20071017

beautiful ironic awkward decay...understanding in progress...notes...


here are some of my thoughts from the past few weeks. on space, energy, waste, advertising, the internet. they are in note form. **on the left are images of an advertisement that I noticed the other day on my way to itp. An allegory to the things I have been thinking of. The advertisement lives. Posters pasted to, decaying, scratched, alive and dying in the physical world. On walls. walls that I could walk by, touch. Texture, of a new world explicitly superimposed onto an old one. An ironic, awkward display that is very meaningful to me.

The content of the ad is some AT&T thing that you can send a text message and they will send you back some graphical representation your "virtual space". A pretty useless concept, but for me at that moment, the experience of it's execution was very powerful.

*********link to pdf on advertising/waste/diagrams************

from modules to connectors to networks to energy. things are starting to come together. This week, our assignment was to think about energy. It lead me to a lot of different things, a challenge to put them all together, but a challenge that is important to face.

Innovation: humanity reaching, extending, abstracting, physical body and mind through time and space. This action is reciprocal, for every time we build, we rebuild some piece of our self. Innovation is a form of communication. Communication amongst human minds and bodies together. Energy flows through the pathways built by innovation. It is our goal to energize, and in order to do this we build, and connect and continue. Humans are efficient, dynamic, adaptive, continuously evaluating and then re-evaluating our spaces, our constraints and our connections. We build connections, innovate, discover and then enter new spaces.

Humans are inherently efficient. We have a tendency towards order, path of least resistance. Waste results from inefficiencies in technology...constraints... I don't think it is attached to or dependent on any form of subjective morality. i.e. I don't think you can point fingers and say that X is bad because they are polluting Y, or you are bad because you use too many paper coffee cups. All of our waste is interconnected. Ingrained within our every day processes. All things consumed and produced generate some degree of waste. It is comparable to electrical resistance value inherent to a physical substance. We are always looking for the path with the least resistance. This tendency is not moral, it is inherent to humanity, it essential to survival (and gives some hope that maybe we won't destroy our world and our selves). We don't waste because we are bad people, we are neither bad nor good. We are efficient. We will use paper cups as long as it is more efficient to do that. We are constantly making computations that evaluate risk in terms of cost/benefit of a situation. And we choose path of least resistance. We will keep using oil until it is more efficient to use some alternate energy source.

This week while thinking about energy, I became interested in "intangible" waste as opposed to "tangible" waste. Even though both are in many ways connected, I was focusing mainly on waste that occurs as a direct result of bad design. For me, bad design occurs when an innovation is not connected to humanity. i.e. the reciprocal cycle of innovation and recreation of humanity is one of high resistance (over time that the product began it's inception, throughout time consumed, until it is destroyed).maybe this is a simple equation...

ENERGY CREATED/INNOVATION LIFE = RESISTANCE

(high resistance = bad design, low resistance = good design). In many instances it is hard to measure the ENERGY CREATED value, because that energy can exist in tangible and intangible forms. If a product does not connect with humanity at some point in it's life cycle, whether it be physical or psychological, it will generate waste.

Examples of this are everywhere. The most classic example is of the artist or innovator who struggles their entire lifetime (expends all of their energy) to work on some concept that at that time is unable to reconnect with humanity. If time stops here and all of the artist's work is destroyed upon their death, including all impressions, influences of that person passed through to other people, then this cycle is of high resistance. But if the work persists through time, resistance decreases. *(art can transcend time in forms that are not necessarily physical...memory...influence on other ideas...cause/effect...enter new spaces...).

Once technology is available, innovations are in place for communication pathways exist to enable energy to flow more efficiently, waste will be reduced. The ultimate goal of humanity is efficient flow of energy. Waste is everywhere and exists in many forms. A form of waste that I was thinking about a lot this week was

ADVERTISING

Advertising is a construct of the rise of consumerism in the physical world. It is inherently linked to the technological constraints of the physical world.
- Companies started to be able to manufacture things that a greater number of people could afford. A growing middle class, and lowering manufacturing costs occur congruently. It is at this point that people began to realize that you could create a demand...i.e. make a connection with a consumer where one did not previously exist. So you can sell things that are not directly related to some literal human "need", i.e. A t-shirt is a direct extension of the human body. It serve to protect, shelter, keep warm...an extra skin.
A designer t-shirt not only connects with the human on the realm of the physical body, but connects with humans on a psychological realm, that is indirect, and difficult to quantify.

This concept, that humans can connect to a product on some psychological realm that may have nothing to do with actual product is the foundation of advertising. The ability of the human mind to form connections, and extend time/space, is so powerful and significant that it can be used within the physical world to supplement, compensate and even outweigh things that are otherwise constrained by physical limitations. A physical limitation is an inability to form a connection with humanity. So, even if a product is "good", it will be wasteful if it doesn't connect with people. These limitations often stem from boundaries inherent to physical space.
SPACE IS CHANGING.
The internet is changing our space.
The internet is a virtual space, uninhibited by limitations in the physical world.
The physical world is a space, constrained by it's own set of boundaries and limitations.
There is an intersection between the physical world and the internet. Where a new space is formed. I am extremely interested in exploring where this intersection, this new space. Exploring it's constraints and figuring out how to build within it.

Back to ADVERTISING

The reason I have become interested in advertising is because it is a word that is thrown around in order to describe ways to quantify the intersection of physical and virtual space. Everyone talks about "ADVERTISING" as a way to monetize virtual space.
As I mentioned before, advertising is a construct of the limitations of the physical world.
The internet alleviates these constraints. The internet is evolving in such a way (with facebook most notably) as a platform form organic connections. These connections begin with human2human connections and extend from there. And it is the connections that we form ourselves that are the most useful, efficient and powerful.

So what role, if any, does advertising play in this new space?

As I walk down Broadway I see so much waste, huge stores with all of this junk in them and no people to connect it to. Yes people do buy things, and there are ways to distribute prices, put things on sale...but it still creates surplus and waste. The internet provides the means to connect people with products in ways that are more efficient. The physical world will be transformed. Brick and mortar collapsing. But what are we going to do with all of this new space???
maybe house people... new spaces and extensions of...environments to connect. in a world of increasing technology and communication, what is the future of art? If art is a form of communication, will it be lost as innovation leads to transparent communication. Is it obsolete? or is are sacred, ubiquitous, invulnerable and inevitable? What will it look like? How will art be produced, consumed, valued? What new, abstract spaces, environments will this lead to? Mike Nelson: a Psychic Vacuum. Developing physical environment that transcend time and space. Let humans connect, feel, actively explore and tell stories.

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taylor levy. taylor levy. taylor levy. taylor levy. taylor levy. possible design object. possible design object. possible design object. itp. itp. itp. itp.