For the past thirty years I have been intrigued by the processes of acceptance and integration of new and world changing concepts in the Arts; literature (new styles of unfolding narratives embedded in lyrics, poetry, fiction and journalism), music, dance and stage performance and visual arts and architecture. It is perplexing to see often on […]
Reflections + Follies
A Memory of Human Survival with Dignity
In the mid-seventies I was director of the Institute of Design in Chicago. I started in fall, when swarms of migrating birds would negotiate the city with buildings mostly constructed with glass-curtain walls. Around Crown Hall, the design and architecture studios, every morning one could find hundreds of bird carcasses. Students, staff and teachers, would […]
What is progress?
Industrialization? Urbanization? Globalization? Is it about Efficiency? Expediency? Introducing Scientific, Medical, Technological Solutions? Is it about Modernization, a blind belief in Science and Technology? Has Humankind been able to improve living conditions or the environment? Is it Progress, when the human biology is being ignored, even crippled, when all ecological connections with the environment are […]
Design Failure, Safety and Form
By Len D. Singer Len Singer Design and Research , Portsmouth VA, 23703 USAFormer Professor of Industrial Design, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Emeritus Member: Human Factors and Ergonomic Society, Industrial Designers Society of America, and Environmental Design Research Association. Synopsis The objective of this paper […]
Ivan Massar’s Musings
A Short Biography The many portfolios of his images present a professional photographer’s life-retrospective of a true love for people of all walks of life, the environment and disparate places and moods, and the conflicts engendered by the variety of human and inhumane conditions, from Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to […]
Indulgences
Got a call from Benedict XVI, you know “good old Joe, but call me Al, Ratzinger”, formerly John Paul’s second Attack-Rottweiler, now Papa. He wondered if you didn’t need some earthquake insurance for the trip to Italy. He mumbled something about indulgences. I asked, “Do you mean beer?” He explained: “Not in Italy. No, no. […]
Rip Van Winkler
The various roles of this story play in the shadow of the complex dynamics of their time, as collected in the chronicles of several German cities in the mid-20th century. Back then, there was a simple, average, basically contented young man named Rip Van Winkler. He was a good neighbor, who was always obedient and […]
Music as a Guide
Music is full of phenomena which make up the construction of various styles and philosophical intentions of pieces when composed. So, why is it not at all possible to find parallels between the aural phenomena of music composition and the visual phenomena of typographic design, just to break away from the monotony of Bauhaus or […]
Openness and Closedness
If one prefers not to copy or plagiarize someone’s else’s concepts or work, still, for the emerged frames of perceptions, which make attempts to freeze the understanding, conclusion or position, one is obliged to learn how to translate the wonders of today into positive realities for tomorrow. About how easy it was for a young […]
Appendixes
At the beginning, they say, the word was birthed. That may be true. But at the end, it says right here, in the mechanics of life, at the end of the book, there fall the appendixes . . . Any encyclopedia will mark “appendix” a collection of supplementary material, usually placed at the end, […]