(TrendHunter.com) The conceptual ‘TAKEME’ trike has been designed as a transportation for consumers who require a bit of assistance when going out for a walk or heading to the store. The tricycle boasts a…
If you walked into your office tomorrow and found that all the logos had been removed, would you still be able to see your brand there? What if all your products were taken off the shelves. Would customers still know the store was yours? Is your brand a tangible presence in your company’s day-to-day culture?…
Halloween Greeting For Dairy Queen Egypt Using Their Famous Cone.
The pile of books to review at Maison WMMNA gets more intimidating with each passage of the postman but i’m going to face them one at a time. The exciting ones at least. Here’s a publication i enjoyed on my way latest long train trip:
Studio Time: Future Thinking in Art and Design, edited by Jan Boelen, Ils Huygens and Heini Lehtinen.
On amazon UK.
Publisher Black Dog Press writes: The ability to use imagination to envision future needs is crucial in art, design and architecture. Future thinking and making require the capacity to create narratives for near and far futures and to compose proposals to meet the imagined needs of the future. Future-oriented creative practices also require future literacy—understanding the temporal continuum in which future-oriented work is created and being aware of the underlying incentives, motivations and structures of works, commissioned or self-initiated. Similarly, viewing or consuming speculative creative works requires some level of understanding of the context of the works.
Studio Time: Future Thinking in Art and Design approaches these questions with essays from international design and art thinkers, a number of shorter essays and a selection of art, design and architecture projects. The book consists of three parts that each focus on future fictions in art and design from different perspectives: future fictions and imagination in creative practices, future literacy and future ethics. Each part consists of two essays, two reflective contributions from artists and designers and selected projects from practitioners around the world.
Michael Burton, Astronomical Bodies, 2010. Photo: Theo Cook
Because future world-building shouldn’t be left in the hands of corporations, politicians and “trends forecasters”, the Studio Time book investigates the meaningful roles that art and design can play in formulating alternative visions of the future but also (and more importantly) in providing a space for free questioning, debates and encounters. I particularly liked that some of the contributors of the book went even further and looked at the mistakes artists and designers have made in the past (and continue doing) when grappling with their visions for future societies.
Although each of them was invited to write about (roughly) the same topic, the 30 thinkers and makers whose work is featured in the book adopted perspectives different enough to keep the reader absorbed, puzzled and stimulated. From page 1 to page 291.
The essays in the book i found most engaging were the following:
Artist and scientist Angelo Vermeulen teamed up with researcher Caroline Nevejan and Professor Frances Brazier to point out the need for a more inclusive future-thinking that would actively cultivate diversity.
Writer and artist James Bridle wrote about the difficulty for artists of balancing the seductive and the disturbing in dystopian narratives, lest the most aesthetic aspects of these works overshadow the dark sides and eventually seep into the mainstream.
Marina Otero Verzier, an architect, curator and the Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, made very interesting comments about the future in defense departments and asked whether designers could/should participate to military thinking or altogether reject the association with the military in the name of ethics.
Curator and theorist Louise Schouwenberg commented on the current crisis of the criteria when it comes to distinguishing between the valuable and the valueless in both art and design.
Science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling takes Robinson Crusoe as an entry point to discuss “abject fiction design,” a universe of tragedy, suffering, misery and other inconveniences that design fiction can’t design away but should still grapple with.
In his essay, architect and writer Theo Deutinger charts the ownership of the future. First religions had a monopoly on the future. Later on, people realized that hard facts were more interesting and science grabbed the keys to the future. More recently, the ownership was passed on to big data or rather on to algorithms and their ability to spot patterns in a sea of information. Today, feelings appear to have gained the upper hand.
Curator, writer and researcher Nicola Triscott wrote about co-inquiry, a constantly evolving model that involves curators, artists, scientists and other experts. This interdisciplinary approach to knowledge-production provides space for a fruitful discussion between different groups of people with broadly different viewpoints.
??Dunne & Raby, Not Here, Not Now, 2014. Exhibition opening at Z33. Photo: Kristof Vrancken
Designers and design thinkers Dunne & Raby explained why they believe that it is important design for the rich spectrum located between the real and the unreal.
Nik Baerten, founder of the design and foresight studio Panopticon, looked at our collective imagination deficit when it comes to picturing ourselves within the post-capitalist post-fossil fuel society we so eagerly desire.
The book is a closing chapter of Studio Future, one of the research studios developed by Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, to explore various aspects of future-oriented art and design practices.
A big bravo to Joris Kritis and Bernardo Rodrigues for their graphic design work. It’s elegant, calming and efficient.
The pile of books to review at Maison WMMNA gets more intimidating with each passage of the postman but i’m going to face them one at a time. The exciting ones at least. Here’s a publication i enjoyed on my way latest long train trip:
Studio Time: Future Thinking in Art and Design, edited by Jan Boelen, Ils Huygens and Heini Lehtinen.
On amazon UK.
Publisher Black Dog Press writes: The ability to use imagination to envision future needs is crucial in art, design and architecture. Future thinking and making require the capacity to create narratives for near and far futures and to compose proposals to meet the imagined needs of the future. Future-oriented creative practices also require future literacy—understanding the temporal continuum in which future-oriented work is created and being aware of the underlying incentives, motivations and structures of works, commissioned or self-initiated. Similarly, viewing or consuming speculative creative works requires some level of understanding of the context of the works.
Studio Time: Future Thinking in Art and Design approaches these questions with essays from international design and art thinkers, a number of shorter essays and a selection of art, design and architecture projects. The book consists of three parts that each focus on future fictions in art and design from different perspectives: future fictions and imagination in creative practices, future literacy and future ethics. Each part consists of two essays, two reflective contributions from artists and designers and selected projects from practitioners around the world.
Michael Burton, Astronomical Bodies, 2010. Photo: Theo Cook
Because future world-building shouldn’t be left in the hands of corporations, politicians and “trends forecasters”, the Studio Time book investigates the meaningful roles that art and design can play in formulating alternative visions of the future but also (and more importantly) in providing a space for free questioning, debates and encounters. I particularly liked that some of the contributors of the book went even further and looked at the mistakes artists and designers have made in the past (and continue doing) when grappling with their visions for future societies.
Although each of them was invited to write about (roughly) the same topic, the 30 thinkers and makers whose work is featured in the book adopted perspectives different enough to keep the reader absorbed, puzzled and stimulated. From page 1 to page 291.
The essays in the book i found most engaging were the following:
Artist and scientist Angelo Vermeulen teamed up with researcher Caroline Nevejan and Professor Frances Brazier to point out the need for a more inclusive future-thinking that would actively cultivate diversity.
Writer and artist James Bridle wrote about the difficulty for artists of balancing the seductive and the disturbing in dystopian narratives, lest the most aesthetic aspects of these works overshadow the dark sides and eventually seep into the mainstream.
Marina Otero Verzier, an architect, curator and the Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, made very interesting comments about the future in defense departments and asked whether designers could/should participate to military thinking or altogether reject the association with the military in the name of ethics.
Curator and theorist Louise Schouwenberg commented on the current crisis of the criteria when it comes to distinguishing between the valuable and the valueless in both art and design.
Science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling takes Robinson Crusoe as an entry point to discuss “abject fiction design,” a universe of tragedy, suffering, misery and other inconveniences that design fiction can’t design away but should still grapple with.
In his essay, architect and writer Theo Deutinger charts the ownership of the future. First religions had a monopoly on the future. Later on, people realized that hard facts were more interesting and science grabbed the keys to the future. More recently, the ownership was passed on to big data or rather on to algorithms and their ability to spot patterns in a sea of information. Today, feelings appear to have gained the upper hand.
Curator, writer and researcher Nicola Triscott wrote about co-inquiry, a constantly evolving model that involves curators, artists, scientists and other experts. This interdisciplinary approach to knowledge-production provides space for a fruitful discussion between different groups of people with broadly different viewpoints.
??Dunne & Raby, Not Here, Not Now, 2014. Exhibition opening at Z33. Photo: Kristof Vrancken
Designers and design thinkers Dunne & Raby explained why they believe that it is important design for the rich spectrum located between the real and the unreal.
Nik Baerten, founder of the design and foresight studio Panopticon, looked at our collective imagination deficit when it comes to picturing ourselves within the post-capitalist post-fossil fuel society we so eagerly desire.
The book is a closing chapter of Studio Future, one of the research studios developed by Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, to explore various aspects of future-oriented art and design practices.
A big bravo to Joris Kritis and Bernardo Rodrigues for their graphic design work. It’s elegant, calming and efficient.
Facebook provided some details about how it has been using artificial intelligence and machine learning in its efforts to prevent child exploitation and keep children safe on its platform. Global head of safety Antigone Davis wrote in a Newsroom post that the social network is using AI, machine learning and other technology to “proactively detect…
Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: 45 years ago, Americans flocked to theaters to see The Exorcist. Many were sorry they did.
Activity will run across TV, digital display and social.
Activity will run across TV, digital display and social.
“There are some unknowns,” says Mike Hudnall, global head of WPP’s Health Practice.
“There are some unknowns,” says Mike Hudnall, global head of WPP’s Health Practice.
Engine is planning to drop the WCRS brand after 39 years to move to an integrated business model. Co-founder Peter Scott looks back at the history of Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.
Engine is planning to drop the WCRS brand after 39 years to move to an integrated business model. Co-founder Peter Scott looks back at the history of Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.
The third project i discovered at A School of School, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial (after Halletmek. The Turkish art of speeding up design processes and Genetically Modified Generation) is not a project but a cabinet of curiosities curated by SulSolSal, a collaboration between Brazilian architect Guido Giglio and South-African designer Hannes Bernard.
Demystification Committee, The Offshore Spring/Summer 2018, 2018
Exhibition view of Staying Alive, part of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz
Global warming, widespread precarity and the threat of another economic crisis, the rise of far right discourses across Europe and the US, the mass extinction of natural species, (cyber)terrorism, political unrest, etc. The world seems to be facing a constant stream of menaces and crisis that only seem to grow with each passing day. Governments don’t seem too concerned about it, they are too busy signing climate agreements they won’t respect and courting votes with short-time measures that can only fool the naive and the self-centered. As for industries, they pursue their strategies of turbo-greed as if there was no tomorrow. And maybe indeed there won’t be any tomorrow.
SulSolSal’s Staying Alive is part a “wunderkammer” and part a survival guide. The artists, designers, architects and other resourceful citizens whose thoughts and works the SulSolSal duo has collected look bravely at some of the crisis we are facing today and attempt to help us prepare for a future of adversity and scarcity.
I wish SulSolSal‘s website was up and running and that they hadn’t titled their contribution Staying Alive because i’ve spent the whole weekend pretending i’m Robin Gibb. Other than that, i can’t fault the work of these guys. The research they did for the Istanbul Design Biennial was smart and inspiring.
Here’s my favourite projects in their selection of interesting and often tongue-in-cheek attempts to respond to the ongoing climate of impending doom:
Theo Deutinger, Europe in Africa, 2014
Theo Deutinger, Europe in Africa, 2014
Europe in Africa (EIA) is a proposal for a new city – state on an artificial island to be created right between the Exclusive Economic Zone of Tunisia and Italy. The aim of EIA is to provide a secure place for people that have to flee their country and want to reach Europe.
The purpose-built island would offer a football stadium, a business park, a mosque and a church, a business park, a police station, schools and spaces to live and grow crops.
After living and working 5 years in EIA its inhabitants would be granted with a truly European passport and could leave and legally reside in any European country; if wanted. The designer believes that Brexit exiles would be welcome on the island as well.
SkyLift V0.3 (current build) Photo ©Adam Harvey. Used in Adam Harvey and Anastasia Kubrak, Data Pools, 2018
The pools and mansions of Silicon Valley are financed by the mechanisms of economic surveillance and ownership of your personal data. Yet the geographic locations of these luxurious residences are often removed from open source databases. Data Pools uses SkyLift, an experimental wifi geolocation spoofing device that relocates your smartphone to these hidden locations of interest. The work explores the relationship between data collection, consent and the technologies behind wifi geolocation positioning.
With this project, Adam Harvey and Anastasia Kubrak allows you to cheat these technologies of control and pretend you’re having a drink by the private pools of big tech billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page.
Human Rights Foundation, Flash Drives for Freedom, 2005
The Human Rights Foundation is using USB sticks to counter Kim Jong-un’s propaganda machine and influence people living in North Korea.
A few years ago, a group of defectors began smuggling USB drives with educative and informative contents from the outside world. The campaign invites people all over the world to support their “subversive” effort and donate their unused drives. The USBs will then be filled with e-books, films, an offline Korean Wikipedia and other content proven to inspire North Koreans to disbelieve Kim Jong-Un’s propaganda and take a stand. The drives are then smuggled into the country.
Meeus van Dis, Super Green (Solar powered tanning bed), 2016. Photo credits: Sabrina Gaudio
Meeus van Dis, Super Green (The diesel fuel powered electric car), 2016. Photo credits: Sabrina Gaudio
Steven de Peven, Meeus van Dis and Bart Eysink Smeets used absurdist humour to question the “technofix”, this tendency we have to look at technology and design as providers of the ultimate solution to climate change and other man-made problems.
Their Super Green series features the GreenBrown solarium powered by solar energy to give you an eco-tan, an electric car powered by a diesel generator and an electric fan that uses wind energy.
Joao Roxo, The Hand that Feeds you, 2017. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz
The Hands That Feed You: Global Dependency and Design for the Third Space maps the North-South divide and the dynamics of its inter-dependency systems, in particular its flows of waste and surplus. The work also exposes a “Third Space” made of self-reliance and resourcefulness and informal economies. An example of this inventiveness is the furniture that people in the South craft using the excess of unwanted clothing sent as ‘charity’ from the North. People stuff big bags with the clothes and use them as poufs for example.
Janna Ullrich, Quantified (image)
’Quantified’ is a cooperative board game, set in a world in which everyone’s behavior is constantly surveilled and analyzed. A player’s behavior results in a social credit score leaving traces of data behind for governments and corporations to analyse and determining their position on the social ladder. Players start from different positions on the social ladder, as refugee, unemployed or employed, with unequal access to human rights. The goal of the game is to make all rights accessible to all players and to fight the implementation of totalitarian policies.
By gamifying the complex challenges of migration, participants experience how legal innocent activities can make them lose their rights and how they can collectively fight for laws that protect their rights.
Tattfoo Studio, New Earth Personal Survival Kit, 2017. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz
Tattfoo Studio, New Earth Personal Survival Kit, 2017
New Earth Personal Survival Kit, aka NEPSK, is a series of small survival kits that form part of an educational program teaching an ethos of self-reliance and living closer to the Earth. Although the work intends to prepare us for any type of challenging situation we might encounter in the future, it features artifacts inspired by folk craft and everyday objects. The artist believes that equipping yourself for the future also involves a great deal of looking back at past practices and strategies.
Demystification Committee, Offshore Spring/Summer 2018, exhibition view at the Istanbul Design Biennial. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz
Demystification Committee, exhibition view at the Istanbul Design Biennial. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz
The Offshore Investigation Vehicle, by Demystification Committee, is an art and research project that takes the shape of an international corporate structure set up to model and explore offshore finance. Secretive movement of money is a crucial component of the offshore world. In order to benefit from this, the structure has launched a collection of beachwear: Offshore Spring/Summer 2018. In this leisure collection, the stakeholders and strategies of the dark infrastructure is portrayed as being just as unseen as brightly coloured, pop-fashion diagrams.
Demystification Committee, Offshore Economist, 2018
The Offshore Economist, a digital publication focusing on the cracks inherent to the offshoring practices of corporate finance.
Mary Ponomareva, Luxury Survival Fair, 2017
Our anxieties and uncertainties about future disasters shouldn’t stifle the economy. In fact, ‘The end of the world’ is a business opportunity like any other, with high-end private security systems, state-of-the-art predator drones, luxurious survival condos and jewel-encrusted gas masks, etc.
By speculating on the objects and services that will make post-apocalyptic life more glamourous, Mary Ponomareva’s Luxury Survival Fair questions the role that aesthetics plays in the construction of ideology.
A School of School, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial is curated by Jan Boelen and organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). The exhibitions remain open at various locations in Istanbul until 4 November 2018.
Also part of the biennial: Halletmek. The Turkish art of speeding up design processes and Genetically Modified Generation (Designer Babies).
CNN said it evacuated its New York City bureau Wednesday morning, citing a report of a suspicious device. The cable network’s anchors, including Jim Sciutto, delivered their reports from the street outside Time Warner Center in Manhattan (see the clip embedded in the tweet above).
The evacuation follows earlier news of potential explosive devices addressed to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, which were detected and intercepted by the U.S. Secret Service. A criminal investigation into the incidents is in progress.
“The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,” the Secret Service said in an emailed statement Wednesday in regard to the Obama and Clinton interceptions. “The protectees did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them.”
More than 600,000 people in the U.S. took advantage of Snapchat’s deep integration with TurboVote in support of National Voter Registration Day. The messaging application teamed up with the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization to send all U.S. users 18 and over a custom text and video message containing a link to this page, powered by TurboVote,…
There’s a reason why the majority of advertisers that use addressable television in their media plans repeat the strategy for future campaigns: It works.
The promise of addressable TVdelivering relevant ads to individual householdshas been here for a while. The biggest challenge the marketplace faces now is identifying what’s truly possible with the medium. Like the early days of digital, there is a lot of confusion.
Many discuss addressable without a full understanding of the opportunities this new medium brings. My advice to marketers: Don’t let this opportunity pass you by because you don’t understand the full range of possibilities that addressable presents. Educate yourself on this real opportunity. The future of TV is already here.
Apple CEO Tim Cook lashed into companies such as Facebook and Google that collect user data, equating their services to “surveillance,” as he touted the importance of privacy and legislation to protect it.
The comments, given at an EU privacy conference in Brussels on Wednesday, come months after the bloc implemented strict new data protection rules and as Apple begins to mend a difficult relationship with the EU following a clash over nearly $15 billion in allegedly unpaid taxes.
In some of his harshest rebukes of his competitors yet, Cook sought to distinguish the iPhone maker from Silicon Valley competitors, like Alphabet Google and Facebook, both under scrutiny for recent user data breaches.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
