aesthetics of joy

As you know I’m fascinated by language and color, and the dialogue between the two. And I’m captivated by tools, extenders of human capability that give myriad forms to the efforts of our hands. As a tool of communication, this is perhaps inefficient. But as a tool of expression, it is powerful. The typewriter is a piece by artist Tyree Callahan.

What I love most is how Callahan maintained the convention of case in the typewriter keys. You can see how shifting would affect the color, in most cases increasing the intensity, a nice if imperfect analogue for the upper case. Callahan has entered the piece for a West prize. You can learn how to vote for it here.

And along a similar vein (but with a completely different tone), there’s this cocktail typewriter, which translates from language to color to flavor. (A fun, but potentially dangerous tool in the wrong hands!)

{via Colossal}

These last few weeks I’ve been steeped in color. Literally, with the effusion of bright summer hues in the city, and figuratively, as I’ve been devoting many a spare moment to researching it. Color is the subject of chapter two and, as evidenced by the colorful nature of this blog, a nearly endless topic when considering design and joy.

Right now I’m reading a very thoughtful, scientific little book from the 1980s called Colour: Why the World Isn’t Grey, which covers everything from why rainbows appear to why flames are orange to why the sky is blue. As the author Hazel Rossotti demystifies these phenomena, she’s reminding me that some color seems particularly mysterious.

Intangible color – the color of the horizon, of an oil slick on a rain puddle, of a match-strike – has a trickiness to it. We perceive the color, but it is either too distant, too evanescent, or too changeable to feel certain in our impressions. The color feels deceptive, yet tantalizing. Though we know that pursuing it will leave us empty-handed, sometimes we go after it anyway. Like burying one’s nose in a magnolia flower only to find the thrum of fragrance all around, but pale within, we find our rainbows and sunsets accessible only from afar. I suppose we should feel grateful that their photons journeyed such a long way to our eyes in the first place.

Maybe there’s more joy to this kind of elusive chroma, or if not more, then certainly a distinct kind of joy – a delight mingled with longing. And that’s of course what joy should be from an evolutionary perspective. Not perfect satiation, but satiation plus motivation to continue seeking that “passage from lesser to greater perfection,” as Spinoza wrote. With its spiritual airiness, intangible color feels something like a promise, a reminder that still greater beauty is out in the world to be discovered.

With these thoughts on my mind, I wanted to share a few works that create a similar kind of intangible color, despite being constructed from tangible materials. The first, above, is a recent piece by Andy Gilmore, whose kaleidoscopic works I’ve long enjoyed and have posted in the past. This piece seems to vibrate in those light spaces where the hues fade out in steps. It’s almost as if it’s moving, and therefore impossible to fully take in all at once.

Below is a kind of 3D counterpoint to Gilmore, from artist Gabriel Dawe’s Plexus 4 and Plexus 5 series. These are similarly vibratory, almost spatial rather than material, like a dense chromatic fog. You almost feel as if you could walk right through them, though in fact they’re constructed from thousands of strands of thread. Like many natural examples of intangible color, these installations seem to radiate their own light, making them even more ethereal and compelling.

I hope you’re out enjoying a colorful weekend somewhere, intangible or otherwise…

Xx Ingrid

I can’t stop playing with this site. The online home of a traveling exhibit about everyday functional objects like the pencil and zipper, Hidden Heroes takes what could be a dull experience and makes it delightful – vibrant, sensorial, playful. Visit the site and see for yourself. The screenshots can’t communicate the pleasure of the transitions, the little joys of the sounds and swishes that bring elements in and out of view. Hidden Heroes, curated by the Vitra Design Museum (a joyful place in its own right), recently won a Webby for navigation, an element of interaction design that typically strives for clarity over enthusiasm.

But I love how the nav manages to incorporate color and whimsy without sacrificing clarity at all. In effect, the nav structures reflect the intention of the exhibit: to elevate the ordinary, to celebrate the stories of simple things. This is no mean feat. Abstracted from the tangibility of the artifacts, online exhibits often feel like poor cousins of the real thing, more effective as documentation than experience. But with all its abundance and brio, the Hidden Heroes exhibit feels like an experience first and foremost for the web, and I wonder if it’s perhaps more pleasurable even than the bricks-and-mortar version.

Web design is inherently constrained by the medium of the screen, and its power to evoke emotion is hindered by this constraint. It’s sensorially limited. It can’t stimulate the senses of touch, smell, or taste, three senses we know to be powerfully linked to our emotions. (Though a smell-o-vision inspired website is still a popular fantasy.) A neuroscientist I spoke with once went so far as to say that he didn’t think art on a screen could ever light up the emotional brain the way a painting could.

But what design for the screen lacks in texture and tangibility, it makes up for in dynamism, movement, and interactivity. At their best, designers who work in this field – interaction designers – floor me with the way they transform mundane experiences into joyful ones. I’m thinking of the Spectra visual newsreader, a uniquely colorful way to peruse the headlines, or the HEMA, a department store in the Netherlands that has created a Rube Goldberg-esque home page that must be experienced to be believed. (Seriously. I’m not even going to try to screenshot it.) More simply, I also love Supermarket Sarah, an online retailer that eschews the grid in favor of a clickable photo array for its navigation.

And finally, as I think of navigation and the web, I can’t help but think about this wonderful project by Alexander Chen, which is not at all about online navigation, but about using the online medium to give us a new perspective on offline navigation. Conductor: mta.me reenvisions the subway map as a string instrument. It is in effect a map come alive, drawing itself with charming lines, tones, and vibrations to overlay a lyrical quality onto something most city dwellers take for granted. Three separate people sent it to me with Aesthetics of Joy in mind, so I know this really spoke to people about delight! It certainly reminded me of the inherently joyful quality of transit maps, their colorful lines and intersections, and all the happenings you can imagine at their junctures. (The video is ok but again, go to the site to really experience it.)

Have I missed other joyful interfaces? Which websites bring you joy?

A wonderful find, from my dear friend Mara of Neither Snow, is this “rainbow warrior.” The warrior is a street artist working in Albuquerque, using spilled paint to pour rainbows off the tops of buildings. He (or she)’s really got some people riled up (see newscast, here) and it strikes me as remarkable that people can be so dour in the face of rainbows.

The charm of the story is in how the community has rallied to the warrior’s defense. This Facebook page has drawn 1,492 fans “in support of the Rainbow Warrior, whomever s/he may be.” And the soul of the story is in the warrior’s own words. This is the warrior on his/her inspiration for painting the rainbows:

About three or four years ago … I was feeling really depressed and I had this notion that if I went out and painted a rainbow, maybe someone would see it and feel what I was feeling or feel anything as intensely as I was. The first one I did, I just literally dumped the paint over the side of a pretty ugly, abandoned, alleyway building.

And this is the warrior on street art:

I want to inspire other people. That’s part of all my art; it’s always positive. I think I chose street art to inspire somebody else in a way that’s outside of the box. Like somebody who wouldn’t normally be exposed to street art, somebody who would just walk past it. Street art really saves a lot of people who are down in their lives and on their luck. This is their one and only outlet. Plus, you get an immediate response from people. A lot of times it’s just, Look at that graffiti on that freeway wall. But maybe the graffiti on the freeway isn’t the ugly thing, maybe that’s not what they’re angry about. Maybe they’re angry about how for the last 10 years you’ve been driving through this prison freeway with these big ugly gray walls and it just took the graffiti to point out the ugly that was already there.

I find this tension – between the forbidden act of graffiti, technically vandalism, and the delight people are discovering as a consequence – acutely compelling. Is an illegal rainbow still joyful? Here’s a letter writer commenting on the rainbow warrior situation:

So, somebody lays down a rainbow on the thing, a piece of art (and yes, it is art, even if it is “free,” and maybe especially so) that pokes fun at the mess, that makes me grin and say, “That’s a little better!” As a life-long citizen of Albuquerque, as someone who has had his very personal property damaged by genuinely malicious individuals: this isn’t the same thing. Is it graffiti? Yeah. Is it the same as somebody tagging a vulgar word on the car my parents gave me when I went to college? No. The intention of the rainbows is perhaps mischievous, but it is definitely not malicious. The intention, and the execution, is a wink, a laugh, a little unexpected burst. Worth a slap on the wrist and a good talking to, nothing more.

(Ok, and now I’m going to pause, because the 400 words and 45 minutes I just spent finishing this post have vanished into the ether that is this charming second day of the new year. [Deep breath and a moment to convince myself it will come out better the second time around.] Ok…)

I like this distinction between mischief and malice. The mess the writer refers to is the Anasazi building, the most public of the warrior’s targets, a high-rise which had recently been taken over by the Albuquerque government because the developer was charged with fraud, (a crime with no discernible aesthetic value). I like the idea that the rainbow has in a way recast an unfortunate incident for the citizens of the city. Redemption, via transgression.

How important is this element of transgression in the joy we feel from street art? Is there something inherent in the violation of boundaries that fuels our pleasure when we look at it? The carefree disregard of the strictures of private ownership and the numbing conventions of urban aesthetic culture? Maybe our delight is less about the vibrancy of the color, and more about the irrepressible spirit that put it there.

I’ve been wondering this in the wake of a visit last week to Wynwood Walls, a collection of murals in an artfully dingy Miami neighborhood. Wynwood brings together works by a range of street artists, well-known names like Futura, Shepherd Fairey, Nunca, Space Invader, etc. under the sanction of gallerists and developers, in a project that dropped out of Art Basel 2009. I really like a number of these works (particularly the piece by Nunca, below), and I recognize that the mainstreaming of street art gives these artists a chance to make a real living, but I can’t help but wonder: Is some of the joy lost by bringing these works into this kind of walled garden? Tamed by the light of legality and legitimacy, are they just a bit less vibrant, a bit more inert?

Maybe my previous question – Can an illegal rainbow be joyful? – had it backwards. Maybe it’s precisely the illegality that touches us. Mischief, with its attendant unpredictability and freedom, makes us feel vicariously free.

Thoughts?

By the way, if you find yourself in Miami, definitely make your way over to Wynwood and see it for yourself. Have lunch at the Wynwood Kitchen and Bar and wander the zillions of galleries which seem to have sprung up, perfectly distressed-looking, practically yesterday. It’s a nice day out, and a welcome departure from the excess of the design district.

Rainbow Warrior images via Patricia Austhoff and The Fibe Squad. And again, thanks, Mara.

This clever little rainbow by Dutch artist Helmut Smits made me smile. Not quite the reaction of the “double rainbow” guy, but still, there’s something joyful about rainbows…

I love the opportunistic quality of this incredibly simple piece, the way it takes advantage of an existing motion to create something beautiful. For people who regularly sit behind the wheel of a car, the movement of windshield wipers is almost invisible — of course, it’s designed to be that way. Like a kite exposing the movement of the wind, or these speed blend tires embellishing the motion of bike wheels, it’s amazing how a little color can expose the hidden beauty of an ordinary arc.

{via @etsy}

I posted Leah Rosenberg’s delightful work earlier this month, and couldn’t resist a follow-up post of this amazing rainbow cake she made for her show. The cake was 7′ feet long and made in 13 7″ sections, each with a different configuration of stripes. This really adds another joyful dimension — variation and surprise — as she writes:

So over time throughout the night, as it was cut & consumed (from both sides towards the center of the cake) the colors and stripe pattern of the slice of cake that you had would be different from the hours prior.

She must have been baking forever, but how beautiful! I also love how pure and serene the long white cake looks before it was cut. You’d never guess the riot of color that lay inside.

Check out more photos from the show here.

Really liking the colorful flatness of these spreads from Fireworks, by Mike Mills, plus one last set of rainbows (from his 2008 installation in Milan) to round out the day.

This looks like a delicious dessert for a spring day. Maybe something to eat when you’re wandering around Wuppertal…

And maybe if you were carrying…

On such a colorful day, you might run into someone like this:

And then if you got tired, you’d come home and take a seat:

My files are full of these joyful, colorful images that have caught my eye at one point or another. I save them up in folders with names like spirals and candy and things that look like ice cream. Then I forget what I put in them, and sometimes when I go in and open them up they are like little presents. This is the contents of my rainbows folder, now emptied out so I can start gathering anew!

Top to bottom: Rainbow jello, via DailyCandy; Holsteiner stairs in Wuppertal, by Horst Gläsker; Bolsaco by SuTurno; Photo by Paul Smith, posted on his (maddeningly non-permalinked) blog 13 August 09; Paper-wood stool by Drill Design.

ps: I love how Paul Smith describes his photo, above. He says, “this man is also a shop,” which is such a lovely window into his view of retailing. If you’ve ever walked through one of his whimsical, eclectic shops, you can immediately see the connection to this image, and the notion that selling is secondary to the pleasure of being among (and creating) arrangements of delightful things.

If I had a set of these cheerful chopsticks from DWR Tools For Living, my takeout bill would be steep! Though I guess I could offset the cost with noodle dinners, as these would make even dollar-store ramen into a joyful experience.

A rainbow is a pretty easy path to joy. This one involved a fair amount of work, piecing together all the appropriate hues in Pantone swatches, but the “Wow” payoff was virtually guaranteed.

I find the wide view really extraordinary. It’s like a pixelated projection, a very clever play on the digital nature of a Pantone rainbow, almost like a Photoshop add-on. The rainbow is actually more materially tangible than a real rainbow, yet viewed this way has the same textural filminess, the same unreality. I know it began as an ad stunt, but for me there is a profound and subtle comment in here about tangibility in the crossover between the digital and analog worlds.

Photos: Wandaaaa
Via Core77

Joyful accessorizing: a polka-dotted headband that said boo! to Saturday’s gray weather.

Thank you to my friend Ben for these amazing rainbow pictures over the Sydney harbor (or, I should say, harbour!). Rainbows have a way of making the whole earth seem enchanted and surreal. I especially love how the light in the pic above makes everything under the rainbow seem brighter, like the world under the rainbow is charmed.