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18 April 2006
As I was working last night, I listened to a number of old podcasts of Debbie Millman's "Design Matters" (an internet talk radio show, if such a thing can really exist). A number of her guests (including Art Chantry and Kenneth Fitzgerald) expressed their narrow, fatalistic, design-just-isn't-what-it-used-to-be views, and it started to get on my nerves. All the craft has been lost, there's nothing of merit among young designers, and we might as well give in to our fate as classless technicians who prostitute whatever scrap of aesthetic sensibility we may possess. Blah, blah...Ellen Lupton, fortunately, came to the rescue. She expressed her fascination with the possibilities afforded by new media, and she lauded the contributions of her graduate students to a recent project of hers (the publication of her latest book, "D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself"). She seemed to attach to the idea that, as expressed by one of her colleagues, we should foster "more creation and less critique." Her optimism was a welcome change to the pessimism that plagues our aging grandfathers of design (among whom sits Milton Glaser, I might add), and she was able to redeem herself from whatever bitterness had carried over from our last encounter (see Signed, a disillusioned design student).
Here's to more creation and less critique.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 16:47 : 1 comments :
]05 April 2006
{ Boarding }
I wake up at 4:45 AM, having slept for an hour and forty-five minutes. Remnants of dreams linger as I dress and get ready to leave the hotel room; my mind is fixed on the hypersensitivity to touch that has carried over from these deep, tingling, counterfeit memories. My real-life movements feel detached and foreign.I clench my eyelids over my stinging eyes as I sit on the E train. I measure the time in distance, breaking down my travel itinerary into fractions and percentages of a day. By the time I arrive at JFK, I imagine that one and a half percent of the day has passed; I always round down. I wonder if there is such a thing as organic mathematics.
Near my gate is a mass of ugly angry people. A wrinkled Chinese woman in a wheelchair sneers at me as she is wheeled past, and I turn my attention to my breakfast options. I choose a 68-gram oatmeal-raisin energy bar that will cost me $3.67. I’ll wash it down with eight percent of the water from the bottle in my bag.
I choose my seat carefully in the dingy waiting area adjacent to my gate. I sit at the end of a short row, next to a pockmarked seat with torn vinyl upholstery; I hope that it will discourage anyone from sitting next to me. I’ve barely sat down when an old Italian man sits down on the seat with the torn upholstery; he wears an Adidas track suit, and a halo of oily, wispy hair frames his tanned head.
Behind the counter, the ticket agent’s words are out of sync with her mouth movements; it’s time to board.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 18:58 : 1 comments :
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