December 2011
10 posts
A system of irreconcilable regularities →
German pre-Romantic philosopher, Johann Georg Hamman, held that music was given to man to make it possible to measure time:
We do not measure time regularly, like clocks do, but with many differing rates of speed. In the complexity of today’s experience, it often seems as if simultaneous events were unfolding with different measures. These different measures coexist and often blend but are not...
“The question of repetition is very important. It is important because there is...”
– Gertrude Stein cf. the science of linguistics cf. “A failure is a project that doesn’t work, an initiative that teaches you something at the same time the outcome doesn’t move you directly closer to your goal. A mistake is either a failure repeated, doing something for the second...
Where the borders are →
I contributed part of the Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011 update. I explore the dissolving/ed borders between consumer and producer, collaboration as primary form of interaction in design, and “beautiful seams” as a response.
The updated Icograda Design Education Manifesto and supporting essays — including this one — is available for download. To obtain a printed copy of the...
Sudden rejuvenation →
Everyone has it. For some, it’s a place. For others, a religion. Others, a sidewalk cafe. A cocktail. A best friend. A familiar painting. Or, a vice. For some, a dark place. For me, it’s a text. Specifically E.B. White’s Here is New York. You see, whatever it is; whatever happens in the city — small, large, flittering, scented, sterile, crushing, tragic, magic — that...
Love not help →
A pair of French researchers propose that adding the text “loving” to a collection box almost doubled the amount of money raised:
Some [collection] boxes had this additional text in French just below the money slot: “DONATING=LOVING”; others had the text “DONATING=HELPING”; whilst others had no further text below the slot. …. The text on the donation...
The visual truth of Barbie →
A group of Swedish neuroscientists determined that the perception of your whole body is affected by the size of your body image. How? By “tricking” people into being Barbie:
A research group at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has managed to make people feel as though they actually inhabited bodies of vastly different size — either that of dolls or of giants. The researchers...
Right as rain →
Research suggests that leaning to the left encourages people to underestimate things from the height of buildings to Michael Jackson tracks (in cultures that count from left to right):
See also: Spatial versus narrative navigators
To find out whether body positions influence value estimation, Anita Eerland and her colleagues at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands asked 33...
Small pieces, joined →
Stripping out the Gospel miracles and inconsistencies to demonstrate parts he found interesting, Thomas Jefferson created a book representing his own views:
Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John....
Lessons according to salt
In the kitchen where I grew up in a non-popular town in Pennsylvania — the kitchen where my parents still live and cook and all important Danzico Family Conversations take place — there is a saltbox. It hangs just to the right of the stove, a handmade walnut wooden box, made for my grandmother by my grandfather, who himself was a furniture designer.
The saltbox itself as an object is...
Intuition, printed →
It was hard for me to approach even a little old lady. There’s a barrier between people riding the subway — eyes are averted, a wall is set up. To break through this painful tension I had to act quickly, on impulse, for if I hesitated, my subject might get off at the next station and be lost forever. I dealt with this in several ways. Often I would just approach the person: “Excuse me. I’m doing a...