Maps as Public Art

Today The New York Times ran this interesting story on the design and subsequent demise of a map of the NY subway system. Words and pictures need to go together, as the designer knew while the bureaucrats apparently did not. This reminds me of the mayhem a decade later that surrounded Richard Serra's 'Tilted Arch'; public opposition (no doubt orchestrated) did in both.

#Occupy as Symbolic Politics

This nice article appears in The New York Times today on what I reluctantly call the "branding" of Occupy Wall Street. This is the second article by Alice Rawsthorn that has caught my attention lately. Here she takes a designer's eye to OWS. While Rawsthorn notes a variety of precedents, she might have focused more on ACT UP not only for having pioneered the LOGO [Your Location Here] style, but for the incisive use of graphics to convey complexity. That said, her analysis is politically useful as a way to both assess symbolic politics and anticipate the emergence of cliche.

Reading Around - 50 Designers Pick Books

I stumbled across the Designers & Books page which gives you an idea what these folks think are important things to read. I always find these things interesting.

Annals of Fair Use ~ Expert Testimony

I have posted a number of times on Shepard Fairey [1] [2] and some of his recent legal . . . well, depending on your perspective, either travails or shenanigans [3] [4]. Setting aside the quality of his work, which I have all along considered distinctly underwhelming, I still am not persuaded that his appropriation of photographs violates 'fair use.'

I am given some pause though, by this remark from a recent interview with graphics guru Milton Glaser: "For myself—this is subjective—I find the relationship between Fairey’s work and his sources discomforting. Nothing substantial has been added. . . . I think unless you’re modifying it and making it your own, you’re on very tenuous ground." If AP were to call Glaser to testify as an expert witness, old Shepard might have a tough go defending his claim to have creatively transformed Mannie Garcia's photograph of Obama.

Recycling Suburbia

"The leftover parts of San Diego's older subdivisions--standard framing, joists, connectors, plywood, aluminum windows, garage doors--are being disassembled and recombined just across the border. A few miles south, in Tijuana, new informal suburbs--some call them slums--spring up from one day to another. This river of urban waste flows across the Tijuana-San Diego to make something dramatically new.

On the edges of Tijuana, rife with poverty, social upheaval and a severe housing shortage, the detritus of San Diego's suburbs is reassembled into a fresh milieu, a city made of waste. But not only small, scattered debris is imported and recycled into makeshift housing in Tijuana. Entire pieces of one city travel southward as residential ready-made houses are directly plugged in to the other city's fabric. This process begins when a Tijuana speculator travels to San Diego to buy up the little post-World War II bungalows that have been slated for demolition. The little houses are loaded onto trailers to travel to Tijuana, where they clear customs before making their journey south. On some days here, one can see houses, just like cars and pedestrians, waiting in line to cross the border." ~ Teddy Cruz

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About 18 months ago I posted on Teddy Cruz, an architect who works at the border of Tijuana and San Diego. This evening I came across a short essay of his - "A City Made of Waste" - in The Nation. It is accompanied by a film (lifted here) of the same name made by Laura Hanna. Ironically enough, I wrote a post yesterday and called it Recycling the Suburbs? where I complained that "design ideas tend to be class-blind." Well, Cruz comments on the underlying class and ethnic basis of the processes by which suburban San Diego literally is being disassembled and recycled in Tijuana.

Recycling the Suburbs?

At The New York Times yesterday there was an interesting piece by Allison Arieff entitled "Saving the Suburbs, Part 2." As her title implies Arieff had published an earlier installment called "What Will Save the Suburbs?". I'd missed it when it first appeared, but you can find it here. Arieff speculates on design strategies that might in a real sense recycle suburban spaces in user-friendly, greener, economically viable ways. In the process she refers to a whole slew of studies and proposals - "ideas" - for how to turn commercial dis-investment and real estate crisis to useful ends. I have since my college days been fascinated by these sots of ideas. But I also agree with the reader who commented that the design ideas tend to be class-blind. Among the most problematic aspects of suburbia in the U.S. is that it typically embodies quite pronounced economic and racial homogeneity and segregation. I see that not as an insurmountable obstacle but as a challenge - a problem that perhaps Arieff might address.

Art & Propaganda

"Beliefs must be held lightly, because certainty is frequently
the enemy of truth."

"Art is a survival mechanism for the human species. Otherwise,
it never would have lasted so long. [ . . . ] But how does it work?
How does it affect us? Primarily, it makes us attentive to
the reality of our own life."

I have lifted both of these astute observations from this essay in The Nation by graphic designer Milton Glaser (pictured here in an unattributed photograph). While I think Glaser's effort to differentiate art and propaganda is conceptually important, I am not persuaded (pun, as will hopefully soon be clear, intended) by his analysis. Following the Roman philosopher Horace, Glaser suggests "The purpose of art is to inform and delight." He contrasts "inform" with "persuade" and ascribes the latter aim to propaganda. That is where we part company. Where Glaser is distrustful of persuasion per se, I think a more careful assessment suggests his concern is misguided.

When I persuade someone, or seek to do so, I communicate with her. I am attempting to get her to see things my way or agree with me. And she, arguing back, would no doubt try to persuade me that I ought to see things her way. We would try to convince one another by, for instance, offering reasons, calling attention to implications or factors or evidence that our interlocutor seems to have neglected, focusing on what we consider inconsistency or incoherence in the other's views, and so forth. I need not dissemble, nor invoke authority, nor deploy ambiguous phrases or symbolism, nor, for that matter, engage in any sort of suspect speech act. Nor need she do any of those things. So, while I am sympathetic with Glaser's view that art does not seek to persuade (even if artist typically do seek to get us to see things differently than we might now do), I do not see persuasion itself as a nefarious activity.

Of course one might try to persuade another in a manipulative manner by, say, playing on her fears, directing her attention away from germane factors or evidence and toward irrelevancies, remaining impervious ot counter-arguments or disconfirming evidence, and so forth; that is how propaganda operates. Glaser rightly notes that a propagandist need not actually lie (according to David Levi Strauss, she will never actually risk being caught trafficking in outright falsehoods). But they can just as well be wholly indifferent to the truth too. In that respect, they peddle bullshit in the ways I've discussed in many previous posts [1] [2]. So, I can mislead you without lying to you.

I do not see how artists, by contrast, can be indifferent to truth and the sort of reflexivity that helps reveal it. In that sense they, unlike propagandists, ought to be attuned to the diversity of views, the openness with which they can be expressed, the general reciprocity of communication, and so forth available to us at any given time. Likewise, my efforts to persuade or convince you are parasitic on just such facors - diversity, reciprocity, openness; and these subvert to the efforts of a propgandist to indoctrinate or manipulate you.

We Know Who You Are. We Know Who Your Talking About. We Just Don't Care All That Much.

A week or so ago The New York Times ran this very cool interactive graphic which is intended to capture the number of times each candidate mentions another. The graphic is indeed cool. And that seems to have gotten some bloggers from the 'InfoVis' domain all worked up (e.g., [1] [2]). The question is - what does it really capture? Here are some top-of-the-head concerns:

First, note that some of the candidates are not included. We get only data on "major" candidates. So the information provided here about who is speaking the most is biased. But that presumes that we are uninterested in the agenda-setting funciton of some candidacies - Tom Tancredo, for instance, was hardly "major" and was mostly unmentioned, but he claims credit for getting immigration talked about in the primaries.

Second, note that the graphic focuses on the number of times a candidate mentions another candidate rather than substantive issues or topics. For that we have to go to this much less cool graphic (and even then we must assume that merely mentioning something is meaningful in one or another obvious way). So, in that sense we are getting only 'horserace' information. That may not be bad, but it is crucial to note that the cool graphic is not providing nformation about candidates and their positions. It is providing (at best) getting information about who thinks who may be politically challenging. (In other words, lack of mentions is also important in this context as a sign of political irrelevance.)

Third, given that it maps campaign interactions in primaries there is scant mention by either Repulicans or Democrats of those in the "other" party. The one primmary exception seems to be Hilary, who even the Republicans tend to mention. No surprise in any of this; it falls into the "Grandma knows that" category.

Finally, note that the person who is perhaps most mentioned (among Democrats, at least) is not included. That would be the dishonorable 'W' himself. Ooopps!

Design for Democracy

I want to call your attention to a book due to be released soon entitled Design for Democracy. I now have discovered that this is the upshot of a project of the same name run under the auspices of AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts). The author/coordinator of the volume is Marcia Lausen. I know nothing about the organization or the author. Indeed, I've only seen a pre-release copy of the book at a convention recently and it seems to raise a whole set of interesting issues at the intersection of graphic design and democratic politics. I am interested to see how the DfD folks navigate this terrain.

Design of Dissent

I picked up this book today at a very cool, fairly new little shop in Rochester called :nook; the shop is among a gaggle of new-ish businesses in and around the "South Wedge." Rather than simply wishing the proprietor luck, I spent some $$$, buying the book and a fashionable shirt that I can send to August.

In any case, I am fascinated by political graphics and what makes them "work." (From a wholly talent-less perspective, of course!) This volume is a 200+ page compendium of oppositional graphics from around the world, consisting mostly of quite recent contributions. The work raises what I think is an interesting question: should dissenters truly and consistently embrace a "No Logo" approach? Or should dissenters seek to deploy aesthetic/design strategies as sophisticated as those who occupy positions of power? I actually think that the first option is doomed to be self-defeating. But why doesn't the no logo impulse carry over into politics? Do sophisticated design strategies risk lapsing into manipulation? Do they contribute to the commercialization of politics? Do they treat publics in an overly instrumental manner? And, finally, if we aim to adopt such strategies, shouldn't we be studying the designs deployed by the Karl Rove types of the world?

In part, I am prompted to ask these questions because I also heard an interview this afternoon on npr with John Maeda maven of "simplicity." I had read Maeda's slender The Laws of Simplicity (MIT Press) a while ago and was pretty ambivalent about it. Why? A good bit of Maeda's design thinking seems to presume that we can identify essences. And I think that talk of the "essence" of some instrument or practice is almost always wrong headed. I guess I've read too much Wittgenstein. Worse, I think the book is woefully abstracted from themes of power and hierarchy in the sense that (like, say, efficiency) simplicity is defined by some who, typically, have the capacity and resources to impose that definition on others. There are all sorts of issues of coordination at work here to which Maeda seems to be more or less oblivious. His design approach seems to be more or less unthinkingly at the service of commercial interests. Is it possible to pry the discussion of simplicity or of design more generally out of that framework? Since Maeda loves the iPod* (as an exemplar of simplicity), it seems appropriate to tie this meandering post together with a graphic that Glaser and Ilić include in their volume:

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* Full disclosure - I own an iPod and agree with Maeda about its design features. I simply (no pun intended) fear that he is insufficiently attuned to the political-economic backdrop to simple design. The iRaq posters are attributed to two anonymous collectives one in NYC (coopergreene.org which inhabits a now defunct domain), the other in L.A. (forkscrew graphics) and were pasted around both cities in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations.

Teddy Cruz

One of the chapters in Rebecca Solnit's new book is an essay she wrote under the auspices of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College, Chicago. The Center has commissioned a set of profiles entitled Democratic Vistas. As part of that series Solnit has written an essay entitled "Non-Conforming Uses: Architect Teddy Cruz at the Borders of Tomorrow" on ex-patriot Guatemalan architect Teddy Cruz. You can find a pdf version of her essay here. And you can find a recent story on Cruz from The New York Times here. Basically, Cruz works on the border of San Diego & Tijuana looking at the insights that flow in both directions as practices and living patterns on each side cross back and forth at the border. In April 2005 Cruz delivered the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City under the title "Border Postcards: Chronicles from the Edge." Solnit reproduces the image at right - Border Wall Sequence, 2004 © estudio Teddy Cruz - as part of her discussion.

Design for the Other 90%

I just noticed this story in The New York Times (29 May) on a new exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC. Called Design for the Other 90% it features work by various designers (and fellow travelers) who are "devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for" populations in the developing world and for poor populations in the 'developed' world. The products are intended in one or another way to contribute to "help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education." The exhibition runs through through September 23.
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PS: (Added later that same day) - One thing that bothered me about the exhibition and the reports on it - well, OK, two things - revolve around the political economy of this enterprise.

First, these design solutions primarily are ameliorative (read "humanitarian") and only secondarily transformative, in the sense that they afford those who use them to devote the energy or attention the designs free up to other tasks. They in no way address the underlying causal forces that create the problems of say, inadequate shelter, lack of potable water, and so forth. In other words it is important to note that even well-intentioned design per se is not a panacea.

Second, there are crucial question regarding how these items might be produced and distributed. (Where? By whom? Through what insititutional arrangements? With what costs on the social and natural environment? To whose profit? And so on.) The backers of the exhibition have clear views on this. But it is not at all obvious that those views are defensible. They tend to spurn the notion of "charity" but presume that the only alternative to that is selling products to the poor on the market. The designers whose work is represented in this show display a ton of problem solving imagination. Perhaps what is called for is a corresponding level of imagination regarding institutional alternatives? That is a problem-solving task too! For a critical perspective on all this see this post at Art For A Change.

Tiny Houses

© Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

For some time now I have carried a link toward the bottom of the side bar to Alchemy Architects who design, construct and deliver "Wee Houses"; their diminutive domiciles seem wonderfully designed and aesthetically pleasing in a modernist sort of way.

On a flight back to Rochester yesterday I read this story in The New York Times entitled "Think Small" that talks about the folks at Alchemy and a bunch of similar firms. These things seem to appeal to the latent Thoreau in people. I will say that having been in Red Bluff, CA in late summer I cannot imagine how unbearably hot Matthew Adams' little -approximately 130 sq. feet. - cabana (shown above) is going to be exposed to the sun without a lick of shade.