Big Bambú: You Can't, You Won't, You Don't Stop

Identical twins Doug and Mike Starn created "Big Bambú: You Can't, You Won't, You Don't Stop," a large installation on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It involved two artists, and twenty rock climbers to construct a structure made of 5,000 pieces of bamboo and 50 miles of nylon rope. The piece opened to the public on April 27, 2010, and its dismantling began last week. Over the course of the six months it was featured at the Met, the crew continued to add material to it, using lots of rope to secure it, allowing viewers to come walk on it and explore the walkways and maze of bamboo thicket as it was constantly being worked on. (Three proposals even happened in it, or on it, during its construction. For those of us who were unable to climb to the top of it, we can only imagine that the views of the city and of Central Park are glorious.)
Photo by Shot By Jake|Photography
Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times

This idea that form is "constantly active, but always the same" is something that the artists pursue in their work, using the materials and working within their constraints, to create an interactive experience for their viewers on a large scale. The connective tissue, or rope, is where the activity happens, because it is the inter-connectivity that binds the bamboo and forms a sturdy shape. Besides the physical constraints of the amount or supply of bamboo and rope, (not to mention the weather, which caused them to pause work for a week every time it rained). the process of making the work in a rooftop space presented its own challenges.
As they continued to build the artwork day by day, the Starn brothers and their team of rock climbers drank beer and listened to music like Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones (Pogrebin).
Speaking of constraints, “'It’s amazing that the Met had the nerve to take on an evolving structure like this,' Mike said. 'But we had to pull them along to create something about chaos. It’s a habitat. They wanted us out at 5 o’clock. But we’re not just here working. We’re a part of it. They didn’t like that — the beers. We finally got them to understand that this piece wouldn’t exist if it were too controlled. The vibe is important.'”
This communication between the artists and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an example of design as conversation, as well as working within the constraints that present themselves during a project.Over the course of its progression, people would come back to the rooftop more than once to check on the status of the growing and changing Big Bambu. This kind of interaction is a way for people to feel they are part of something larger than themselves that is growing and changing, and they are able to experience the process.

Photo by Shot By Jake|Photography
Photo by Shot By Jake|Photography
The Starn brothers have created an installation piece that speaks to the intersection between art and design, as it is presented in an art gallery space (albeit outdoors on the rooftop of the Metro Museum), yet the nature of this art piece shares characteristics of design as a process in which artists and designers work within constraints in a process that creates a realm of experience for its viewers. Like design, this art piece is about the process, not the final product.

Objective: Design

Gary Hustwit's documentary film, Objectified, addresses the meaning of objects and design in our everyday lives. He examines how form and content interact in the functionality of products we encounter daily. Through interviews with designers from all over the world, including representatives of SmartDesign, the Bouroullec brothers from Paris, Chris Bangle of BMW Design, and Tim Brown of IDEO, viewers are exposed to a glimpse of how design functions in society today. Each designer discusses what makes good design, and the relationship that humans have with the products we use.

Through the standardization of mass produced objects, design has the power to reach millions and millions of people, with designers making things that are geared towards improving people's lives without them even noticing. Design is the search for form, not only that of physical or tangible objects but also using form to shape people's choices. As discussed in the film, the nature of design is a strong focus on the new, about what is going to happen, not what has happened.

See a few of the designers featured in the film, including Jonathan Ive of Apple, Australian Marc Newson, and Alice Rawsthorn, with director Gary Hustwit.

Form follows function. These three words are key to the business of design. Let us consider objects like a spoon and a chair. As mentioned by Rawsthorn in the film, if a martian were to land on earth and encounter a spoon, it would observe its shape and form, and be able to figure out it's purpose. Likewise, the form of a chair suggests and communicates it's function. These are industrial design products that's invention preceded the digital age, and they maintain their meaning as examples of design's "form follows function" philosophy.

(Is that a spoon? The simplicity of the object's form in this illustration reminds me of Rene Magritte's The Treachery of Images, doesn't it? Just a little bit?)

Below, see a rough example of an early design of a wooden chair.

Also, see a lounge chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames in the 1950s, a modern example of the progression of the chair's form following function.

The viewer gains access to behind-the-scene moments in design firm offices, allowing us to see the prototypes, sketches and on-screen digital development of product design, such as a potato peeler. The new and improved potato peeler is a reaction to the dissatisfaction of the uncomfortable peeler that preceded OXO's Good Grips version.

Renowned German designer Dieter Rams lists attributes of what makes good design, including descriptors such as "environmentally friendly, long-lived, unobtrusive, consistent in every detail, and as little design as possible." These qualities speak to the goal of designers in creating objects that will achieve a new, aesthetically appealing design, while having the potential to be long-lived in its purpose and function.

This One or That One?

As designers, we engage in a decision-making process in which we work within our constraints, comparing and contrasting ideas, and sparking conversations amongst our viewers.

The evolution of Apple's logo.

A brand's logotype plays a very important role in creating a company's public image, a visual or a token typeface for which people associate with the name. Recently, major retailer The Gap decided to introduce a new logo, using the popular Helvetica font. This is the current typeface for brands American Apparel, Target, Staples, Microsoft, Panasonic and Crate&Barrel, just to name a few. We see Helvetica printed daily, with so many top-selling big time businesses using the sleek and powerful typeface, in sizes big and small. So what's the big deal with Helvetica?

Helvetica is attractive. It is easily readable, and has a clean aesthetic. The typeface has been so successful largely due to it's accessibility, and it's effectiveness in big headlines, display, and also body text. It looks just as good on small documents as it does on big airplanes. Since it's creation in 1957 by Swiss designer Max Miedinger, the sans-serif typeface has maintained it's strikingly modern and versatile appeal. So, why didn't bloggers and internet-surfers like it when the Gap transitioned from their original logo, below, to their updated, modernized version?

Americans who have long been exposed to The Gap's advertisements and big presence in consumer culture, have learned to link the iconic image on the left to its corporate identity. Shoppers see the logo in magazines and on shopping bags, and think of the company's affordable khaki pants, classic jeans and comfortable cable-knit sweaters. Most likely they also consider the token Gap sweatshirts that have that exact logo printed in big font on the front, as seen in the recently released movie The Social Network, worn by Mark Zuckerberg.


Over the years, it has become the classic design for the Gap, a trademark symbol for the company. The t-shirts and sweatshirts with their logo printed on them was a big part of their success during the 90's. Now, current creative director Patrick Robinson has expressed interest in "elevating the brand." So strategically, the first step in improving business would be to try to revitalize with a new logo. Which brings me to, the new logo. Featuring a blue box with gradient, to reference a technical graphic design term, the image just feels generic, as expressed and quickly replicated by a blogger who posted this video on YouTube.

Very soon after listening to the negative feedback from their customers, The Gap decided to go back to their original iconic logo. This move is an example of how powerful design is in society, meaning it has the capacity to quickly spark an online media frenzy, creating buzz all over the internet and prompting conversation and dialogue amongst people everywhere. By looking at two visual images that feature different typefaces and layouts but send the same advertising message using the same text, the viewer compares and contrasts the old and the new, considering the value or significance of the brand, and feels that the modern image is simply not as effective as the iconic one that we know and love.

Let us consider American Airlines, a company that, according to Gary Hustwit's documentary film Helvetica (promo ad pictured above), has never changed their logo, which happens to be in the typeface Helvetica. After seeing the onslaught of negative reactions to the Gap's effort to modernize their branding image, my guess is, people wouldn't be happy if American Airlines did the same thing. Unless it looked really good.

How Soon is Now?

Vanity Fair is a Conde Nast publication, a monthly magazine that features relevant articles and photo spreads on art and fashion, pop culture, entertainment and current political discussion. This month's November cover girl is Marilyn Monroe, who has been featured on the cover two times since 2008. This year, Vanity Fair dedicated covers to Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe. Before that, Jackie Kennedy was on the cover solo in October 2009, and with Jack Kennedy in November 2007. They must be top-selling issues, or else it is likely that Editor Graydon Carter would not continue to produce covers with iconic women of the past.

November 2010

October 2008
With a good amount of covers that feature big names of the past, and pay tribute to them by rehashing stories in articles that do not offer new information, what can we gather about design as conversation? Is design a way to link figures from the past to today, as a sort of inspirational source for current designers? Or is this type of nostalgia unproductive, in that it is not very progressive or forward thinking for readers to be exposed to two Marilyn Monroe covers in two years? Design is influenced by the past, of course, but at what point do readers decide they want to focus on the now and look for reports on the present.

Liz Taylor, July 2010

Jackie Kennedy, October 2009
For a magazine like Vanity Fair, it would seem a priority to come up with covers and articles that are compelling enough to sell, simultaneously stirring the pot that is a cultural conversation amongst its readers. By dedicating six covers to figures of the past within two years (Taylor is not dead yet but has not exactly been a topic of current news for a couple decades), as pictured in this post, are we experiencing productive nostalgia? Or are we dwelling and rehashing things that have been talked about already? It seems that some buyers are uninterested in modern celebrities, and are more likely to buy ones with the familiar faces of their own youth (it could be that baby boomers like to revisit the golden icons closer to their generation). After considering VF covers from the last few years (three covers prior to Monroe's 2010 cover feature Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie), the topic of design as conversation reveals itself more prominently. Design is a way in which magazines like Vanity Fair can redirect its viewers to consider moments of the past, and how that fits into moving forward in today's society. For a relevant magazine to open up the public dialogue by bringing ideas from the past into the present sphere of society, questions arise about constraints in design and what it means to draw from past influences.

November 2007

June 2008

Wild West

Justine Kurland is a fine arts photographer who came to UC Davis on Thursday, October 14th to participate in the Art Studio Lecture Series. Her work addresses America's cultural idea of moving west, inspired by the tradition of depicting nineteenth century idealistic frontier history. As a traveler who spends most of the year in the car on the road, she seeks out fellow wanderers and develops a body of work that is tied to projecting ideas of freedom, and Thoreau's thoughts on self-sufficiency. The landscape is an important player in each photo's narrative that projects a sense of Utopian fantasy.
During her late twenties, she embarked on a project in which she staged photo shoots of runaway girls, paralleling her own struggles with watching her girlhood fade away. As is true with all designers and artists, we work within our constraints, and for Kurland, her sphere really broadened once she got her drivers license. Once she got a car, however, more constraints presented themselves because it became harder to pick up girls and ask them to get in her car.



The next series of photos expand to a more political sphere as she traveled to secular communities across the country, including ones in Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, California, and she expanded on her ideas of portraying a fantasy of communal living. These photos speak to her desire to reach out to other wanderers in different parts of the country. Then, she drew on her inspiration from renaissance fairs she had attended in her childhood, and staged a series of photos that represented war soldiers as knights, using color to enhance the sense of fantasy. During her lecture, Kurland explains that she reserves black and white for documentary photographs.
Once she had a baby in 2004, she traveled west with him and used photography as a way to cope with the hardships of motherhood. She sought out fellow mamas who were willing to be photographed naked with their baby. As her son Casper grew older, he developed a strong passion for trains, inspiring Kurland's next series of train photos, which fits perfectly with her interest in the American west and its cultural identity. The railroad shaped America, (trains standardized clocks), and her pictures seek to capture the way trains are like a scar across the landscape, which is different from typical train photography because she doesn't frame the photos to show the front.



Astride Mama Burro, Now Dead, 2007

Of Woman Born

After considering the work Kurland has created, including the runaway girls, the communal living situations, the naked mothers and babies, and the trains, we see her subjective portrayal of the American iconography of the West. She uses personal issues such as her descent from girlhood, to her journey into motherhood, to make pictures that work with the physical constraints at hand, as she faces myriad traveling challenges that come with raising a young child on the road and making her artwork.


Casper on the Back Porch, 2008

Meet Graphene

Scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their innovative work concerning Graphene, a one atom thick carbon material that is very thin, yet the strongest in the world. This discovery has very much potential for future breakthroughs and inventions in technology. It all started with some experimentation involving Scotch tape.

The two Russian scientists were working with tape and graphite (pencil lead), and after thinning and manipulating the two-dimensional sheet of Carbon (see Periodic Table of Elements below), they created what is now known as Graphene. Working with the knowledge they had, two men used their skills to come up with something entirely new, which will then serve as a starting point, or origin, for many more future developments. This transparent material is the most thin in the world, and it is flexible yet extremely strong, promising properties that will prove Graphene to be an incredibly powerful tool in the progression of design.

This accomplishment marks a big inspiring moment in the expansive future of products and electronics. Two men's proud scientific discovery of a unique material that is the only one of its kind, will certainly be the foundation of many more men's creations. While I am not a scientist, I have a strong feeling we will be seeing this material in years to come.
Let the design process begin. Graphene, I look forward to working with you.

Small, Medium, or Large?

Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist whose work is not only aesthetically grand and intriguing, but is rich with social and cultural commentary concerning the way we experience art in society. That being said, his work suggests no personal emotional expression, but rather, exemplifies "art from without." He currently lives and works in New York, crafting large quantities of small-scale hand-made collectible objects that are slightly unique from each other. Individual Works is a series of installations that point to the repetitiveness and sameness of mass-production, suggesting commentary concerning consumption and the way people find meaning in objects in American culture, subsequently redirecting viewer’s expectations of artworks featured in exhibition spaces.

Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, 1987/88. Enamel on cast Hydrocal. 2" diameter, lengths variable, each unique.

By using a mechanical process and shaping each object with hand-cast plaster, McCollum ensures that there will be no object that is identical to another, but they will look the same when grouped together. This commitment to creating exclusivity is quite the feat, considering he will include circa 10,000 objects in a single installation. The ordinary objects he references range from bottle caps, salt shakers, spoons, earrings, candy molds and pencil sharpeners, items that are encountered and used in daily life. He finds these items anywhere and everywhere – both in public venues like supermarkets, and in private households. This project transcends the meaning of the symbolic objects and addresses psychological notions of how people make sense of big numbers.

The viewer's perception of large quantities of objects is disturbed, as they are challenged to make distinctions between individual objects and reject the assumption that they are all the same just because they are grouped together in such a way. In this way, McCollum disrupts his audience's expectations for the presentation of objects, subsequently provoking questions that concern society on a larger scale rather than his own emotional or personal struggles. This work communicates the artist's search for inspiration from "without" himself, and not from "within," as he communicates ideas and poses questions about individuality in a world of masses.

Stone Soup (A.K.A. Play Day)

The idea of bringing bits and pieces of mundane objects together and assembling them in different arrangements is one that has great potential to yield an aesthetically pleasing and rewarding collaborative project. On Tuesday, October 5th, our design class extended our learning experience outdoors as we left the lecture hall and ventured outdoors to create an art piece in a public space on campus.
This notion of collectively making something out of not much, is inspired by Stone Soup, a children's folk tale written and illustrated by Marcia Brown in 1975, in which local villagers all pitch in to make a hearty soup for everyone by filling a cauldron with stones and an assortment of vegetables. With this idea in mind, each student brought a combination of recycled materials and art supplies to throw into the "pot," a challenge in which we worked together to create something delicious out of nothing, even though the final product was a visual treat and not an edible one.

As our group sat in a circle in the grass, we revealed our items and brainstormed about the myriad possibilities and options we had to work with, considering the size, colors and shapes of what we had in front of us. We began the process by wrapping a long piece of butcher paper around a lamppost, and we continued to "stir the pot" by adding foil, wooden sticks, useless bike tubes and plastic. By weaving the materials around the pole and feeding off each other's creative juices, the overall piece assumed a tree-like representation, with crinkled paper bags and glow sticks as the "branches," and strips of denim fabric and tissue paper dangling from them, resembling leaves. We topped it all off by shaping a cardboard box around the base of the post, serving as the "trunk." Thus, with the use of the lamppost as our concrete structure for creation, we spontaneously made a site-specific installation.

Such artistic improvisation stresses the value of sharing ideas in an open environment, allowing team work to result in eye candy for lucky pedestrians strolling through campus from around 11:00 - 11:50 A.M. In conclusion, I challenge anyone who says that "play day" isn't the best source of inspiration for brainstorming and design.
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Moving Forward with Proenza Schouler

Designers Lazaro Hernandez and and Jack McCollough presented a sophisticated and elegant Spring 2011 collection for Proenza Schouler at the recent New York Fashion Week. Sleek dresses hung below the knees, creating a soft and attractive silhouette. The use of color helped to create appealing shapes, with warm salmon, light peach and black as palette staples, but also jazzed up with acid pink and yellow neon tones. Their ideas artfully combine longer hemlines that point to fifties inspired designs, as well as Chanel-inspired tweed numbers, while enhancing the charming silhouettes by introducing sheer and lace fabrics to add rich texture, not to mention a dose of edge, featuring colorful tye-die moments in silk dresses. All of these elements of shape, color and form are components that gracefully come together to reveal a complete collection of dress, resulting in a powerful runway presentation and culminating in an impressive body of work that illustrates the intersection between art and design.

So, where does this all come from? It all starts with an idea, formed into a fully fleshed out concept to be executed into a visual and physical manifestation. Let us consider Kostas Terzidis' Etymology of Design: Pre-Socratic Perspective, as he explains "the notion of an origin is important when discussing the process of design. Because of its investigative nature, design always is associated with a starting point or a pivot out of which style, fashion, or mannerisms result."
Case in point. In an effort to keep progressing and growing, designers Hernandez and McCollough introduced to their audience a new collection which is drastically different from their last, but is definitely influenced by moments in the past. By taking a step in another direction with this collection, they leave behind last year's tight, short, body conscious garments, and forge on with more polished and ladylike looks. This transition points to the reality of design in general, which draws on previous work in order to move forward, in the quest to step "into the future, as a search for new entities, processes, and forms," (Terzidis).
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Ishigami's columns

“I wanted to make a space with very ambiguous borderlines, which has a fluctuation between local spaces and the overall space, rather than a universal space like that of Mies” says Ishigami. “This allows a new flexibility to emerge, revealing reality rather than shaping it.”

Junya Ishigami’s work at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan, just west of Tokyo, is an example of the way that a man-made, designed physical space will correspond and even help to dictate dynamics between people in a social environment.

The on-campus building is a place for students in the fields of design and engineering to work together making objects, sharing ideas and collaborating on projects. The university's intention for the students' experience is taken into account by the young Japanese architect, who presents tall thin white columns that are spread out within the glass windows that line the perimeter and establish the boundary walls of the building. The transparency of the clear exterior walls allow the space to blend in with its exterior environment. Inside the structure, furniture such as desks and chairs are arranged in a way that encourages a community vibe, rather than cubicles or walls that would separate and forge barriers around the work spaces. This lack of privacy within an open space encourages a different, more interactive social behavior than if the physical design were geared towards independence and isolation.

Contrast this reality with an institution like a library, for example. At the library at this university in Japan, my guess is that there are more nooks and crannies for people to go hide in with their books and computers; walls and blocks sharply distinguish study areas and individual desks. This type of design communicates to people, visitors and students alike, that the social environment is more conducive to quiet thinkers who came to study in their own personal space.

These physical signs are things to look out for as we navigate through our daily lives. When we enter a new space, we search and scan for text and words, icons, images, and architecture, all of which were created by designers and serve as signifiers or clues, that help us to negotiate our way through the world. All the while we look for aesthetically attractive visual communication, as displayed by Ishigami, whose work displays a productive and powerful process that is design, in which we communicate using visual information.
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