? 07 i.e., a l l the components needed to a ssemble a mou nta i n bike, designed to work together. Major bicycle manufacturers reverse-engineered the bikes Gary and I sold, and the market f looded with enough clones that our company name grew generic, and mountain bikes became the largest part of the market.

T he for m of ra ci n g that led us to desi g n these

bi kes wa s i n itia l ly not considered leg iti mate by the the nationa l gover n i n g body that sa nctioned roa d ra ces and awarded national championships. Since mountain bikerace promoters wa nted to f i nd l iabi l ity i nsu ra nce, a

few of us formed the first off-road sanctioning body, ca lled the Nationa l Off-Road Bicycle Association

Above: Charlie Kelly and Roy Rivers

the ru les, wh i le a lso keeping them brief. Th is

ÂŠWende Cragg Marin Museum of Bicycling

con nected to ou r second pu r pose, wh ich wa s to

Special thanks to:

(NORBA).08 Ou r i n itia l pu rpose was to sta nda rd ize

find insurance coverage. Carriers needed to see helmets and working brakes, so some rules had to ex ist, but none restricted what you cou ld ride or what you wore, apart from mandatory helmets.

A lthough my ow n involvement in it ended

early, NORBA is still bike racingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nationa l governing body. The other nationa l body, now ca lled USA Cycl i n g, eventua l ly bou g ht ou r upsta r t leag ue so that the Un ited States m ight compete at world-championship levels.

Today, mountain biking is the most popular

high-school sport in Marin County. To the horror of traditional bicycle-racing afficionados, you can now earn a world championship in downhill racing. But on the morning of October 21, 1976, when a ha nd f u l of us gathered at the top of a steep mound, none in our wildest imaginings could have g uessed where that m ight lead.

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Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze, Wende Cragg, Dewey Livingston, Gary Fisher and the Marin Museum of Bicycling

29 Below: Jacquie Phelan leads Cindy Whitehead at the 1986 Sierra Plumbline race.

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