Sarah Hromack

Group Material Show and Tell:
A day of lectures and talks about Group Material
Sunday, October 24, noon–7 pm
Artists Space, Greene Street, NYC
$20/rsvp@artisspace.org

I’ll be spending tomorrow at Artists Space on a research mission of sorts for a piece on Group Material I’m just finishing for an upcoming issue of Print magazine. Ute Meta Bauer, Simon Critchley, and Richard Meyer will speak; Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble will lead a discussion with GM members Julie Ault, Doug Ashford, Liliana Downes, Thomas Eggerer, and Tim Rollins. Promising. Go.

[A note on the image above: This is an installations shot of a series of posters GM installed in Union Square in 1982, Da Zi Baos. Dazibaos (“big character poster”) is a form of Chinese public debate wherein handwritten posters that opine or inform on a given subject are posted in a public place; the series was developed after Tim Rollins visited China in 1978, and features statements on womens rights, the death penalty, and labor unions, all culled from passersby in Union Square by GM members before being rendered by hand into these posters. Yes, I’ve been researching.]

Print and Demand

Just perusing the schedule of events for the New York Art Book Fair, which is swiftly approaching. My money is on Print and Demand #2, presented by Triple Canopy on Sunday, 7 November at 4 pm in the conference room at MoMA PS1, LIC, Queens. Solid speaker line up; solid line of query. A blurb:

The second in an ongoing series of conversations exploring how print culture is being changed by the manifold forms of online publication, and how public spaces are being constituted around those forms. Caleb Waldorf, Triple Canopy creative director and co-organizer of The Public School Los Angeles, will moderate a discussion about the role played by design in shaping digital forms of publication: How are certain tropes of print publication—and the reading and viewing experiences they have engendered—being translated for new media (while others are being jettisoned entirely)? How has the shift from graphic design to user design, with its focus on interaction and interface, changed the way publications function? [A most interesting question, I think.]

Participants include: James Goggin, design director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and principle of Practise; Jiminie Ha, an independent designer and founder of W/——— project space in Chinatown; and Rob Giampietro, a designer and writer and principal at Project Projects.

One of the most valuable graduate seminars I took at CCA (though I realized it in retrospect, of course, as I was in the final, burned-out throes of thesis work at the time) was a visual anthropology seminar team taught by an IDEO designer and social anthropologist. The course reader was heavy on Geertz, Mitchell, and the like. Our fieldwork methodology was based on IDEO’s, obviously, which I was intrigued to find (via Todd Walker’s Tumblr, Designing Innovations) has recently been made public as a crowd-sourced design initiative. OpenIDEO is “a global community that will draw on your optimism, inspiration, opinions and ideas to solve problems together for the collective social good.”

OpenIDEO’s beta site has been live for just a couple of weeks; as of 9 August, it received 33k visits, 23k absolute unique visitors, 126k pageviews from 121 countries, according to a recent post (replete with Google Maps datavis, natch). As of today, 3,890 users have registered. I just became user number 3,891 after reading one of the more thorough user agreements I’ve seen on a website in a good, long time; here’s an approximation via the FAQ. (And also: Isn’t this the most adorable Vimeo project pitch evaaar?)

Happy relaunch to a new, SEO-savvy Bookforum.com.

Nota Bene:

+ The design is just lovely—very “Swiss” and moreover, conducive to actual reading (sometimes we forget that websites are meant to be read.)

+ OMNIVORE now lives ‘above the fold,’ if you will, for maximum clickage. Well played.

+ CURRENT REVIEWS are now housed in a very elegantly designed, scroll-able module. Love.

+ THE DAILY REVIEW lives at the top, left-hand corner—the operative word here being top—signaling to the user that yes, Bookforum.com changes its content daily.

+ IN PRINT lives below that. Why? Because print and the Web are related, though very much separate entities, and as a user, I’m returning to this site to find new content. Draw me in by giving me a new visual experience every time I log on, and trust my ability to dig for the details.

Bravo.

San Francisco design pundit Sally Kuchar of Sally TV has posted her piece on the design debate sparked by NYT writer Michael Cannell’s recent op-ed on the subject; Design Observer ran maven Murray Moss’s retort several days later, and it was on.
Derailing the conversation off of its one-way track toward tedium, Sally has posted a series of screen grabs from “IMversations” (as I like to call them) with a motley crew of friends, ranging from IT guys to her mom. Debate team, cut-and-paste style. Says Sally:

So as I poured myself a double Hendrick’s and tonic I wondered what I could offer to the conversation and figured “what the hell” I’d just ask random friends who were available for a quick chat on the internet. I’d ask some of them to read the article and the rebuttals. I’d ask others what they thought about design, generally speaking. Most importantly, I just wanted to know what a bunch of random people who were signed onto my buddy list at the moment thought.

Design Hates Hyperbole

Several days ago, Murray Moss shot off a couple of bottle rockets at New York Times critic Michael Cannell’s recent op-ed piece, “Design Loves a Depression.” In a rhetoric-heavy riposte posted on Design Observer, Moss characterizes Cannell’s (dis)missive as “regressive and mean-spirited,” contending that the design community suffers, not thrives, during times like these. Moss isn’t so far off — his is a brand and a business, after all, and his position is one of a capitalist in crisis (though I do doubt Moss is on the skids — or I hope not, at least).

Admittedly, I’ve grown a bit wary of the Moss Daily New email as of late — an object such as, say, Ted Muehling’s $370 red coral spoon reads much differently in this economic climate. (An aside: I should note that A) I am an ardent design lover; and B) I am similarly critical of the contemporary art world, in which I have a little truck.) And yet, we need a mental escape hatch from time to time; for better or worse, it may come in the form of a $370 spoon, however impractical said object may be.

Cannell made several mistakes in his assessment: The first is semantic in nature, as his headline barrels wildly toward hyperbole. Reality check: nobody loves a recession, let alone those who work in the first industries to be dismissed as frivolous when times get tough. Secondly, his position is painfully narrow, for the most part. Cannell doesn’t dismiss ingenuity outright, yet practicality is privileged as the noble pursuit. Ever lounged on Mies van der Rohe’s iconic, post-war “Barcelona” day bed? Economy: check. Chronic back pain: double check. Utilitarianism has its limits.

Historically speaking, so-called “avant-garde” developments in the arts have emerged in moments of war and depravity (see the aforementioned chaise). Why not take risks when one has nothing to lose? Why not laser-cut the living hell out of some pressed ply? On that note, though I believe his response was entirely in line and exceptionally well-articulated, Moss could have dialed it back a notch or two, if only in the interest of keeping it cool. His points will prove themselves in due time. Hell, if I hadn’t been walking my friends’ dog yesterday, I would have popped into The Future Perfect and snapped up a “Fuck the Economy” tote bag. After all, who can resist a small luxury here and there? This unemployed writer sure can’t.

+ Design Loves a Depression (New York Times)
+ Murray Moss: Design Hates a Depression (Design Observer)