The Fredösphere

I like DesignObserver, I really do, but sometimes they play to the stereotype.  Here they are, analyzing Spirograph:

The Spirograph demonstrates, if not promotes, the belief that design can be formulaic and that good design has something to do with simplicity and objectivity. However, qualitative aspects such as emotion, irrationality, and instinct are largely missing. The patterns themselves make no direct reference to a user’s nationality, ethnicity, social class, or gender. Choices are officially confined to color and template combinations.

...and inevitably, the Tet Offensive also gets a mention.  Only near the end does the essay get back on track.  I wonder what ominous visions of militarism one could see in Major Matt Mason (one of my favorite childhood toys) if one went looking?  I loved the space crawler, which one could mount atop the moon base and use as a crane (since it had a winch in its tail).  Don't make my mistake and confuse it with the crater crawler, another toy I owned but which is not of the MMMM (Major Matt Mason Mythos).  Don't forget, James Lileks has beautifully deconstructed the MMM Big Little Book.  Beat me to it--dang.

Labels: Design, sci-fi

My previous post on random album cover generators proved to be hugely successful, by my standards.  Do read the comments, which have links to other great examples of serendipitous album art.

I strongly recommend you read what Books Under the Bridge has to say about religion in science fiction.  It's a series of four blog posts, each with a long, stimulating comments section.  Read part one, part two, part three, and part four.

In the comments of part one, you'll see I grab an opportunity to flog one of my favorite religion-in-SF novels, The Mote In God's Eye, which is remarkable for the casual (and to me, believable) way religion is depicted:  always there, in the background, neither impotent nor menacing.  Also of note are the very long comments by SF author John Wright, a former atheist and current Christian (hmmm, what are the implications of that word "current"?  What will he logically turn into next--a Rosicrucian?  An anarcho-socialist post-Jesuit with a soft spot for vegetarian triumphalism?) who, oddly, is a skeptic on the question of including religion in any fiction at all, except in its extreme forms.  (Read his argument; it's more plausible than my summary makes it sound.  More plausible, and somewhat convincing, but not completely.)

Labels: Design, Religion, sci-fi

I grabbed a meme from Scuffulans Hirsutus and gave it a try.  Here are the rules:

1 - Go to wikipedia. Hit “random”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to mix it all up.

I think my result is highly serendipitous.  I chose the font Justinian to tie in with the Latin theme of the band's name and the (probable) ethnicity of the woman in the image (by flickr photographer Luiz Alberto).  The album's title sounds like an earnest plea on behalf of the poor of the third world:  our proffered solutions don't work because we never trouble ourselves to listen to the poor.  (In fact, the title's source is a quote from Tolstoy:  "Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.")  I'm pleased with the S-shape of the unjustified left edge of the album title snaking its way around the woman's elbow and fist--but I'm an amateur at graphic design, so probably it violates some rule of taste written down in the secret rule book of graphic design techniques that only real graphic designers are allowed to read.

I'd say the result is better than Don's (of Scuffulans Hirsutus) thanks to dumb luck.  It makes me wonder how many times one would need to turn the crank before a genuinely compelling album concept would pop out.  Maybe not too many.

Labels: Design, Meme

It really does look like Obama has a lock on the graphic design vote.  Cool, calm, and beautiful.

(Like everyone, I like Obama, but this post does not constitute an endorsement.  I'm a bit put off by the hype.  My pipe dream for this election was that Fred "voting for me will be by invitation only" Thompson could somehow win without burdening the country with his campaigning.  There's something achingly appealing about a candidate who attends a fundraiser and ends up as the only person present not working the room.  Alas.)

Labels: Design

This ... Is ... Science!  You've got to read The Most Hated Holiday Song in the World at Design Observer, about a very intelligent but not very sincere attempt to use the science of opinion polls to design art with likableness maximized and minimized.  The most and least liked music are two utterly brilliant songs.  The satire is subtle; I honestly liked the likable song, at least the first half, which would not been out of place on a Kenny G (Mr. Likable himself) album.  In short, I liked it.  The unlikeable song is a patchwork affair with a rapping operatic soprano, accordion, pipe organ, banjo, tuba, Walmart jingles...aw, heck, just what you expect:

The Most Unwanted Song, however, is mesmerizing: over an accompaniment of bagpipe, tuba and accordian (statistically, America’s least favorite instruments), an operatic soprano (our least favorite type of singer) raps (ditto) about cowboys (ditto). Their research indicated that the most hated lyrical subject is holidays (disliked by 33%), so the song is suitable not only for Christmas, but Easter, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, and Halloween. These interludes are introduced abruptly by a children’s chorus (“Hey everybody, it’s Yom Kippur!”), who couple their refrains with cheerful commercial messages. By the end, the subject has shifted to human slavery and genocide. The whole thing, going on for nearly 22 minutes (the least favorite song length), is as impossible to ignore as a car crash.

Besides the music, there's painting.  You'll get George Washington in a landscape with deer, drinking from a stream--the deer, not the former president.  Plus, some utterly delicious Socialist Realist parodies.  I recommend Stalin and the Muses.

I haven't laughed this hard in ages.  Wow.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Culture, Design

Throw that piano out the window of your garret apartment right now!  Reactable is the future of music making, and all those other crappy user interfaces--trombones, harps, Casio keyboards--are hereby obsolete!

Well, maybe not.  Still, it's fun, and slightly mesmerizing, to watch Reactable players (should we call them Reactablists?) work those funky blocks on the glowing blue table.  But would the music hold your attention without the visuals?

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Design

By way of ArtsJournal, we find an article in the NY Sun on an exhibition of "graphic scores," i.e., sheet music that employs composer-invented notation. Very interesting, and yet I can't help think it all seems timid when compared to the most uncompromising artistic visionary in the history of the world.

Elsewhere in the news....

I've been asked to play keyboard at the University Lutheran Chapel this weekend.  Regular readers of this blog know how I hate performing generally, and how this kind of responsibility fouls my attitude.  I have more than enough singing experience that I no longer sweat those jobs, but keyboards!  So many notes!  So many opportunities to screw up! 

Imagine your nation's government has arrested you because of your involvement in a seditious conspiracy.  Five minutes into the interrogation, you have told everything you know, but the officials want more.  Jack Bauer is brought in.  He turns loose a small but aggressive and very rabid ferret on your right leg.  The ferret proceeds to gnaw your leg off, in a process that takes several days to complete.  At that point, Jack Bauer announces he will set the ferret to work on your left leg, unless you give him more information.  You scream for the thousandth time that you know nothing more.  Just then, an officer comes in and informs Jack Bauer that all your co-conspirators have been arrested, and that there is no need to interrogate you further.  You are released.

Can you imagine the sense of delicious relief that would overwhelm you, knowing that, although one leg was gnawed off, the other leg was spared?  If so, you have some slight understanding of my joy whenever I have finished playing the piano in public, and am free to go home and forget about it.

Labels: Design

Don't miss Design Observer's take on the amusing but less-than-perfectly-settling world of faux-ethnic fonts.  Am I the first person in the world to notice that Circumcision is most appropriately used in its sans-serif version?

Another font available at myfonts.com is MCapitals, which Ian Moss should use the next time he redesigns his band's website. The font handles the umlaut-O with the unusual expedient of an E floating inside the O, rather than with double dots.  Give it extra points for creativity, but if you want those dots to act as a diacritic rather than an umlaut, I guess you're out of luck. Or, as the New Yorker's house style would have it:

Labels: Design

My friend Dave the harpsichord hobbyist sent this photo of his near-completed masterpiece.  But is a harpsichord ever really "complete?" Each little quill needs infinite amounts of hand-sanding so the voicing of the instrument is perfectly, perfectly uniform at each key.  (Click on the photo for a bigger view of that beautiful mahogany veneer.)

My friend writes:  "there is still a bit of work to do in terms of voicing, but the main 8' choir sounds pretty decent." I like that:  "pretty decent."  No doubt the main 8' choir will be upgraded to "quite decent" after another two years of delicate adjustment.

I can't wait to try out the Shostakovich A-minor fugue on it. But will that be allowed? Dave is a confirmed baroque fanatic; he may have added one of those dissonance low-pass filters that shut the instrument down after too many minor ninths are played.

Labels: Design