So apparently Collaborative Strategies were big in Antwerp around the 16th & 17th centuries… I saw this painting “Battle of Amazons” a collaborative painting by Jan Bruegel and P.P. Rubens at the Rubenhuis, in downtown Antwerp.

Earlier this morning I came across another Bruegel collaboration, a painting of the 9 muses meeting with Minerva, the Roman Goddess of War. This painting, which I didn’t get then name of, was housed in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen.

Documentary of Quinta Monroy Project in Iquique, Chile from elementalchile on Vimeo.

This project by Elemental Architects (Chile) reminds me of Rural Studio/Samuel Mockbee (US) in that they involve the public in the design process. This project however goes a step further by adding the potential for expansion and further customization to be realized by the dweller after the design is complete.

Consumed,Repurpose-Driven Life – NYTimes.com
“America’s shopping infrastructure is vast and abundant. That’s the problem.”

The above is an article in the New York Times about the shopping mall crisis in the USA mentions the photography of Julia Christensen (above) which documents the conversions of big-box stores in the Big Box Reuse book and BigBoxReuse website and a new book with research on the phenomenon called “Retrofitting Suburbia,” by Ellen Dunham-Jones…

A similar book worth mentioning is Rem Koolhaas and his students’ work at Harvard called “The Harvard Guide to Shopping” …if you can get your hands on a copy. $112 and up on Amazon. [We happened to read the intro to Koolhass' "S, M, L, XL" in Vito Acconci's "Aesthetics of Information class" (Spring 08) and we also read a criticism of his books by Hal Foster in Siebren Versteeg's "Workshop in Design History" (Spring 08)]

In regards to re-purposing and mix-use space, here is a film by an artist friend of mine Hatuey Ramos-Fermin, which documents a special mix-use space in Holland.

Coexistence: “Since the year 2000 this Latin American migrants pentecostal church shares their worship space with a ping pong club in Amsterdam. Each weekend they transform the space.”

Finally, this is a great little guide book from architects Atelier Bow-Wow in Japan called “Made in Tokyo“… It’s an index of all the uniqueness of Tokyo’s architectural condition: very little space…

After Image (exhibit of propositions)

PROPOSITIONS: ‘AFTER IMAGE’
Written + Realized: Documents, Objects, Flyers, Sculpture, Video, Painting, and Drawings.

(i) Is there any rest from images? In abstraction and representation? The attempt to deny the image is but just the most instinctual of all responses we can have to the image: shut it off. I am a bit confused to what you mean by shutting off the image? A way to think about it is like turing off the lights. Reading into it or not? Overlooking its formal qualities? Or it’s purpose of depicting something?. Both form and message, the next line answers states this…

After Image, April 23rd, 2009

As of this post, After Image is requesting propositions from:

[X] HSIAO CHEN • [   ] ZOE GHERTNER • [X] AMA SARU
[X] ANTONIO SERNA • [X] SUZANNE SONG • [X] PEGGY TAN
[   ] ARTHUR OU • [X] MATTHEW WILSON • [X] JOHN MONTEITH
[   ] KELSEY HARRINGTON • [   ] KEITH RILEY • [   ]HONG-KAI WANG

Couple in Gallery photo by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary (click for the flkr page)

This article in Wired’s website “Beauty Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently” caught my eye because of a recent discussion about how women and men process visual art differently. (Apparently there are studies that show a difference in the way men and women process music too.) But more interesting than the difference in how we process art –as everything is perhaps processed differently from person to person– was this line about how Camilo Cela-Conde, the researcher in the article, believes aesthetics could actually be a byproduct of other cognitive tasks.

Here is another article on the same study: Beauty is in the brain of the beholder… but more so if you’re a woman” again, it’s interesting to note that although men and women process art differently –at the end of the day thier defintion of beauty was the same.

The Way Things Go by Fischi and Weiss

The previous post wasn’t for nothing, I wanted to point out that in thinking about function as a factor in determining the differences between art and design, I would reconsider the charges presented in the Fischli and Weiss vs Honda (Copyright Dispute), where The artist Fischi and Weiss claimed that Honda stole their art film, The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge), to make this Honda car ad. Honestly, I would say that the film and the Ad are totally different, primarily for the fact that in the Fischi and Weiss film, all the chain reactions, in the end, have no function, that is there is no final purpose to the way things go (art); while in the VW Ad the chain reactions have a function contributing to the building of a VW (design). This clarity of function is probably the reason why the urinal designer didn’t sue Marcel Duchamp.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917

In the end Honda did admit to stealing the tire sequence, but is that enough?  Can Fischli and Weiss copyright a chain reaction involving a tire? Have Fischli and Weiss ever seen Rube Goldberg’s work? I bet if you look long enough you can probably find a similarity or two. I guess they could argue they’ve never seen his work before.

The Hema's website version of the Way Things Go

Finally, take a look at this cause and effect website sequence by the Dutch department store Hema before it’s take down. There’s more video examples out there just do a search. (HEMA site read from provocat blog post “The Rube Goldberg Effect”)

Above All there is Function.
If I had to (read had to) categorize something as being “art” or “design”, I would say that function is the first criteria that I would run it through. The more functional a thing is, the more it gets absorbed into the realm or design;  the less we can determine it’s function, the more it is swallowed by the realm of art. Don’t get me wrong, not everything is black and white, most of it is actually shades of gray… 20% art 70% design ( and 10% embellishment) Most of the time this function criteria will work, but there are two factors that greatly affect this criteria, each explained in the next paragraphs: 1. rationality (causes the equation flip), and 2. super-function (causes things to be indeterminable as art or design).

Keep You From Forgetting To Mail Your Wife's Letter - Rube Goldberg Contraption

1. The Rationality.
In relation to design, rationality can push a thing beyond it’s function, flipping it closer to the realm of art. An example would be a design that is too irrational like a Rube Goldberg contraption (above), or the opposite, something that too rational like Chindogu (below). While Rube Goldberg’s contraptions have a function, the method in which they go about functioning is too irrational – that becomes art. The Chindogu, like the Hay-Fever toilet paper hat below, which is too rational –of course you would want a roll of toilet paper on your head if you have a runny nose! –that becomes art too.

Hay Fever Hat-The all day tissue dispenser a Chindogu from International Chindogu Society

Rationality can also affect things that are normally labeled as art. When art is made rationally, that is it makes sense and is understood, I would say it is actually a design disguised as art, since all it’s parts are carefully strategized to have a function. I’m a big fan of Paul Rand who said you can’t make art, art is –if you’re lucky– a byproduct of what ever it is you are doing, be it design or washing dishes. Artist are the first to complain about this view, but I am not saying that making art is useless, but don’t be surprised or upset that the thing you finally create doesn’t feel like art, there is a possibility that another aspect of that thing –it’s byproduct– it the real art deal. I remember one of my teachers once saying he didn’t care for Brancusi’s sculptures but the pictures of the sculptures–now that was art to him!

Let’s look at the opposite, an irrational art piece can also made design by being explicated via text, or forced into having a function– then the work of art, with it’s function revealed, rationalized, or involuntarily assigned, becomes design than an art piece. Design, after all, comes from  Latin ‘to mark out’, (de- +signare), similar to designate (Latin past participle of designare Merriam-Webster). Therefor if you can designate a function to an art piece, it is design –you have ‘marked it out’, you have designed it! It is somewhat similar when the tables are turned: remove the function or a design, then it has the possibility of becoming art, that is of course, if it holds your interest. Without interest it is just a thing, neither art nor design.

Man-made and natural super-functions are illustrated in The Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy.

2. The Super-Function.
Before talking about super-function, I want to clarify that by super I mean extreme or excessive quality –in both a positive and negative sense. The super-function arises when something has an incalculable amount of function and thus it’s state of being labeled art or design in indeterminable. In the extreme end of  super-function I am reminded of the question of the function of life as discussed in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In this sci-fiction novel, humans attempt to answer the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” eventually they do arrive at an answer, which is 42- duh!… Life, the Universe, and Everything, with it’s super-function is indeterminable. People often want to continue to discuss super-function of nature- forget it, it’s beyond us. The realms of art and design, for the sake of this essay, revolve only around man-made things.

[Side Note: The humans in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy don't actually come up with the answer "42" on their own, the actually design a computer called Deep Thought that took 7 ½ million years to come up with the answer to the "ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything". In the end another computer has to be built in order to make sense of the answer. This new computer is actually Earth -a planet size computer, which is often mistaken for a planet because of it's size and use of life forms within it's "computational matrix". (So that's our function!?)]

What about Purpose or Intent?
Besides function, rationality, and super-function why don’t I consider “purpose” or “intent” of the artist or designers as factors? Because both “purpose” an “intent” are only the creators’ ideal state of being –either art or design. This  purpose only exists in the mind or in a situation where it’s purpose hasn’t been realized. And even once realized there are many factors that can change it’s state. For example when something has the intent or purpose of being a design, it cannot be determined as being design until it’s function is realized, only with a quantifiable degree of function can you then make a determination. Something that hasn’t been realized should not be confused with something that may never be realized, as the latter is possibly an indication of something that has a super-function as described mentioned above. Deep Thought, although it was designer to find the ultimate answers, it hasn’t proven to function, properly, there for it is not design. In the end it might actually be art, the computer “earth” might also be art, if it doesn’t solve the problem of what “42″ is.

The Art/Design Graph?
…hasn’t been sketched up yet, but hopefully someone someday will make it and all this babbling with become clear.

(although useless is not the right word to describe Chindogu, here it is, noted in a Design Boom article about the History of Useless Inventions.)

Interesting article plus multimedia in the New York Times last month about a show of the Ceausescu Collection in Romania’s Bucharest’s National Museum of Contemporary Art.  The paintings were all hung at angles or low to the ground to so the show is not interpreted as a tribute.

Romania Shrugs Off Reminder of Its Past (article)
From the Ceausescu Collection (multimedia)