let me answer that with a quote by bob dylan, i was so much older then, i'm younger than that now!

(copy and pasted from j's blog, but i'd just like to remind myself!)

things to do:

- draw a book-labyrinth that is the identical backwards and forwards, except mirrored in some manner

- create a website featuring photos of people on the street, kind of like those street photo blogs, but accompanied by a short interview: what is their favorite memory and favorite scene from a movie

- host a silent film party where everyone converses (silently) with captions that are written as they proceed, possibly to the tune of a pipe organ

- draw a history map, only places and events, between two people

- make a short film about a boy who perpetually wears a helmet

- illustrate a short story or poem written by or for a young child

- make a poster where the past and the future collide spectacularly (details to be worked out later)

- make a short film based on clips taken from footage of friends shot without them knowing, and afterwards, cut in a ridiculous way

- make a stop motion animation with voice-acting done by friends who've unwittingly been recorded in everyday conversation

- ask someone to describe the basic elements of their dream home and then create it in AutoCAD, render it in a 3D rendering program of choice, and present it to them in the manner of a real architectural pitch to a client

- make a three-part book where flipping the pages separately creates multiple landscape-scenario permutations

david adjaye


Maybe a movie is a room with light, but no view, light not as a bulb, but as a form, a physical plane. It’s like what Walter Murch, editor of films by Francis Ford Coppola, said: the last thing to include in a scene that requires blue lighting is a blue light.

jun nguyen-hatsushiba





"film is a medium with as many pros and cons as any other. it all depends on how it is applied and in what context. for people who think multimedia is the future, i feel a little sad. it should be us and our perception of life that becomes multifaceted and multiflavored. then, everything we see will add something significant to our experience. compare the sound of a single mosquito vibrating its wings to a bass-enhanced hifi personal surround-sound theatre system. it's the imagination in us."

book designs by willy fleckhaus

bookbook

So, I made one book for my job interviews, now I’d like to make another book… perhaps a children's book? book of poems? or a graphic novella!

Procedure (courtesy of Bruce Mau):

1. Establish form and content.

2. Collect materials (photograph, record, download, ask questions…)

3. Start with the spread (define the page dimensions, the number of pages is unlimited.)

4. Insert the grid (at its largest, follow the golden canon of Jan Tschichold, drawn in 1953: the inner margin is one-ninth the page width; the outer margin is two-ninth the page width; the top margin is one-ninth the page height; and the bottom margin is two-ninths the page height.

5. Select the images

6. Apply the appropriate templates and masks (templates define the position of content, masks control the degree of expression…)

7. Specify typography

8. Create a feedback loop (ask friends, collaborators, peers, and persons off the street, find conflict, amplify content.)

now... go!

This is my dream job: not a desk but a city, an office physically dispersed across three to four cities at any given moment and constructed on the fly, an office with no center, just consultants and collaborators and fabricators working together from around the world…

once, we spent a week
in a skyscraper
surrounded by forest

we were waiting for an elevator
and watching the trees

lost in translation

James, my friend in Hong Kong, had an away message up that read, “gno hei gei ho,” which I thought meant “I’m am doing very well!” in Cantonese. I asked him about that, and he said, “nooo, you mistranslated, gno hei gei ho… I am a gay ho!”

found in translation


photo from: jake dow-smith

I wonder about a couple, in a coffee shop, sharing steamed milk and tea, and one asking the other, “are you happy with me as the translator of the book of you?” I think we’re all translating someone else, all expressing someone else’s dream and qualities on their behalf.

Translation: moving an idea from one medium to another.

For instance, from sketch to construction, or even, as I hope to do one day, from architecture into film. This process brings into focus each medium’s particular qualities, potentials, and limitations for expression, as well as the structure and technique of the work itself. I think, the trick is to find the heart of the original and produce it in a new way.