Born Under Punches

letsbuildahome-fr: Rooftop Racetrack: 1928 via Retronaut “The...

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:30:48 -0400

Rooftop Racetrack: 1928 via Retronaut

“The Lingotto building, Turin, Italy, once housed a Fiat factory. Built between 1916 and 1923, the design had five floors, raw materials going in at the ground floor, and cars built on a line that went up through the building. Finished cars emerged at rooftop level, where there was a rooftop test track. It was the largest car factory in the world at the time. Le Corbusier called it “one of the most impressive sights in industry”, and “a guideline for town planning”.”

Reblogged for Dad.

The Sims Career Ladder - Dorkly Comic

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:52:08 -0400

The Sims Career Ladder - Dorkly Comic

(source unknown… I tried!)

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:11:00 -0400

(source unknown… I tried!)

girlwithlandscape: theparisreview: In...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:03:00 -0400

girlwithlandscape:

theparisreview:

In Japanese, tsundoku means, “the act of buying books and not reading them, leaving them to pile up.”

For more of this morning’s roundup, click here.

There’s a word for it?

I was in Japan for two and a half years, and I did not learn this word that sums up my life?

For those of you curious about the etymology:

積む (tsumu, to pile up) + 読 (doku, to read), punning on “積んでおく” (tsundeoku, to leave piled up)

Reddit AMA with Ellen McLain, the voice of GlaDOS from Portal...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:58:56 -0400

Reddit AMA with Ellen McLain, the voice of GlaDOS from Portal and Portal 2.

The many voices of Billy West (on PennsSundaySchool)

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:53:54 -0400

The many voices of Billy West (on PennsSundaySchool)

lacarpa: Andrew Tomaszuk lol wat

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:47:05 -0400

lacarpa:

Andrew Tomaszuk

lol wat

allthingsconsiderate: This is worthwhile. artdawdlings: Bruce...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:45:45 -0400

allthingsconsiderate:

This is worthwhile.

artdawdlings:

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Currently at 43. Very cool - I mean interesting.
Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

fozmeadows: hyperbolic-time-chamber: There’s a lot...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:47:11 -0400

fozmeadows:

hyperbolic-time-chamber:

There’s a lot to discuss here

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON HERE

I CAN’T

*dies*

Printing this out so I can show my tattoo guy.

Azalea garden pt. 3 (at New York Botanical Garden)

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:22:11 -0400

Azalea garden pt. 3 (at New York Botanical Garden)

Azalea garden pt. 2 (at New York Botanical Garden)

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:18:08 -0400

Azalea garden pt. 2 (at New York Botanical Garden)

Azalea garden pt. 1 (at New York Botanical Garden)

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:17:20 -0400

Azalea garden pt. 1 (at New York Botanical Garden)

“It’s like doing a study of toddlers and declaring...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:03:10 -0400

“It’s like doing a study of toddlers and declaring those born since 2010 are Generation Sociopath: Kids These Days Will Pull Your Hair, Pee On Walls, Throw Full Bowls of Cereal Without Even Thinking of the Consequences.”

- “Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation” - Elspeth Reeve on The Atlantic Wire)

Thank the heavens Allie Brosh is back. I hope she knows how much...

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:50:30 -0400

Thank the heavens Allie Brosh is back. I hope she knows how much she is loved. (Especially for the drawing above.)

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

leilacohanmiccio: 2013 Book #16 Shockingly contemporary and...

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:32:28 -0400

leilacohanmiccio:

2013 Book #16

Shockingly contemporary and readable - if you like The Group, The Best of Everything, et. al. and you haven’t read this, you’re missing out.

I found a copy of this at my grandparents’ summer house. I dog-eared all the sex bits and it got passed around a lot in my middle school. (I think I even put a paper bag cover on it.

Ah, the pre-Internet era, when novels about awkward sex stood in for explicit porn.

STAHP (via reddit)

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:45:21 -0400

STAHP

(via reddit)

The Basketball Goal

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:21:17 -0400

textastrophe:

The Orginal Ad:

My conversation with the ad poster:

A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie (by IBM)

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:17:28 -0400

A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie (by IBM)

Reddit Read of the Day: College student overloads his power...

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:32:55 -0400

Reddit Read of the Day: College student overloads his power strip, takes it apart to find a spying device, consisting of a microphone and a GPS tracker with cellular uplink.

He thinks he took the power strip from his parents’ house. Who is being spied on, and by whom? The Reddit Bureau of Investigation is on the case.

"Oh, The Following. You’re like watching a bird with a broken wing fill out an SAT exam."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:01:43 -0400

“Oh, The Following. You’re like watching a bird with a broken wing fill out an SAT exam.”

- Starlee Kine, recapping the season finale of The Following on Vulture