The closest thing we have to "fact" is "common opinion." Everything is an opinion. The way you dress is an expression of your opinion. Your religious beliefs are your opinion. The music you turn up loud is your opinion. For most people it's easier to just agree.
For me the hardest thing is to 'just' agree and that is what sparks creativity, the feeling that something can be better, the feeling that something's missing, the feeling that something's needed.
- Kanye West
03 March 2010
Events Odyssey
Promotional material for an events company.
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
24 February 2010
City Short: Rotterdam
Soon to be my new home! (Well sort of, I'll be in The Hague first) I like the words unplanned, organic, spontaneous and unexpected when describing a city.
Click to watch video: City Short: Rotterdam
Travel Offbeat and fiercely committed to the new, Rotterdam is home to a number of respected architects and designers. Here, designers Joep and Jeroen Verhoeven and Judith de Graauw from Demakersvan, architect Reinier de Graaf of OMA and architect Ben van Berkel of UNstudio talk about the city's redevelopment, its diversity and how it inspires their work.
23 February 2010
Budapest Tramlines
Okay I finally made something to submit to CSS Zen Garden. That place has been around forever and I've always wanted to do something. It's my little tribute to my time in Budapest.
20 February 2010
Right should always feel this Wrong.
To all the awesome, daring, crazy people I've known through romping around in this crazy jungle of sex, drugs, rock n' roll (or electronic music, or Wagner, or whatever). I can safely say I do not know anyone who has lived their lives like my parents did. In the wake of failed marriages, used hearts, alternative sexual arrangements, post-traumatic stress disorder, social humiliation, body modifications, synthetic mental enhancement, voluntarily physical torture, long term sleep deprivation, streaking naked and other such self-deprecating acts. Despite it all, or perhaps, because of it all, you give me a reason to believe that the life of insanity is a life that is infinitely rewarding.
The following is an extract from a Paul Arden interview.
Hermann Vaske
Why is it WRONG to be right?
Paul Arden
Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It's also out of date.
EXPERIENCE IS THE OPPOSITE OF BEING CREATIVE.
And if you can prove you're right, you're set in concrete. You cannot move, with the times or with other people.
Being right is also boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a very valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly. Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible and people who are right would hate to be thought fallible.
So it's wrong to be right. Because people who are right are rooted in the past; rigid-minded; dull and smug. There's no talking to them. (nonononononononononononon
Hermann Vaske
And why is it right to be WRONG?
Paul Arden
Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. The future opens up. Ideas are allowed back in. You are no longer trying to be infallible. Safety is out, excitement in.
You are in the unknown.
You're pushing the frontiers out, extending the imagination into places it's never been. There's no way of knowing what can happen, but there's more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.
No one can be be blamed if it doesn't work. Blame belongs to moral situations and being wrong steps outside morality. Also, blame is an attempt to back out of responsibility and what else is responsibility but the ability to respond? People respond much faster to temptation and excitement and other aspects of wrongness, than they do to people being right.
Of course, being wrong is a risk. Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up by having more.
Paul Arden was creative director of Saatchi and Saatchi in their most creative years in the eighties.
The following is an extract from a Paul Arden interview.
Hermann Vaske
Why is it WRONG to be right?
Paul Arden
Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It's also out of date.
It's the opposite of originality.
Experience is built from solutions to old situations and problems.EXPERIENCE IS THE OPPOSITE OF BEING CREATIVE.
And if you can prove you're right, you're set in concrete. You cannot move, with the times or with other people.
Being right is also boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a very valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly. Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible and people who are right would hate to be thought fallible.
So it's wrong to be right. Because people who are right are rooted in the past; rigid-minded; dull and smug. There's no talking to them. (nonononononononononononon
Hermann Vaske
And why is it right to be WRONG?
Paul Arden
Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. The future opens up. Ideas are allowed back in. You are no longer trying to be infallible. Safety is out, excitement in.
You are in the unknown.
You're pushing the frontiers out, extending the imagination into places it's never been. There's no way of knowing what can happen, but there's more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.
No one can be be blamed if it doesn't work. Blame belongs to moral situations and being wrong steps outside morality. Also, blame is an attempt to back out of responsibility and what else is responsibility but the ability to respond? People respond much faster to temptation and excitement and other aspects of wrongness, than they do to people being right.
Of course, being wrong is a risk. Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up by having more.
Being wrong isn't in the future, or in the past.Being wrong isn't anywhere but being here. NOW.
Paul Arden was creative director of Saatchi and Saatchi in their most creative years in the eighties.
17 February 2010
Revenge Is... Deconstructionist Architecture.
Whatever that was supposed to mean. No one really knows what "deconstructionist" anything is, I think that it cannot be understood in any concrete terms is an inherent value in the word itself. It's quite alright when they're just words that mean nothing, but another problem altogether when they manifest themselves in three dimensions.
I personally have no problems with outrageous modern architecture, I quite love them in fact. It makes the urban landscape much more exciting. For sure, there are plenty of failed experiments, but to get from one successful peak or design to another requires a few failures. Unsuccessful variations on a theme that worked well. It's alright as long as architectural frivolity happens primarily in the developed world. Post-modern design and all it's non-functionality is eye-candy or intellectual wank, luxuries for the rich.
The Telegraph has an article on this: "Architecture should please the public, not spite them". It starts of as a rant against Daniel Libeskin's extension to the Dresden Military History Museum.
I actually like spaces like that in places like museums. People that hang around in modern museums usually have some time to kill, and contemporary art work doesn't always want to display itself on a wall perpendicular to the ground. Also, crazy architecture gives room for elements of surprise and surreality when you're in a space. The transition of walking from a traditionally built environment to a modern one can also be novel and stimulation. Spaces like that are not ideal of living or working in, but as a temporary escape from reality, they can be interesting experiences.
The comments at the end of the article are hilarious. One guy says, commenting on the Dresden Museum, "So he's of Polish origin, is he? Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold, and after 70 years it must be well chilled."
I personally have no problems with outrageous modern architecture, I quite love them in fact. It makes the urban landscape much more exciting. For sure, there are plenty of failed experiments, but to get from one successful peak or design to another requires a few failures. Unsuccessful variations on a theme that worked well. It's alright as long as architectural frivolity happens primarily in the developed world. Post-modern design and all it's non-functionality is eye-candy or intellectual wank, luxuries for the rich.
The Telegraph has an article on this: "Architecture should please the public, not spite them". It starts of as a rant against Daniel Libeskin's extension to the Dresden Military History Museum.
I actually like spaces like that in places like museums. People that hang around in modern museums usually have some time to kill, and contemporary art work doesn't always want to display itself on a wall perpendicular to the ground. Also, crazy architecture gives room for elements of surprise and surreality when you're in a space. The transition of walking from a traditionally built environment to a modern one can also be novel and stimulation. Spaces like that are not ideal of living or working in, but as a temporary escape from reality, they can be interesting experiences.
The comments at the end of the article are hilarious. One guy says, commenting on the Dresden Museum, "So he's of Polish origin, is he? Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold, and after 70 years it must be well chilled."
15 February 2010
Melbourne Southern Star
The Ferris wheel has got to be up there on the list of useless things in the world just asking to be re-imagined into something better. Things don't have to be useful to exist, but the Ferris wheel isn't even fun. One can suppose it's value comes from the provision of a unique city skyline... whoops, I think not! I suppose it's become a sort of symbol for major cities around the world, with names that bring out the inherent wishes and hopes of the people living in the city. The Singapore Flyer, the Melbourne Southern Star, the London Eye: for an increasingly paranoid city of pedophiles and junkies.
That said, they are structures that stir the imagination. Carriages that suspend you in the air and go about in a circular motion, without the intention to achieve anything. Perhaps it's elliptical structure is used to break the monotony of modernist steel blocks that rule the skyline of most modern cities. Being something different, it calls out at people to imagine it in ever more different ways.
Behold, the Melbourne Southern Star, re-imagined...
That said, they are structures that stir the imagination. Carriages that suspend you in the air and go about in a circular motion, without the intention to achieve anything. Perhaps it's elliptical structure is used to break the monotony of modernist steel blocks that rule the skyline of most modern cities. Being something different, it calls out at people to imagine it in ever more different ways.
Behold, the Melbourne Southern Star, re-imagined...
we came up with the following reuse strategy; a greek windmill inspired sci-fi future with a ‘wind driven, solar sail energy collecting wheel, as a hub for a new fleet of flying steam powered trams’ to alleviate congestion in a newly greened Melbourne. Click on the images to view the full scale versions.Via BuroNorth.
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