"I think your blog is getting jealous-child syndrome and feeling alienated because of your Tumblr." - Satish
He's right. I turn to my Tumblr in times like these, because it takes less time to post a quote, a photo or a short anecdote than it does to write a long-ish piece on here. I'm sorry :( there really is no excuse. I have thought about taking an hour of time out of my sleep schedule every day so I can squeeze everything in, but really I don't think it would help. Someone at an Adcenter board meeting once mentioned that however much time you're given for something, it will take that long. Regardless of whether it's a week or a day, the same task will fill that amount of time. Nevermind, then.
Design and the Elastic Mind
I went to the member preview at the MoMA with Satish. Everybody can find a number of sources about this exhibit by now, so I won't get into detail about every single part of it that I loved (even though I filled four pages in my journal that day). For anybody who hasn't read about it though, it was full of stuff that showed designers as changing from form givers to essential interpreters. The elasticity part referred to grasping progress (in technology and the world) and making it one's own.
The exhibit was separated into small scale (nanostructures), human scale (interactions with others) and large scale (cities, www, the world, the universe), making it really easy to navigate. That being said though, do not go to this exhibit unless you have a lot of time and mental energy. Going through the entire thing, reading and thinking took us around two and a half hours. SO interesting though!
One of the things I wrote down was a water-moving system that used the Fibonacci sequence to circulate millions of gallons of water with minimal energy. There was some awesome visualization, like what the entire Internet looks like (by the way: it looks like fireworks); aircraft navigation paths; computer chess thinking paths; etc. Relatedly, the NY Talk Exchange was so incredible you should visit this link if you only click on one in this part. Oh god there was so so much more. Shoes that stored your walking & stair climbing energy throughout the day and then were used to power small electronics that night in your home; children's science ideas (including the caption "This is a squiggle. It is a plant that has been genetically somethinged"); more more more.
Visit this nerdy and fascinating collection of ideas, it's up until May. Oh, and the entire thing uses Courier Sans :D
