aesthetics of joy

What do lollipops have to do with keeping the peace? Surprisingly, more than a little. A recent initiative by a city council in the city of Victoria in British Columbia offered free lollipops to drunken revelers leaving bars to cut down on noise and violence after a night out. Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe explained that the treats make it hard for inebriated partiers to be too loud, and that they minimize dialogue that could lead to brawls. More practically speaking, they also regulate blood sugar and, like pacifiers, have a calming effect.

While there’s no hard evidence that the lollipops worked, councillor Thornton-Joe says that it seemed to be so effective that the city is considering making it a permanent program. It’s a charming idea – that something so childlike and innocent could disarm a rowdy bunch. And it makes for a joyful image, to imagine adults appeased by candies on sticks.

This is aesthetics of joy at their beguiling best. Sugar, color, and a form that evokes nostalgia for childhood – these things have real power. Contrary to so much of what we are taught, they are not just styling or superficial extras. They are phrases in the language with which our stuff speaks to us, quietly shaping our desires and our behavior. It’s a joy to see them applied in a such a novel way, and for such playful problem-solving. I hope to see this idea take off in other places too.

Photo: Beautiful feather lollipops by Abbey Hendrickson of Aesthetic Outburst, via Pinterest
NPR: “Lollipops: Pacifiers for Bar Patrons?” 

I’ll be back tomorrow with more thoughts on the aesthetics of play. In the meantime, today I’m posting a few of the toys my inner child is currently coveting.

Hidden magnets make these blocks a magical remix of the old wooden ones, allowing creations that wouldn’t have even been fathomable before.

Huesito blocks from Tegu. Get them here.

My best friend is in town from London this weekend, and we have a whole day to ourselves and a whole city to explore. I’m pretty sure ice cream will be on the agenda.

I’ve known Annie longer than I’ve known ice cream, even. We’ve been best friends since we met in nursery school, at the age of two. Once we got driver’s licenses we would regularly bounce between Ben & Jerry’s and Friendly’s, thanking our metabolisms all the way. At Friendly’s we had standard orders: a peanut butter cup sundae for me, a mint chip sundae with butterscotch sauce and gummy bears for Anne. (Which I still think is gross.) Last time she came to town we had a wild goose chase across Manhattan looking for a mythical Friendly’s (save yourself some time, Manhattanites — there isn’t one). It’s one thing we can count on in our ever-changing lives; we will both always be up for a cone, anytime, anywhere.

So this NYT review of the city’s gourmet ice cream carts is perfectly timed. I think 87 flavors is a bit excessive even for us, so it’s nice to be able to cut to the chase. I’d say that Cookshop’s strawberry would go perfectly with a visit to the High Line…

Happy long weekend — enjoy the last taste of summer!

NYT: 87 Scoops Later, A Sweet Meltdown

What’s happening in the world of joy this week…

Phish’s new album “Joy” will be released Sept. 8; Band announces a limited edition “Joy Box” containing 1o posters designed for each of the album’s 10 tracks and an entirely separate album called “Party Time” (Rolling Stone)

Statisticians are attempting to develop a “happiness index” using Twitter (Central Penn Business Journal)

Giddy with social networking glee, Coca-Cola has created its own abbreviated URL, a la tinyurl and bit.ly: http://cokeurl.com/. Coke says: “Coke URL is just one way we’re making happiness easier to share.” (via Peter Feld)

New study shows happiness grows with age; apparently we get better at fighting off the cold-pricklies as we get older (US News & World Report)

Joyful music festival Woodstock celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend, stoking the nostalgia of baby boomers everywhere

Being interested as I am in joyful objects, it’s only natural that I’ve become obsessed with all things bubble, ball, and balloon. So when the dvd of The Red Balloon caught my eye in the local video store, I couldn’t resist bringing it home.

It must be more than 20 years since I’d seen it, but the film has a way of turning you back into a child. This happens so subtly that you don’t even notice, and the joy you feel at Pascal’s discovery of the balloon is as unfiltered and real as it would be if it were you climbing that Paris lamppost, seeking out that enormous floating treasure. And the pain at its eventual fate is just as real, just as sharp as a child’s.

In childhood we feel these emotions for the first time, and for this reason they remain at their peak of intensity in our memory. Perhaps this is why coveted objects from our childhood, like balloons, become so deeply symbolic of joy later in our lives. But there is still the question of why we are attracted to them so intensely in the first place, and I think this points to intrinsic qualities that entice us no matter how far we are from childhood.

In a 2007 review, Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman wrote:

The timeless magic of Albert Lamorisse’s mostly wordless 34-minute 1956 fable. . . begins with the balloon itself, which looks like no other balloon you’ve ever seen. It’s so shiny and tactile, so luscious in its utter balloon-ness, that it’s like some wondrous spherical lollipop.

Joy begins with aesthetics, with our sensory experience of the world, with qualities like shininess, redness, roundness, and lusciousness. The aesthetics, and their contrast with the muted surrounds, capture our attention, the beam of conscious awareness that causes us to then notice all the other joyful aspects of the object, which are also communicated aesthetically. Aspects such as its magical movements — hovering inexplicably outside a window when it is cast outside, and taking off after an attractive blue balloon in the hands of a pretty girl encountered on the street — its surprising personality, and the story it tells.

Of course, the red balloon is not just an example of the aesthetics of joy. It is joy itself, and I was struck most of all by the purity of the allegory in the nearly-wordless narrative.

Joy is often found when you are not looking for it, and in unexpected places. It rewards the observant and those willing to make an effort to attain it. Joy has a mind of its own — you cannot predict where it will pop up or how long it will stay.

Joy is not welcome in school, a sad statement that is all too often true in contemporary education. And it is not welcome in church, though it should thrive there too. It isn’t really welcome in much of the adult world, and some adults are impervious to joy, but fortunately the child’s world is a much nicer place to dwell. Yet there are also adults whose inner children are alive and well — those who will gladly shield your joy from a stormy day under their umbrella or smile just to see it go by.

You cannot take joy by force, no matter how hard you try. You can kill it, though, but only for a moment. Because real joy is abundant and irrepressible, and always available to those who are open to it.

The film is online in its entirety here, but I can’t tell you how much I hope you don’t watch this version. There is so much pleasure in the details of this film, details lost in this low-quality upload. Put it in your Netflix queue and wait for the real thing, and let me know if it brings you as much joy as it did to me.

I have a post in draft form (that I hope, eventually, will see the light of day) about universal vs. individual aesthetics of joy. Of course everyone has different things that bring them joy, but they don’t necessarily conform to what would be defined culturally as joyful aesthetics.

My project generally focuses on the more general, more universal aesthetic patterns because it makes it easier to draw lessons that can be applied broadly to design. But occasionally I come across what I would call a “counter-aesthetic” of joy: an object or space that on the surface looks to be the very opposite of joy, yet someone has managed to wring delight from it.

The trigger nearly always has to do with personal experience, as is the case here, with these photographs of the Gowanus Canal by José Gaytan. Gaytan, a Brooklynite who grew up in Juarez, Mexico, was attracted to the canal by a familiar smell. “That aroma is embedded in my brain,” he says, “a mix of sewage, kerosene and oil.” Which doesn’t sound so appealing, except that it reminds Gaytan of his handyman grandfather, and the junkyards he used to play in while he was alongside him on jobs.

This illuminates one of the true marvels of emotions in the brain. Aromas, colors, textures, sounds — all of these things can become associated with positive or negative feelings through experience and memory. Especially aroma. Current research suggests that smell is processed differently in the brain from the other senses, and may therefore have a stronger link to long-term emotional memories. So a smell (stench?) that for most of us might connote filth in need of a Superfund cleanup, for someone else evokes the joy of childhood.

Where this gets interesting is art. To feel joy where others don’t is wonderful, yet limited. But to try to shine a light on your joy and share it with the world, especially when it involves overcoming preconceived notions, is a powerfully transformative act and deserves a place in the schema of aesthetics of joy. A success in this regard is to make us see a place with fresh eyes. As Barbara Wing, curator of the Brooklyn Public Library’s exhibit of Gaytan’s photographs, says, “He really looks at details we don’t notice. The colors are fantastic, almost painterly.” Just as long as they don’t come with the smells. . .

Thanks for the tip, Dad!

Exhibit, at the Brooklyn Public Library, now through August 29th
NYT story

Today on Deep Glamour: my thoughts on Barbie. I’m going to be a regular contributor on Virginia Postrel‘s wonderful blog on glamour, taking occasional departures from the world of joy to think about more adult aesthetics.

My focus in the post is on Barbie’s lost glamour, but at heart Barbie is a joyful topic for me. Part of it is the nostalgia for childhood, part the delight of imaginative, open-ended play, and part the delicious appeal of Barbie’s indulgent, over-the-top, feminine world. For a true girly-girl, Barbie’s ability to do this is unmatched, and probably has something to do with her continuing ability to bring joy to generation after generation of young girls.

I had such a good time at the insanely cute Putting Lot this weekend, a mini golf course created for this summer by a bunch of artists on a disused lot in Bushwick. The Putting Lot is like a joyful little oasis in the heart of a typical urban-industrial Brooklyn landscape. While I think there’s always something whimsical about mini golf (notably the idea of miniaturization, a key trend in joyful things), this particular course takes it a step further with its surprising location and artfully inventive holes.

The hole featured above (thank you to Flickr user jamfan2 for the image), aside from its wonderfully appealing color scheme, involves spending a lot of time with your feet in the cool water as you fail time and time again to vault your ball over the canal that separates the tee from the hole. My other favorite hole is like putting on a green where the Caddyshack groundhog has set up a dozen technicolor burrows. One leads to the hole, while the others shoot you back out the way you came. It’s endless fun to try and figure it out.

The genius of these holes is how open-ended they are. You can play them in a competitive game, but the real pleasure comes from discovering the many different approaches and traps and testing out their various properties. Sometimes the balls get stuck, or come out somewhere they clearly weren’t intended to, but this DIY feel is all part of the fun, and in my view makes it even better than a slick, “commercial” mini golf course.

I highly recommend a visit this summer. Just make sure to dress appropriately!