re. ceramics + materials in general

So I figured I'd just go ahead and make this a full post, rather than scattered little incoherent comments.
I want to continue the ceramics and material re-tasking discussion, so to summarize from your ceramics post:

Cat.1 = purely aesthetic
Cat.2 = an obvious function
Cat.3 = the same function
Cat.4 = new and different function
Cat.5 = other (function optional)

I'm starting to think there's a certain amount of philosophy involved here (to be discussed)...so..if that's alright with you.
If it weren't for a few important qualities, i don't think i'd find this whole "re-tasking" trend all that interesting. But, I mentioned earlier that i really like the tri-gun vase as a vehicle for social commentary, and this is something I'd like to explore... I also like the many various examples of disposable containers rendered permanent, also as cultural critiques.
I like the environmental awareness that can be fostered through this type of commentary, and for the most part I like the style.

What I really like though, are the challenges created when we confront our bias about materials.
People store a lot of their cultural identity in objects. They rely on those objects to be composed of certain materials, perform certain functions, and basically look a certain way.
By transmogrifying an objects physical makeup we can interrupt that objects social narrative.
What we need to focus on with "re-tasking" or "re-casting" objects is how to demonstrate our exploration of their meaning in society, and force the user/consumer to examine their ideas about that object and question them on a fundamentally personal level.

What does this mean for actually makin' stuff?
Maybe it's just a simple process...ask why the designer chose the material they chose...try to replace it with another material...what does the new material say?
If nothing...pass. If something (interesting)...yay.

ceramics

well, we were chatting earlier about working together to create a "line" of ceramic products cast from existing objects; as a design excercise. to rehash, and add to, the conversation from earlier i'm going to get started.

the first thing to do is establish a thematic course. while we do not need to limit what type of objects, or how we re-purpose them, it might be valuable to explore the different methods that are being employed around the design world.

i see a few main categories of ceramic products that re-purpose existing objects.

1. purely aesthetic. there are plenty of objects that are simply a cast version of an everyday object for decorative purposes. sure, there is a discussion about "removing function" as a function, art drivel. but in effect, they are just pretty objects to put on the shelf or mount on the wall.




ricochet design studio's "sharpener"
http://www.ricochetstudio.blogspot.com/



2. obvious function. these designs take one object, cast it in ceramic, and simply re-purpose it for an obvious function. one vessel become a different kind of vessel, etc.






daniel reynolds
http://www.reynoldsware.co.uk
(of course, this almost also fits in cat. 3)





3. the same function. this is the category name that i'm giving to objects, that even though sometimes interesting, do not fundamentally change what it is that the object does. the major player in here are the cast ceramic doppelgangers of disposable items. while that was really neat the first time i saw it, it seems odd that every time it happens again it continues to get "press."






a bunch of stuff from uncommon goods
http://www.uncommongoods.com/
(if you know this site, you know that by the time something is for sale there it is no longer a new idea)






4. holy crap, a new function. this is a wide array of things. i could have divided this into several, but i'll leave it as one category. this includes concepts that change the function from that which we visually assume from the form of the object, functions that counter the intuitive ideas of the nature of the object, or any other way in which a truly new function is added. not a change in the process of that function (disposable to permanent) but a functional relationship with some other thing that was not there before.









"3 gun vase" from suck uk
http://www.suck.uk.com
(i know, sticking flowers in a hole isn't an amazing functional innovation...but look how neat this looks...it's guns, in porecelin...ohhh.)



5. a new object. fun, rare, hard to define. this could be an assembly of parts to create a new collage/object, the distortion to the point of new identity, or a retooling of both functionality and appearance. hard to define, harder to create. since the constant in these categories is the re-purposing of existing objects the creation of something that is aesthetically and functionally new stands as a pinnacle of success.



ricochet design studio's "shelf/clamp"
http://www.ricochetstudio.blogspot.com/
(can you tell that i like them?)




6. i'm leaving this blank so we can fill it in when we think of the completely blatant category that i forgot.

for no other reason that to offer different directions, hopefully this was useful. there is of course, plenty that can be expounded upon (aesthetic objects come in the adorned, unadorned, etc.) but i think basics are useful.

what is our first step. left to my own devices i will come up with 14 items that have absolutely no common element...that seems to defy the purpose of this exercise. your thoughts?

ps. after making this...this "blogger" format...could it be crappier? the formatting of this? looks great in the little "editing" box. once in the preview? hell. getting photos in here? pain the ass. preview then back to editing? adds all the html garbage i don't understand. poops to this. since this project is new can we migrate somewhere else to a better platform?

Invisible cities

Have you read "Invisible cities" by Italo Calvino?

I know it's fiction, and therefor falls outside your typical sphere of acceptable reading material. But it's a pretty wonderful book.
The title alone though, is enough to kind of get you thinking...Actually I'm also reading "The Architecture of happiness" right now. By Alain De Botton. It's ok. But there are some outstanding little observations that tie in pretty well to the whole concept of invisible cities...the interpretation of space and the impressions we get from our surroundings.
For example, this astute little observation:

"Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better of worse, different people in different places."
and the existential aestheticist in me likes this:
"an ugly room can coagulate any loose suspicions about the incompleteness of life"

The association with invisible cities is the(obvious)one that we all interpret things differently at different times under different circumstances.
The role that architecture plays in our lives seems directly related to our susceptibility to the influence of our surroundings. When i first got to korea I was overwhelmingly impressed with minute differences of scale...tiny differences like the height to width ratio of doors, roads, windows...light posts etc. The physical fabric of the world had been shifted slightly and it interfered with all aspects of my life.
In another part of "the architecture of happiness" he says "you are inconveniently vulnerable to the color of your wallpaper"
Do you feel vulnerable to the color of your wallpaper?
Do you feel like your life, mood, state of mind, productivity...whatever, is influenced much by your surroundings?

It's not a new, but it's an interesting observation.
If you create something for others...what do you want them to gain from it?
If you create something for yourself...what do you want to gain from it?


you enter the city the first time and it's new.
you leave and come back and it's different.
you get a new job and the city is cheaper.
you take up cycling and the city is fast.
you give up your car and the city is noisy.
you stop smoking and the city is pungent.
you move to the 33rd floor and the city flattens out.
you fall in love and the city is vibrant.
you fall out of love and the city grows dull.

Perspective, you know...
ok, I'm rambling...hope you have a good trip to Seattle.

But one more thing:
The city of Ersilia is my favorite...it's such a beautiful concept.

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses...according to [the type of relationships.] When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave; the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere... Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities... spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

algorithmic design...or art

So, I really really like that algorithmic city builder site.
www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/substrate/appletl/index.html
I can't tell if you would call it design or art...it's a program, which makes it design-ed. but the effect is (kind of) random, which gives it the feel of art.
And i especially like it because, and as the name says, it's another example of how something logical and relatively simple can become abstract and complex when interpreted through a process.

For some reason it made me think about this article i read a while ago about some dirty dj who's hands were so grubby that when he touched a cd fungus grew on it. But then he played the cd and the fungus had altered the tracks so that some awesome new kind of music was created.
Not quite the same thing...but it's one system interfering with another to create something new.
Which is interesting.
And from a design point of view...getting some degree of randomness through logic is for very interesting. We need something functional, so it's logical...but it's got to have aesthetic value, so there's art. Granted, function and simplicity can be beautiful, but..you know.
hooray fractals...I'm gonna go water my:
Here's the article about the cd. The site it was on was all messed up so I just copied it here for convenience.

Grow bacteria on your CD for new sound

Thursday, 11 September , 2003, 09:10

Paris: Want to listen to something really different? Smear yoghurt on your favourite CD. Let it dry. Slide the disc into the player. Crank up the volume. And hear that music in a completely fresh, possibly spine-chilling way. The bizarre innovation -- an "optical biocomputer" if you must know -- is the brainchild of an Australian scientist, Cameron Jones, who as well as being a mathematician with a record of published research also owns a nightclub and bar in Melbourne, New Scientist reports. Jones' pet area of research is how signals can be transmitted through biological cells, which grow in a so-called "fractal" way, like tree branches. He became intrigued by experimental musicians and DJs who, from the mid-1980s, sanded, varnished or even slapped paint onto CDs to create new sounds to sample. Music on CDs comes from tiny etched pits in the tracks that represent binary digits, the "0" or "1" that make up a computer code. The code, reflected back by the laser in the CD player, is then processed back into an electronic signal and converted to sound. Mutilating the surface, so that some of the pits are missed, thus changes the sound. But Jones found that much subtler sounds could be achieved using fungal or bacterial growth, rather than scraping or coating the disc's surface. This is because these life forms introduce tiny errors, on a micron on nanoscale level rather than the far bigger millimetric scale. In addition, the way fungus and bacteria can shape the sound in weird ways. Bacteria grow by cell division, while fungi grow by branching. Both processes can be controlled by adding malt extract to the disc as food. Jones told New Scientist that he came across the discovery quite by accident, when he was DJing in his bar. "I often change CDs when my hands are wet with beer," he told the British weekly. "One night I must have changed the CDs, touched the data surface, then left them for use on another night." The following week, he put on a CD by Nine Inch Nails and found that it would not play properly because fungus had grown on it. But the fungus had not ruined the disc. The original audio sequence was there, but it would sometimes change in pitch and there were small staccato noises in the background. He asked himself: "What would happen if I purposely grew fungi, yeast or bacteria in direct contact with the media, and manipulated their fractal dimensions?" Yoghurt-on-a-disc was born! Jones says that he has yet to damage any of his discs or players with his pioneering work, but warns that the technique does crash CD players on computers because the software cannot cope. Judge the sounds for yourself on (www.swin.edu.au/chem/bio/fractals/refslist.htm), which has details of his work and samples of "fractal" music.

So this is a constant interest for me. don't hold back with anything else you find, let me suggest a few key words:
evolutionary art / algorithmic design / evolutionary architecture / evolutionary design / hippie spirals / the Parthenon ...I'm sure you can think of many more.