this past week

Tuesday 24 June

That morning we went to the D&AD exhibition, a rather enormous international student design exhibition. It was a bit overwhelming, and the work wasn't displayed in a way that made me want to interact with it. The work was set up in booths/partitions.

Then Julianne and I derived with the wind. We allowed ourself to get lost depending on where the wind blew our hair or our clothing. Pretty early we stumbled upon a really old cemetery. We first walked in and the place was teeming with little lives--birds and squirrels really. But they had overtaken the place, and were very territorial about it. and there were black crows sitting on he gravestones. Many of the stones were heaved up and crooked, or broken and laid back down into their place. The grass was taller than the stones in some places, and ivy had overgrown in some places that there were only lumps of ivy in the grid of the gravestones. the cemetery went on forever, it was a strange environment in the middle of the city. There was a colonnade that went through part of the cemetery, elevating our view, and making it seem even more expansive. We sat down on a bench to have a rest and a strange man was sitting across from us. He was working on a 6 pack of something. he asked us about president Bush. We derived all the way out to the highway you take to Heathrow, through a lot of residential neighborhoods, some anti-climb paint, we followed a plastic bag, went into a McDonalds, and ended the day at the Harrod's food halls and I ate the most delicious olives in the world. They were beautifully bright green. We sat in Hyde Park and ate them. When we were taking the bus home, we fell for an old man's practical joke and got off before we needed to.

Later that night we went down to canary warf in search of an under-the -thames walking tunnel. After alot of walking/singing/dancing down the street we found it and the echoes were incredible. There was a smashed pomegranate inside the tunnel and the seeds were littered all over the concrete floor and white-tiled walls.

we also found a mass of traffic lights shaped like a tree in the middle of a traffic circle. It was bizarre because we wondered if it was an art object or not (or intended to be) it could be confusing or dangerous, the lights changed so fast.

Wednesday 25 June

letterpress workshop that was low key and fun, inspired by last nights singing, we made a spread about a birthday song. Their shop was great, nice wide presses and wonderful ink colors!

We also went to the Stanley Kubrick archive at the LCC. It was incredible, he saved everything form every project, or hint of a project he ever had. We saw the typewriter pages from the shining, golashes worn by the crew on a rainy set, handwritten screenplays, set design sketches, anything you could imagine....binders upon binders of research! The archive was designed to look like parts of 2001 Space Odyssey.

For dinner we went to Yo!Sushi. It's a conveyor belt Japanese restaurant where little color coded, dome-covered dishes are carried around the bar on a conveyor belt and you just grab what you want. Then we played some pin the tale on the Barbican.

Thursday, 26 June

V&A for the Blood on Paper Exhibition. It explored the meaning of artists books. There were a few really nice pieces. A collaboration between Lichtenstein/Ginsburg. we bomb you we bomb who do we bomb. There was also an exploding book, and the collection of stains that was in the MoMA color exhibition earlier this year. Not a single woman in the show, but it was curated by three women!

Then we spent many hours at the RCA design show, which was really nice, the work was great and the way it was displayed really made it nice to look at. The exhibition was dynamic and interactive. There were a couple really nice books one in which every page was the first sentence of a self help book. Another interesting piece was a map of London Tap water, that promoted district-specific tap water, the elements it contained was based off of the population. Some neighborhoods had great water, where everyone ate organic food, some had tons of drugs in it, like birth control and anti-depressants from peoples waste. Apparently, water filtration systems are not required to clean out pharmaceutical waste. There was a great animation involving finger puppets and salt shakers, and another very sad one about masculinity.

an id student made a record player with 5 arms so different parts played at once.

One students project was all about women in design (jackpot). She produced a book on the subject, and interviewed 2 women I have seen here (Teal Triggs and Catherine Dixon). It was interesting that some of her questions focused on the idea of the role model, and motherhood was a huge part of the discussion. Apparently during the 1990s something called "Lad Culture" popped up. The environment for design was very masculine and the public representation of women was repressed. In schools today about 60% of design students are women, someone wondered where are they all going? Some of the interviews talked about women being afraid to come across as feminist, and role models, who are they, what makes one?

According to the research done for this project 79% of freelance designers are men.
Women begin their own studios just so they have the flexibility to be with their children.
Ageism- the possibility/boldness of being young, once a women ages and/or had a baby the possibilities disappear.
You don't make enough as a freelancer to support a child.
Personality, and the ability to sell your work
your work should stand for itself outside of gender!
The internet was identified as an important tool for women, they can easily show their work without the intimidation of walking into a room full of men

These are a mix of the opinions discussed, and many of them varied. Some women didn't want gender to have to with their work, or how they are perceived by others. They don't believe it should be an issue, or an identifier work should speak for itself, and they want to be judged by work void of gender, (this is a great piece of design, not a great piece of design by a woman). Some thought it was a generational issue, there are many male executives because few women in that stage went to school for design. Others think motherhood has such a huge part in it. The demanding schedule doesn't support motherhood. Some women stated that we just need good designers, no matter what gender they are. Some role models are reole models because they are sticktotheirguns kind of people, others because their work is great.

It was an interesting sort of conversation between several women, who were all asked the same questions. Gender is clearly something that effects this field, but the opinions about how and where it is going are so different. There are so many women studying design today.

That night we went to sing along where a musician played an a rotating 12 foot vinyl record.

Friday 27 June

The rumpus room, interactive design, yet another affirmation that the internet is the new everything. Here we saw the internet being used/designed as a platform to connect people (p2p, facebook...) and advertise subversively at the same time. the rumpus room.

Then we all walked over to Abbey road, which was strange and funny. It's a very busy road, so we all sort of ran across self consciously.

We decided to go to the Hayward afterwards to see Psycho buildings, artists attack architecture. It was a nice, not too big example of how place/space is used in art. A lot of destruction. the first piece was a contained these fragrant nylon sacks within a strange nylon dome, sort of like a giant sack itself, it reminded me of insects. The highlight was a plastic observatory on the roof. It was a clear dome you could sit in, but it had a sort of double layered roof, the layer under the actual roof was a plastic bubble you could crawl around on. The show as a whole was pretty good I thought.

There was also a hyperbolic crochet sea reef. It used all sorts of materials, assorted/banal plastic things, hair ties that sparkled and of course yarn. It was beautiful, the mixture of material and color, and the interaction of the forms. It was made by (women I think) all over the world.

Today we went to Cambridge for the day, and punted down the river. It was a very English seeming thing to do, floating around lazing and eating on a boat. The person punting stood on the broad, flat end of the boat and used a pole to propel movement. It was harder than it looked. Cambridge was in graduation mode, and of course all the buildings were impressive, a rather pristine (almost too) environment. The student housing was pretty cool. Windows with several hundred year old glass, and nice gardens. It might bizarre to spend 4 years there.

Cows were wandering around.

The train was nice, we went by a lot of farmland that was so very green! There were a few neatly sliced tracks through tall fields that rippled as we went by, sort of flashing yellowy, with sudden bright patched of wildflowers, and green hills that were patched depending on what was growing there.