Why Design is a great video series by furniture company and all around design icon Herman Miller, which profiles some of it’s best designers:
At Herman Miller design is the language we use to ask questions and seek answers to the problems our customers face. The design process is a journey into the unknown—or as George Nelson once quipped, “I have never met a designer who was retained to keep things the same as they were.” Before we decide what we do and how we do it, we like to begin by asking the question “Why?” In Why Design, a new video series, we explore the world through the eyes of our designers, and share something of why we value their point of view.
Each Monday morning, from September 10th through October 29th, Herman Miller will launch a new designer profile at Why Design. The series includes:
9.10.12 – Yves Béhar – “Surfing Is Like Improvisational Jazz” 9.17.12 – Don Chadwick – “The Camera Becomes an Extension of Your Eyes” 9.24.12 – Ayse Birsel – “Your Life Is Your Most Important Project” 10.1.12 – Irving Harper – “Paper Is a Versatile Medium” 10.8.12 – Gianfranco Zaccai – “Great Food Should Be Like Great Design” 10.15.12 – Studio 7.5 – “Design by Its Nature Is Collaborative” 10.22.12 – Steve Frykholm – “It’s the Breaks That Allow My Mind to Refresh” 10.29.12 – Sam Hecht + Kim Colin – “We Need Contrast and Tension to Be Able to Create”
The Impossible Project launched the Impossible Instant Lab via Kickstarter, which is designed to transform any digital image via your iPhone into an instant photo that is exposed using only the light from the display, then processed and developed by chemicals. A photo that no longer needs an electronic device to be seen.
What are everyone’s thoughts on this? Is a photo just a photo, or…?
Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno goes beyond the traditional conceptions of place, time, gravity and our familiar notions of architecture. Saraceno is an artist and architect whos visions for cities floating in the air have led him to create a series of experimental structures such as balloons or inflatable modular platforms that can be inhabited and exploit natural energies. Any of his objects is an invitation to think about alternative knowledge, about emotions and the interaction with others. They invite you to participate, like Poetic Cosmos Of The Breath (pictured above), an experimental solar dome, which was part of The Arts Catalyst’s 2nd International Artists Airshow.
At dawn, crowds formed around a giant and colorful, circular foil, pinned to the ground at the edges with sand bags. Throughout the morning, the artist and his team gradually filled the foil with air and visitors could walk through this stunning colored wonderland.
Reverse Of Volume was an installation by artist Yatsuaki Onishi commissioned by Rice Gallery, which ran from April 13 – July 27 2012. The suspended fabricated mountainscape is formed from two materials; plastic sheeting and black colored hot-glue. Onishi shaped the floating sculpture within the gallery space by first draping the expansive plastic piece over stacked cardboard boxes, then removing the piled components following the white sheet having been attached to the ceiling by the quick-drying adhesive. This creative process or method is known to Yasuaki Onishi as ‘casting the invisible’ and aids in his artistic meditation on the reality of negative space.
My friend Cameron Ballensky has been in town visiting for a few days, so we’ve been out and about shooting loads of film. Me, mostly 35mm, him Polaroid. After seeing some of the unpredictable results yielded by certain films he uses, I was really turned on by the idea of exploring this format myself (also two of my favorite photographers, Reuben Wu and Neil Krug, have inspired this in me as well). Cameron mostly get’s all of his film through The Impossible Project, a company that now produces Polaroid film, and as I was exploring their site, I came across the beautiful work of Chloe Aftel, a Los Angeles based photographer and film director.
Browse through her beautiful body of work on Flickr.
Chloe is also part of The Impossible Project’s launch of a new instant film material for 8×10 cameras (image below). More info can be found here.
Blog and personal favorite visual artist Leif Podhajsky just updated his site recently, and as usual, mind blown!. Most notably: Dan Croll’s‘From Nowhere’ 7″ artwork (first and second images).
Japanese artist Yamamoto Motoi was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1966 and worked in a dockyard until he was 22, when he decided to focus on art full-time. Six years later, in 1994, his younger sister died from complications due to brain cancer and Yamamoto immediately began to memorialize her in his labyrinthine installations of poured salt. The patterns formed from the salt are actually quite literal in that Yamamoto first created a three-dimensional brain as an exploration of his sister’s condition and subsequently wondered what would happen if the patterns and channels of the brain were then flattened.
Although he creates basic guidelines and conditions for each piece, the works are almost entirely improvised with mistakes and imperfections often left intact during hundreds of hours of meticulous pouring. After each piece has been on view for several weeks, the public is invited to communally destroy each work and help package the salt into bags and jars, after which it is thrown back into the ocean.
The App is more than the just the printed catalogue, it offers a comprehensive overview of the work of the great Dutch master, not only in pictures, but in words as well. The viewer also has access to a filmed interview with Crouwel, a photographic record of the show itself, and a range of animations using the letterforms designed by Wim Crouwel during his long career.
This all-encompassing digital catalogue offers a unique insight into Wim Crouwel’s work and archive, as well as the successful exhibition co-curated by Unit Editions co-founder Tony Brook. It’s a chance to either discover or relive the exhibition.
Editors: Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy Compatibility: iPad2 & iPad3 Size: 364 MB Design: Spin Price: $5.99
