WALTER AMERIKA BLOGS

Another Apple is doing well: New York. Certainly with shows like MoMA's Talk to Me

New York attracted more than 48 million tourists in 2010. Up 7% compared to 2009. With over 6500 new jobs. If you haven't been there ( I for one didn't) there's a great reason to visit this year. Or so it seems. The MoMA is preparing for Talk to Me: an exhibition on the communication between people and objects that will open at The Museum of Modern Art on July 24th 2011. It will feature a wide range of objects from all over the world, from interfaces and products to diagrams, visualizations, perhaps even vehicles and furniture, by bona-fide designers, students, scientists, all designed in the past few years or currently under development. 

The curating team opened an online journal that will document the process and progress of Talk to Me. Shared are findings, considerations, and explorations as they research, investigate, travel and hear from their networks of designers, artists, scientists and scholars.

Under the queue tab you'll find projects that piqued interest and are awaiting further research, whereas if something is tagged as checked, it has already gone successfully through that phase and it sits in our preliminary database, which will not be final until, probably, the opening day of the show.

By allowing us to have a peek behind the scenes of Talk to Me, they hope not only to shed some light on the curatorial process, but also to gather feedback in the form of comments to the posts, free-floating ideas, and suggestions. Nice.

Here's a project in queue by a former Design Academy Student: Florian Krautli's Human Antenna.

Human Antenna from Florian Kräutli on Vimeo.

 

Antony Who?

Admitting that your out of touch with avantgarde music is not nice, but can be done. Anyway, going to let myself be surprised tonight by an episode of VPRO's Winter Guests, starring Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. Seems to be a beautiful voice and intriguing personality. Art and music combined.

The week after

Although hectic, I enjoyed the Dutch Design Week last week. Great vibe all over Eindhoven, right from the start at Saturday with the opneing of the Graduation Show of the Design Academy Eindhoven, curated by Ilse Crawford (head of Department) and Anne Mieke Eggenkamp (Chairwoman) with interior design by Piet Hein Eek. Who himself by the wayopened a huge place at Strijp R (11.000 square meters of old industrial building). Talking about the designer as entrepreneur. The Academy was highlighting the different roles designers nowadays play in business and society in large. During several breakfast meetings we discussed this with industry leaders and Friends and Sponsors of the Academy. The academy is now clearly moving in to a new direction of combined cultural, economic and social relevance.

Also moderated a nice exhibition on LED: Liberation of Light, in the Design House, presented the Best Client Award to Royal VKB during the Design Awards Show and visited the first World Design Forum, which I expected to be a bit more vibrant and mixed. Now it was primarely a gathering of older men in grey suits (of course including myself). Anyway the week was a success, as far I'm concerned. Only mistake I made was not to be a full week in Eindhoven, but try to combine it with work elsewhere. And that ended up in too much traveling up and down. Will do that differently next year.

 

Where ideas come from: Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on creative environments

Wired Magazine (October 2010) features a conversation between authors Kevin Kelly and Steve Johnson on why the best environments for creativity are diverse, collaborative and tolerant of failure. Kelley recently wrote 'What Technology Wants', in which he states that technology is a form of autonomous life and Johnson wrote 'Where good ideas come from' : a natural history of innovation. He finds that great creative environments are like coral reefs. Good to hear, I'm advocating now for some time that the the creative industries can only flourish in 'creative eco-systems'. First example Johnson gives is Twitter and its retweets on ideas and articles. Second, and seen from my Design Academy Eindhoven perspective much more interesting, Johnson still sees university systems as engines of innovation. As long as they are prepared to leave their ivory tower isolation. True, true, true!

Kelly proclaims that we should see ideas as connections. Another view I support. Connecting creativity will be the next big thing. Biological and cultural systems all in all might be closer intertwined than we might think. Let's read both books.

Copyright WIRED Magazine, illustration by Jason Holley

Speaking at Picnic 10: Cloud culture on a sunny day.

Spoke yesterday at Picnic10, the Amsterdam based conference on digital media, green innovation and many other topics. A very easy going gathering of thinkers and doers. I'm  in the middle between those two, I guess. Participated in a session with Charles Leadbeater, the renowned 'inventor' of 'wethink'. Saw him speak for the first time at TED GLOBAL 2005 and thought: 'clever insights in what's coming'. He now delivered arguments on high and low culture, making a funny language comparison between French and Australian wines to proof his point. 

Anyway, Cloud culture theory is not completely my thing...I like it a bit more down to earth: what will be the new upcoming creative careers, where is the growth capital coming from, why don't we embrace the different crisis (for instance upcoming healthcare issues, water and environment issues, educational and datainformation issues) to show what creativity can add in terms of social and economic value?

But the somewhat fuzzy cloud culture discussion with the audience didn't ruin my day by any chance: it was after all the 24th birtday of my daughter Kim, who visited Picnic on Thursday and was inspired and triggered by it.  

Charles Leadbeater during his talk

 

Design Academy Eindhoven opens new Academic Year with great symposium

Jay Parkinson on designing new healthcare systems, Michael Braungart on cradle to cradle effectiveness, Joep van Lieshout on Slave City, Robert Dijkgraaf en Joke Hermsen on universal time and a slow future and Carl Rohde on the needs of the 50+ generation (yes, that's me)

A very nice set of high level and entertaining speakers were present at the opening of the Academic year at the Design Academy Eindhoven, the renowned design institute where I head the Market Department (with great pleasure). The Academy is again reinventing itself step by step towards more socio-economic relevance. Without loosing it's edge of cultural and conceptual frontrunner off course.

On the pic chairwoman Anne Mieke Eggenkamp during her opening speech with Maarten Baas' analog/digital iPhone app projected behind her.

Plundered my soul

May 18th...oh, how long...

Goodbye Peter Bouhof

Peter Bouhof died last Sunday, after being seriously ill for more than a year. Much too young. Peter was my former art director when I started out in advertising at FHV/BBDO in 1985. He already worked there for a little period and was able to show me around and make feel welcome. But more than that he (as well as myself) knew that we needed each other to come up with good ideas and breakthrough execution. So right from the start we were a team working hard to achieve success on big national accounts like Albert Heijn. Which we got. We both got promoted to senior level after some years. Than the chemistry of the team disappeared, and we changed creative partners.

But we also stayed in contact, because Peter grew - next to advertising - into a second field of interest: Art. And came up with the idea to start an art gallery: The Drawing Room. Just the original idea sketches of artists. beautifully captured in simple wooden frames. I liked the concept and decided to partner with him. We had an hilarious opening night: Director of the Stedelijk Museum Rudy Fuchs and the Minister of Culture at the time Hedy D'Ancona were supposed to visit our new gallery (being part of a consortium of seven galleries, as I recall, at the Amsterdam Lijnbaangracht). Peter came up with a brilliant idea to 'cover' our ugly ceiling with a pattern of terracotta tiles by an artist he knew. Fine by me. It was installed a day before the opening, but some hours before the opening we heard a noise of something dropping to the floor from some height: terracotta tile # 1. Then after some time tile # 2. And they kept coming down every now and then. Fortunately, the hot shot guests game through our gallery without being hit by art! 

Eventually I did quit the gallery because I couldn't match it with my job in advertising. But Peter loved it too much not to try to combine both.

Over the years Peter and I stayed in on and off contact. He had his live and I had mine. More than a year ago now I got a call that he had suddenly collapsed in the street. When we visited him with some friends in the hospital he was in a scary condition, but luckily he recovered for the time being and there were nice moments last year to look back and laugh about memories such as the one I described.

I will always remember Peter with a smile on my face as an advertising soul mate and an art adventurer, but most of all as a warm, enthusiastic and kind friend. 

Brand Building | Vitra

Nice brand home, designed by Swiss star architects Herzog and de Meuron, for Vitra. Vitra, a Swiss furniture manufacturer, recently completed the Vitrahaus as a presentation space for their collection.  The building's comprised of 12 stacked "houses". It is located on the border of Germany and Switzerland, in the town of Weil am Rhein. It's not showing any conceptual link with furniture, but nevertheless it's enforcing Vitra's values like quality and style. DesignBoom that reported on the building, however doesn't mention sustainability. Has Vitra missed an opportunity here?

 

Jeans, shoes and water

Visited the Amsterdam Fashion Week. First listened to a very clear presentation by former AFW director James Veenhoff, who initiated the House of Denim project: a jeans factory, r&d lab, school, shop etc completely focused on denim. Big motivation for Veenhoff is the sustainability aspect of producing jeans, especially the enormous amount of water that is needed to produce and dye jeans. I hope the initiative gets the public private support that it needs. Anyone interested in jeans, could also visite the 'Global Denim Project' website of ULC (University College London). Nice overview of all research going on in the world about jeans and denim.

Afterwards went to se the Mada van Gaans fashion show. I'm not that much of a fashionista, but I liked the consistency of the show (which was based on a 'snake goddes' kind of idea, I just read somewhere). No extravaganza, good eye for refined simplicity. Unfortuntely something went wrong with ordering the right shoesize for the models, who barely could walk on their high heels. Not a major thing, you don't see it in the magazine pictures anyway...but it didn't contribute to the otherwise professional presentation.