stories-at-the-edge-of-time.blogspot.com

gizmotics.blogspot.com

Gizmotics: The Ring of the Neoluds

http://gizmotics.blogspot.com/2012/04/ring-of-neoluds.html

The Ring of the Neoluds. 8220;The engines he will have invented will. Be beyond his strength to control…”. Henry Adams, writing in 1862. Our responses to Gizmos evolution are all over the place. They range from blind acceptance to healthy skepticism to outright rage at the machine. Most folks become whine connoisseurs, always aggravated. But for a smaller group, the world is going right to hell on a microchip. I understand these modern Luddites very well; they are really preservationists. One of the main...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: THE MUSEUM OF DECENT ART

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-museum-of-decent-art.html

THE MUSEUM OF DECENT ART. In the news is yet another uproar about. Offensive art and a call for a panel of experts to address the problem. Nothing will come of it because the logistics of evaluating all the exhibitions in all the museums and public spaces are impossible. So much garbage, so few shovels. As a public service, I have come up with a better idea. Instead of eliminating all the smut and crud that is passed off as art these days, we should counter it with the creation of a Museum of Decent Art.

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: HIGHER TEA

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/higher-tea.html

The spoon I had in hand was no ordinary utensil. It had a fancy vine pattern etched on the surface. A spoon, of course, does not need to tickle your eye or tongue; it simply needs to spoon. This is surplus design, perhaps a throwback to a time before modernism declared that excess was excessive. An ode to details from a time when details soothed. The columns that supported this ornamental sky were themselves elaborate confections. Lost arts from a lost time. Glasses clinked, silverware chimed, and chatte...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: LEAP OF FAITH

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/leap-of-faith.html

As designers know, the whole process of making something centers on a certain leap of faith. The challenge, the research, the insight, the plan, the construction.all of that has to work towards a realizable goal of course. But behind it all as a kind of impetus is the belief that the design will work in the world just as well as it did in our imagination. Design – any design from a logo to a starship – is therefore a leap into the unknown with only a concept to keep you aloft. By the early 820s, a new Ca...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: VEGAS IN NO TIME

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/vegas-in-no-time.html

VEGAS IN NO TIME. Nothing can really prepare you for Las Vegas. Not old TV shows, not movies, not postcards, not even previous visits. Las Vegas is unlike anything else and not even very much like itself either. It is based on a theory of design which says that form need not follow function and function is no fun anyway. This is city as confection, a dessert in the desert, thought up by the same people who invented wedding cakes, Easter peeps, and sundaes. Birds fly, lizards dart. It rains every hour.

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: UPON THE ROOF

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/10/upon-roof.html

For months I have been watching my neighbor’s roof. Sometimes with binoculars but mostly with my naked eye. My obsession started in the summer and has now continued into autumn. The roof in question belongs to a brownstone on my block and my apartment on the ninth floor of a nearby building gives me an aerial view over it. It is the perfect perspective from which to gaze in awe, but the object of my fascination is not what you might think. It started with some neat men walking around the roof and pointing.

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The Made World: STITCH IN TIME

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/09/stitch-in-time.html

Putting on my pants, one leg at time as is my custom, I instantly thought of Barthelemy Thimmonier. You would have to be a designer, or historian of technology, to know why. The reason is in the seams that held my pants, like all garments, together. We can thank Thimmonier for that. Without his design, only the rich would be able to wear clothes; the rest of us would simply be covering our nakedness. He never designed a dress or sketched an outfit. Thimmonier invented the sewing machine. This was intende...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: MAKE A THING

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/09/make-thing.html

Over the years I have tried many cures for my depression. Medical ones, questionable ones, spiritual ones, therapeutic ones. Sometimes these have worked and sometimes not. But there is one approach that always works, if only I can remember to do it. Most artists and designers know this and, for some of us, it is one of the driving forces behind our creative impulse. The solution to despair is to make a thing. Example: a few years ago, during a particularly bad bout of gloom, I got a crazy idea. But the i...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: PERFECT CIRCLE

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/12/perfect-circle.html

Nothing could be simpler than drawing a circle. A compass – or more correctly, a pair of compasses – accomplishes this in no time. As easy as it may be, however, there is still a magical power to drawing one. Give any kid a compass and watch their expression as the arcing line meets up with itself. Pure satisfaction and true for most adults too. Something about that perfectly circular shape resonates in the part of the brain that loves simplicity and a sense of completion. Drawing a perfect circle with n...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: PENCILITIS

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/pencilitis.html

I am writing this in pencil first. Not because I want to but simply to get in tune with the topic. Writing with a pencil takes more effort but it is also more intimate than typing on a keyboard because the words are marks and our marks are what make us human after all. The pencil has often been called the greatest single design of all time, and not just by pencil pushers. It has changed so little from its original form – and seems so perfect in its. That was made of lead. The pencil might very well have ...