16 Articles on Design

Spring 2011 DESIGN WRITING Anthony Acock Skyler Balbus Theresa Berenato Mariya Campwala Chantal Fischzang Richard Hall Elizabeth Kuehnen Christina Latina Anqi Li Brenda McManus Nick Misini Frances Pharr Janice Ramirez Mira Rojanasakul Natalie Sims Maria Nefeli Stavrinidi

PROFESSOR DK HOLLAND

1 ANTHONY WOODFIELD ACOCK MFA candidate. Parent. Graphic Designer. Vandal.

General Hooliganism.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

“Take off your shirt”, barked the midwife, only half looking at me. It was 4:30 in the morning, and I was exhausted. The taller midwife tried carefully to pry the pink squirming child from my wife’s arms. She was in a half state of shock, soaking wet, laying in the make shift tub we had set up in our kitchen, with a child only 15 minutes old in her arms. She seemed terrified of letting him go.

The midwife lifted the child up, walked towards me, her arms stretched out, “here” she said, “take him to your chest”. It suddenly dawned on me that I had never held a child before, let alone, one so tiny, or for that matter, one that was mine.

I stepped back with a look of half confusion, half terror on my face. The midwife laughed, pressed my son to my pale chest firmly, and wrapped a blanket diagonally around the two of us, giving me the look of some third world farmer. She placed a light green beanie on the boy’s head. Grabbing my arm, she walked me to my bedroom while the other midwife tended to Lourdes, still in the water. I was surprised by how quite and still the child was.

Laying me down, carefully holding Gabriel’s head up while I laid back, covered us with more blankets, and assured me that I would instinctively know how to sleep with a baby on my chest. I doubted her, but couldn’t stop staring at the now sleeping 7-pound life on top of me as she walked back into the kitchen to join Lourdes and the other midwife.

She had a worried look on her face, which I couldn’t quite understand. My son was perfect, was Lourdes okay?

Moments later all three came into the room, my wife severely limping. They tucked her in bed next to me and our new son, and began wiping Lourdes’s head with a cool wet rag.

They started talking to us, but nothing they said made any sense. The midwives could tell we were exhausted and headed back into the kitchen to talk amongst themselves.

Trisomy 21

people first language

I could hear their concerned whispers through the thin apartment walls as I drifted to sleep.

Something about folds of skin on his neck, the shape of his eyes, and low muscle tone.

I passed out within 10 minutes and awoke 3 hours later to a quiet house.

The basic function of People First language is simple. By placing the name or pronoun before the disability, you present the subject as a person first and their disability second.

In my experience, one’s disability is typically the least interesting thing about that person.

It was a cold January morning. Lourdes was asleep next to me, and on my bare chest lay a the boy with his almond shaped eyes still closed. I couldn’t comprehend how warm he felt against my skin. The fast rhythm of his heart beating on top of mine.

For example, you would say; “The child with Down Syndrome”, and not; “The Down Syndrome child”. Or as my pediatrician put, my “Down’s baby”. It may seem innocent enough, but for people within the Down Syndrome community, it’s like nails on a chalk board. In the case of, “The Down Syndrome child” you are saying that the most notable fact about this child, is the fact that they have Down Syndrome. Not the fact that they are someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s friend. Rather, they are nothing more than a diagnosis. By placing the disability before the person, you have completely dehumanized and devalued their very identity.

I could only vaguely remember the midwives’ conversation. The only two words that truly resonated were, “Down Syndrome”. Looking down at my son, his perfect face, his tiny hands wrapped around my index finger, I struggled to find imperfection, and failed to do so. Down Syndrome is a tragedy, and my son was perfect. My son is perfect. They must have been mistaken.

A few days later we received confirmation from our pediatrician that Gabriel Louis was born with a third 21st chromosome.

My son has Down Syndrome.

The pediatrician tried in vain to assure us that “‘Downs’ babies lead productive lives today” but that did nothing to reassure us, and something about labeling my son as a “Down baby” instead of “my baby” didn’t sit right with me. This is, of course, before I learned about the concept of People First Language.

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

–Mark Twain

Having a child with Down Syndrome has taught me that words have incredible power. When we talk about people, clumsy choices in sentence structure can do profound harm, often times accidently or unknowingly. People First language seeks to avoid this subconscious dehumanization that occurs when we talk about people with disabilities.

acock+

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If you think about illness in this regard, we can speak of my aunt Dona who has cancer. If you compare, “My aunt Dona has Cancer” to “My cancerous aunt Dona” the difference is obvious.

My aunt Dona is a wonderful woman, a devout Catholic, and charitable community member.

To wrap her up in one cancerous package does a great injustice when speaking of her as a woman. The same applies when talking about people with disabilities.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, individuals with disabilities are not retarded, autistic, blind, deaf, learning disabled! “They are people: moms and dads; sons and daughters; employees and employers; friends and neighbors; students and teachers; scientists, reporters, doctors, actors, presidents, and more. People with disabilities are people, first.”

–Kathie Snow

It is as important, as it is easy. Just a simple restructuring of our sentences can revolutionize the way we talk, think about, and treat people with disabilities.

2 SKYLER BALBUS Skyler was once an academic and an editor, but now she is a designer. Her MFA thesis, entitled 100 Means of Invisibility, addresses invisibility as a means of communication. She currently lives in a sunny railroad apartment in Brooklyn, NY.

Invisibly Abstract An interview and discussion with Évita Yumul

by Skyler Balbus

November 2010, New York, NY: The cold air whips around me as I shove my hands in the pockets of my black wool coat, boots clicking hard against the sidewalk. My fingers grope the tiny notebook and pencil taking up valuable pocket space. I am thinking about things that are impossible, because in the next thirty-five minutes, I have to come up with an impossible project.

To be clear: I had thirty-five minutes to come up with a project about impossibility for a class about technology.

Even so, my mind had been a blank, as frozen as everything else in late November. I’m no stranger to panic, but I rarely leave first steps to the last minute, and I knew the only thing I could do was to go look at something. So I bundled up and headed out. I decided to walk to a nearby art-bookstore, thinking that I’d find something there that would spark an idea and give me something to work with. The walk to the store was not long, but I was innately conscious of every step. I was walked around, walked into, walked in front of and behind; I was jostled and hurried and ignored; I saw myself dressed like everyone else; I saw myself drawing attention. Through all of this, I wrote everything down, freezing my thoughts on paper.

My notes from that walk are shaky, taken with hands arthritic from cold, but read in messily large letters: The impossibility of being invisible. They continue: Tangibility. Containment. Words, archetypes, truisms. Mythical.

Synthesis. Invisibility within a city, within the internet.

Camouflage. Metaphors. Isolation. Seeing or showing or telling. I thought that what I was doing was working out a four-week project, where I would somehow address the tripartite relationship between visibility, urban spaces, and the internet, but what it turned out I was doing was starting the framework of the project that would consume the next six months of my life, at least.

Shortly after I conceived of my small project, I discovered the storefront of Tokyo-based designer and artist Évita Yumul on Etsy.com. A former architect, Yumul now lives in Tokyo, and when she is not working on any number of personal or collaborative projects, she patterns, sews, and sells clothing of her own design, meticulously crafted and perfectly minimal. It seemed to me that if I wore an out-

fit comprised entirely of her clothes—perhaps a pair of dark denim pants with a v-neck sweater or a boxy top, under a grey toggle coat—I could be completely invisible: the simplicity of her designs would allow me to blend in with everyone else in the city, without aligning me with any brand name or statement or movement. Even the design of her storefront suggests invisibility: the garments are photographed in part, not in whole, as they appear on the main page of the storefront, so that the top half of one garment aligns with the bottom half of another—or with nothing at all, depending on what items are currently in the shop.

I was intrigued by her work and in need of new clothes, so I purchased a purplish-grey buttondown shirt and sent Yumul an email, asking if I could send her some questions. She was extremely courteous, and I received my shirt (a perfect fit) a few weeks later. When I wore the shirt, it felt like wearing a secret. I soon became swept up in my thesis work, which turned toward the invisible, and I dropped communication with Yumul as I continued building projects that addressed different aspects of invisibility. I continued visiting her website and storefront, and once I had developed a language to talk about both my work and her projects, I contacted her and asked if we could hold an interview via email. She agreed, and the following is a portion of our ongoing conversation. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Skyler Balbus (SB): One of the reasons I began looking at invisibility as a lens for my work was a series of interactions I had while simply existing in public in New York City.

I started thinking about the intersections of invisibility, camouflage, and minimalism, and then a few weeks later, I found your Etsy store, which seemed to make these ideas physical and commercial. On your website, you talk about the Etsy store as being a study of the “handmade” or craft phenomenon. While your work is handmade, it is also precise and minimal: qualities that are more often found in mass-produced garments than those found on Etsy. In this way, the project seems to me to speak more to the invisibility of mass-produced items, where the “handmade touch” is absent (unless designed that way). In any case, how would you say the study has gone?

Évita Yumul (ÉY): The study has gone well enough—I’m currently engaged in false starts trying to start it up in the new year. My own personal desire to stay on Etsy has more to do with what I have been seeing (on Etsy itself, networked on one-degree-from-it-blogs, etc.) on the interface, whether it is a proper/productive non-place to reach people.

Signs have been pointing to “no,” it has lacked both context and criteria for me. Very few people are interested in how a concept is transferred through clothing unless it is a purely visual (here, versus thinking) one.

The “handmade touch” is simply that: touch. A sort of modern fantasy that highlights the maker and not the product, it’s mostly applique without any implications. And, everything, mass produced or not is, in some way handmade, with or without said “touch.” Clothing needs to fit properly, clothing needs to drape properly, requires precision and detailing, but truly minimal gestures to address its use-value.

I don’t think handmade and mass-produced can be set as such clean poles (against one another).

So, I’m not interested in “the invisibility of mass-produced garments,” I’m interested in how that modern fantasy of the maker can/is allowed to disappear (which, for me, is not the same as making it invisible and how those minimal gestures which making garments requires can be used to communicate a carefulness effectively: “Someone made this for me with their own two hands!!” versus “Someone thought about the detailing of this so that I don’t have to look like my now-passed-aunt made my entire adult wardrobe.”

As a side note and example: Somehow the only garments I’ve been wearing apart from the ones I make myself are from Comme des Garçons. People forget this, but the clothing is mass-produced. But the difference is clear: the clothing is mass-produced with a heightened attention to detail. These attentions could easily be mistaken for the insertion of the “handmade touch” or as completely decorative, but I beg to differ. The clothing of CdG is about the indexing of an industry based on spoken or translated concepts (Kuwakubo’s or her protégés alike), and the peculiar detailing exists more on the plane of particular. The clothing isn’t made to “wear the wearer” (a sentiment repeated on an Etsy featured seller interview; which could easily be said about CdG), the wearer is allowed to wear the clothes in any way they see fit.

SB: One of the things that initially drew me to your Etsy store was the way you photographed and arranged your items, so that they appeared to be mis-matched with other pieces. This seems to me to speak to the inherent invisibility in the medium of a storefront: the squares of the Etsy items are unconsidered, invisible, until you place images in them that immediately cause them to relate to each other. Your website, too, utilizes invisibilities inherent in the medium: by making the text on your front page white, you leave the reader to navigate by abstraction. How did you decide to display your work in this way? Probably “invisibility” is a

word I am latching onto to describe your work; was invisibility a consideration for you, or was it something different? ÉY: For the website: it’s completely visible with the use of the mouse, I’m just asking that the interface be navigated in a different, non-linear fashion. For the Etsy page, it is other than, or outside abstraction. It’s completely literal and functions in the same way as the sporadic letters on the website: the garments hold their own individually, but I needed a way out of those singular representations, and specifically for Etsy, those that pronounce (as if screaming) lifestyle, taste and style with backgrounded objects, as if to say the wearer possibly has no place in wearing/buying unless they have the same interior-decorating sensibility or unless they buy the same types of clothes you do.

I wanted to design the visual occupation of the page outside of the objects therein, the bricolage-mismatches seemed like the most effective way to do this. It might also have something to do with my strong (pervading) distrust in “photography” as a medium. I rarely flinch or look twice at photographs, I consume them too quickly.

SB: Can you explain your use of “completely literal” and “outside abstraction” a little more? Occasionally the distinction between abstract and literal gets a little fuzzy for me, due to years of mythology studies. In terms of myth, the literal is simultaneously a symbol, so there is meaning behind everything; literal isn’t literal, but neither is abstract really abstract. It’s totally presumptuous, but would it be possible to rephrase the statements about your store to be: The images mean nothing more than images; the clothing has no outside value; the whitespace and juxtaposition serve to remove the clothing from context;? To me, this seems to move the images / clothing more into the realm of abstraction (since nothing exists without context), but because the meaning is literal (or, THE CLOTHES ARE ONLY CLOTHES), I am finding it difficult to see the distinction between the literal and the abstract. It seems to me like if there were some kind of continuum between literal and abstract, the Etsy store (and your website) exist on some point that is off the page, where the two concepts connect in reverse. ÉY: For Etsy (in general): The clothes are only clothes, but they are after a different system of valuation on Etsy. I absolutely refuse to subscribe to the “charge more because you pushed it out of your hands” approach/indoctrination.

That’s the concept that has always driven the shop. And now I’m struggling getting back on Etsy because, after how ever many sales, the truth remains: only desires are being fulfilled on Etsy. There’s no NEED being addressed. And no one is in-desire of good ideas, art as practice and thinking cannot be sold on Etsy.

Literal and abstract: Completely literal = refusing (to assign or script) meaning for x. = (it is other than, or) outside abstraction = here I think I was using abstraction as it

Invisibly Abstract An interview and discussion with Évita Yumul

by Skyler Balbus

November 2010, New York, NY: The cold air whips around me as I shove my hands in the pockets of my black wool coat, boots clicking hard against the sidewalk. My fingers grope the tiny notebook and pencil taking up valuable pocket space. I am thinking about things that are impossible, because in the next thirty-five minutes, I have to come up with an impossible project.

To be clear: I had thirty-five minutes to come up with a project about impossibility for a class about technology.

Even so, my mind had been a blank, as frozen as everything else in late November. I’m no stranger to panic, but I rarely leave first steps to the last minute, and I knew the only thing I could do was to go look at something. So I bundled up and headed out. I decided to walk to a nearby art-bookstore, thinking that I’d find something there that would spark an idea and give me something to work with. The walk to the store was not long, but I was innately conscious of every step. I was walked around, walked into, walked in front of and behind; I was jostled and hurried and ignored; I saw myself dressed like everyone else; I saw myself drawing attention. Through all of this, I wrote everything down, freezing my thoughts on paper.

My notes from that walk are shaky, taken with hands arthritic from cold, but read in messily large letters: The impossibility of being invisible. They continue: Tangibility. Containment. Words, archetypes, truisms. Mythical.

Synthesis. Invisibility within a city, within the internet.

Camouflage. Metaphors. Isolation. Seeing or showing or telling. I thought that what I was doing was working out a four-week project, where I would somehow address the tripartite relationship between visibility, urban spaces, and the internet, but what it turned out I was doing was starting the framework of the project that would consume the next six months of my life, at least.

Shortly after I conceived of my small project, I discovered the storefront of Tokyo-based designer and artist Évita Yumul on Etsy.com. A former architect, Yumul now lives in Tokyo, and when she is not working on any number of personal or collaborative projects, she patterns, sews, and sells clothing of her own design, meticulously crafted and perfectly minimal. It seemed to me that if I wore an out-

fit comprised entirely of her clothes—perhaps a pair of dark denim pants with a v-neck sweater or a boxy top, under a grey toggle coat—I could be completely invisible: the simplicity of her designs would allow me to blend in with everyone else in the city, without aligning me with any brand name or statement or movement. Even the design of her storefront suggests invisibility: the garments are photographed in part, not in whole, as they appear on the main page of the storefront, so that the top half of one garment aligns with the bottom half of another—or with nothing at all, depending on what items are currently in the shop.

I was intrigued by her work and in need of new clothes, so I purchased a purplish-grey buttondown shirt and sent Yumul an email, asking if I could send her some questions. She was extremely courteous, and I received my shirt (a perfect fit) a few weeks later. When I wore the shirt, it felt like wearing a secret. I soon became swept up in my thesis work, which turned toward the invisible, and I dropped communication with Yumul as I continued building projects that addressed different aspects of invisibility. I continued visiting her website and storefront, and once I had developed a language to talk about both my work and her projects, I contacted her and asked if we could hold an interview via email. She agreed, and the following is a portion of our ongoing conversation. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Skyler Balbus (SB): One of the reasons I began looking at invisibility as a lens for my work was a series of interactions I had while simply existing in public in New York City.

I started thinking about the intersections of invisibility, camouflage, and minimalism, and then a few weeks later, I found your Etsy store, which seemed to make these ideas physical and commercial. On your website, you talk about the Etsy store as being a study of the “handmade” or craft phenomenon. While your work is handmade, it is also precise and minimal: qualities that are more often found in mass-produced garments than those found on Etsy. In this way, the project seems to me to speak more to the invisibility of mass-produced items, where the “handmade touch” is absent (unless designed that way). In any case, how would you say the study has gone?

Évita Yumul (ÉY): The study has gone well enough—I’m currently engaged in false starts trying to start it up in the new year. My own personal desire to stay on Etsy has more to do with what I have been seeing (on Etsy itself, networked on one-degree-from-it-blogs, etc.) on the interface, whether it is a proper/productive non-place to reach people.

Signs have been pointing to “no,” it has lacked both context and criteria for me. Very few people are interested in how a concept is transferred through clothing unless it is a purely visual (here, versus thinking) one.

The “handmade touch” is simply that: touch. A sort of modern fantasy that highlights the maker and not the product, it’s mostly applique without any implications. And, everything, mass produced or not is, in some way handmade, with or without said “touch.” Clothing needs to fit properly, clothing needs to drape properly, requires precision and detailing, but truly minimal gestures to address its use-value.

I don’t think handmade and mass-produced can be set as such clean poles (against one another).

So, I’m not interested in “the invisibility of mass-produced garments,” I’m interested in how that modern fantasy of the maker can/is allowed to disappear (which, for me, is not the same as making it invisible and how those minimal gestures which making garments requires can be used to communicate a carefulness effectively: “Someone made this for me with their own two hands!!” versus “Someone thought about the detailing of this so that I don’t have to look like my now-passed-aunt made my entire adult wardrobe.”

As a side note and example: Somehow the only garments I’ve been wearing apart from the ones I make myself are from Comme des Garçons. People forget this, but the clothing is mass-produced. But the difference is clear: the clothing is mass-produced with a heightened attention to detail. These attentions could easily be mistaken for the insertion of the “handmade touch” or as completely decorative, but I beg to differ. The clothing of CdG is about the indexing of an industry based on spoken or translated concepts (Kuwakubo’s or her protégés alike), and the peculiar detailing exists more on the plane of particular. The clothing isn’t made to “wear the wearer” (a sentiment repeated on an Etsy featured seller interview; which could easily be said about CdG), the wearer is allowed to wear the clothes in any way they see fit.

SB: One of the things that initially drew me to your Etsy store was the way you photographed and arranged your items, so that they appeared to be mis-matched with other pieces. This seems to me to speak to the inherent invisibility in the medium of a storefront: the squares of the Etsy items are unconsidered, invisible, until you place images in them that immediately cause them to relate to each other. Your website, too, utilizes invisibilities inherent in the medium: by making the text on your front page white, you leave the reader to navigate by abstraction. How did you decide to display your work in this way? Probably “invisibility” is a

word I am latching onto to describe your work; was invisibility a consideration for you, or was it something different? ÉY: For the website: it’s completely visible with the use of the mouse, I’m just asking that the interface be navigated in a different, non-linear fashion. For the Etsy page, it is other than, or outside abstraction. It’s completely literal and functions in the same way as the sporadic letters on the website: the garments hold their own individually, but I needed a way out of those singular representations, and specifically for Etsy, those that pronounce (as if screaming) lifestyle, taste and style with backgrounded objects, as if to say the wearer possibly has no place in wearing/buying unless they have the same interior-decorating sensibility or unless they buy the same types of clothes you do.

I wanted to design the visual occupation of the page outside of the objects therein, the bricolage-mismatches seemed like the most effective way to do this. It might also have something to do with my strong (pervading) distrust in “photography” as a medium. I rarely flinch or look twice at photographs, I consume them too quickly.

SB: Can you explain your use of “completely literal” and “outside abstraction” a little more? Occasionally the distinction between abstract and literal gets a little fuzzy for me, due to years of mythology studies. In terms of myth, the literal is simultaneously a symbol, so there is meaning behind everything; literal isn’t literal, but neither is abstract really abstract. It’s totally presumptuous, but would it be possible to rephrase the statements about your store to be: The images mean nothing more than images; the clothing has no outside value; the whitespace and juxtaposition serve to remove the clothing from context;? To me, this seems to move the images / clothing more into the realm of abstraction (since nothing exists without context), but because the meaning is literal (or, THE CLOTHES ARE ONLY CLOTHES), I am finding it difficult to see the distinction between the literal and the abstract. It seems to me like if there were some kind of continuum between literal and abstract, the Etsy store (and your website) exist on some point that is off the page, where the two concepts connect in reverse. ÉY: For Etsy (in general): The clothes are only clothes, but they are after a different system of valuation on Etsy. I absolutely refuse to subscribe to the “charge more because you pushed it out of your hands” approach/indoctrination.

That’s the concept that has always driven the shop. And now I’m struggling getting back on Etsy because, after how ever many sales, the truth remains: only desires are being fulfilled on Etsy. There’s no NEED being addressed. And no one is in-desire of good ideas, art as practice and thinking cannot be sold on Etsy.

Literal and abstract: Completely literal = refusing (to assign or script) meaning for x. = (it is other than, or) outside abstraction = here I think I was using abstraction as it

Top, this page: Lacunary type sample, created by SB as an invisible typeface Bottom, this page: Trusted Sentiments, part 2, created by ÉY as part of the 52 Objects series Facing page: Clothing samples and layout from ÉY’s Etsy store

Top, this page: Lacunary type sample, created by SB as an invisible typeface Bottom, this page: Trusted Sentiments, part 2, created by ÉY as part of the 52 Objects series Facing page: Clothing samples and layout from ÉY’s Etsy store

Facing page: Selections from Trustisms, ÉY’s ongoing series of Jenny Holzer phrases “trusted” by individuals

relates to representation rather than philosophical abstraction; what is represented on Etsy doesn’t change form at all; outside abstraction, no-“thing” can really be drawn from it (it is what it is, visually)

lesser definitions of the words—daydreaming, (self-)absorption. Those two words (executed today as “practice”) prevent newness. I like to think I’ve stopped making work for myself alone, that I’m after something new.

I have a hard time with “the literal is simultaneously a symbol.” It’s too simplistic and I guess I’ve thought about this in terms of signs. The best way I can explain the distinction I am making between the two is with the Trustisms project.

I believe that the execution of Trustisms is a literal repeat of the work of Holzer, the sum of the work is completely material / thinking (rather than meaning) as it stands. Supposing I let this go to the realm of the abstract, the project would look more like this: I have had difficulty consuming the words of Jenny Holzer.

To deal with this difficulty, I will go down the list of truisms, assessing what Jenny Holzer’s statements (existing signs) “mean” for me, and I will develop a new list of Truisms as a way to “express” this difficulty, to develop something “original” and completely outside the work. Or I would take a list of her 10 Inflammatory Essays and cut them up and make a new sequence of words that means something else.

I’m interested in the collapse of language that allows for (al)truisms to exist. It’s thinking through (for both me and hopefully contributors) the possibilities for the work of Holzer rather than making Holzer mean more. I’m proposing that newness does not have to happen within new images and words, newness can be the PRODUCT of an existing framework, of thinking through one. I don’t know if that makes sense.

SB: It’s difficult for me to hold in my head this communication // literalness // abstraction relationship. Partly it’s that I’m understanding ‘abstraction’ as more of a mythic term, as something that is participated-in, bestowed and bestowing meaning or communication. In the interest of unpacking, could I ask you to elaborate on 1. a little bit?

SB: Another question: Abstraction is also something I’ve been playing with in my work, or the notion that there’s some essence of a thing that is all you need in order to communicate an idea. This kind of abstraction seems to play a role in much of your work, then taken in another direction: something is distilled and then given the form of an everyday object. 1. Is this an accurate interpretation of your work? 2. Can you talk a little about how you view abstraction in your work? ÉY: 1. I don’t believe in “essence” and the other terms that implies for me: “meaning” , “originality” , “source” , “individuality”, “wonder” , “intrinsic” , “talent” , “emotion” , “ephemeral” , “beauty” ... I could go on.

Communication is missing its own literal aspects and implies “understanding,” which is simply impossible based on how we communicate. Literalism counters those terms (communication, understanding) with trust/obligation (to improve on a discourse in more than physical or visual ways) and possibility/risks (all aspects of communication, but removed from understanding). We have more (at times, better) readymades, and forms exist. Their possibility to be outside of themselves as objects is something necessarily scripted, an object is de-stilled but maybe not refined as the word “distill” would have it.

2. The term abstraction has become the product of the

ÉY: I think I’m using abstraction without trying to distort it; myth is an act toward distortion (of the truth at times).

About 1. Understanding is not possible because of a difference in (speaking) values, but trust offsets that distance.

You can use the basic concept of infinity here, but with two people at either end (I don’t know if this has anything to do with how I consumed J-L Nancy’s On Touching); no matter how close they stand, there’s a space between them.

Trust reconciles that and we’re obliged to building these frameworks as cultural producers. I’ll think about this a little more: maybe I just wrote those words as a way to write that we need to trust what we’re able to make without those dated constructs of language, those need to stop existing as a goal. The words listed under 1. prioritize “process” over production, that is, the production of a lot of versions of some-thing to get to another (here I’m thinking about Sturtevant).

SB: Ok, abstraction part 2, or pattern recognition: one of my projects was the creation of an “invisible typeface,” using the counters and other abstracted geometric shapes to hint at letterforms. This project relied on the principle that people are very good at recognizing things that are innately familiar to them (including their native alphabets, but also faces, numbers, etc.). Those things might therefore be considered invisible: they’re so common and so inherent to communication and understanding that the most basic forms can stand in for them. It seems like this also is related to your work, especially the (Tourist / 52) Objects, where you use a recognizable, inherently usable, and minimal form (a pencil, a clock) and transform it into something more meaningful. How, or why, did you choose to create work in the form of these seemingly-mundane objects? Is the intention for accessibility / recognition / invisibility, or is it something else? ÉY: I see where you’re going with the typefaces. I’ve seen a lot of proto-minimal typefaces—somehow the Gs are always a problem. Is recognize-ability always the end goal for manipulations on form? I wonder what happens to the alphabet when it’s impact is less than immediate. Sort of like the slowness of recognizing someone you haven’t seen after a long while. I think it is curious that you’re doing the reverse process on the letters (seeing as they are designed for image-impact and recognition then literalized for readability).

Meaning. Meaning’s some other thing and I’ll leave it at ...

Work doesn’t have to mean anything. It just has to be good (criteria wise). And new.

Before assigning any possible meaning to/in 52 Objects: After 5 years of staying rather invisible on the web due to my own insecurities about making my work public, I decided to make a website/directory of projects to combat invisibility and to pursue the sentiment: “If no one sees it, it doesn’t exist.” It’s my own way of making projects and working through my own personal apprehensions about art and its current context—regularly, trying to keep it on a schedule, paced: a commentary on the documentation of the banal and “everyday” which are often fetishized, transfixed in, or stodged by meaning. 52 Objects is really just making for not-just-making’s sake, for the continual performance in the mood of critique, silence or humor.

Perhaps pattern language is figured somewhere in 52 Objects—maybe they exist as my own affinities and I needed a way to categorize those impulses (which do occur in patterns) that I stopped believing in for some time.

At some point, someone told me to believe in my ideas and the manner in which they’re executed, and I went with that.

SB: Very taken by the idea of slow recognition. Are there any works that you can think of that utilize / translate this?

I had hoped to achieve a similar effect with the typeface by organizing them into words or phrases (I’m attaching two images, front/back of a foldable booklet, here). To me, the letterforms aren’t quite enough on their own; they have to do something to mean something. Another project I put together is a pair of image books, where the spread has two images taken within a few seconds of each other. It’s about narrative and filling-in-the-blank but also about recognition and the moment you spot the difference. ÉY: I’ll think of some examples and e-mail you later. It’s always equally as fast. Maybe Ruscha painting involving words, maybe Struth and Holzer, maybe some of Roni Horn’s work, however backgrounded in its repetition. I like your letter forms! I want to see them rendered as solids; the uneven background distracts from a meaning-reading, maybe. I assign meaning to them like one would nautical flags. Maybe you develop a sign system based on your observations from viewers: which letters can you recognize?

Maybe it’s like Rorschach tests with text, without symmetry and what it renders on impact. Or a typeface in color for the colorblind. ?? They sound a little funny, but I’m sure there are holes all throughout typography that need to be filled.

SB: Have you read any good books lately? ÉY: Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes. All together narcissistic and sad, but indicative of RB’s predilection for trusting an intuition, matching a heart with the brain that makes it

beat. The Confronted Community by Jean-Luc Nancy, Discourses on the Vanishing by M. (I forget the first name) Ivy (a comprehensive book on—in basic terms—Japan as having always neither having immersed or fully withdrawn from the West and throughout successive waves of modernity), a lot of catabooks on contemporary architecture in Japan, and pages of the most recent 032c.

Facing page: Selections from Trustisms, ÉY’s ongoing series of Jenny Holzer phrases “trusted” by individuals

relates to representation rather than philosophical abstraction; what is represented on Etsy doesn’t change form at all; outside abstraction, no-“thing” can really be drawn from it (it is what it is, visually)

lesser definitions of the words—daydreaming, (self-)absorption. Those two words (executed today as “practice”) prevent newness. I like to think I’ve stopped making work for myself alone, that I’m after something new.

I have a hard time with “the literal is simultaneously a symbol.” It’s too simplistic and I guess I’ve thought about this in terms of signs. The best way I can explain the distinction I am making between the two is with the Trustisms project.

I believe that the execution of Trustisms is a literal repeat of the work of Holzer, the sum of the work is completely material / thinking (rather than meaning) as it stands. Supposing I let this go to the realm of the abstract, the project would look more like this: I have had difficulty consuming the words of Jenny Holzer.

To deal with this difficulty, I will go down the list of truisms, assessing what Jenny Holzer’s statements (existing signs) “mean” for me, and I will develop a new list of Truisms as a way to “express” this difficulty, to develop something “original” and completely outside the work. Or I would take a list of her 10 Inflammatory Essays and cut them up and make a new sequence of words that means something else.

I’m interested in the collapse of language that allows for (al)truisms to exist. It’s thinking through (for both me and hopefully contributors) the possibilities for the work of Holzer rather than making Holzer mean more. I’m proposing that newness does not have to happen within new images and words, newness can be the PRODUCT of an existing framework, of thinking through one. I don’t know if that makes sense.

SB: It’s difficult for me to hold in my head this communication // literalness // abstraction relationship. Partly it’s that I’m understanding ‘abstraction’ as more of a mythic term, as something that is participated-in, bestowed and bestowing meaning or communication. In the interest of unpacking, could I ask you to elaborate on 1. a little bit?

SB: Another question: Abstraction is also something I’ve been playing with in my work, or the notion that there’s some essence of a thing that is all you need in order to communicate an idea. This kind of abstraction seems to play a role in much of your work, then taken in another direction: something is distilled and then given the form of an everyday object. 1. Is this an accurate interpretation of your work? 2. Can you talk a little about how you view abstraction in your work? ÉY: 1. I don’t believe in “essence” and the other terms that implies for me: “meaning” , “originality” , “source” , “individuality”, “wonder” , “intrinsic” , “talent” , “emotion” , “ephemeral” , “beauty” ... I could go on.

Communication is missing its own literal aspects and implies “understanding,” which is simply impossible based on how we communicate. Literalism counters those terms (communication, understanding) with trust/obligation (to improve on a discourse in more than physical or visual ways) and possibility/risks (all aspects of communication, but removed from understanding). We have more (at times, better) readymades, and forms exist. Their possibility to be outside of themselves as objects is something necessarily scripted, an object is de-stilled but maybe not refined as the word “distill” would have it.

2. The term abstraction has become the product of the

ÉY: I think I’m using abstraction without trying to distort it; myth is an act toward distortion (of the truth at times).

About 1. Understanding is not possible because of a difference in (speaking) values, but trust offsets that distance.

You can use the basic concept of infinity here, but with two people at either end (I don’t know if this has anything to do with how I consumed J-L Nancy’s On Touching); no matter how close they stand, there’s a space between them.

Trust reconciles that and we’re obliged to building these frameworks as cultural producers. I’ll think about this a little more: maybe I just wrote those words as a way to write that we need to trust what we’re able to make without those dated constructs of language, those need to stop existing as a goal. The words listed under 1. prioritize “process” over production, that is, the production of a lot of versions of some-thing to get to another (here I’m thinking about Sturtevant).

SB: Ok, abstraction part 2, or pattern recognition: one of my projects was the creation of an “invisible typeface,” using the counters and other abstracted geometric shapes to hint at letterforms. This project relied on the principle that people are very good at recognizing things that are innately familiar to them (including their native alphabets, but also faces, numbers, etc.). Those things might therefore be considered invisible: they’re so common and so inherent to communication and understanding that the most basic forms can stand in for them. It seems like this also is related to your work, especially the (Tourist / 52) Objects, where you use a recognizable, inherently usable, and minimal form (a pencil, a clock) and transform it into something more meaningful. How, or why, did you choose to create work in the form of these seemingly-mundane objects? Is the intention for accessibility / recognition / invisibility, or is it something else? ÉY: I see where you’re going with the typefaces. I’ve seen a lot of proto-minimal typefaces—somehow the Gs are always a problem. Is recognize-ability always the end goal for manipulations on form? I wonder what happens to the alphabet when it’s impact is less than immediate. Sort of like the slowness of recognizing someone you haven’t seen after a long while. I think it is curious that you’re doing the reverse process on the letters (seeing as they are designed for image-impact and recognition then literalized for readability).

Meaning. Meaning’s some other thing and I’ll leave it at ...

Work doesn’t have to mean anything. It just has to be good (criteria wise). And new.

Before assigning any possible meaning to/in 52 Objects: After 5 years of staying rather invisible on the web due to my own insecurities about making my work public, I decided to make a website/directory of projects to combat invisibility and to pursue the sentiment: “If no one sees it, it doesn’t exist.” It’s my own way of making projects and working through my own personal apprehensions about art and its current context—regularly, trying to keep it on a schedule, paced: a commentary on the documentation of the banal and “everyday” which are often fetishized, transfixed in, or stodged by meaning. 52 Objects is really just making for not-just-making’s sake, for the continual performance in the mood of critique, silence or humor.

Perhaps pattern language is figured somewhere in 52 Objects—maybe they exist as my own affinities and I needed a way to categorize those impulses (which do occur in patterns) that I stopped believing in for some time.

At some point, someone told me to believe in my ideas and the manner in which they’re executed, and I went with that.

SB: Very taken by the idea of slow recognition. Are there any works that you can think of that utilize / translate this?

I had hoped to achieve a similar effect with the typeface by organizing them into words or phrases (I’m attaching two images, front/back of a foldable booklet, here). To me, the letterforms aren’t quite enough on their own; they have to do something to mean something. Another project I put together is a pair of image books, where the spread has two images taken within a few seconds of each other. It’s about narrative and filling-in-the-blank but also about recognition and the moment you spot the difference. ÉY: I’ll think of some examples and e-mail you later. It’s always equally as fast. Maybe Ruscha painting involving words, maybe Struth and Holzer, maybe some of Roni Horn’s work, however backgrounded in its repetition. I like your letter forms! I want to see them rendered as solids; the uneven background distracts from a meaning-reading, maybe. I assign meaning to them like one would nautical flags. Maybe you develop a sign system based on your observations from viewers: which letters can you recognize?

Maybe it’s like Rorschach tests with text, without symmetry and what it renders on impact. Or a typeface in color for the colorblind. ?? They sound a little funny, but I’m sure there are holes all throughout typography that need to be filled.

SB: Have you read any good books lately? ÉY: Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes. All together narcissistic and sad, but indicative of RB’s predilection for trusting an intuition, matching a heart with the brain that makes it

beat. The Confronted Community by Jean-Luc Nancy, Discourses on the Vanishing by M. (I forget the first name) Ivy (a comprehensive book on—in basic terms—Japan as having always neither having immersed or fully withdrawn from the West and throughout successive waves of modernity), a lot of catabooks on contemporary architecture in Japan, and pages of the most recent 032c.

3 THERESA BERENATO Theresa is a Pratt MFA candidate. Recurrent themes within her work include crafted and gestural forms.

She lives and works in New York city.

“How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise—the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream—be set down alive?” john steinbeck,

Cannery Row

the P O E T I C S of D E S I G N redefining nostalgia

For years, an empty frame travelled with me. From the kitchen on South Robinson Street, where the firemen came one afternoon, to Butcher’s Hill, in the third story bedroom in which I had attempted to uncover hardwood flooring, to Park avenue, still empty, where it leaned against the temporary wall and watched the Chrysler building’s hood ornaments and radiators light up each night and fade away each morning.

The frame was cumbersome but beautiful, dirtencrusted but white, antique and a bargain for fifteen bucks off Rt. 40, on the way to Cape May. It was dusty and hung behind a shelf of Charlie Brown glasses, the kind my childhood neighbors, the Hubbards, drank from while eating ‘supper.’ The Hubbards’ house smelled like baked beans and I remember there was a line of masking tape on the carpet a few feet from their TV, a boundary to prevent blindness, I suppose.

I finagled the frame out from behind the shelf and I also inquired about a worn, shabby medicine cabinet, but the owner said it wasn’t for sale. She wrote my name and number down on a small slice of scrap paper and promised to call if she changed her mind. I took home a handwritten receipt.

In this small exchange, I experienced waves of past memories, I was enchanted by a piece of ephemera, I physically felt connected to the moment, to the shop, to the woman.

So easily in daily life, we successfully subordinate ourselves to the concept of linear time. We are constantly enticed with low hanging fruit: email, social networks, blinking billboards and pop-up advertisements! The majority of visual language today is snapping and flashing, demanding, unwelcoming. As a result of our forward-moving culture, a sense of being fully present is sometimes unfamiliar.

On the other hand, any remnant of emotional evocation seems overdone, mass produced. We can buy experience, from the pages of Restoration Hardware or the aisles of Anthropology, the whole kit and caboodle purchased in one stop. Because of this readily

packaged experience we have come to call nostalgic, the technique has been tainted. We shy away from the mention of nostalgia—pawning it off as a means of dramatizing the past. This overly sentimental notion of nostalgia began as early as the eighteenth century, when nostalgia was seen as a disease, described as “hypochondria of the heart.” 1 However. I believe designers have the ability to create the platform which enables the opportunity for someone to experience, to feel the essence of something. We can—instead of handing someone a packaged experience—create a space where people can attach their memories and associations, where they can be emotionally present with their past experiences, or daydream about new possibilities. The subjectivity and consideration the viewer brings is essential to this equation. We can use a term I will describe as post-nostalgia—a nod toward English art critic Roger Fry, who was the first to label the fine art movement following impressionism post-impressionism, “out of convenience”—to create this subjective, intimate space.

(A self-deprecating Fry did delve deeper into the distinction, defining post-impressionism as an “exploration and expression of the emotional significance which lies in things.”) 2 Post-nostalgia differs a bit from the original meaning of nostalgia: instead of being “a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time,” 3 post-nostalgia, as a design device, is the space created to form an emotional connection to another person, time, or place. Nostalgic yearning is replaced by post-nostalgic appreciation.

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Mamma Andersson. Leftovers, 2006. a) Found ephemera and collage, 2011 Thesis exploration. b) Collaboration and foil assemblage by Nick Misini.

Pablo Picasso. Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass, 1912.

Note to my mother, 1989.

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Post-nostalgic design—and Milton Glaser boils design down to “any intentional act”—is design in which the touch of the hand is evident through a heightened level of attention to detail made visible through - materials - techniques and/or the inclusion of - artifacts For example, by incorporating textured material or found ephemera; relying on hand production skills; considering the inclusion of tangible pieces of daily life­; ideas and experiences act as physically triggers that can evoke an emotional reaction. Fine artists of the early 20th century are precedents to this type of exploration: through the assemblage techniques of Cubism to the paintings and photographs of the Abstract Expressionists.

Post-nostalgic design dismisses those who say We invented humanity. Nothing happened before us (or nothing worth remembering). Post-nostalgia acknowledges that we are temporary beings seeking connections to former generations and time.

Thinking about connection, I recalled the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. He spent years researching and writing about peak experiences, which he described as experiences that have the ability to release creative energies; affirm the meaning and value of existence; give a sense of purpose to the individual; provide a feeling of integration; and leave a permanent mark on the individual. 4 Far from a religious or pharmacologically 5 induced experience, I decided that the emotions, memories and connections that manifest from the beauty of my antique frame were not invoked by the frame’s beveled edges or chipped wood, though that aesthetic does exist. The beauty stems from the multiplicity of objects: to have a piece that has already lived is a reminder that we are temporary beings, and by constructing—through memory, imagination or speculation—an island of connections to past experiences and former generations and time, I somehow create order and meaning in my own life.

Post-nostalgic design can speak to the sentiments of humanity without being wistful, reveal the commonplace with authenticity and illuminate the invisible interconnectivity of our past memories.

Recently, a friend recalled that as a child, every card, gift or letter she gave—to her classmates or parents or grandparents—was handcrafted. The recipient always showed enthusiasm upon receipt, because, she said, “It showed heart. It was unique.

Discarded shutter, recovered in Chelsea.

Hand-painted Rilke quote, The Ninth Elegy

It took time and effort and love.” As trivial as this conversation may sound, and for fear of venturing into the technology vs. the handmade battle, at the heart of post-nostalgic design is the desire to create, arrange, or offer something tangibly punctuated with time and effort and love. I shook my head in response, yes, yes, yes and my friend said, “No, really. I cleaned my room the other day and I threw out every birthday card from last year, but saved yours. Not only did I save it, but I held it in my hands and marveled at the fact that you actually made it. You spent time and thought and crafted something. And did it for me. I put it back in my storage box and will save it forever.”

Without the opportunity to physically relate to another human being, another time or place, the world remains abstract and distant. At the end of the day, it is only human nature to recollect, to seek connections to the past and daydream about future possibilities.

The white frame is filled now, with an archival pigment print by Pratt graduate and artist Clare Grill, whose paintings are about family folklore and backyard rituals. The Overachievers is familiar in a complicated way.

The colors are murky and the subjects—school children with bent heads—are creating something unseen with their tiny hands.

The technique of the blurred brush strokes and the ambiguity of the subjects and their concentrated focus in The Overachievers allows the present, the past and the future to exist simultaneously, lines are blurred.

That The Overachievers is now the occupant of the frame connects my past experiences, in grade school art classrooms, to the present moment—being a Pratt graduate student—while also acting as a reminder that the future is full of creative possibilities yet unseen.

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Jessica Helfand, “The Shock Of The Old: Rethinking Nostalgia.” Design Observer. 2005.

Roger Fry, Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition catalogue, 1910.

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, 2009. pharmacology: the science dealing with the preparation, uses, and especially the effects of drugs.

Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences,1964.

4 MARIYA CAMPWALA Mariya is currently working on her masters degree in communications design at the Pratt Institute. She secretly yearns to be a gardener.

God & Beer

Mariya Campwala

My first year of grad school is coming to a close and I’ve decided to think about changing my thesis topic. I haven’t told my thesis advisor, and I don’t know if I will. But the thought of continuing along my current trajectory is bringing to mind future psychosomatic episodes and unnecessary trips to a shrink (but who knows, maybe by the end of it all, the trips will be necessary.)

As it stands now, my thesis is about the inability of the human psyche to rationalize the conflicting roles that we play in our day to day lives. What happens to an individual when they are asked to compromise religious morals for the sake of their career?t Or vice versa? How does a woman rationalize the difficult decision to accelerate her career over having a family?

Thousands of years ago, as humans improved their hunting, gathering and cooking techniques, population size increased and so did the need for finessed social skills. Cooperative relationships were critical to accessing food and those with blunt social skills were less likely to survive. As society became increasingly complex, our social skills (aggression, awareness, adaptability, often turned into aggressive and narcissistic personalities, anxious personalities and split personalities. The overworked human brain is much more susceptible to poor mental health. The example Randolph Nesse uses in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, is the comparison of the human brain with race horses: “Just as horse breeding has selected for long thin legs that increase speed but are prone to fracture, cognitive advances also increase in fitness—to a point.”

That’s the part right there that really gets me, the “to a point”. I can see myself diligently pouring over books, scholarly articles, websites, very easily projecting upon my own person, my own overworked brain, the documented symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotional brittleness. I’ll be partaking in my own version of the Web MD, everyone’s-a-doctor phenomenon.

Two Faced Beauty by Amanda Bradford

I’m a second generation Indian, Muslim, woman who loves art and rock & roll. I enjoy beer, I want babies...

I can’t stay it hasn’t already started. I don’t know if I came to this topic because of a, lets say, already existing interest in it, or that through my research, I’ve begun to see myself as going a little crazy.

Like everyone else, I’m constantly negotiating my identity and its relationship to social values. I’m a second generation Indian, Muslim, woman who loves art and rock & roll. I enjoy beer, I want babies, and I want to run my own design firm one day. Just there I can count off five or six conflicting statements and values. But everyday I rationalize, I make judgements based on worth and context and manage to present a relatively consistent persona. But what if these shear forces build and build? Maybe they’ll break along a fault line and I’ll live out my days glassy eyed in a rocking chair.

If nothing else, I think I’m becoming more psychosomatic.

Over the past two generations, there has been an overall shift in societal values from intrinsic goals (personal growth, physical fitness, and community contributions,) to extrinsic goals (amassing wealth, gaining adulation, and presenting

an attractive image.) A study published in the Clinical Psychology Review in 2009 tried to pinpoint the root cause of the trend of mental health problems among college students. To compare the levels of mental illness between generations, the study looked at scores from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory — which measures levels of psychological ailments like depression paranoia, schizophrenia, hypomania and hysteria — from the 1930s to 2007. The researchers concluded that the trend did not correlate with economic cycles, ruling the economy out as a possible cause.

They ultimately concluded that the most likely source of the trend was a cultural shift in priorities from intrinsic goals to extrinsic goals. These extrinsic goals, the researchers argue, contribute to more cases of mental distress. People found themselves battling more an more against natural desires for personal growth and fitness, involvement with one’s own family and community in order to prioritize goals of wealth, adulation, and looking attractive to others.

In many cases, culture has a powerful influence on the moral order. Because systems of meaning and ways of thinking differ from one culture to another, people from different cultures typically develop different ideas about morality and the best way to live. They often have different conceptions of moral authority, truth, and the nature of community. For example, some cultures place great moral emphasis on the family, while others stress the importance of individual autonomy. These cultural differences become even more problematic when groups have radically different expectations about what

is virtuous, what is right, and how to deal with moral conflicts. Thus, culture wars are often driven by moral conflict, and this becomes even more complex when one individual lives within the space of overlapping cultures.

It is in these overlaps that an individual loses a feeling of certainty, a basic emotional need. Humans are constantly defining, categorizing, labeling things as one or the other. When stuck in these gray areas, there is no easy answer of what to do or how to feel.

And we are constantly living within gray areas.

If one wants to operate within our society, are they really doomed to a life of constant stress and conflict? I might be crazy, but in the end, I’m an optimist.

I can’t sit back and say that there’s no other option. Maybe I feel the need for options, for it to be ok to live within gray areas. I don’t want to give up any part of my identity, even if they don’t all live in harmony. Thesis topic or not, it would be an amiable goal to provide a prescription for self empowerment and at the risk of sounding cheesy, self compassion; create a space where gray areas are accepted, something a person can look to, internalize, or inhabit that lets them say, “I may not be promoted this year cause I didn’t want to break a promise to my kid, and I’m ok with that.”

5 CHANTAL FISCHZANG A visual communicator, inspired by people’s behavior and driven by social change. Chantal is currently pursuing her MFA in Design at Pratt Institute, NYC.

6 RICHARD HALL Richard is constantly searching for something. Maybe he will find it during his studies in Communications Design at Pratt. He lives in Queens, NY (near Forest Park).

In Search of Forest Park

Richard Hall

It takes me just 454 steps to get from my Queens apartment to the nearest park. Given that each of my steps covers a span of approximately two feet, this journey is equivalent to walking the length of a Manhattan city block. I have lived in the same place for four years, but have only visited Forest Park three times. I’m not sure why I have visited it so infrequently. For some reason, the park just has not resonated with me.

I aim to change that. I want to experience the park, I want to get to know it, have a dialogue with it and introduce it into my life.

In Search of Forest Park

Richard Hall

It takes me just 454 steps to get from my Queens apartment to the nearest park. Given that each of my steps covers a span of approximately two feet, this journey is equivalent to walking the length of a Manhattan city block. I have lived in the same place for four years, but have only visited Forest Park three times. I’m not sure why I have visited it so infrequently. For some reason, the park just has not resonated with me.

I aim to change that. I want to experience the park, I want to get to know it, have a dialogue with it and introduce it into my life.

In Search of Forest Park

I start this process by taking two introductory walks in the park equipped with camera and notebook; the results of these short excursions are documented here.

F 1. A desire path is a path developed by erosion caused by footfall.

It normally veers off from an officially designated path.

2. The center of these cheap cigars are often removed and replaced with marijuana, making a “blunt”.

orest Park was designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick William Olmsted in 1896.

Although significant in being the third largest park in Queens, Forest Park is the younger and smaller sibling of Olmsted’s more celebrated works, Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

It is surrounded by five busy roads and eight cemeteries. Any people along its edges are either driving at great speeds or are dead. Any people inside the park are there for a purpose, the most popular being dog walking and jogging.

Saturday 16th April 2011 7:13AM I manage to enter the park without getting run over and start walking along the main concrete path.

Design Writing

7:22AM

7:33AM

I decide to break off from the designated footpath and head into dense scrub on what appears to be a desire path1. The track I have chosen is ill-defined due to infrequent use, its secretive nature promises hidden surprises. As I get deeper I start to notice fragments of human detritus spaced along either side of the path, it directs my flow like lights along an airplane’s aisle, a way-finding system made of trash. Empty beer cans are soon followed by the occasional discarded condom. Further in, I see packaging for cheap cigars, hinting at mild drug use in the vicinity2. The path is a snapshot of the evolution of bored urban youth: alcohol, sex and soft drugs. I wonder what I will come across next.

I am now in a heavily forested area, with no sign of any other ramblers.

7:25AM

7:16AM

Sounds of traffic are now very distant.

Dog walkers and joggers have started early this Saturday morning.

7:28AM

A desire path leads into denser brush

A childless balloon floats up through Silver Birches

Before long I find myself in what appears to be somebody’s living room. In a small opening amongst the brush there is a tree stump that has been cut flat and is now being used as a chair, next to it is a fallen tree that is repurposed as a sofa, some piled logs beside the sofa make the three-piece suite. Soft leaves in various tones of brown create a comforting Turkish rug, and on top of the rug is the entertainment center. Or rather a center of entertainment that once was. The crushed soda cans, empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and fast food packaging are piled in the area, resembling a student dorm room the morning after a good party. Some parts of the rug are charred where unsuccessful attempts at camp fire camaraderie could not be ignited. This abode, open to the elements and collaboratively designed by nature and man, is a pleasure seekers paradise for those with a stark sense of pleasure.

7:42AM I come across another enclosure of domestic activity.

This one is smaller and much more personal. Just a single seat, a solitary cubbyhole. Thrown across the floor are scratch cards, there must be 30 or 40 of them, all the same game—Cashword, a two dollar card with a possible $10,000 pay out—all are used, all are losers. Either these cards were procured in a suspicious manner or whoever was here is highly ashamed of his or her addiction. I hope they had a winner, otherwise the walk back through the forest after an unsuccessful bout of foil scraping would have been unbearably depressing.

7:48AM A woodpecker.

7:53AM I am walking through a loosely planted area of silver birches when suddenly I notice out the corner of my eye a yellow helium-filled balloon. It is 30 feet away from me and about 20 feet from the ground and rising. I look for its source, but there is nobody there. I look back to the balloon which is fighting its way through the higher branches of the canopy directly above me, eventually it breaks free and slowly shrinks away into indiscernibility. I am completely spooked. I am sure I would have seen or heard anybody that could have been carrying the balloon, especially the young child that I am imagining would once have been the proud owner.

I have been alone for a good twenty minutes in a fairly impenetrable area that few people appear to visit, where did the balloon come from? Although

unnerved I realize that I am also happy. I’m sure I could attempt to justify this fleeting event with a reasonable explanation, but I choose not to. This was a phenomenon, a mysterious occurrence. The park is speaking to me, it is responding to my wish for a resonant experience, it knows why I am here.

8:02AM Marks of young love are scratched into the bark of a beech tree. The thick grey skin of the tree reminds me of an elephant’s leg, now branded forever by Tony and Julie.

8:14AM I’ve worked my way back to the main pathway, a dog comes tearing at me, barking, circles me a few times and then heads back to his owner. I must have looked a little concerned because the owner shouts, “Don’t worry, I’m just trying to get some energy out of him. He’s frustrated, he hasn’t had any breakfast yet.” I head for the exit of the park before the dog has a chance to consider one of my shins as his first meal of the day.

A successful first visit. I am forming a picture of the various users and abusers of the park. I have experienced more than I expected and leave the park with strong visual images.

Friday 22 April 2011 10:02AM The sun is out, I’m happy to be back in the park.

10:13AM I meet a dog walker as I enter one of the tracks. Her name is Daphne and she regularly travels all the way from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to visit Forest Park. “I love this place, but it’s underutilized, if it was in

Design Writing

In Search of Forest Park

I start this process by taking two introductory walks in the park equipped with camera and notebook; the results of these short excursions are documented here.

F 1. A desire path is a path developed by erosion caused by footfall.

It normally veers off from an officially designated path.

2. The center of these cheap cigars are often removed and replaced with marijuana, making a “blunt”.

orest Park was designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick William Olmsted in 1896.

Although significant in being the third largest park in Queens, Forest Park is the younger and smaller sibling of Olmsted’s more celebrated works, Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

It is surrounded by five busy roads and eight cemeteries. Any people along its edges are either driving at great speeds or are dead. Any people inside the park are there for a purpose, the most popular being dog walking and jogging.

Saturday 16th April 2011 7:13AM I manage to enter the park without getting run over and start walking along the main concrete path.

Design Writing

7:22AM

7:33AM

I decide to break off from the designated footpath and head into dense scrub on what appears to be a desire path1. The track I have chosen is ill-defined due to infrequent use, its secretive nature promises hidden surprises. As I get deeper I start to notice fragments of human detritus spaced along either side of the path, it directs my flow like lights along an airplane’s aisle, a way-finding system made of trash. Empty beer cans are soon followed by the occasional discarded condom. Further in, I see packaging for cheap cigars, hinting at mild drug use in the vicinity2. The path is a snapshot of the evolution of bored urban youth: alcohol, sex and soft drugs. I wonder what I will come across next.

I am now in a heavily forested area, with no sign of any other ramblers.

7:25AM

7:16AM

Sounds of traffic are now very distant.

Dog walkers and joggers have started early this Saturday morning.

7:28AM

A desire path leads into denser brush

A childless balloon floats up through Silver Birches

Before long I find myself in what appears to be somebody’s living room. In a small opening amongst the brush there is a tree stump that has been cut flat and is now being used as a chair, next to it is a fallen tree that is repurposed as a sofa, some piled logs beside the sofa make the three-piece suite. Soft leaves in various tones of brown create a comforting Turkish rug, and on top of the rug is the entertainment center. Or rather a center of entertainment that once was. The crushed soda cans, empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and fast food packaging are piled in the area, resembling a student dorm room the morning after a good party. Some parts of the rug are charred where unsuccessful attempts at camp fire camaraderie could not be ignited. This abode, open to the elements and collaboratively designed by nature and man, is a pleasure seekers paradise for those with a stark sense of pleasure.

7:42AM I come across another enclosure of domestic activity.

This one is smaller and much more personal. Just a single seat, a solitary cubbyhole. Thrown across the floor are scratch cards, there must be 30 or 40 of them, all the same game—Cashword, a two dollar card with a possible $10,000 pay out—all are used, all are losers. Either these cards were procured in a suspicious manner or whoever was here is highly ashamed of his or her addiction. I hope they had a winner, otherwise the walk back through the forest after an unsuccessful bout of foil scraping would have been unbearably depressing.

7:48AM A woodpecker.

7:53AM I am walking through a loosely planted area of silver birches when suddenly I notice out the corner of my eye a yellow helium-filled balloon. It is 30 feet away from me and about 20 feet from the ground and rising. I look for its source, but there is nobody there. I look back to the balloon which is fighting its way through the higher branches of the canopy directly above me, eventually it breaks free and slowly shrinks away into indiscernibility. I am completely spooked. I am sure I would have seen or heard anybody that could have been carrying the balloon, especially the young child that I am imagining would once have been the proud owner.

I have been alone for a good twenty minutes in a fairly impenetrable area that few people appear to visit, where did the balloon come from? Although

unnerved I realize that I am also happy. I’m sure I could attempt to justify this fleeting event with a reasonable explanation, but I choose not to. This was a phenomenon, a mysterious occurrence. The park is speaking to me, it is responding to my wish for a resonant experience, it knows why I am here.

8:02AM Marks of young love are scratched into the bark of a beech tree. The thick grey skin of the tree reminds me of an elephant’s leg, now branded forever by Tony and Julie.

8:14AM I’ve worked my way back to the main pathway, a dog comes tearing at me, barking, circles me a few times and then heads back to his owner. I must have looked a little concerned because the owner shouts, “Don’t worry, I’m just trying to get some energy out of him. He’s frustrated, he hasn’t had any breakfast yet.” I head for the exit of the park before the dog has a chance to consider one of my shins as his first meal of the day.

A successful first visit. I am forming a picture of the various users and abusers of the park. I have experienced more than I expected and leave the park with strong visual images.

Friday 22 April 2011 10:02AM The sun is out, I’m happy to be back in the park.

10:13AM I meet a dog walker as I enter one of the tracks. Her name is Daphne and she regularly travels all the way from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to visit Forest Park. “I love this place, but it’s underutilized, if it was in

Design Writing

In Search of Forest Park

“I love this place, but it’s underutilized, if it was in Williamsburg it would be packed.”

—Daphne, Dog Walker and artist

A disused rail track that is now being used as a gallery

3. Cottaging is a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory, or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.

Williamsburg it would be packed.” I explain that I am one of the locals that doesn’t use it enough, she takes the opportunity to champion the park and some other of her favorites in New York—Crescent Beach Park and Fort Tilden—I can tell she is a connoisseur with a passion for urban forestry, I take note of her recommendations. She suggests I take the track that she is exiting, “follow the yellow trail, it’s beautiful.” She also offers some background to this section of the park. “That whole area back there is a common cruising spot, so you will probably see the occasional single guy hanging around, that’s why there are condoms everywhere.” We have a brief discussion about the most popular spots in London for cottaging3, Daphne is very familiar with Hampstead Heath in the north of the city. I feel comfortable talking to Daphne, and she seems happy to talk to me. She reveals that she is a sculptor and teaches at Yale. I realize that we are two kindred spirits, using the park to try and draw inspiration.

10:27AM I can’t see any signs of cruising.

10:32AM I break off from the yellow trail and follow a bridleway. Three horses with riders pass me at speed.

10:54AM I’m on a path that crosses over an abandoned rail track. Signs are attached to a fence exclaiming, “no trespassing”, but I decide to take a peek. I work my way down a wide drainage passage at the side of the bridge. As I descend, I see the bright colors of spray paint, the graffiti is vibrant and welcome to my eyes.

Hidden from view of the general public, this is not an example of artists trying to make a visible mark in society, this is a private gallery for like-minded appreciators, and a testing ground for new work.

Design Writing

The area is quiet, a good environment for creativity.

The absence of the noise that is normally associated with bridges and train tracks creates an extremely calming mood. The only sounds come from the snap of my camera shutter and the tin cans that I am kicking around in the dust. I look up to the far ramp of the bridge and notice blankets wrapped around two separate body shapes, I realize that I am trespassing, not just on city property, but on somebody’s private space. I retreat back up the drainage ramp.

11:27AM

11:09AM

Golf course to my right.

Carousel—closed for winter.

11:29AM

11:14AM

More golf course.

I take another diversion, dropping down towards a lake. I notice from a distance two people clothed head to toe in white safety outfits on the far side of the water. They look like forensic scientists at a crime scene, I wonder what I may have stumbled upon. On nearing the lake I see a Parks and Recreation truck, a third member of the white overall gang is approaching the vehicle. He is removing a large backpack of chemical spray from his shoulders. I point to it and ask if its insecticide.

“It’s herbicide”, he says, “we have a lot of Japanese Honeysuckle and Garlic Mustard growing over there.”

“Are these a problem?” I ask.

“Yes, the Japanese Honeysuckle wraps itself around everything. It can wrap itself around trees so tightly that it kills them. The garlic mustard grows in large clumps and it’s a problem because its roots release a chemical that is dangerous to other plants, they can change the pH of the soil in the areas that they grow.”

“Are they new to the park?”

“No, we see them every year. They’re both invasive plants, not native to the US, the seeds would have come in on the soles of people’s shoes. Insects are not

used to them, they can’t digest them, so the plants have no predators. They basically live in perfect sterile environments and can do as much damage as they like. We have to get rid of them.”

This chat with a professional horticulturalist adds a further layer to my increasing enjoyment of the park. Nature attacking nature, the park is attacking itself, like a niggling neurosis that it can’t shake. Its vulnerability and flawed traits are endearing.

11:32AM How is smoking whilst driving a golf buggy a sport?

11:33AM I check the GPS on my cell phone and see that there is nothing left of the park but a path beside a golf course. I have reached the far end of the park. I am disappointed that I have come to the end, I turn and head back.

I was looking for the park to speak to me and it has. Forest Park should not feel in the shadow of its larger siblings, it has a rich and charming personality of its own. I’ve enjoyed experiencing its strengths and weaknesses and I plan on becoming its friend.

I think I have secured some memories, but it is too early to say.

In twelve months I will return to this piece of writing to see if any memories have stayed with me and to see how my relationship with Forest Park has changed. 

Closed for Winter

Design Writing

In Search of Forest Park

“I love this place, but it’s underutilized, if it was in Williamsburg it would be packed.”

—Daphne, Dog Walker and artist

A disused rail track that is now being used as a gallery

3. Cottaging is a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory, or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.

Williamsburg it would be packed.” I explain that I am one of the locals that doesn’t use it enough, she takes the opportunity to champion the park and some other of her favorites in New York—Crescent Beach Park and Fort Tilden—I can tell she is a connoisseur with a passion for urban forestry, I take note of her recommendations. She suggests I take the track that she is exiting, “follow the yellow trail, it’s beautiful.” She also offers some background to this section of the park. “That whole area back there is a common cruising spot, so you will probably see the occasional single guy hanging around, that’s why there are condoms everywhere.” We have a brief discussion about the most popular spots in London for cottaging3, Daphne is very familiar with Hampstead Heath in the north of the city. I feel comfortable talking to Daphne, and she seems happy to talk to me. She reveals that she is a sculptor and teaches at Yale. I realize that we are two kindred spirits, using the park to try and draw inspiration.

10:27AM I can’t see any signs of cruising.

10:32AM I break off from the yellow trail and follow a bridleway. Three horses with riders pass me at speed.

10:54AM I’m on a path that crosses over an abandoned rail track. Signs are attached to a fence exclaiming, “no trespassing”, but I decide to take a peek. I work my way down a wide drainage passage at the side of the bridge. As I descend, I see the bright colors of spray paint, the graffiti is vibrant and welcome to my eyes.

Hidden from view of the general public, this is not an example of artists trying to make a visible mark in society, this is a private gallery for like-minded appreciators, and a testing ground for new work.

Design Writing

The area is quiet, a good environment for creativity.

The absence of the noise that is normally associated with bridges and train tracks creates an extremely calming mood. The only sounds come from the snap of my camera shutter and the tin cans that I am kicking around in the dust. I look up to the far ramp of the bridge and notice blankets wrapped around two separate body shapes, I realize that I am trespassing, not just on city property, but on somebody’s private space. I retreat back up the drainage ramp.

11:27AM

11:09AM

Golf course to my right.

Carousel—closed for winter.

11:29AM

11:14AM

More golf course.

I take another diversion, dropping down towards a lake. I notice from a distance two people clothed head to toe in white safety outfits on the far side of the water. They look like forensic scientists at a crime scene, I wonder what I may have stumbled upon. On nearing the lake I see a Parks and Recreation truck, a third member of the white overall gang is approaching the vehicle. He is removing a large backpack of chemical spray from his shoulders. I point to it and ask if its insecticide.

“It’s herbicide”, he says, “we have a lot of Japanese Honeysuckle and Garlic Mustard growing over there.”

“Are these a problem?” I ask.

“Yes, the Japanese Honeysuckle wraps itself around everything. It can wrap itself around trees so tightly that it kills them. The garlic mustard grows in large clumps and it’s a problem because its roots release a chemical that is dangerous to other plants, they can change the pH of the soil in the areas that they grow.”

“Are they new to the park?”

“No, we see them every year. They’re both invasive plants, not native to the US, the seeds would have come in on the soles of people’s shoes. Insects are not

used to them, they can’t digest them, so the plants have no predators. They basically live in perfect sterile environments and can do as much damage as they like. We have to get rid of them.”

This chat with a professional horticulturalist adds a further layer to my increasing enjoyment of the park. Nature attacking nature, the park is attacking itself, like a niggling neurosis that it can’t shake. Its vulnerability and flawed traits are endearing.

11:32AM How is smoking whilst driving a golf buggy a sport?

11:33AM I check the GPS on my cell phone and see that there is nothing left of the park but a path beside a golf course. I have reached the far end of the park. I am disappointed that I have come to the end, I turn and head back.

I was looking for the park to speak to me and it has. Forest Park should not feel in the shadow of its larger siblings, it has a rich and charming personality of its own. I’ve enjoyed experiencing its strengths and weaknesses and I plan on becoming its friend.

I think I have secured some memories, but it is too early to say.

In twelve months I will return to this piece of writing to see if any memories have stayed with me and to see how my relationship with Forest Park has changed. 

Closed for Winter

Design Writing

7 ELIZABETH KUEHNEN Liz’s interests lie at the intersection of art, design and urbanism. Most of her work is anchored to place— currently the delirious city of New York. She dreams to one day give up city life and live on a horse farm.

Storytelling

to illuminate place Part 1: Place as anchor Part 2: Urban Palimpsest

1

Place as Anchor

On March 25th, 1903, my great-grandfather Demetrio Berna arrived in New York from Naples, sailing on the S.S. Ravenna, according to the ship ledger in the Ellis Island archives. In the ledger it asks for his name in full, his age (eighteen), his last residence (Reggio in Southern Italy), and if he was in possession of thirty dollars and if less, how much (he had $12). Since he couldn’t write in English, all of this information was transcribed by the immigration official. Question number ten is “Whether going to join a relative, and if so, what relative, the name and address”. He replied “cousin Antonio Ravella, 2390 Arthur Avenue, New York City”.

I remember my mother taking me to Arthur Avenue for the first time when I was seven years old. That neighborhood in the Bronx is a cultural anchor for many ItalianAmericans, and the shops have been preserved like a street museum. Giant stacked tins of olive oil decorate the street corner across from the clam house, covered with a blue awning that is shockingly bright against the plain gray street. A little further down the road is Madonia’s bakery, with fresh crusty loaves of Italian bread speckled with sesame seeds. Arthur Avenue is also one of the last places where you can watch fresh pasta being rolled out for your dinner.

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S.S. Ravenna ship ledger, 1903 Detail with address of Demetrio Berna’s final destination in New York

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4

Dutch designer Jan Van Toorn writes, “...culture is re-definition, re-interpretation, and re-invention; a way of exploring and mapping the world again and again and telling stories about it – commenting on the way it is, or seems to be.” I would add, also how we want it to be. I’m fascinated by this concept in relation to the city – the constant re-writing of the city’s story by every passerby. People create the narratives of place to understand and explain its complexities in context, and it is from these stories that the city comes to life.

I began to write stories about my personal and cultural context in New York. In Space and Place, Yi-Fu Tuan’s writing and references reinforce the vivid sense of place you can achieve with a perceptive writer, and I wanted to illuminate places in the city that relate to my experiences.

The most interesting thing to me about these locations is that chances are you would walk right by without a second glance. When there is personal meaning embedded within the walls of a place, it completely transforms the experience. Through written and visual storytelling, I would like to capture that feeling.

5

Arthur Avenue

If you were visiting this neighborhood for the first time, the following story about my memory of Arthur Avenue might illuminate something about the place, provide a richer experience, or conjure up images of an ItalianAmerican tradition. The following is a story I wrote: Clutching her mother’s hand, a seven-year-old girl bundled against the cold steps into a warmly lit store on 187th Street in the Bronx. The tiny bell jingles. “Buon Natale”, an old man says as he nods at the mother and her little girl. In the back of the shop an even older man winds large doughy pasta sheets through a steel press. They come out the other end soft and paper-thin. The man looks up as if he knows them – maybe he does. Her mother knows exactly what she’ll order – four boxes of handmade ravioli for the family Christmas party, and after less than two minutes of cooking she’ll serve them with a simple tomato sauce to her little girl, cousins, grandparents and the whole boisterous family.

New York City is the front door of the United States, where millions of immigrants like my ancestors traveled to access the land of opportunity. I don’t know why or how all six of my Italian great-grandparents ended up living within a fifteen-block radius of each other in the Bronx, especially since they all came from different regions in Italy, but it anchors me firmly to a particular place in the dense landscape of New York.

6

My grandparents and great-grandparents took great pains to assimilate once they arrived in New York just after the turn of the century, and as a result our family lost much of the Italian language and customs. Artifacts like the Ellis Island documents preserve place as an important cultural heirloom, and someday I can point out to my children and grandchildren the places where their ancestors lived. I can also tell them the stories that have been passed down through generations of my family, and place will anchor us to these memories.

However, nowhere on Arthur Avenue or in the surrounding area is there a marker or memorial that explains to passersby the importance of this neighborhood for people of Italian descent. How can these rich historical narratives be translated into a memorial on-site that reveals the layers of meaning in the neighborhood?

“ Places represent living embodiments of the collective memory of vital historic events that help determine a sense of co-belonging, of deep unity between people and nature and between individuals, families, and larger communities; of mutual interdependence that connects all of us together as a fundamental characteristic of humanity.�

Luigi Fusco-Girard

7

Urban Palimpsest

When we walk through a neighborhood or past a building, we appreciate it on a visual and kinesthetic level, but when we develop a deeper understanding of the place by learning the layers of history, it alters the experience of being there. For example, when I discovered that Andy Warhol’s Factory was in a building that I walk by every day in Union Square, it changed the feeling of this portion of my walk. I had never noticed the building before, and now I started noticing how odd and beautiful this building is, and thinking of all the people who have passed through its doors to star in a film or just be seen. The following is a story I wrote about Andy Warhol and his troubled muse, Edie Sedgwick:

8

Andy and Edie, 1965

Andy Warhol moved the Factory to the sixth floor of 33 Union Square West in 1965, the same year he met Edie. An unusual building for it’s era, it still stands out on the block because of the intricate terra cotta details on the facade and a large minaret on the roof. Max’s Kansas City was around the corner on Park Avenue South. Andy’s friend Lou Reed played there regularly with the Velvet Underground, and Andy’s crowd of artists, scenesters and followers became a fixture in the back room of the club.

Edie Sedgwick’s entry into the New York scene was explosive.

When she entered the room, people revolved around her like planets orbiting the sun. Andy claimed her as his muse and christened her his “Superstar”. She wanted the Hollywood dream Andy promised and he cast her in many of his films.

After returning from a Paris gallery opening in May 1965, Warhol asked his scriptwriter to write a script for Sedgwick, “something in a kitchen – something white, and clean, and plastic.” The resulting film was “Kitchen”, one of the many in which Edie would wander about the set with some fuzzy purpose having unintelligible conversations with other actors.

Although Edie’s magnetism made the films an underground success, most of them were never screened outside of the Factory.

Whirling onto the Factory scene was Edie’s escape from her troubled childhood, and drugs pushed her further away from her problems. Many people, including Bob Dylan, were at odds with Andy about the way he objectively watched - and filmed - her demise. Edie tried to get closer to Andy emotionally but he remained cold and detached. Their relationship deteriorated by the end of 1965, when she was already heavily dependent on drugs. She died of a massive overdose at the age of twenty-eight. In a short time she became a vital component of the Factory and a cultural icon, but her star burned too bright as it seared the night sky.

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The Andy Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2011

Two weeks ago, a life size metallic chrome sculpture depicting Warhol with a camera hanging from his neck and a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag appeared in front of Warhol’s old Factory studio. As I walk by I hear the surprise of people who are just seeing it for the first time, “Is that Andy?” as they walk closer, or “Who’s Andy?” kids ask, as their parents try to explain who the artist was.

This work is a very subjective interpretation of the legacy of Andy Warhol by artist Rob Pruitt, but it is successful in that it memorializes the cultural icon and its location reveals the layers of his story. Many people will make the fascinating discovery, as I had earlier this year, that one of the locations of his Factory was on Union Square, and maybe that will generate more curiosity about his work and the art world he thrived in. The Andy Monument succeeds in transforming my experience of place, but I wonder what would Andy think? Some people are certain that he would have loved it. Maybe this is how he would have most liked to be remembered - shiny and larger than life.

John Stilgoe has been teaching a course at Harvard on the art of exploring for over thirty years. His teaching depends heavily on the history of the built and natural environments, and he sees elements in our surroundings as portals into larger concepts or moments in time. Manhole covers, for example, are a relic of a historical period when New York City was dotted with cast-iron foundries that produced everything from decorative railings, staircases, doors, lampposts, boot scrapers, and manhole and coal chute covers. In the thousands of miles of sidewalks in NYC you can find the names of these foundries with handiwork from as far back as the late eighteen hundreds intact. It is this spirit of inquiry about the landscape – built and natural alike – that turns a daily walk into a fascinating exploration.

11

NEW WALL BETWEEN PILLARS

13 W X 8’ H

Designers can reveal hidden narratives of place, but unlocking the secrets of the built environment requires a balance of nuance and complexity. One story can have many different interpretations, and the knowledge we gain can be completely different depending on the perspective of who is telling it. While researching historical places in New York, I discovered an event that seemed to echo a lot of the issues with terrorismOF that we deal with 5’ HEIGHT COLLAGE today. The following is the I wrote about the event, (2”story FROM BOTTOM, titled “America’s First Age of Terrorism”: 1’ SPACE FROM EDGE OF WALL AROUND)

At noon on September 16th, 1920, a wagon passed by lunchtime crowds on Wall Street in New York City. It stopped across the street from the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street, on the Financial District’s busiest corner. Inside, a timer-set detonation sent 100 pounds of dynamite with heavy, cast-iron sash weights tearing through the air. The bomb was an incredibly cruel device that killed 38 people and seriously injured hundreds more, but it merely pocked the firm’s impenetrable marble walls.

The crime was never solved. Labor radicals and anarchists were implicated but never indicted. Beverly Gage, in The Day Wall Street Exploded writes, “Far from being an era of placid reform, the turn of the century was a moment in which the entire structure of American institutions – from the government to the economy –h seemed to be up for grabs, poised to be reshaped by new movements and ideas.”

The 1920 Wall Street bombing was the worst act of terrorism in New York until September 11th, 2001. J.P. Morgan was the most powerful symbol of capitalism at that time since the bank had provided loans to keep the Great War going, but most of the victims were innocent bystanders who made a modest living and did not symbolize American capitalism at all. The marks defiantly remain on the J.P. Morgan building to this day – “the stigmata of capitalism” – only blocks away from the site of the worst terrorist attack in history.

7’ WIDTH OF COLLAG 12

Wall Street Installation

To memorialize this event, I created a site-specific installation that depicts the 1920 Wall Street bombing. For the exhibition, I took this project to human scale by increasing the size of the model threefold. The work takes photography of a three-dimensional object – the site of the bombing at 23 Wall Street – from many different angles, fragments and redefines it and then places is back in a three-dimensional environment to tell a new story. I took each photo at different angles of the building, fractured them at the seams of the building, then collaged the pieces and hung them at different angles from the wall in the composition.

The sepia tone is meant to evoke the historical era, and the fragments of the building still damaged from the blast are placed in the forefront so that the gesture of the work speaks of the explosion.

GE 13

WALL S VIEW TREET IN ST FROM ABOV ALLATION E

Drawings and photos from installation

7’ WID TH O

F CO

SKYL

IGHT

COR

D1

COR

D2

COR

D3

COR

D4

WALL 6 in 6 in 6 in 6 in

The viewer is invited to interact with the piece by moving around to experience different angles, and to see different perspectives of the story. On the backside of the fragments, I provided a full account of the terrorist attack – the story above – in different typographic voices. Projected text onto the building adds another layer of meaning and visualizes the communication of the built environment. For the projection I wrote, “They felt injustice then, but now their protests will fall on deaf and vengeful ears.”

The projection was positioned at a distance of fifteen feet so that as people walk through the space they insert themselves into the installation, and into the story. This contributes to the feeling of energy of the city and allows the subject matter to come to life.

My goals when transforming the piece to a larger scale in the gallery space were to communicate the bombing more through the gesture and narrative, and encourage interaction. I created a tactile experience through fragmentation, color and texture that evokes a sense of explosion and invites people to touch and turn the pieces. I wanted to create an experience – to really immerse people in the place and my subjective interpretation of the events on that day. I wanted people to see the photography of the damaged walls of the building, fragmented in this striking composition, and immediately understand the story.

14

LLAG E

Photography: Richard Hall

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Photography: Richard Hall

The Wall Street installation created an experience that uncovers the history of the urban landscape, and it reveals a richer, multilayered environment than only looking at the space itself. When you walk by the marble walls of 23 Wall Street, the pockmarks are still visible from the bombing in 1920 but there is nothing to memorialize this event, pay respect to the violent era in American history, or bring awareness to the loss of life that occurred. There is a complex and layered story behind the marks on this wall, and looking deeper into our surroundings uncovers this fascinating history. In this way I can offer people unconventional ways to see and understand this place.

In the art of exploration course, John Stilgoe encourages his students to see things that they wouldn’t notice otherwise, and wonder about them, from faded inscriptions on building facades to the reason a statue is facing a certain direction. “I emphasize that the built environment is a sort of palimpsest, a document in which one layer of writing has been scraped off, and another one applied.

An acute, mindful explorer who holds up the palimpsest to the light sees something of the earlier message, and a careful, confident explorer of the built environment soon sees all sorts of traces of past generations.” The urban explorer is mindful to go beyond what the visual characteristics are, to investigate why. Even what seems like accidental patterns that appear on surfaces through abandonment, wear or decay have a story to tell.

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8 CHRISTINA LATINA Christina is a graduate student at PRATT pursuing an MFA in Communication Design. Her thesis studies focus on mediology, cybernetics and memory.

COLLECTING MEMORIES exploring the capacity of human memory by christina latina

Close your eyes. No, wait.

Read the following sentence, then close your eyes.

Recall your first memory, with as much detail as possible. (ok, now close your eyes)

COLLECTING MEMORIES exploring the capacity of human memory by christina latina

Close your eyes. No, wait.

Read the following sentence, then close your eyes.

Recall your first memory, with as much detail as possible. (ok, now close your eyes)

Ok, you can open them; welcome back. That was just a little warm up to get your recollection juices flowing, as I’ll be discussing memory in this article. So, I’ll share with you my first memory: Our house is large and blue, with a porch that never ends and a backyard that accommodates the infinite imagination of a four year old me. It is summer and I’m in my bathing suit; I can feel the warm grass squishing beneath my small, uncovered toes. My brother is beside me as we watch our father walk around the backyard in his underwear, spraying little dirt mounds—an angel of death to the procreating hoards of fire ants that chew on his children. We follow hard on his heels through the tundra of the backyard—learning lessons of the hunt from him, our wise tribe leader. Our expedition ends on the porch, where we discover our kiddie pool filled to the brim with slimy little tadpoles, desperately wiggling away as I stick my hands in to play with them.

Like a lot of overworked adults, my childhood memories tend to be my most common recollections, harkening back to a time when summer afternoons were spent pretending and exploring, not paying bills and online dating. I’ve always been intrigued by these memories, what they are exactly. This could be due to the fact that I have a terrible memory, but really mostly because I’m preoccupied with these past and potential instances being stored in my brain. I consider myself a representation of my memories; I am my memories and they define me. So if I am nothing more or nothing less than the things that I remember, it begs the questions what are memories, how do they work and why do we have them? Is memory limitless or finite and how is it evolving?

How does memory shape us as individuals and as a collective?

In my childhood, my parents frequently got what I ruefully refer to as the ‘architecture itch.’ They shared a bizarre passion for all things architecture, particularly the designing and building of homes—their homes. Neither of the two were trained in architecture or any discipline that might inform this sort of interest; my father owned a plumbing supply company and my mother stayed home with us kids making sure we ate our broccoli. Being a designer myself, I was deeply influenced by their interest in design; most of my childhood memories center around their creative process, which included a lot of heated debate and uneasy compromise, but whose results were incredible considering. During this process of designing, building and moving, we lived in 16 different locations. Most of these were the concert of my mother’s thoughtful design and my father’s solid construction, but others were interim habitats— apartments, rental homes, and at one time a double-wide trailer (my mother was all but thrilled). I moved away at 18 to attend college, so if you dare the math, approximately every 0.83 years I was reorganizing my life into a new space. I learned to adapt to these new llife systems with an uncommon proficiency.

“A human memory is the subjective recollection of an experience— a creative process where experiences are reimagined.”

The interesting thing I’ve discovered in my recollection of memories is the way I have unconsciously structured my method of remembering. I almost always recall memories in relation to the plethora of places I’ve lived. Every memory I have has been allocated to one of these houses. I store each memory, each instance of experience in different rooms of these houses, houses that are now only faded blueprints in the architecture of my consciousness. I can visually recall every detail, pulling out memories from drawers and hiding others away in closets.

Navigating these constructs provides a visual environment for me to relive and reconstruct these personal memories.

Funny thing is, I’m not the first person to do this. This is actually a really old method, I mean really old; try all the way back to ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks used a tactic of remembering called Method of Loci, or more commonly, Memory Palaces.1 Method of Loci is a method of memory enhancement which utilizes visualization, or spatial maps, to organize and recall information. Cicero would use this method to memorize entire books. The World Memory Championships contestant Joshua Foer discusses using a similar method of remembering raw data in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein, where he assigns images to random numbers, creating visual narratives that are easier to remember.2 Most people think about memory as a physiological system, like a vast databank inside our minds. The previously discussed Ars Memorativa streamlines our storing, organizing and retrieving of files in these databanks. But sometimes files are unorganized or locked, making retrieval difficult or impossible.

So while it is true that our memories are physical systems, with proteins being the building blocks of memories, the storing of a memory and the storing of a file are vastly different processes.

Writer Jonah Lehrer suggests that memories are more than just stored data—memories are the cognitive recreations of

1

2

“art of memory” in Latin, is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall; originated among the Pythagoreans.

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. Print.

experiences.3 A human memory is not just the storing of an experience, but is more importantly the subjective recollection of an experience. Memory is a creative process in which experiences are reimagined.

memory that we share. There exists the ability to discover truths in discussing our shared memories, not objective truths but personal shared truths, as well as discovering new memories that our unconscious’s deemed unworthy of storage.

Neuroscientist Joe LeDoux discovered a way to erase a particular memory as it was being recalled, through the use of protein blocking agent.4 The study was published several years ago and has since been used on humans, one woman in particular suffered from the pain of a particularly horrific memory, but by slowly erasing this memory with protein blocking and recollection, she was able to feel less emotional connection with the particular memory. It’s exactly like the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey’s character requests the services of a memory erasure facility.5 These studies have proven the idea stated earlier, that memory is a subjective construct, something that can’t be quantified. A memory is not an entity and not a specific instance.

A memory is the recollection of perception, of a set of sensory experiences that we reconstruct in our visual minds. This act of recreating is in itself degrading to the initial, true experience, like making a copy of a copy of a copy. But that’s the beauty of a memory, the personal translation. If you were to ask my brother about the memory I recalled earlier, he would probably recall a slightly different experience. Although he’s not the nostalgic type, his version of that memory would probably be more accurate, simply due to his lack of recalling and reconstructing it. I find this really interesting, this collective

In fact, I was chatting with him a few days ago and he randomly asked me, “Do you remember the bee hive in the graveyard, the one that was in the tree over the really old graves?” I hadn’t and I replied, “No, I had totally forgotten about that.” The bees weren’t so interesting in themselves, it was more about the connections those bees carried; those little bees pollinated my associative memory. They carried me into other memories, memories that I thought I had forgotten, but were just stored away in the depths of my unconscious memory. This trail of recollection leads me to believe that memory isn’t finite, and our capacity for storage is only limited by our ability to remember. This ability is of course affected by our physiology and psychology; like the artist Steven Wilcher who has a limitless photographic memory due to his autism, or the composer Clive Wearing who has only a seven second memory due to a damaged hippocampus.6 Our inability to recal our memories, to reconstruct them, that is the challenge.

The act of forgetting shouldn’t be discounted. In a society that is ever more dependent on external memory, a society obsessed with information over experience, the limits of our recollection are intrinsically human and therefore exist for an instinctual purpose, most likely for balance. Robert Krulwich of the

3

Jonah Lehrer on radiolab: http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

6

4

Can Memories Be Erased? by Joseph LeDoux http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-ledoux/can-memories-beerased_b_303519.html

5

Director Michel Gondry admits to being inspired by LeDoux’s studies published in 2000.

The hippocampus is the area of the brain that transfers short term memories to long term.

Ok, you can open them; welcome back. That was just a little warm up to get your recollection juices flowing, as I’ll be discussing memory in this article. So, I’ll share with you my first memory: Our house is large and blue, with a porch that never ends and a backyard that accommodates the infinite imagination of a four year old me. It is summer and I’m in my bathing suit; I can feel the warm grass squishing beneath my small, uncovered toes. My brother is beside me as we watch our father walk around the backyard in his underwear, spraying little dirt mounds—an angel of death to the procreating hoards of fire ants that chew on his children. We follow hard on his heels through the tundra of the backyard—learning lessons of the hunt from him, our wise tribe leader. Our expedition ends on the porch, where we discover our kiddie pool filled to the brim with slimy little tadpoles, desperately wiggling away as I stick my hands in to play with them.

Like a lot of overworked adults, my childhood memories tend to be my most common recollections, harkening back to a time when summer afternoons were spent pretending and exploring, not paying bills and online dating. I’ve always been intrigued by these memories, what they are exactly. This could be due to the fact that I have a terrible memory, but really mostly because I’m preoccupied with these past and potential instances being stored in my brain. I consider myself a representation of my memories; I am my memories and they define me. So if I am nothing more or nothing less than the things that I remember, it begs the questions what are memories, how do they work and why do we have them? Is memory limitless or finite and how is it evolving?

How does memory shape us as individuals and as a collective?

In my childhood, my parents frequently got what I ruefully refer to as the ‘architecture itch.’ They shared a bizarre passion for all things architecture, particularly the designing and building of homes—their homes. Neither of the two were trained in architecture or any discipline that might inform this sort of interest; my father owned a plumbing supply company and my mother stayed home with us kids making sure we ate our broccoli. Being a designer myself, I was deeply influenced by their interest in design; most of my childhood memories center around their creative process, which included a lot of heated debate and uneasy compromise, but whose results were incredible considering. During this process of designing, building and moving, we lived in 16 different locations. Most of these were the concert of my mother’s thoughtful design and my father’s solid construction, but others were interim habitats— apartments, rental homes, and at one time a double-wide trailer (my mother was all but thrilled). I moved away at 18 to attend college, so if you dare the math, approximately every 0.83 years I was reorganizing my life into a new space. I learned to adapt to these new llife systems with an uncommon proficiency.

“A human memory is the subjective recollection of an experience— a creative process where experiences are reimagined.”

The interesting thing I’ve discovered in my recollection of memories is the way I have unconsciously structured my method of remembering. I almost always recall memories in relation to the plethora of places I’ve lived. Every memory I have has been allocated to one of these houses. I store each memory, each instance of experience in different rooms of these houses, houses that are now only faded blueprints in the architecture of my consciousness. I can visually recall every detail, pulling out memories from drawers and hiding others away in closets.

Navigating these constructs provides a visual environment for me to relive and reconstruct these personal memories.

Funny thing is, I’m not the first person to do this. This is actually a really old method, I mean really old; try all the way back to ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks used a tactic of remembering called Method of Loci, or more commonly, Memory Palaces.1 Method of Loci is a method of memory enhancement which utilizes visualization, or spatial maps, to organize and recall information. Cicero would use this method to memorize entire books. The World Memory Championships contestant Joshua Foer discusses using a similar method of remembering raw data in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein, where he assigns images to random numbers, creating visual narratives that are easier to remember.2 Most people think about memory as a physiological system, like a vast databank inside our minds. The previously discussed Ars Memorativa streamlines our storing, organizing and retrieving of files in these databanks. But sometimes files are unorganized or locked, making retrieval difficult or impossible.

So while it is true that our memories are physical systems, with proteins being the building blocks of memories, the storing of a memory and the storing of a file are vastly different processes.

Writer Jonah Lehrer suggests that memories are more than just stored data—memories are the cognitive recreations of

1

2

“art of memory” in Latin, is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall; originated among the Pythagoreans.

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. Print.

experiences.3 A human memory is not just the storing of an experience, but is more importantly the subjective recollection of an experience. Memory is a creative process in which experiences are reimagined.

memory that we share. There exists the ability to discover truths in discussing our shared memories, not objective truths but personal shared truths, as well as discovering new memories that our unconscious’s deemed unworthy of storage.

Neuroscientist Joe LeDoux discovered a way to erase a particular memory as it was being recalled, through the use of protein blocking agent.4 The study was published several years ago and has since been used on humans, one woman in particular suffered from the pain of a particularly horrific memory, but by slowly erasing this memory with protein blocking and recollection, she was able to feel less emotional connection with the particular memory. It’s exactly like the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey’s character requests the services of a memory erasure facility.5 These studies have proven the idea stated earlier, that memory is a subjective construct, something that can’t be quantified. A memory is not an entity and not a specific instance.

A memory is the recollection of perception, of a set of sensory experiences that we reconstruct in our visual minds. This act of recreating is in itself degrading to the initial, true experience, like making a copy of a copy of a copy. But that’s the beauty of a memory, the personal translation. If you were to ask my brother about the memory I recalled earlier, he would probably recall a slightly different experience. Although he’s not the nostalgic type, his version of that memory would probably be more accurate, simply due to his lack of recalling and reconstructing it. I find this really interesting, this collective

In fact, I was chatting with him a few days ago and he randomly asked me, “Do you remember the bee hive in the graveyard, the one that was in the tree over the really old graves?” I hadn’t and I replied, “No, I had totally forgotten about that.” The bees weren’t so interesting in themselves, it was more about the connections those bees carried; those little bees pollinated my associative memory. They carried me into other memories, memories that I thought I had forgotten, but were just stored away in the depths of my unconscious memory. This trail of recollection leads me to believe that memory isn’t finite, and our capacity for storage is only limited by our ability to remember. This ability is of course affected by our physiology and psychology; like the artist Steven Wilcher who has a limitless photographic memory due to his autism, or the composer Clive Wearing who has only a seven second memory due to a damaged hippocampus.6 Our inability to recal our memories, to reconstruct them, that is the challenge.

The act of forgetting shouldn’t be discounted. In a society that is ever more dependent on external memory, a society obsessed with information over experience, the limits of our recollection are intrinsically human and therefore exist for an instinctual purpose, most likely for balance. Robert Krulwich of the

3

Jonah Lehrer on radiolab: http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

6

4

Can Memories Be Erased? by Joseph LeDoux http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-ledoux/can-memories-beerased_b_303519.html

5

Director Michel Gondry admits to being inspired by LeDoux’s studies published in 2000.

The hippocampus is the area of the brain that transfers short term memories to long term.

NPR program RadioLab states, “The act of forgetting is crucial to creating preciousness.”7 If we remembered everything we encountered each and every day, we wouldn’t be able to differentiate and make sense of the world. Value is constructed through understanding and focus, if our conscious memory were a huge undifferentiated blur we would not be able to acquire that focus, and in turn things we not carry value, things like our jobs, our families, our lives.

In an age where our memories can be externally stored in zero’s and ones, the understanding and ability we have of memory is changing. Let’s take, say, Harry Potter for example, wizards can transfer memories out of their minds into something called a ‘pensieve’. Dumbledore states to Harry, “One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure.”8 We muggles have something similar: the internet. The internet is a vast pool of human memory. We can upload photos, stories, documentation, anything at all, to this infinite memory bank and retrieve it with the click of a button. The only problem with this is that by filing away our memories, we lose the quality of human translation.

We lose the value in reconstructing our memories, and in turn the preciousness of those memories. By externalizing, our memories becomes streamlined, depersonalized, and demystified. And while this can be a benefit to systems of law or education that need objective, factual data, the utilization of it for personal memories is degrading to the narrative qualities of a human memory.

Human memory is not an inert stack of zero’s and one’s. Human memory is a personal experience that places value on the subtleties of everyday life. We’ve discovered that memory is a subject construct, the recollection and construction of an experience, not the experience itself. We’ve also discovered that memories can be shared human experiences, expanding and discovering memories. These recollections constitute who we are as humans and shape the future of who we will be. As technology advances and memory is demystified and streamlined, I consider the future of internal, human memory.

Exploring our personal memories, letting our minds wander and allowing time for recollection and reflection is important to the greater human narrative, a narrative that we all unconsciously share and contribute to; it is our human story.

7

Robert Krulwich: The Limits of the Mind, on NPR’s RadioLab

8

Albus Dumbledore Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2000. Print.

NPR program RadioLab states, “The act of forgetting is crucial to creating preciousness.”7 If we remembered everything we encountered each and every day, we wouldn’t be able to differentiate and make sense of the world. Value is constructed through understanding and focus, if our conscious memory were a huge undifferentiated blur we would not be able to acquire that focus, and in turn things we not carry value, things like our jobs, our families, our lives.

In an age where our memories can be externally stored in zero’s and ones, the understanding and ability we have of memory is changing. Let’s take, say, Harry Potter for example, wizards can transfer memories out of their minds into something called a ‘pensieve’. Dumbledore states to Harry, “One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure.”8 We muggles have something similar: the internet. The internet is a vast pool of human memory. We can upload photos, stories, documentation, anything at all, to this infinite memory bank and retrieve it with the click of a button. The only problem with this is that by filing away our memories, we lose the quality of human translation.

We lose the value in reconstructing our memories, and in turn the preciousness of those memories. By externalizing, our memories becomes streamlined, depersonalized, and demystified. And while this can be a benefit to systems of law or education that need objective, factual data, the utilization of it for personal memories is degrading to the narrative qualities of a human memory.

Human memory is not an inert stack of zero’s and one’s. Human memory is a personal experience that places value on the subtleties of everyday life. We’ve discovered that memory is a subject construct, the recollection and construction of an experience, not the experience itself. We’ve also discovered that memories can be shared human experiences, expanding and discovering memories. These recollections constitute who we are as humans and shape the future of who we will be. As technology advances and memory is demystified and streamlined, I consider the future of internal, human memory.

Exploring our personal memories, letting our minds wander and allowing time for recollection and reflection is important to the greater human narrative, a narrative that we all unconsciously share and contribute to; it is our human story.

7

Robert Krulwich: The Limits of the Mind, on NPR’s RadioLab

8

Albus Dumbledore Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2000. Print.

9 ANQI LI Born in Beijing, Anqi is studying Communications Design at Pratt Institute. Her present work is focused on social changes across cultures.

She lives in Beijing and New York.

IN THEIN THE MIXTURE MIXTURE OF BRAVE NEWOF BRAVEWORLD NEW WORLD 1984 ANDAND 1984 A few weeks ago, when I was conceptualizing a new project about a memorial for my MFA study, a message caught my eye at the first glance on Facebook. It said the Chinese deviant artist Ai Weiwei was put into captivity by the government for his attempt to start a project to reckon up the exact casualties in the earthquake that happened in Sichuan province in 2008, yet no one has a clue of where he is now.

the public brainwashed from dictatorship, thus following the overall decline in democracy. During that time, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Tsing, one of the most prestigious figures in traditional Chinese poetry, was banished and tortured due to his political background. This reminds me of my grandfather, who was also banished to a desolated rural area for the same reason, as were millions of others.

In some sense, Ai Weiwei is to China who Andy Warhol is to America. Both of them make eccentric public figures. Warhol devoted his life examining modern life, reproduction, and fame. He denied the lasting value of art and deconstructed the nature of art by presenting the overload of image in a media saturated culture. Akin to Warhol, Ai Weiwei’s artworks are often embedded with radical concepts, juxtaposing the ideas of being utopian versus being realistic. Many of his works are reflections on the current situation in China. He became so influential in the field for his fight to reveal the truth that the government eventually decided to purge him.

My grandfather was of no importance in Chinese history, however he was one of the very few who survived the disaster declared by Chairman Mao Tse Dong as the “Purge”. World War II and The Cultural Revolution brought two major devastations to China in the twentieth century. Many people survived the first one, yet very few survived the second, along with their culture, values and traditions. Though I have never had a literal conversation with my grandfather due to multiple strokes leaving him without speech, I feel a close connection with him and the sense of “A chip off the old block”, according to my mother’s narrative of his life story.

Every year in China many people just disappear the way Ai Weiwei did. The term “Evaporation” coined

by George Orwell in his renowned book 1984 best describes this form of disappearance. During The Cultural Revolution such events went unquestioned by

Despite being banished, my grandfather made every effort to live more harmoniously. During his exile he was sent to a village cut off from civilization, forced to work and reflect on past misdeeds. The only recreation was reading and writing which he taught my mother

Mao Tse Dong, 1973 Andy Warhol Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas New York, Corcoran Gallery of Art

IN THEIN THE MIXTURE MIXTURE OF BRAVE NEWOF BRAVEWORLD NEW WORLD 1984 ANDAND 1984 A few weeks ago, when I was conceptualizing a new project about a memorial for my MFA study, a message caught my eye at the first glance on Facebook. It said the Chinese deviant artist Ai Weiwei was put into captivity by the government for his attempt to start a project to reckon up the exact casualties in the earthquake that happened in Sichuan province in 2008, yet no one has a clue of where he is now.

the public brainwashed from dictatorship, thus following the overall decline in democracy. During that time, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Tsing, one of the most prestigious figures in traditional Chinese poetry, was banished and tortured due to his political background. This reminds me of my grandfather, who was also banished to a desolated rural area for the same reason, as were millions of others.

In some sense, Ai Weiwei is to China who Andy Warhol is to America. Both of them make eccentric public figures. Warhol devoted his life examining modern life, reproduction, and fame. He denied the lasting value of art and deconstructed the nature of art by presenting the overload of image in a media saturated culture. Akin to Warhol, Ai Weiwei’s artworks are often embedded with radical concepts, juxtaposing the ideas of being utopian versus being realistic. Many of his works are reflections on the current situation in China. He became so influential in the field for his fight to reveal the truth that the government eventually decided to purge him.

My grandfather was of no importance in Chinese history, however he was one of the very few who survived the disaster declared by Chairman Mao Tse Dong as the “Purge”. World War II and The Cultural Revolution brought two major devastations to China in the twentieth century. Many people survived the first one, yet very few survived the second, along with their culture, values and traditions. Though I have never had a literal conversation with my grandfather due to multiple strokes leaving him without speech, I feel a close connection with him and the sense of “A chip off the old block”, according to my mother’s narrative of his life story.

Every year in China many people just disappear the way Ai Weiwei did. The term “Evaporation” coined

by George Orwell in his renowned book 1984 best describes this form of disappearance. During The Cultural Revolution such events went unquestioned by

Despite being banished, my grandfather made every effort to live more harmoniously. During his exile he was sent to a village cut off from civilization, forced to work and reflect on past misdeeds. The only recreation was reading and writing which he taught my mother

Mao Tse Dong, 1973 Andy Warhol Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas New York, Corcoran Gallery of Art

and my uncles when all the schools, other than primary ones were shut down, proclaimed as redundancy of academic study by Mao Tse Dong. He wrote many classical Chinese poems, in retrospect of the preserved poems, I was stunned by the embedded aspiration and perseverance. “He was an aspiring man.” Said my mother. “I believe that aspiration came from responsibility. He feels responsible for his family, for us, and for other people.”

I keep wondering if it is the responsibility that my grandfather and his peers had for their people that helped to sustain their cultural values through all adversity. I recently had a conversation with a friend of my father from Taiwan, who is a couple of years younger than my grandfather, and from the narrative of his life story, I found the comparable value. The following is what he said about himself.

“Nowadays, a retired old man, I make my home between Beijing and Taipei, and still trying to stay active as a free-lance consultant for multinational companies on their business development work in this region.

Sometimes, I couldn’t help but looked at myself as a recycled resource, much like used cans and bottles. If they are still useful for something by someone, so much the better!”

followed by the attenuation of the awareness of so many essential values. Hence people no longer feel responsible for themselves and others.

Perhaps this explains why we don’t want to question the blockage of all the social medias in China and perhaps why we feel indifferent to Ai Weiwei’s recent captivity.

We don’t really care how the society will end up because this has nothing to do with us and someone else will take responsibility to fix the situation.

Such thinking is actually not solely discovered in China.

If we move to the larger picture, we might be surprised by the tendency of being less responsible among cultures.

We are devastated by the brainwash from advertising or propaganda, indulging ourselves in material world.

Compared to the old generation, we are less willing to effect change, caught by some rapture of nothing.

This is exactly what we as designers are asked to fix.

Our task is much more than fixing the typography and layout of a brochure. The visual presentation is not our goal but our tool to solve the problem, either culture or social.

Now it is the year of 2011, 32 years after the beginning of Chinese economic reform. The domestic economical, social, political and cultural systems have been massively reconstructed. Despite all of this development, the democracy in China seems to have taken an enormous step back.

The scenario is a lot more perplexing than it was in the 1960s. With the marketplace open, the young generation has been deeply impacted by consumerism and modernization. The world is being connected intensively, which causes a new dilemma for us as the next generation of China. Part of us indulge ourselves in a life that is economically flamboyant yet, politically mundane, celebrating the hallucination of economical achievement. People are absent-minded of the deterioration of democracy, attributing to the trepidation of the ruling power’s loss of domination, Written and Designed by Anqi Li Coca Cola Vase, 1997 Ai Weiwei Vase from the Tang dynasty (618-907)

and my uncles when all the schools, other than primary ones were shut down, proclaimed as redundancy of academic study by Mao Tse Dong. He wrote many classical Chinese poems, in retrospect of the preserved poems, I was stunned by the embedded aspiration and perseverance. “He was an aspiring man.” Said my mother. “I believe that aspiration came from responsibility. He feels responsible for his family, for us, and for other people.”

I keep wondering if it is the responsibility that my grandfather and his peers had for their people that helped to sustain their cultural values through all adversity. I recently had a conversation with a friend of my father from Taiwan, who is a couple of years younger than my grandfather, and from the narrative of his life story, I found the comparable value. The following is what he said about himself.

“Nowadays, a retired old man, I make my home between Beijing and Taipei, and still trying to stay active as a free-lance consultant for multinational companies on their business development work in this region.

Sometimes, I couldn’t help but looked at myself as a recycled resource, much like used cans and bottles. If they are still useful for something by someone, so much the better!”

followed by the attenuation of the awareness of so many essential values. Hence people no longer feel responsible for themselves and others.

Perhaps this explains why we don’t want to question the blockage of all the social medias in China and perhaps why we feel indifferent to Ai Weiwei’s recent captivity.

We don’t really care how the society will end up because this has nothing to do with us and someone else will take responsibility to fix the situation.

Such thinking is actually not solely discovered in China.

If we move to the larger picture, we might be surprised by the tendency of being less responsible among cultures.

We are devastated by the brainwash from advertising or propaganda, indulging ourselves in material world.

Compared to the old generation, we are less willing to effect change, caught by some rapture of nothing.

This is exactly what we as designers are asked to fix.

Our task is much more than fixing the typography and layout of a brochure. The visual presentation is not our goal but our tool to solve the problem, either culture or social.

Now it is the year of 2011, 32 years after the beginning of Chinese economic reform. The domestic economical, social, political and cultural systems have been massively reconstructed. Despite all of this development, the democracy in China seems to have taken an enormous step back.

The scenario is a lot more perplexing than it was in the 1960s. With the marketplace open, the young generation has been deeply impacted by consumerism and modernization. The world is being connected intensively, which causes a new dilemma for us as the next generation of China. Part of us indulge ourselves in a life that is economically flamboyant yet, politically mundane, celebrating the hallucination of economical achievement. People are absent-minded of the deterioration of democracy, attributing to the trepidation of the ruling power’s loss of domination, Written and Designed by Anqi Li Coca Cola Vase, 1997 Ai Weiwei Vase from the Tang dynasty (618-907)

10 BRENDA MCMANUS Brenda is a Pratt MFA candidate. She lives and works in New York city.

essay and design by

Brenda McManus

1. Halliday, E.M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson.

New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2001.

essay and design by

Brenda McManus

1. Halliday, E.M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson.

New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2001.

Fig. 1, Ronald Reagan, plate 4 of 7, public policy, design: Brenda McManus

Fig. 1, Ronald Reagan, plate 4 of 7, public policy, design: Brenda McManus

11 NICK MISANI Nick is a 20-something design student living in NYC. When he’s not perusing Chinatown in search of Asian treats, he’s usually sound asleep at his desk in the studio.

Nicholas Misani Article by Susan Fachini Misani Translated into English by Nicholas Misani

Ivo Misani

era un’artista

all’avanguardia.

Uno stilista unico nel suo genere e completo nella sua originaliĂ .

Ivo Misani was a cutting edge artist. A master of style, unique in his field and complete in his originality

Era uno dei maggiori protagonisti delle nuove tendenze nel mondo dell’arte orafa.

Instancabile e geniale ricercatore e sperimentatore,

era

costantemente in rapporto con tutte le arti che concorrono a determinare il volto di un’epoca

Ivo Misani prendeva ispirazione dalle naturali abitudini della gente dei posti che visitava.

Amava viaggiare fisicamente e con la mente, andando e prendendo ispirazione da ogni cosa. selezionava,

coglieva,

o v u n

eaisolava

una serie di di particolari, dettagli e fram m e n t

i

tratti da ciò che ci circonda: rami sassi foglie semi conchiglie trovando nella natura fonte inesauribile di ispirazione

Perfino degli intrecci di rami, raccolti durante una passeggiata in riva ad un fiume o sulla spiaggia,

sensazioni,

svelavano di emozioni sottili.

ad Ivo Misani un mondo fatto di

Questa, per Misani, era la materia da plasmare, ancor prima dell’oro e delle pietre preziose.

He was one of the main players who shaped the new trends in Italian jewelry. He was a tireless and ingenious researcher and experimenter, constantly in touch with all the arts that contribute to the creation of an era. Ivo Misani was inspired by the habits of the inhabitants of the places he visited. He loved to travel, physically and with his mind; he went everywhere and drew inspiration from everything. He se-

lected, gathered, and isolated fragments of all that surrounds us: branches, stones, leaves, seeds, seashells; finding, within nature an unending source of inspiration.

Even a knot of branches, gathered during a walk along the river or on the beach, revealed to Ivo Misani a world made of sensations and subtle emotions. This, for Misani, was the raw material to shape; well before the gold and precious stones.

Ivo Misani

q u e

morĂŹ

il 28 gennaio 1993

un segno profondo

lasciando un vuoto nel mondo che lo circondava nella gioielleria contemporanea

Ivo Misani died on the 28th of January, 1993, leaving a void in the world that surrounded him; a deep mark in contemporary jewelry.

Ogni pezzo realizzato da Ivo Misani è un

monumento

alla sua vita e alla sua creatività; una piccola scultura, ed in ogni particolare e .otal ingo ad

perfetta interessante

La collana Montenapoleone ne è il perfetto esempio — oscillando tra gioiello e scultura — ha come motivo centrale un quarzo bianco scolpito a mano con le due impronte di Ivo Misani.

Questo cristallo,

freddo e trasparente è destinato a non sciogliersi mai.

mantenendo congelate

in eterno le impronte dell’artista

Every piece created by Ivo Misani is a monument to his life and his creativity; a small sculpture, perfect and interesting in every detail and from every angle. The Montenapoleone necklace is the perfect example of this—fluctuating between jewel and sculpture­—has, as its central element a large piece of white quartz,

sculpted by hand to show two of Ivo Misani’s fingerprints. This crystal, cold and transparent, is destined to never melt, keeping the artist’s fingerprints eternally frozen within it.

le

eclettiche creazioni Misani appartengono ad un universo completamente loro, difficile da posizionare nel contesto del design dell’epoca.

Sono opere ricche di citazioni, dall’Ellenismo al Rinascimento dal Decò al Barocco (con le sue profonde suggestioni) Eclettico nei suoi gusti, Ivo Misani era appassionato dell’espressione artistica in ogni disciplina; amava lo stile Memphis Aldo RossiMirò in architettura Botero Henry Moore Picasso e gli affreschi rinascimentali di Mantegna Misani era un uomo privato, complesso, estremamente semplice

ma allo stesso tempo

completamente instancabile in un momento creativo, la sua vulcanica espressione e curiosità non si fermavano all’arte orafa. La sua ricerca lo spinse a sperimentare in ambiti e con materiali sempre diversi: dal gioiello all’orologio dai lumi di casa alla pelliccia dalle borse in coccodrillo ai bicchieri di cristallo dalle monete preziose agli occhiali perfino il suo ultimo lavoro le porte di una chiesa completate dopo la sua

morte

mostrano una creatività e un’originalità uniche ne mondo del design.

Misani’s creations belong to a unique universe, one that is difficult to place within the design landscape of the time. These pieces are rich with references: from Hellenism to the Renaissance, from Art Deco to Baroque. Eclectic in his taste, Ivo Misani was a lover of the Memphis style, Aldo Rossi in architecture, Botero, Henry Moore, Mirò, Picasso, and the frescos of Mantegna.Misani was a private man, both complex

and extremely simple. Completely tireless when inspired, his volcanic expression and curiosity were not limited to jewelry design. His research led him to experiment in different fields: from jewelry to watches, from lamps to fur, from crocodile bags to crystal glasses, from coins to eye wear. Even his last work, the doors of a church, completed after his death, display a creativity and originality unique in the world of design.

le imperfezioni

the imperfection and asymmetry in his work were always carefully studied; almost

e a sim me tri e

presenti nelle sue opere erano sempre studiate; quasi mai casua Spesso, queste irregolaritĂ nascevano dalla provocazione di un concetto o di un metodo tradizionale

Ivo Misani

creava

a

composizioni bilanciate pur essendo simmetriche;

glorificava le imperfezioni tramite il rivelare della materia Ivo Misani non nascondeva materia

prima mai prima

nella sua arte;

non la constringeva contro la sua natura ad adattarsi ad era in sintonia totale materia

con la sua prima

un’idea.

;

capace di spingerla al massimo riusciva a stabilire un rapporto intimo con essa, facendone emerger gli aspetti migliori

portandola a respirare del suo stesso respiro e cresere dalle sue stesse esperienze era, infatti spesso la materia

prima

a

che stabiliva,

tramite un’intima conversazione con Misani la direzione del design

Misani amava queste

provocazioni il contrasto e le sorprese nascoste

never left to chance. Often, these irregularities were born from the provocation of a traditional concept or method. Ivo Misani created compositions that were perfectly balanced despite their asymmetry; he glorified imperfection by revealing the raw material of his pieces. Ivo Misani never concealed the material element from his art; he never forced the material against its nature to fit an idea. He was in total symbiosis

with the material; able to push it to its limits, he established an intimate relationship with it, bringing out its best features, allowing it to breath his own breath and grow through his own experiences. It was, in fact, often the material itself that established, through an intimate conversation with Misani, the direction of the design. Misani loved these provocations, contrast, and the element of surprise.

Nascevano cosÏ gioielli innovativi; opere d’arte capaci di sorprendere per il disinibito gioco di

forme e s

p

a

z

i

composizione , movimento , colore , dimensione , suono , gioco e sorpresa;

t u t t i

elementi presenti

nelle sue creazioni

This is how innovative jewelry was born. Pieces are able to surprise the viewer with their uninhibited play of form and space. Composition, movement, color, scale, form, sound, play, and surprise are all elements that present in his creations...

...

12 FRANCES PHARR Frances is an MFA candidate in Design at Pratt, a twin, grew up in the woods of NY State and loves pictures of all kinds.

............

THE FUTURE OF THE photography and the hand of time... by frances pharr

............................. .............................

.................................

PAST

............................................................. ////////////////////////////////////////////////// ................ //////////////////////////////////////////////////

////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////

I

found a small white envelope several months ago; it contained a set of photographs, square, glossy and textured. The images were of days surrounding my mom and dad’s wedding, a few years before I was born, and something about made me return to them again and again, thinking, feeling them out. Here was my mom, with her waist-long hair up, getting ready for her wedding, ironing her dress in a sleeveless shirt; here she was sitting up straight in a white dress, flowers in her hand, sitting next to an old quilt with a circular flower pattern I remember; here were images of my since-deceased grandparents, soft, pale and younger-looking faces; and of my dad, bearded and smiling.

Here was evidence, in the flesh, of an idyllic life, a tiny, makeshift house tucked behind some pine trees up an asphalt driveway on a hill, on the edge of the woods.

We lived in that house for twelve years of my life, and I still dream about it. It was small, with a loft. It was

under construction, in various stages over the years we lived there, my dad building a deck, then a screen porch. Unfinished sheetrocked walls served as a canvas for my early artistic endeavors.

But the house was new in the pictures. Nothing had happened yet in it; it wasn’t even finished at the instant they were taken. I was not yet born, but there is my dad, sitting on the side steps, off the mudroom in a white polo shirt and shorts. I can feel the sun beating down, hear the buzzing of insects; can almost see my mom, knees in the dirt, digging with a trowel determinedly to make a garden.

Photography, it has been said, simultaneously brings us closer to and distances us from what it depicts, capturing and “killing” its subjects in a mutedly violent way. Photographer and theorist Susan Sontag draws an analogy between a camera and a gun, and likens “shooting” a picture to a softened version of killing something in the wild, being on safari.1 Taking

a photograph, she says, is an aggressive act; we both preserve and destroy a thing by entrapping it. By taking pictures, we kill what we want to remember to hang it on a wall later--is photography in fact the act of killing time, to preserve it?

The act of preserving, “capturing,” in a sense, allows us to see what is no longer there, but not to actually experience it. This aspect of photography is perhaps part of the allure of the pictures I found: the sudden, simultaneous reality they revealed to me, a thread of time alongside ours, but just out of reach.

////////// ////////// ........ Volumes discuss this exact experience academically. ////////// represent real life with such specificity that //////////Photographs it become almost tangible on paper. “The photograph,” Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida, “becomes a //////////says bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest, shared

here was evidence, in the flesh, of an idyllic life, a tiny, makeshift house tucked behind some pine trees up an asphalt driveway on a hill, on the edge of the woods. hallucination (on the one hand ‘it is not there,’ on the other ‘but it has indeed been): a mad image, chafed by reality.”2 Is it this paradox, between the reality I see presented in the images of my parents, and the fact that this reality no longer exists, that draws me to them? How real these pictures suddenly make the past, how they confirm it, in the present?

Yes, but it is also the significance these images take on in my own history, as objects, as pieces of a story that make them important. They are more than just “pictures.” We are not just hunters, cunningly snaring moments to preserve, though we might sometimes act this way. The images we take are talismans, touchstones for things that have been that can tell us about who we were, telegraphs to ourselves at a future date.

Designer Debbie Millman, in her book Look Both Ways, touches on the importance of visual aides to memory, and it makes sense from a design persepctive. “... Visual mementos,” she says, “visceral as they are, catalog our experiences. We process our emotions, in part, through images. I’m certain this is why we are both drawn to and provoked by art in such powerful and profound ways, and ultimately why art is such a subjective and personal experience: it simultaneously allows us to feel emotions we might not otherwise be able to describe and evokes our own personal association with those very feelings.”3 This is what the photographs show me. It is this overlapping of eras, and the context surrounding these images, what came after, the flow of time since, and how far away that tiny, soft, light-filled world is my parents lived in that telegraph a message to me. We have all moved out of our old house the photographs depict; it has since been remodeled by new tenants. My mom now lives on her own in another house my dad built later on. It is this gem of a memory, a fold in time that is easy to forget, bury, leave behind, that reveals itself to me in all its brilliance.

////// ////// ////// ////// ////// //////

................................... ................................

No matter what happens as the future rolls itself into view, as our lives unfold in unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible ways, it’s important to remember where we began, and what we hoped for--how we willingly stepped into a time, a role, a life that we saw before us, in spite of our other choices. There is a glimmer of decision, of choice, that reveals itself to me in all these images, a promise, a vision of something so lovely, I couldn’t have turned away from anything that bright.

..................

///////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// ........................................ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////// ................................................................... /////////////////////////////////////////// .............................................................. ///////////////////

////////////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// sources ////////////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// ....................................................................... /////////////////// 1. Sontag, Susan, On Photography 2. Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida, pg. 17 3. Millman, Debbie, Look Both Ways, pg. 71

13 JANICE RAMIREZ Janice is a Pratt MFA candidate. Her explorations include challenging ideas for social reform, power dynamics and the outdoors.

Cancer Cell

Shielding Yourself Protection from Environmental Pollutants

I underwent a brief state of panic. My partner’s mother called a few weeks after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, to inform of its reach to California.

UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering further confirms radioactive Iodine-131 present in tap, rain, milk, and air samples to be 181 times above drinking water standard known as MCL (maximum contaminant levels). 1 In addition to existing exposure experienced daily, I consider the implications of the nuclear core meltdown to human health. The main cause of cancer in Chernobyl was from milk contamination.2 As the nuclear pollution continues to surround Fukushima, I hypothesize that we will see a greater effect in the years to come.

Janice R. Rudan

Janice is a Pratt MFA candidate. Her explorations include challenging ideas for social reform, power dynamics and the outdoors.

In history, the scope of the Chernobyl incident did not reveal its full impact until several years later. At the present moment, Japanese are fighting to determine their country’s fate while the magnitude of this current disaster is undermined by domestic news and political spin, dismissing the aggregate total of radiation. According to the Wall Street Journal, most radioactive particles are heavy enough, so that we can expect them to fall into the ocean before travelling to the west coast.3 U.S. government officials claim radioactive isotopes are inconsequential at low levels. Do particles simply disappear or stay afloat, push to shore and contaminate marine life (our source of food)? Suppose the ocean prevents radioactivity from reaching the U.S., factors such as rain can still play a role. Both sources neglect to address that there is no safe level of radiation. As discovered in the past week, radiation leakage in the ocean from reactor number two released high levels (1000 millisieverts) of toxicity, enough to cause fatal cancer and acute sickness.4 Radiation from Fukushima becomes difficult to measure as it continues to contaminate, we cannot presume the exact amount of radiation though it is fair to say that it is further increasing. My concerns about radiation causing cancer bring me to question radiation treatment of cancer and search for an alternative therapy for healthy living instead of further contaminating the body.

Born in the Philippines, I wondered how much time (if any) my family had until the physical removal from their homes.

Shortly thereafter, my uncle informed me of Filipino government officials ordering evacuation of costal communities. “There is a real risk that over time, additional cases of cancer, birth defects, immune disorders, and other illnesses would occur among the population exposed to this low level radiation,” said Dr. Romeo Quijano, a professor at University of Philippines Manila’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.5 I thought of my parents’ island home still under construction in the midst of these events. Furthermore, I considered the potential harm to my mother and father as they make the Philippines their retirement haven.

This information leads me to consider the personal impact of humanity at large. Each individual has a personal connection to the event, however seemingly remote. We can bring together people and transform this devastation into an opportunity to focus on health, both in our physical bodies and our planet. As nuclear waste pollutes our earth, it causes cancers within our bodies.

Restoring a balance through diet and demanding sustainable food systems is a way to make global health stem from a personal level. For this reason I bring my focus to alternative cancer treatments, particularly the Gerson therapy.

Physician Max Gerson developed a nutrition-based alternative treatment to cancer among other ailments.

Foods that are chemically processed contain only three nutrients as opposed to 50 in natural foods. The levels of nutrients provide biologically occurring antioxidants to help cleanse the body of toxins, strengthening the immune system. It acts as a natural defense to cancer agents from pollution and radiation during a lifetime of exposure. The therapy offers organic juicing and foods along with coffee enemas for detoxification. Coffee stimulates enzymes in the liver (glutathione-S-tansferase) destroying free radicals and reversing cancer overtime. The legality of the highly unorthodox therapy is disregarded by western medicine.

Advocates of the Gerson therapy argue that the political reasons behind its illegality threaten the profitability of pharmaceutical industries.6

“ I know of one patient who turned to Gerson Therapy having been told she was suffering from terminal cancer and would not survive another course of chemotherapy. Happily, seven years later, she is alive and well. So it is vital that, rather than dismissing such experiences, we should further investigate the beneficial nature of these treatments. ” 7

(H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales)

After Max Gerson’s death (claimed to be from lung cancer though forensic concludes arsenic poisoning) daughter Charlotte Gerson took over the Gerson Institute she founded in 1977. As it is illegal to treat cancer patients other than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in the U.S., she currently has her clinic located in Tiajuana, Mexico (a few hours away from where she lives in San Diego) where she continues to treat and educate practitioners.

Though this alternate therapy to cancer reports to have a 90% success rate, it remains unapproved by the FDA. But to those who it has touched, the wisdom of natural treatments continues to spread hopefully gaining deserved credibility around the globe.8

My sentiment for family and loved ones propels a lifetime of exploration to find light in the darkest of places. Bringing awareness to health as well as our environmental responsibility sheds light on relevant social issues that may have a significant global impact.

When we seize accountability for the care of our bodies, we in turn care for the earth, which provides us with sustenance, thereby restoring global balance.

1. UC Berkeley. “UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station.” Web. 2. Harris, Gardiner. “Chernobyl Study Finds Lingering Cancer Risk - NYTimes.com.” Web. 3. Rasey, Michelle. “Radioactive Risk to United States from Japan Nuclear Meltdown.” Web. 4. Whipp, Lindsay. “Tepco Struggles to Halt Radioactive Leak.” Web. 5. Gonzales, Iris. “Radiation can Reach the Philippines.” Wed. 6. Kroschel, Steve. The Beautiful Truth: The World’s Simplest Cure for Cancer. Film.

7. Saul W., Andrew. “Andrew W. Saul Interviews Cancer Crusader Charlotte Gerson.” Web. 8. Kroschel, Steve. The Beautiful Truth: The World’s Simplest Cure for Cancer. Film.

Cancer Cell

Shielding Yourself Protection from Environmental Pollutants

I underwent a brief state of panic. My partner’s mother called a few weeks after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, to inform of its reach to California.

UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering further confirms radioactive Iodine-131 present in tap, rain, milk, and air samples to be 181 times above drinking water standard known as MCL (maximum contaminant levels). 1 In addition to existing exposure experienced daily, I consider the implications of the nuclear core meltdown to human health. The main cause of cancer in Chernobyl was from milk contamination.2 As the nuclear pollution continues to surround Fukushima, I hypothesize that we will see a greater effect in the years to come.

Janice R. Rudan

Janice is a Pratt MFA candidate. Her explorations include challenging ideas for social reform, power dynamics and the outdoors.

In history, the scope of the Chernobyl incident did not reveal its full impact until several years later. At the present moment, Japanese are fighting to determine their country’s fate while the magnitude of this current disaster is undermined by domestic news and political spin, dismissing the aggregate total of radiation. According to the Wall Street Journal, most radioactive particles are heavy enough, so that we can expect them to fall into the ocean before travelling to the west coast.3 U.S. government officials claim radioactive isotopes are inconsequential at low levels. Do particles simply disappear or stay afloat, push to shore and contaminate marine life (our source of food)? Suppose the ocean prevents radioactivity from reaching the U.S., factors such as rain can still play a role. Both sources neglect to address that there is no safe level of radiation. As discovered in the past week, radiation leakage in the ocean from reactor number two released high levels (1000 millisieverts) of toxicity, enough to cause fatal cancer and acute sickness.4 Radiation from Fukushima becomes difficult to measure as it continues to contaminate, we cannot presume the exact amount of radiation though it is fair to say that it is further increasing. My concerns about radiation causing cancer bring me to question radiation treatment of cancer and search for an alternative therapy for healthy living instead of further contaminating the body.

Born in the Philippines, I wondered how much time (if any) my family had until the physical removal from their homes.

Shortly thereafter, my uncle informed me of Filipino government officials ordering evacuation of costal communities. “There is a real risk that over time, additional cases of cancer, birth defects, immune disorders, and other illnesses would occur among the population exposed to this low level radiation,” said Dr. Romeo Quijano, a professor at University of Philippines Manila’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.5 I thought of my parents’ island home still under construction in the midst of these events. Furthermore, I considered the potential harm to my mother and father as they make the Philippines their retirement haven.

This information leads me to consider the personal impact of humanity at large. Each individual has a personal connection to the event, however seemingly remote. We can bring together people and transform this devastation into an opportunity to focus on health, both in our physical bodies and our planet. As nuclear waste pollutes our earth, it causes cancers within our bodies.

Restoring a balance through diet and demanding sustainable food systems is a way to make global health stem from a personal level. For this reason I bring my focus to alternative cancer treatments, particularly the Gerson therapy.

Physician Max Gerson developed a nutrition-based alternative treatment to cancer among other ailments.

Foods that are chemically processed contain only three nutrients as opposed to 50 in natural foods. The levels of nutrients provide biologically occurring antioxidants to help cleanse the body of toxins, strengthening the immune system. It acts as a natural defense to cancer agents from pollution and radiation during a lifetime of exposure. The therapy offers organic juicing and foods along with coffee enemas for detoxification. Coffee stimulates enzymes in the liver (glutathione-S-tansferase) destroying free radicals and reversing cancer overtime. The legality of the highly unorthodox therapy is disregarded by western medicine.

Advocates of the Gerson therapy argue that the political reasons behind its illegality threaten the profitability of pharmaceutical industries.6

“ I know of one patient who turned to Gerson Therapy having been told she was suffering from terminal cancer and would not survive another course of chemotherapy. Happily, seven years later, she is alive and well. So it is vital that, rather than dismissing such experiences, we should further investigate the beneficial nature of these treatments. ” 7

(H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales)

After Max Gerson’s death (claimed to be from lung cancer though forensic concludes arsenic poisoning) daughter Charlotte Gerson took over the Gerson Institute she founded in 1977. As it is illegal to treat cancer patients other than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in the U.S., she currently has her clinic located in Tiajuana, Mexico (a few hours away from where she lives in San Diego) where she continues to treat and educate practitioners.

Though this alternate therapy to cancer reports to have a 90% success rate, it remains unapproved by the FDA. But to those who it has touched, the wisdom of natural treatments continues to spread hopefully gaining deserved credibility around the globe.8

My sentiment for family and loved ones propels a lifetime of exploration to find light in the darkest of places. Bringing awareness to health as well as our environmental responsibility sheds light on relevant social issues that may have a significant global impact.

When we seize accountability for the care of our bodies, we in turn care for the earth, which provides us with sustenance, thereby restoring global balance.

1. UC Berkeley. “UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station.” Web. 2. Harris, Gardiner. “Chernobyl Study Finds Lingering Cancer Risk - NYTimes.com.” Web. 3. Rasey, Michelle. “Radioactive Risk to United States from Japan Nuclear Meltdown.” Web. 4. Whipp, Lindsay. “Tepco Struggles to Halt Radioactive Leak.” Web. 5. Gonzales, Iris. “Radiation can Reach the Philippines.” Wed. 6. Kroschel, Steve. The Beautiful Truth: The World’s Simplest Cure for Cancer. Film.

7. Saul W., Andrew. “Andrew W. Saul Interviews Cancer Crusader Charlotte Gerson.” Web. 8. Kroschel, Steve. The Beautiful Truth: The World’s Simplest Cure for Cancer. Film.

14 MIRA ROJANASAKUL Artist, Pratt communication design MFA candidate.

memories through forgetting I keep coming back to this old journal entry lately.

It’s the August before my senior year, and a friend and I were sharing the sweltering third floor of an off-campus house. I DJ’d the two person dance parties we threw on weeknights, and she took me on achingly long runs or bike rides at dusk—grand, scenic tours that had all the breathtaking airs of Hollywood cinematography. As a product of my part-time schedule or the sultry midwestern humidity, I was in a particularly good mood for writing that summer. A number of ecstatic little moments called out for some sort of preservation, and I obliged.

As any designer can tell you, basic hierarchy relies as much on the negative space and the deemphasized as what is evident. But our technologies have facilitated the experiencehoarders in all of us, swarming our personal histories with less meaningful artifacts.

Tourists snap thousands of photos with their eyes glued to a screen, and experience nothing of their journey or the people in front of them, turned off to the senses that make real, evocative memories. We must forget in order to remember, but we either cannot or will not.

But there’s a disappointment to reading these words now, which once came as a deluge of certain vocabularies under the spell of that point in time and place. I had thoughtlessly selected this short memoir for a layout assignment, morphing it through so many fonts, kerning its sutures loose, repeating pull quotes over and over until the words ceased to make sense, let alone transport me to its origins.

But how can we help but document? There’s this mostly unspoken idea that the digital age has granted us some permanence—from the collective cloud of information amassed online to your personal cache of files and photos. Since the earliest cave paintings, our media has only become more sophisticated at capturing moments of our lives in physical manifestations.

Neuroscience informs us reminiscence is like experiencing a copy of a copy. Stories are reinvented upon each telling, and as with a well-loved garment, it takes care and consideration not to disintegrate it with overuse. Because that summer is transcribed and held indefinitely in text, there’s something about these plot lines and details that I begin to suspect as counterfeit. A memory should be like swimming; a sudden submersion into the viscous, visceral illusion of the past. What once was a full-bodied, multi-sensory plunge into the past now feels stilted, as flat as the screen that contains it.

What do you remember these days that isn’t somehow tied to a photograph or written story?

Michael Amundson, founder of online gaming social network “Evolve,” remains reticent to digitally induced nostalgia.

“Memories discovered over the internet aren’t as evocative and I feel less connection to them.” Arthur Elmes notes that “it’s sort of an active/passive difference” between memories experienced from artifacts versus those that seem to arise more naturally. “I prompt memories into mind using photos, etc, specifically because I’m in the mood to

do so, whereas a passively conjured memory is altogether surprising, and far more transfixing.”

Despite our technologies, I find comfort that there’s still something in our biology that cannot be replicated, and exerts a little more intrigue than the secondary replicas we make. At this moment, all of the world’s computing power only just equals that of one human brain. Facebook randomly generates “photo memories” for you to stumble upon, but how can it compare to the flash intoxication of honeysuckle on a warm June night in my hometown? As advanced as our current technologies may seem, they still cannot replicate the kind of robust recollection tied to scent, or serendipitous rediscovery of a forgotten song heard on the radio.

In the end, all I’m calling for is to acknowledge and embrace forgetting in order to bring mystery back to nostalgia, and to truly highlight the meaningful experiences we have through the natural distillation of our subconscious. It may grow out of our own fears of mortality, or a lack of faith in our mind’s abilities to savor the highlights of our lives, but we’re not meant to be machines in all our capabilities. It’s human to forget, to remember something trivial, to alter our autobiographies, and we should sometimes learn to trust these faulty, sentimental neural mechanisms to continue to do just that.

15 NATALIE SIMS Natalie is currently pursuing an MFA in communications design at pratt. She is in a continual process of investigation with the hand-crafted and the massproduced. She is a Gemini, with a moon in Cancer, and hopelessly devoted to kombucha.

I’m bored of blue.

My scarf, as visitors to my blue sanctuary often remind me, is not particularly beautiful. For one thing, its blue. Cobalt, or cerulean maybe. Surrounded by a hefty border of sapphire. At center, it boasts a hand-rendered map of the island of Capri off the coast of Italy, from whence my ancestry came, and a scroll that haphazardly floats just below articulating its proper diction: “L’isola di Capri.” The artist exercised a charming disinterest in matters of scale, filling the cerulean blue waters surrounding l’isola with creatures-del-mare equal in size to the villas on shore.

One possible explanation for my attachment to it is that perhaps I am the only owner of this scarf who has never once adorned her neck with it, but who rather chose to admire its tender blueness spread out over the walls like a piece of ancestral portraiture. Would my affection make better sense if this were the case, if my imagining a rare experience with it were a reality?

While I did reinterpret its function, could distinctive repurposing alone be enough to generate such feelings of rare connection with an object?

Could it be a semantic problem? Maybe an expression of rarity is really a contradiction in terms.

By the good grace of the tenants who occupied my apartment before me, I inherited a room swathed in new-born-baby-blue. It’s a shade decidedly more boyish than the delicate robin’s egg blue walls my roommate received, and certainly more self-congratulatory than the bashful seafoam interior of the kitchen.

Its not that I mind the color blue per se. It has a durable sort of reliability about it, like what I imagine a Chevy would have represented in the heydays of rustic American exuberance. A good family car, a sensible mid-level choice. Sure it is built to last, but it can’t quite mask the air of prudence. It’s no surprise that nearly every corporate identity is comprised of one of blue’s gratuitous myriad tones.

This mild blue boredom lines every wall of my apartment. But this isn’t even the worst of it. The real problem is that my best-loved scarf, the material thread of my domestic existence that has hung ceremoniously over every bed that I have ever known, is itself not one but two additional shades of blue. That brings the total including the kitchen, bathroom and second bedroom to six. Six shades of blue conspiring together and delighting in their boring abundance.

I have of course contemplated removing my curiously treasured tapestry and bringing the hues of blue from six back down to four, but even in its abounding peculiarity I love it so. This is something truly fascinating.

Does not everyone have a metaphorical scarfturned-wall-decor? A cherished object that could maneuver its way into a Benjaminesque discussion of aura?

To say I interpret my scarf as blue (despite the inherent inadequacies of the color) is to make a statement of fact.

It’s blue, it’s silky, its’s dutifully to my bedroom wall.

mounted

I can assess the statistical accuracy of these accounts. Though an object is certainly capable of being “rare” by quantitative measure, this isn’t the rarity of honest and intimate, generally inexplicable, pleasure in the things we value.

The attachment to those “rare” things that we seem to gather around ourselves and use to narrate our earthly existence is quite personal.

But how can our rare narratives be made sense of alongside the seriality inherent in products of the industrial era?

But what is really going on here?

Out of the boring blue and for no reason in particular, we find rare pleasure in an inanimate object. In fact, our species seems thoroughly well-suited in this pursuit. Not only do we construct ritual modes of experience for interacting with this object, but we uniquely narrate its reason for existence in accordance with ours.

In his treatise, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin lures the word “aura” out of its origin in parapsychology in an investigation of this phenomenon. He looks to the advent of technologies of mass production as a means to understand something about our relationship with material artifacts.1

Worse yet, if you’re anything like me, you hold steadfast to it even at risk of being consumed in its pesky blue-ness.

This consideration in itself is evidence that these things are hardly mutually exclusive. In fact, our reception of the latter seems to be a direct byproduct of the circumstances of the former.

----1

I’m bored of blue.

My scarf, as visitors to my blue sanctuary often remind me, is not particularly beautiful. For one thing, its blue. Cobalt, or cerulean maybe. Surrounded by a hefty border of sapphire. At center, it boasts a hand-rendered map of the island of Capri off the coast of Italy, from whence my ancestry came, and a scroll that haphazardly floats just below articulating its proper diction: “L’isola di Capri.” The artist exercised a charming disinterest in matters of scale, filling the cerulean blue waters surrounding l’isola with creatures-del-mare equal in size to the villas on shore.

One possible explanation for my attachment to it is that perhaps I am the only owner of this scarf who has never once adorned her neck with it, but who rather chose to admire its tender blueness spread out over the walls like a piece of ancestral portraiture. Would my affection make better sense if this were the case, if my imagining a rare experience with it were a reality?

While I did reinterpret its function, could distinctive repurposing alone be enough to generate such feelings of rare connection with an object?

Could it be a semantic problem? Maybe an expression of rarity is really a contradiction in terms.

By the good grace of the tenants who occupied my apartment before me, I inherited a room swathed in new-born-baby-blue. It’s a shade decidedly more boyish than the delicate robin’s egg blue walls my roommate received, and certainly more self-congratulatory than the bashful seafoam interior of the kitchen.

Its not that I mind the color blue per se. It has a durable sort of reliability about it, like what I imagine a Chevy would have represented in the heydays of rustic American exuberance. A good family car, a sensible mid-level choice. Sure it is built to last, but it can’t quite mask the air of prudence. It’s no surprise that nearly every corporate identity is comprised of one of blue’s gratuitous myriad tones.

This mild blue boredom lines every wall of my apartment. But this isn’t even the worst of it. The real problem is that my best-loved scarf, the material thread of my domestic existence that has hung ceremoniously over every bed that I have ever known, is itself not one but two additional shades of blue. That brings the total including the kitchen, bathroom and second bedroom to six. Six shades of blue conspiring together and delighting in their boring abundance.

I have of course contemplated removing my curiously treasured tapestry and bringing the hues of blue from six back down to four, but even in its abounding peculiarity I love it so. This is something truly fascinating.

Does not everyone have a metaphorical scarfturned-wall-decor? A cherished object that could maneuver its way into a Benjaminesque discussion of aura?

To say I interpret my scarf as blue (despite the inherent inadequacies of the color) is to make a statement of fact.

It’s blue, it’s silky, its’s dutifully to my bedroom wall.

mounted

I can assess the statistical accuracy of these accounts. Though an object is certainly capable of being “rare” by quantitative measure, this isn’t the rarity of honest and intimate, generally inexplicable, pleasure in the things we value.

The attachment to those “rare” things that we seem to gather around ourselves and use to narrate our earthly existence is quite personal.

But how can our rare narratives be made sense of alongside the seriality inherent in products of the industrial era?

But what is really going on here?

Out of the boring blue and for no reason in particular, we find rare pleasure in an inanimate object. In fact, our species seems thoroughly well-suited in this pursuit. Not only do we construct ritual modes of experience for interacting with this object, but we uniquely narrate its reason for existence in accordance with ours.

In his treatise, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin lures the word “aura” out of its origin in parapsychology in an investigation of this phenomenon. He looks to the advent of technologies of mass production as a means to understand something about our relationship with material artifacts.1

Worse yet, if you’re anything like me, you hold steadfast to it even at risk of being consumed in its pesky blue-ness.

This consideration in itself is evidence that these things are hardly mutually exclusive. In fact, our reception of the latter seems to be a direct byproduct of the circumstances of the former.

----1

Returning to Starry Night for a moment: it has a different sort of aura now that I have seen it on hundreds of occasions manifested in dozens of forms. Its aura has become more of an ontological recognition of its image than a phenomenon of its one-of-akind creation.

Benjamin uses the word aura to describe an art work’s theoretical existence as unique, isolated, and unrepeatable. Faced with the threat of mechanical reproduction, the work of art is thrust into an odd predicament. That which makes it precious (its hypothetical aura of unique existence) is called into question as soon as it is sucked up into the industrial spirit.

As egalitarian as the impulse may be to share expressions of human creativity with eager onlookers, their likeness printed and reprinted ad infinitum, it is by virtue of this possibility that the aura of creation disintegrates. Surely my impression of Van Gogh’s Starry Night has changed dramatically now that should I so desire, I can have its dreary blue likeness reproduced on my visa card.

What is interesting about Benjamin’s diagnosis is that while he sees the aura of singularity disintegrating, he is fundamentally ambivalent about the outcome. As tempting as it is to make a value judgement about this disintegration, he deliberately resists, eluding to the fact that an object’s aura may in fact reappear on the other end.

Although he is specifically discussing works of art, certainly some of our prized collectibles could also be said to possess an aura of the sort that Benjamin sets out.

My elective appreciation for the blue scarf certainly satiates a similar aesthetic desire.

What’s rare is not a quantitative statement about the number of copies of an object; it’s the unique delight I take in seeing it wave loyally up on my wall.

It never represented a unique relic, and despite my knowledge of its method of production and probable litter of siblings decorating necks and walls the world over, it is swimming in aura. It’s an auratic projection due not to its multiplicity, but to the unique affection I’ve found within that multiplicity.

It’s imaging that while I am not its only possessor, I am the only one with the sensitivity to appreciate its decorative capacity.

It doesn’t require a exclusive source image be hanging in a museum somewhere, rather it seems to be a personal ecstasy in the glorious underrated and chronically massproduced. It’s a tale of rare pleasure that exists only for me.

It’s not the hyperlinks and recycling bins, but my fervent personification of blueness.

It’s the personal, personified.

He hints at, and I would like to expound here, the idea that the fracturing of the aura may actually backfire. Now rather than its singularity warranting special attention, an object’s very multiplicity turns out to fashion an aura all its own.

the

peculiar,

the

Rarity, put simply, is me.

So, perhaps the rare is not merely the opposite of the serial, but resides in a desire to believe in a unique experience.

essay and typewriting by

Returning to Starry Night for a moment: it has a different sort of aura now that I have seen it on hundreds of occasions manifested in dozens of forms. Its aura has become more of an ontological recognition of its image than a phenomenon of its one-of-akind creation.

Benjamin uses the word aura to describe an art work’s theoretical existence as unique, isolated, and unrepeatable. Faced with the threat of mechanical reproduction, the work of art is thrust into an odd predicament. That which makes it precious (its hypothetical aura of unique existence) is called into question as soon as it is sucked up into the industrial spirit.

As egalitarian as the impulse may be to share expressions of human creativity with eager onlookers, their likeness printed and reprinted ad infinitum, it is by virtue of this possibility that the aura of creation disintegrates. Surely my impression of Van Gogh’s Starry Night has changed dramatically now that should I so desire, I can have its dreary blue likeness reproduced on my visa card.

What is interesting about Benjamin’s diagnosis is that while he sees the aura of singularity disintegrating, he is fundamentally ambivalent about the outcome. As tempting as it is to make a value judgement about this disintegration, he deliberately resists, eluding to the fact that an object’s aura may in fact reappear on the other end.

Although he is specifically discussing works of art, certainly some of our prized collectibles could also be said to possess an aura of the sort that Benjamin sets out.

My elective appreciation for the blue scarf certainly satiates a similar aesthetic desire.

What’s rare is not a quantitative statement about the number of copies of an object; it’s the unique delight I take in seeing it wave loyally up on my wall.

It never represented a unique relic, and despite my knowledge of its method of production and probable litter of siblings decorating necks and walls the world over, it is swimming in aura. It’s an auratic projection due not to its multiplicity, but to the unique affection I’ve found within that multiplicity.

It’s imaging that while I am not its only possessor, I am the only one with the sensitivity to appreciate its decorative capacity.

It doesn’t require a exclusive source image be hanging in a museum somewhere, rather it seems to be a personal ecstasy in the glorious underrated and chronically massproduced. It’s a tale of rare pleasure that exists only for me.

It’s not the hyperlinks and recycling bins, but my fervent personification of blueness.

It’s the personal, personified.

He hints at, and I would like to expound here, the idea that the fracturing of the aura may actually backfire. Now rather than its singularity warranting special attention, an object’s very multiplicity turns out to fashion an aura all its own.

the

peculiar,

the

Rarity, put simply, is me.

So, perhaps the rare is not merely the opposite of the serial, but resides in a desire to believe in a unique experience.

essay and typewriting by

16 MARIA NEFELI STAVRINIDI Nefeli is interested with the marriage of logic and illogic in the creative process.She is originally from Greece and the last 2 years has been living in NY.

“Niko, are you ready to explore how you perceive time?” I asked.

“Let’s do it! Do I need any preparation?” Niko replied.

“Nope, just be you. Don’t try to get it right.” That’s not the point.”

I answered back.

Niko nodded his head.

speed up or slowed down from many external factors such as how much we pay attention.” 5 Therefore creating is about merging the mechanical and the personal clock: the imposed deadlines with the personal rhythm we all have. It is like marrying logic with illogic. (I am not sure who would be the groom and who the bride however I do know that they would do a great couple... as Prince William with Katherine!)

While I was holding the chronometer I asked Niko to estimate when he thought a minute would pass. I reminded him not to attempt to count but to focus his efforts in listening to his internal, personal clock.

The creative process is about mixing opposite ideas: cognitive knowledge with sentiment, structure with chaos, and methodology with the instinct or else our personal “fortune cookies.” As Wendy Richmond said: “The creative process is about finding the balance between the unpredictable state of not knowing and of tangible, visible progress.” 6

Thirty seconds past. Fifty. One minute. A minute and half.

Two minutes. Two minutes and fifteen seconds.

Nikos shouted: “Now!” I pressed the “stop” button and looked at the chronometer.

Two minutes and twenty six seconds had passed! I wrote it down trying to not betray his inaccuracy with my smile.

“Eleni, you are next,” I shouted. Niko left the room as Eleni entered. She was wearing a concerned grin. She sat and looked fixedly at me.

“I don’t know what to expect,” she said.

“Relax and let’s start,” I declared.

“Do we have to do it in English or in Greek?” She whispered.

“Whatever you prefer,” I replied.

“Ok, in Greek.” She automatically said.

“Works for me,” I nodded my head and explained her as I had with Niko.

“Ready? Start.” I announced.

Time is real. Time is ideal. Time is Illusion.

Mechanical Clocks, Personal Clocks and the Creative Process.

“It has been scientifically discovered that there are dramatically different tempos in human beings .” Neurologist Oliver Sacks said and followed: “Once I had a patient who blew his nose for two hours! When I asked him why you take so long to blow your nose he looked at me curiously; he couldn’t understand the reason of my question. Next I took a series of 2 photos of the patient blowing his nose and created a flip book.” When the patient saw it he got as white as the sheets of the book. He had no idea.

Human beings perform and absorb in different pace without realizing it. However, the extreme example described above was a case of mental disorder that caused the patient to perceive time way different in relation to the average human beings.3 However, if every one of us perceives time in our own way then being asked to perform under the exact same conditions (9am to 5pm) is insane! It is like asking a dead person to talk. (Ok, this is slightly spookier.) To prove that Dr. Sacks was right I decided to conduct my own time experiment. Therefore I asked two brotherly friends of mine, Niko and Eleni, to participate. They agreed.

“Come open up Nefeli, my hands have become ice.” I stood from my desk, passed the long corridor and I finally got to the Pratt ‘s studio main entrance. I entered them in the building and walked them towards my office. I asked Eleni to wait outside. Niko rested his body in the seat across me as I turned to a clean page at my brown, compact notebook.

1

5 Newitz Annalee, How do we know what time really is?, 2010. http://io9.com/#!5646561/how-do-you-really-know-what-time-

it-is 6 Richmond Wendy, The

The Mechanical & Personal Clocks The mechanical clock refers to the man made creation of numeric measurements such as seconds, minutes and hours. The mechanical clock is visible almost everywhere in our daily life such as: in public spaces, in the virtual world and the physical. Although we have many personal clocks that are simultaneously running internally, the two most important are the circadian and the interval. The clock that calculates the circadian rhythms (known also as our biological clock) is the one that tells people when to wake up, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and all the fundamental human needs. The interval clock is the one that tells you how long a particular activity is going to take, for example it may calculate how long you will take to read this article.

4

Although we have many personal clocks all simultaneously running

When we are hungry, sleepy, sad, in pain etc., while the interval measures how long each activity will take.

As Newitz explained, the personal clock has some shared characteristics with the mechanical clock because they both measure time in regular beats. “Those beats are accumulated then stored in our memory as a time interval. However our interval clock can

Creative Process Loop (Design Culture,

2008) 18

“Neurologists have discovered that our brain is the least accurate

The circadian clock informs us of our fundamental needs such as:

RadioLab, “Time,” 29 May 2008.

Annalee, How do we know what time really is?, 2010. http://io9.com/#!5646561/how-do-you-really-know-what-timeit-is

I sat at my desk looking at the results over and over. I was wildly content. Dr. Sacks had been proven right! After this discovery I started reading about our personal clocks night and day. I wanted to comprehend how the personal and the mechanical clock influence the creative process.

internally, the circadian and the interval are the most important.

MPR RadioLab, “Time,” 29 May 2008.

4 Newitz

“Stoooop,” she abruptly said.

I looked at the time. Only 27 seconds had passed!

“I am sure it has been more than a minute already, right?” Eleni asked.

“Right,” I nodded with agreement. I wasn’t going to reveal the actual findings yet.

time measurement device we can use and also the most powerful.”

Adam Barbara, Time (Cambridge: Polity, 2004) 50

2

3 MPR

Eleni gave a push at her chair and directed her eyes towards the bookshelf on the other side of the room. Her eyes looked curious and exploratory.

Fig. 1. Maria-Nefeli Stavrinidi, Viewer As Protagonist, 2011, Mixed Media, 50” x 70”. Thesis Exhibition: “How Does Time Look?,” New York.

1

“Niko, are you ready to explore how you perceive time?” I asked.

“Let’s do it! Do I need any preparation?” Niko replied.

“Nope, just be you. Don’t try to get it right.” That’s not the point.”

I answered back.

Niko nodded his head.

speed up or slowed down from many external factors such as how much we pay attention.” 5 Therefore creating is about merging the mechanical and the personal clock: the imposed deadlines with the personal rhythm we all have. It is like marrying logic with illogic. (I am not sure who would be the groom and who the bride however I do know that they would do a great couple... as Prince William with Katherine!)

While I was holding the chronometer I asked Niko to estimate when he thought a minute would pass. I reminded him not to attempt to count but to focus his efforts in listening to his internal, personal clock.

The creative process is about mixing opposite ideas: cognitive knowledge with sentiment, structure with chaos, and methodology with the instinct or else our personal “fortune cookies.” As Wendy Richmond said: “The creative process is about finding the balance between the unpredictable state of not knowing and of tangible, visible progress.” 6

Thirty seconds past. Fifty. One minute. A minute and half.

Two minutes. Two minutes and fifteen seconds.

Nikos shouted: “Now!” I pressed the “stop” button and looked at the chronometer.

Two minutes and twenty six seconds had passed! I wrote it down trying to not betray his inaccuracy with my smile.

“Eleni, you are next,” I shouted. Niko left the room as Eleni entered. She was wearing a concerned grin. She sat and looked fixedly at me.

“I don’t know what to expect,” she said.

“Relax and let’s start,” I declared.

“Do we have to do it in English or in Greek?” She whispered.

“Whatever you prefer,” I replied.

“Ok, in Greek.” She automatically said.

“Works for me,” I nodded my head and explained her as I had with Niko.

“Ready? Start.” I announced.

Time is real. Time is ideal. Time is Illusion.

Mechanical Clocks, Personal Clocks and the Creative Process.

“It has been scientifically discovered that there are dramatically different tempos in human beings .” Neurologist Oliver Sacks said and followed: “Once I had a patient who blew his nose for two hours! When I asked him why you take so long to blow your nose he looked at me curiously; he couldn’t understand the reason of my question. Next I took a series of 2 photos of the patient blowing his nose and created a flip book.” When the patient saw it he got as white as the sheets of the book. He had no idea.

Human beings perform and absorb in different pace without realizing it. However, the extreme example described above was a case of mental disorder that caused the patient to perceive time way different in relation to the average human beings.3 However, if every one of us perceives time in our own way then being asked to perform under the exact same conditions (9am to 5pm) is insane! It is like asking a dead person to talk. (Ok, this is slightly spookier.) To prove that Dr. Sacks was right I decided to conduct my own time experiment. Therefore I asked two brotherly friends of mine, Niko and Eleni, to participate. They agreed.

“Come open up Nefeli, my hands have become ice.” I stood from my desk, passed the long corridor and I finally got to the Pratt ‘s studio main entrance. I entered them in the building and walked them towards my office. I asked Eleni to wait outside. Niko rested his body in the seat across me as I turned to a clean page at my brown, compact notebook.

1

5 Newitz Annalee, How do we know what time really is?, 2010. http://io9.com/#!5646561/how-do-you-really-know-what-time-

it-is 6 Richmond Wendy, The

The Mechanical & Personal Clocks The mechanical clock refers to the man made creation of numeric measurements such as seconds, minutes and hours. The mechanical clock is visible almost everywhere in our daily life such as: in public spaces, in the virtual world and the physical. Although we have many personal clocks that are simultaneously running internally, the two most important are the circadian and the interval. The clock that calculates the circadian rhythms (known also as our biological clock) is the one that tells people when to wake up, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and all the fundamental human needs. The interval clock is the one that tells you how long a particular activity is going to take, for example it may calculate how long you will take to read this article.

4

Although we have many personal clocks all simultaneously running

When we are hungry, sleepy, sad, in pain etc., while the interval measures how long each activity will take.

As Newitz explained, the personal clock has some shared characteristics with the mechanical clock because they both measure time in regular beats. “Those beats are accumulated then stored in our memory as a time interval. However our interval clock can

Creative Process Loop (Design Culture,

2008) 18

“Neurologists have discovered that our brain is the least accurate

The circadian clock informs us of our fundamental needs such as:

RadioLab, “Time,” 29 May 2008.

Annalee, How do we know what time really is?, 2010. http://io9.com/#!5646561/how-do-you-really-know-what-timeit-is

I sat at my desk looking at the results over and over. I was wildly content. Dr. Sacks had been proven right! After this discovery I started reading about our personal clocks night and day. I wanted to comprehend how the personal and the mechanical clock influence the creative process.

internally, the circadian and the interval are the most important.

MPR RadioLab, “Time,” 29 May 2008.

4 Newitz

“Stoooop,” she abruptly said.

I looked at the time. Only 27 seconds had passed!

“I am sure it has been more than a minute already, right?” Eleni asked.

“Right,” I nodded with agreement. I wasn’t going to reveal the actual findings yet.

time measurement device we can use and also the most powerful.”

Adam Barbara, Time (Cambridge: Polity, 2004) 50

2

3 MPR

Eleni gave a push at her chair and directed her eyes towards the bookshelf on the other side of the room. Her eyes looked curious and exploratory.

Fig. 1. Maria-Nefeli Stavrinidi, Viewer As Protagonist, 2011, Mixed Media, 50” x 70”. Thesis Exhibition: “How Does Time Look?,” New York.

1

Fig. 2. Maria-Nefeli Stavrinidi, Mind map, 2011, Pen, 8.5� x 11.�

Fig. 2. Maria-Nefeli Stavrinidi, Mind map, 2011, Pen, 8.5� x 11.�