Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Apr 26, 2014
Art on Autopilot - Since you dont have time!
Long back read that some sculptor spent his whole life making several sculptures for a large garden, sounds cool but what a waste of life, seriously! In case you paint a Monalisa or something than you might think its worthwhile, since you made a masterpiece for generations to come, but all of us ain't Vinchi.
With whatever capabilities we possess we can have two possible choices to make, one is to make a masterpiece to be remembered or to create abundance of art for yourself and for humanity. Abundance can give you instant opportunity to channelise your creative energy rather than waiting to make that one masterpiece for which you are waiting since last 10 years. And we are not talking about just fine arts, it can be anything, any form of creative affair which you love to be engaged in, you see even pattern of numbers is art for statistician, that's art for her!
So how will you create abundance when art is not your bread n butter and you are ever occupied with inexhaustible to-do list for your lifetime. Solution is to put your art on an autopilot mode. Making art anywhere everywhere, art which consumes least amount of time but is still an art to your satisfaction.
To keep your thinking wheel rotating an example can be like; take a complex peice of sculpture or object or take simply a junk, spill a bucket or mug of water in front of it, see the amazing reflection in water, now click or capture or paint or draw that reflection or the whole environment or simply observe and feel blessed to see your creation, additionally spill some paint in the water or add a mirror in the backdrop if you want or just do anything you like and your are ready with your art piece.
Idea is that it might take substantial time to create that very sculpture or art piece for example, whose reflection you are trying to capture but the moment you added thin film of water or a mirror for example the whole dynamics changed, now the whole setting is complex enough to qualify for an art, your personal art. See Master Artists used to paint pomegranate and guava to create classic masterpiece called “Still Life”, you simply cut them in half and one-click-capture the intricate pattern or just cut-n-shape them in cube and you are ready with your modern piece of art.
The best thing is that it’s you who have created this art, and you own this art; at least it gives you satisfaction to see your creativity manifested, in a blink of eye almost. This shortcut of art is just an example, because you were really running short of time to be devoted to art but you really wanted to create some, now you can think of infinite possibilities to dump the excuse that you could have created something only if you had time. This is how you beat the art!
Oct 6, 2013
Why architectural clients should be more demanding today?
Need of "Creative
demand" and false in-vogue benchmark of "what is good!"
In a time of century when you should be asking for interactive customizable
digital walls for your indoors as a client you are still busy choosing wall
colors and wallpaper patterns, in a time when you should be demanding multiple
mood lighting possibilities for your every room you are apparently happy and content with your stylish off-the-shelf chandelier and much propagated energy saving CFL lighting fixtures, when you should be asking your architect what
kind of living experience he or she is envisaging and designing for your home,
you are busy asking what would be the effective sqft area of your house, when
you should be deliberating about multi-tier security system for your hard
earned asset called home, you are busy choosing stylish looks of your
door knob, when you should be looking for indoor ambiance inspired by your sun-sign,
you leave this design choice to the idiosyncrasy of architect after little
deliberation, who will now design "your" house inspired by his or her
"own" sun sign traits - if you believe in such thing called sun sign! And there are ample other examples which demonstrate you are more or less content will "Less" when it comes to Architecture for your home.
You
do demand as an architectural client but mostly in a wrong direction. And you
know, you only get what you ask for. You
really need to channelize your demands towards design, ambiance, technology
integration, customization and personalization and to the little architectural
elements which is going to make your life better and effortless at home. All you
need to do is to be little more creative in your demand. Also you need to shed
this notion that “popular is good”, that’s not the case when it comes to
architecture because you as an individual or a group of family might have a
totally different needs and aesthetic perception than your friends, or neighbor
or that guy with million dollar Mansion, so your house need not necessarily be
exactly like others no matter how tempting those options are.
You see, if you are of this opinion that insisting your architect for your favorite pink or blue color for your living room wall makes you a good client, then you need to take a look way back to realise that those cave men were more creative for their homes, decorating their caves with such amazing cave paintings or drawings, even after thousands of years later you are still struggling to decorate your living room wall with pink or blue or some painting of great artist! Have you really evolved in this large span of time or are you repeating the same old story in some way or other. That full clad digital living room wall which you can color customize everyday or on which you can write your daily to-do-list or which can remind you of unpaid bills in a flash or where you can leave a message for your loved ones while leaving home is just an example to make your realise that there are no boundaries which defines and restricts architecture or interior design.
The best part is that architects like challenges, so if you demand "more" as a client in terms of stretching the possibilities of design and innovation, they would be more than happy to help you and probably will give you something many shades better than your expectations, all you have to do is to be little more creative in your demand.
Sep 28, 2013
15 things I learned in 10 minutes about photography - Flipping through a reputed travel guide book
Amazing revelations about
Photography-
1) It’s not just about Iconic structures or monuments it’s about capturing their interaction with the people
2) If you are capturing a lively street,
capturing an element of motion is a must (people, car etc.)
3) When capturing sculptures or carved
details in the open sun, wait for the right time of the day for the perfect shadow
which accentuates the dimension and details of subject
4) Capture the clouds in the background
(particularly at dusk ) and half the job is done
5) Capture water fountain in the foreground and half the
job is done
6) Capture someone capturing others (seems
a cheap trick though)
7) If you capture street dining you must
capture some element of service - something being served or by someone who is
serving the thing
8) If capturing museum or exhibition
you must capture the chemistry between the exhibit and spectator, capture someone
quite still and who is trying to understand and appreciate the meaning of exhibit
9) Capturing the public spaces,
capture the people and their behavior at the very intersection of daylight and shadows (it naturally
captures the human dilemma of judgment whether to go out in open sun on stay in
the shadow)
10) When capturing motion you must have
something static for reference, but for best results “that static one” has to
be the one of the vary things which are moving (people, car etc.)
11) Capture a glass building at dusk at the very
moment when it gets illuminated in the evening while it is partially illuminated
from outside as well from setting sun
12) There is at least one definite
location from where the famous sculpture or display (or structure) looks
perfect (and usually it’s the most abused one as well, since whole world seems to
capture the shot from the same point)
13) When taking a shot of any high end
restaurant dining scene, don’t just
capture the food and luxury, and candlelight, you need to capture the people
having supper, with their interactions
and their exaggerated animated expressions
14) When in vegetable market capturing a vendor
interacting with customer, a price list smudged with chalk or otherwise in the
backdrop is must.
15) Shop display window + scripted shop name
typo + passer by = classic shot without fail
Another
series of interesting observations will be part of upcoming posts, Join me on twitter @urbanoregional for updates. Your view and experiences are most
welcome.
You
might also like following post :
Sep 25, 2013
What does growth cycle of design industry looks like?
Design industry follows a repetitive elliptical
growth path.
More than say 90 percent of designers still use direct or derivatives of primitive or rather eternal geometrical building blocks as raw material- shapes and surfaces, like circle, triangle, square, prism, hyperbole etc. and remaining 10 percent relentlessly trying to unearth some divine pattern or previously unseen building blocks or magic design elements, anxiously looking here and there for some clue, looking into microscope, looking up to nature, science, nano technology, microbiology, history or mythology or whatever or simply resorting to hallucinated inspiration, so that some divine "never before design element" descends upon them out of luck, while still acknowledging that those basic geometric building blocks like triangle and circles are not going to go away anywhere soon, probably never.
So,
when majority of fundamental design elements have remained exactly the same
throughout the evolution of design industry, this industry is bound to follow a
recurring path starting from basics, evolving on the way through innovation,
reaching to maturity, taking an inspirational U-Turn and finally going back to
its roots, from where it all started. Apparently a perfect circle of growth;
but it goes further, we haven’t talked about technology yet, this ever evolving
technology provides designers even bigger opportunities, with new materials,
new textures, enhance durability and elasticity, new colors, new opacity newer viscosity
and so on, which helps prolong this period of growth cycle pushing this
circular trajectory to follow an even larger elliptical path, finally going
back to its roots just to be born again.
You might also like this post - Artificial Sonic Urban Environment to break the monotony of City!
Aug 30, 2013
Let me show you the true artist in you!
No art is as inclusive as fine arts or call it whatever.
It seems every single person is born with artistic talent specifically more pronounce and visible in the field of fine arts, abstract art or call it whatever, an artist even in you, whether you consider yourself an artist or not that is irrelevant, proof is your childhood notebook filled with weird characters drawn by you and spoiled pages of your dad's diary and all the tattoo that you made on your hand, graffiti on your school desk and crayon spoiled walls of your house where you spent your childhood days and that creative surge when you were staring at the damp basement or loo walls trying to infer some meaning out of those grunge damp patterns, or even today if you occasionally tend to draw a smiley face on moist, dew clad surface and so on. Every adult was an artist in his or her childhood so they are today, so are you.
Every child with his or her genuine creativity, making and living their own dreams in their sketchbook or on wall, vivid and real in their own imagination, a spell-bounding piece of rawness with bit of influence from surrounding, and we are not talking about all the art and craft assignments forced by educational curriculum and competition, those are plastic, manipulated, and imposed, threatening and robbing the very creative rawness of child. We are not talking about biased aesthetic judgement here. We are talking here for example the child's own interpretation of how round a sun should be or how round his dexterity allows him to draw it, not the Vinchi style geometric perfectness of circle which we tend to impose on them. Since art being essentially a true expression of self does not necessarily demands shape of circle to be a perfect circle so it really doesn't matter how well you used to draw a circle to qualify as an artist in your childhood, and since art is beyond the clutch of time so if you draw the similar weird circle today when you are grown up it is still an art and so you are an artist. Another reason is that if making a perfect circle is a qualification criteria for an artist than our computer or tab can do that job better than our master artist.
So acknowledging the truth of your own childhood talent now you can appreciate the works of kids around better. Not judging them on their perfectness but admiring them for their innocence. You see these kids will grow up one day and change the very definition of understanding of what an art should be. After all its art if you can prove it.
You might also like to read this post on "design diplomacy"
You might also like to read this post on "design diplomacy"
Nov 26, 2012
Making places - That street corner…
Traditional
planning approach and values - being lost in transition?
Any random street corner
of any random city, corner at the junction of streets, streets busy or calm, chaotic
at times, still having its own order, order in transition, transition of daily commuters,
transition of shifting daylight, transition of shadows, glitter of street and
neon signage light, LED shop window and synchronized traffic light, that flux
of casual traffic light, that changing activity landscape across the day across
the seasons with occasional pause. But peculiar are the streets of old and heritage
cities, cities with history, those streets and corners evolved from the
centuries of planning and urban design experience, tailor-made to the local
needs of community and neighborhood, with varying characteristics across the
region across the city and across the world. Wisely adapted for local climate,
some designed for extreme harsh summer, some for tons of snow, an ancestral
legacy of planning and design up-to the last fine details of drain cover and
cast iron light-pillars and articulated bollards.
Though respected, preserved
and encouraged in some cities, that example and inherited legacy of urban
design and planning is fast deteriorating and disappearing, sometimes out of
ignorance sometimes purposefully ignored, in several parts of the world and
almost in any upcoming new city in any corner of world, that local wisdom of
traditional planning is increasingly being lost and being mechanized, being templatified.
Traditionally those streets and corners were designed to protects commuters from
harsh sun, from icy wind, and from pouring rain and sudden snow, those
meandering streets used to have a texture of character with those spaces to
pause and relax and in the comfortable safe niches, a place to chat and
socialize and a place to engage oneself in that active buzz of street, corners
reinforced to give it a distinct recognizable character. That legacy of
traditional localized planning is calling for justice and revival.
Thinking about fabric ofcity especially within city boundaries, a natural question comes to mind, why a
vast country with extremely diversified heritage and climatic regions and special
needs should have only few standard templates of streets sections and junctions
and street corners with little bit possibility of urban design integration
mostly for sake of localization formalities? Templates though give advantage of
planning execution, better control and cost efficiency; it tends to encourage deterioration
of heritage characters and inherited values and learning mostly in the name of
infrastructure and technical feasibility, commercial viability, changing
lifestyle requirements, uniformity, standardization, international acceptance
etc. Of-course needs are different today, speedy transport, higher population
density, quantum shift in lifestyle and technology, higher latent demand, etc.,
hence the different planning approach visible and practiced today, but we
should ask ourselves, can we incorporate those learning experience from our
past generations into today’s planning process and can we infuse them in today’s
“easy way out templates”? With all the technological advancement and possibilities
and centuries of learning experience, one thinks that it’s somewhat possible to
strike the balance between traditional learning and present planning approach
preserving the character and dignity of that specific city that specific core
and that neighborhood, starting right from the careful planning of that street
and that street corner. All it needs is a tender heart, logical brain and collective
will of planners, urban designers and policy makers and may be few extra bucks!
Oct 21, 2012
Still untapped potential of raw satellite images for city planners!
Urban Planning satellitexted
 |
| Satellite view of urban alphabet |
Love exploring cities from the eyes of satellites! they tell stories which were never written, imprints of time still visible, you see a city, you see it growing, you see where its going, you learn where it comes from. They say you need to travel if you want to learn, you confront with knowledge and experience while travelling. Some tools like free or else satellite imageries were not available for planners decades back or even recently, by the time it arrived for planners as a tool, GIS and satellite image interpretation etc. also accompanied and hence all the focus shifted towards degitising the whole world including your neighborhood street and front yard, making layers after layers, though they sure help planners in many ways, but you know at times on feels that in this whole process of mechanization and automation and interpretation, the shear beauty of raw, as it is satellite images and views are loosing its significance.
The naked and raw satellite images of earth like as seen in google earth can tell things and give clues which even high level high resolution satellite image interpretations can't tell, the judgement of human eyes and brain, not just the computer processor, once in a while for sake for fun learning at least. Urban planners, transport planners and so on planners need to see and understand the random behaviors of random cities across the world, travel wont be possible and you don't have enough time to wait for that as well so go explore a city, any city or settlement or villages on google earth or something, every time you will go there you will learn something. Don't get simply spoon-fed by other's version of what that particular city is all about, go learn yourself through your own version of experience, through satellite images, if you are not familiar with the streets and terraces and vegetation of a city from its aerial or satellite dimension, your all efforts to become a good planner is halfhearted. Explore to understand and share with the world or simply use this learning in you next city planning or development project. There is always more than you can explore there!
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 11, 2012
Aug 30, 2012
Sometimes you appreciate unintentional grunge architectural experience!
Even architects refrain to talk about the darker intuitive side of architectural experience.
At times you feel so tiered of popular architecture, popular formula of architecture, formula of what should be and what not and all the glorification and stubbornness around what is popular, those are kind of beautiful, but they are every were, architectural orders, theories so much overvalued so abundantly repeated, interiors so much commercialized so much in order, so much restricted, so much formalized, you are left with no choice but to live in an environment which appeal to neighbors, your housing society and society at large, even You don’t know what you really want to experience. Spoon-fed architectural experience of what is good and what is bad being taught to architects as well as future prospective clients in the school. They are taught to create wonderful architecture but no one encourages them to create wonderful personalized architectural experience no matter even if its eccentric on conventional benchmark, experience of space which you can’t really create with the popular architectural tools, styles, mass education, thumb-rules available and being used widespread today. For example if you have already decided that a particular room, should have a particular lux level of lighting, particular illumination level, uniformly distributed across the room with slight variation here and there as prescribed in the architectural bible or bylaws or general practice or as limited by the market availability and client’s choice of fixture, you can’t create an architectural experience which is thrilling, mysterious, inquisitive and even hauntingly sticky at times even for a moment, which are human psychological needs and part of their personality to experience such environment, at least just for sake of fun. No wonder at times you cherish that moment of darkness in the rainy damp evening or moonlit night when suddenly there is power cut for a brief period, because you have just experienced the dimly lit darker side of architecture which was never intended for you to experience in its original form, but only you know that how much it means to you to experience that very silence of spatial darkness, that mysterious view of dusk from the dark corner of your room, that stillness of ambiance and lack of bright LED light, that passionate experience in the beautiful and diluting sphere of space and light created by that single candle lit on the dining table, that momentarily grey sheds of otherwise bright and warm colors of interior walls. We are talking about darker side of architectural experience which induces a momentarily feeling of introspection to the occupant through its very silence, stillness darkness and grunginess, many writers, directors, photographers, architects, and artists will be able to relate to such experience. Grunge architectural experience which in thought provoking and inspires you at times and which is innate human psychological need somewhere buried in the subconscious under the monumental load of popular architectural experience!
By: Anoop Jha
Jul 12, 2012
Why such vast gap exists in statistical interpretation of a single fact?
Statistics considers raw data while people tend to value associated sentiments.
If you are going for a primary survey with a standard template of closed ended questionnaires or some kind of table to be filled with numbers you might not be doing real justice to the survey. You might have a reasonable amount of data at end of the day to conclude your assignment or research, but you won’t be able to do the realistic assessment of the situation. You might fulfill the acceptable standards of data gathering; you might even publish the result and can even bag an award or two, but if the very people who got surveyed are not being able to relate to the statistical conclusion, or if they do not validate it, all the efforts of data collection and analysis goes to vain.
You will be surprised to realize that still at many instances the situation shown of paper and the actual situation experienced by the population is drastically different, though data for situation analysis was gathered from the same population or community. Then why this vast gap of interpreted and locally experienced situation exists? Why this constant apparent difference of opinion between government’s point of view and what media and NGO’s showcase about the city, region or community etc. There are few possible reasons, first is that statistics is very flexible domain, though outcome seems very impactful there is enough scope to mould or influence the direction of outcome, still staying within legally of intellectually acceptable limit. The kind of data you select to gather, variety of assumptions you take into consideration, mode and tool of statistical analysis you choose to go with, time span considered for analysis, selection and heterogeneity of sample itself, there are so many such variables that one can interpret and influence the outcome in any possible direction depending on the purpose or intention. Larger the data set, greater the flexibility of interpretation.
Government being a powerful entity with ample manpower and resources has generally upper hand when it comes to data collection and interpretation and usually less probability of misrepresentation, but again it depends on what they want to prove or convey. Media and NGO who generally lack enough data due to manpower constraint to prove a fact applicable to a larger domain generally tend to rely on emotional values attached to the subject or region and sentiments of population or communities to prove their point. They generally choose small set of data though having high perceived or emotional value and exploit the associated sentiments. On one hand there is ample scope of playing with data and on the other hand equally or more or less scope to play with people’s emotions and sentiments but ultimately both leads to distortion of fact. And this show of constant blame and justification goes on and on. Actual fact seems to lose the significance while this argument is on, later no one really bothers to reach to the actual fact.
Unless statistics as a knowledge stream would device a method and make it a mandate to consider or quantify and incorporate the emotional and sentimental values attached to the subject of research and aspirations of communities to the extent possible along with some kind of post analytic appraisal and indigenous validation method, data representation would remain deceptive and at the mercy of decision making individuals or groups. Meanwhile we as a layman can mitigate this doubt of data misrepresentation by keeping a questioning, skeptical or neutral attitude towards impactful data being presented day to day from both government end as well as media and social welfare representative’s end, without being panicked, without arriving at immediate conclusion, cross verifying the fact from different sources, applying our own head and intuition, knowing and reminding them that their job is to inform us not to instigate or incite us. You are capable enough to judge yourself; all you need is a fair amount of fair data and statistics or simply a fair representation.
By : Anoop Jha
Jun 21, 2012
It's been done this way since ages doesn’t make it the right way today!!
Rethinking academic research methodology.
So, you are up to research, thesis, dissertation or something, great!! Let’s consider few things before we move ahead, considering few establish academic research norms, said or unsaid, which you might like to question, which you might like to challenge, but you won't, may be you can’t, because someone else is running the show.
Let’s understand the anatomy and objective of research and what should be the scope of any academic research for purposes, like thesis, PhD and so on and let’s see if there is any loophole in the well established century old research methodology and why it’s high time that research methodology has to reinvent itself.
What usually happens is that you choose a topic of your expertise and interest, narrow or wide and a mentor or guide as well either to guide you throughout or just because its mandatory to have one as per university norms, whether its architecture, planning or sociology or something else, it’s all the same. Then you start collecting supporting evidence and snippets of information first to validate the selection of research subject and then to back your conclusion.
If you delve deeper you will realise that any chosen research subject or topic no matter how wide or narrow it is, has a very wide possible scope for exploration which we unjustifiably narrow down due to many reasons. You can have all the freedom to narrow down the subject or research topic itself which you choose but how can you narrow down and limit the research domain yourself and how can you decide in the beginning of research that which external influences to choose which might affects the subject, just because scope of research seems unfathomable to you for that particular subject or topic, just because someone told you to do so, just because your curriculum allows you the freedom to do so. If you are limiting your research to the review of few books on the subject, selected by your guide who can have his or her own biased inclination towards those particular books or those authors, if you limit your research only to some good books which are remaining in your library after best books of the lot which has already been lifted by the academicians and professors long ago, if you limit yourself to handful of primary sample survey which has its own grave issues and which is bound to give inaccurate picture, and if you limit yourself for any other similar innumerable reasons, you are doing a big injustice to the research subject.
The issue with age old academic research methodology in context of today is that there always has been a strong stress on authenticity and completeness of content, fixed research structure, rigidity of data structuring, stress on literature and book reviews and first hand data gathering, there always has been submission to the authority of few established individuals in the field and imposition of idiosyncrasy and idealism of mentor or guide, ignoring the massive and continuous stream of relevant information which is available today and which is already growing and going to grow exponentially in the future. In the inertia of age old established research methodologies we are knowingly or unknowingly ignoring the possibilities that today’s technology provides us in conducting our research. Ignoring the technology of data mining and data exploration which they are already using ruthlessly in business and corporate domain is almost absolutely missing in academic research.
Two fundamental truth which majority of academicians today would be highly hesitant to be confronted with, is first that "Billions of half-baked data is much more reliable and contextual than handful of authentic publications when it comes to research and establishing a fact, excluding field of science and mathematics" and second that "Skewed focus towards book reviews and published literature for research purposes tend to glamorizes second hand work and dampen free and creative thinking spirit". There is nothing new and creative in quoting some author on some instance or subject, nothing new in putting someone else's inferences and analogies in your own words in your academic research report. When there is too much focus on structure and format (Thesis, synthesis, analogy, reference, bibliography and all) content starts losing its significance. This prominent conventional research methodology only leads to half baked conclusion at the end of your research span, because of just few numbers of cases studied and fewer perspectives of authors analysed.
Main constraint here is time and it’s up to you how you manage to get optimum exposure in that short span of time to arrive at valid inferences. More intense the exposure more authentic would be the conclusion or outcome. You are given a limited time to conduct and conclude your academic research whether thesis, dissertation or PhD. You cannot stretch it infinitely. now you zoom in and pick up few published literature on the subject for your research reading pages, first to last, how many of these books with "authentic" information you would be able to read in that assigned research span of few months or years, five, ten, twenty or fifty? That’s it? Come end of the research span and you are aware of point of view of five or fifty different authors, thinking you have known enough, thinking it’s time to conclude. No matter how very authentic information you have at the end to conclude your research, these are just point of views of handful of published authors out of millions equally talented or more or less out there in the world working, thinking, deliberating on the same subject, who never got the time, inclination, money or right publisher to get their work and thoughts published but who are constantly writing on forums, blogs, constantly tweeting and sharing and so on, may be you also missed out the brilliant thoughts on the subject because it didn’t reach your library shelf, because your guide didn’t recommended it to you, may be you didn’t have enough money to buy that book or eBook or may be because it couldn’t get the attention of the masses due to competition with shear number of literature on the same subject.
It’s high time that students and researchers need to be encouraged to look for unconventional, previously unexplored and untapped streams of data for mainstream academic research by their colleges, universities and most importantly from their mentors and guides in their dissertation and PhD, sources like massive free and dynamic data from online environment of blogs, discussion forums, audio-visual data from established or amateur masses, tiny bits of information which individually doesn’t make any sense but which collectively presents fairly recognisable, logical and surprising patterns, and it’s high time that such research methodologies should get mainstream recognition. It’s time that they should shift their fixated attention from literature reviews to data source explorations and analysis, broadening the domain of literature itself.
You see, it would be much more exciting, authentic and wholesome an experience to explore from the dynamic, widespread and crude "sea of knowledge" rather than exploring from few well-maintained but stagnate "resource lakes".
BY- Anoop Jha
May 17, 2012
It’s Art if you can prove it…
Beauty lies in the description of subject not in the eyes of beholder!
We all have seen those classical photorealistic portraits, landscapes and still-life paintings, those precisely chiseled anatomical sculptures as well as those scientifically calculated complex structural building forms and the moment we see it we unanimously conclude that it’s a piece of art. We visualize, appreciate and interpret those art subjects as it is. Here we are talking about something different.
Let’s talk about art in the context of contemporary abstract and modern art, symbolic sculptures, concept based product designs, landscape and urban design installations and to some extent architecture. Let’s face the biting truth of contemporary art and design, i.e. “Abstractness” in art and design and other creative fields has become an easy escape for majority of artists, designers and likeminded people in the contemporary world due to its low-labor-low-skill-fast-production nature and high perceived intellectual and monetary value. Though there is psychological interpretation and justifications of “abstract art” as well but let’s focus here on the whole gimmick of art and commercialization surrounding art and design industry in the name of abstractness.
Let’s see how it works. Let’s be clear in the beginning that it’s not “Art” which is being sold, it the “Story” which they are buying, story of struggle of that artist and designer, story of making of that art and design work, story behind that abstractness. More the abstractness more the flexibility to weave a convincing story around that art, more the vagueness more they are capable to defending their artwork. So it’s not the art but the descriptive and convincing power of the artists and designers which all matters.
If you are not convinced yet let’s see few examples, suppose you see a particular piece of modern abstract contemporary art or installation which is beyond your perception, and your first reaction is “what’s the point”!! Then someone comes and tells you that this is a master-work of some renowned artist or sculptor or designer and then you unsuccessfully try to derive some meaning out of that art which was greek and meaningless for you a moment back, because you don’t want to challenge the authority of that renowned someone, because you know he or she will tell you a very convincing story to prove the meaning of their art. And they can do it very well, they are expert story tellers. That piece of art might be a genuine feeling and true expression of that artist or designer but there is an equal probability that it might be a story fabricated by that artist or designer or sculptor or others, around that art work to manipulate and convince you of its greatness and one can do that very easily if needed. And why not, if people are willing to spend fortunes to buy stories, let’s tell them stories, that’s what they are doing.
Still not convinced? Do it yourself then. Take a large white canvas or paper and few bottles of acrylic colors; put the canvas horizontally on ground and pour those colors randomly here and there on the canvas, use your creativity, instinct and any or some of the tools at your disposal, your hand, your old toothbrush or comb, kitchen utensils etc., just anything to roughly spread and partially mix those color on the canvas. Your painting is ready, now let’s weave an interesting story behind the painting subject, whatever comes to your mind first just go for it. 10 minutes and you are ready with an abstract masterpiece; rest up to your descriptive skill, now “if you can prove, it’s an Art, if not it’s a crap”. Best part is that you don’t have to be an artist or designer to do that, if you want to do a reality check, put this just emerged master art work in your living room, let people come and describe it for you or alternatively describe a different theme to different guests, just for fun. You will be surprised to see the positive responses; someone might offer you a good price for that as well!!
By- Anoop Jha
Apr 23, 2012
Let me Complicate it for you!!
Human mind needs complexity to appreciate design and aesthetics
If it’s too obvious it’s boring. If we have seen it earlier or something similar, it’s boring anyway. We always look forward to see and appreciate a piece of design or work of art or architecture which is refreshingly new, but still with a stubbornness of design expectations since we also love the nostalgia attached to the familiarity of object or subject.
Possibly the reason abstract and modern art emerged is because people were fed up of realistic and photo-realistic portraits and other painting subjects and demanded something new something avant-garde to appreciate. Though there were complexity of techniques and process involved in those elaborately detailed classical or miniature paintings but abstractness of modern art gave viewers infinite possibilities to perceive, interpret and appreciate the artworks. Though the artwork and style was new, people were still able to relate to it because of carefully chosen subjects of contemporary importance of that era or region. Similarly with architecture, possibly the abstract and minimalistic architecture emerged because people were tiered of those architectural details and geometrical orders, people later demanded purity of geometry not the order of geometry, they demanded thematic abstractness of elements not the sensory overload of detailing and Minimalistic architecture provided them all they wanted.
We have reached a time in the human evolution where we seem to have cracked the base code of aesthetics, analysing the rich history of art and architecture and documented enough in course of time for generations to come, while accelerating fast towards future. Now when we have tested basic design flavor and aesthetics of almost every kind how will we satisfy the design and aesthetic urge of humanity which is always looking out for something new to appreciate.
History shows, we have and we will find out new ways to provide the world with new design aesthetics which they will enjoy and appreciate. Fortunately there are ways to do that. Apparently there are two fronts on which we can innovate. One is technology; other is complexity of design itself. Technology will provide us materials, techniques etc. to innovate on design front and complexity of design will give us opportunity to challenge and satisfy the demanding aesthetic urge of curious human mind in field of art, design, architecture etc. What is complexity in this context? Complexity is to give them a piece of work , art or design or architecture which is difficult to grasp in one go like a puzzle, but quite familiar, contextual and easy once decoded, something which challenges the mind. Complexity provided by emerging materials, techniques and tools as well as complexity of forms, and abstractness.
By- Anoop Jha
Jan 24, 2012
Rx Design Capsule !!!
By - Anoop Jha
For better Product and Project Health
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Design Architecture Planning |
Jan 16, 2012
Breaking the monotony of planning
By - Anoop jha
Interesting twist to parking plan
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| Parking Grid |
Parking lot circulation showing innovative approach of planning grid which serves two purpose
1)It gives a holistic touch to industrial style rigid parking grid with main organic collector route
2)It puts a desirable physical limitation on speed of car in parking area due to its curvature and alignment
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