1. Wouldn’t it be nice it wasn’t on purpose?

    November 02, 2008

    Yesterday, invited by Maki from Åbäke, we went to the guided tour of the Somerset House’s exhibition: Wouldn’t it be nice? / Wishful thinking in art and design which present a selection of work by Ryan Gander, Jurgen Bey, Dunne & Raby with Michael Anastassiades, Bless, Dexter Sinister, Alicia Framis, Martino Gamper, Marti Guixe, Tobias Rehberger, Superflex and Chosil Kil.

    The tour was guided by Kevin Flude ◊ and was a reflexion on what a guided tour is; from the beginning the main idea was to introduce the interaction with the audience. I was asked to act/play the designer of the guide: i had to choose a concept and design our guide accordingly; this bit was a bit unexpected and it was a rather confusing experience. After this introduction outside of the building, we started the tour and followed the exhibition’s succesion of projects. Kevin introduced us to a whole range of projects, but exhibited at another exhibition which itself too was exploring what Design is trough a specific angle, the purpose: On-Purpose ◊◊

    The experiment was really nice and completely resulting of the delightful improvisation of our wonderful guide. He is going to post a few reflexion on his own blog, following this post in which he is coming back from the tour.
    It’s nice to see design reflections can also have their echoes in various other fields like organsiing tour (which is, after all, about presenting informations).

    ◊ Kevin Flude is a guide with a blog: And Did Those Feet; Kevin is also closely related with a history museum: The Old Operating Theatre Museum, as well as teaching at St Martins.

    ◊◊ This exhibition is taking place at Arnolfini in Bristol

    ◊◊◊ I’m part of the show at Arnolfini — so, there is a due disclosure: Electronest has been commissioned to make an intervention on internet for the exhibition - sadly Kevin forgot to mention the project during the tour and i missed my few seconds of fame :)



  2. Living in (east) London

    October 21, 2008

    east london

    Maxime (my good old mate, master at typography as well as at tatooing, amongst other things) filmed our flat a while back when he visited for the tatoo convention 2008 in Bricklane; he posted the video on the website for his Sang Bleu Magazine - here

    * it feels a bit strange to see your own flat on the website of someone else :)



  3. saturday / walking

    October 12, 2008

    from Eastbourne to Seafront

    walking, originally uploaded by jrgd.

    On Saturday, we joined Florian, Uli, Sarah and Rafael at Bethnal Green station - we then took the train from London Victoria to Eastbourne; finaly: from there we walked to Seaford.

    It was a great pleasure to be in the nature, even just for a day - and I greatly enjoyed the company of every one… but i have to be honest and say that the deep and real pleasure came from rediscovering i could hike on quite a long distance after all what happened those last months.


    map
    - photo set: www.flickr.com/photos/jrgd/sets/72157607958722809/

    Seven Sisters (from Wikipedia):
    The cliffs are occasionally used in film and television as a stand-in for the more famous white cliffs of Dover, since they are relatively free of anachronistic modern development.



  4. The mini versions

    October 07, 2008

    This morning discussing with Amandine and Anna we came across a couple of buildings which had a mini version of them beforhand their construction - either trough a natural research process or simply because investors were too scared of the novelty the building could represent and the consequent impact on the landscape…


    The Barbican, by suburbanslice

    the Golden Lane estate, by stevecadman

    Barbican & the Golden Lane estate
    Barbican is a well known huge and massive architecture programme in the center of London; after World War 2, a large bombed area has been converted into this utopian project which was reconsidering the needs of modern humans in a urban environnement. Both Barbican and Golden Lane Estate were designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, with obvious Corbusian influences. Golden Lane is of course the mini version (somehow) of the Barbican and came earlier (1957, 1969).


    Trevelyan by Jamie Barras


    Keeling house by joseph beuys hat

    Keeling House & Trevelyan House
    Denys Lasdun designed both of them; they were built between 1957 and 1959. Keeling house is a 4 blocks of maisonettes arranged around a central service tower. In 1952, a rougher similar construction has been built, apparently more dedicated to the working class.


    Balfron Tower, by Richard Parmiter


    Trellick Tower, by Cristiano Betta

    Trellick Tower & Balfron Tower
    I’ve been introduced to those two by Ryan Gander trough his amazing loose association lectures series. When confronted with the volume of the tower designed by Ernõ Goldfinger, investors were scared this would be like a scar in the landscape (London does not have a lot of skyscraper, especially atthat time). They managed to get a smaller version built in East London, to get an impression of how it would be build.

    * Process wise:
    This pre production makes me think that for each of the website i am delivering there would be one, officially working, to test case the pertinence of the design and concpets as well as the solidity of the code.

    * More information on the building:
    Balfron Tower
    Trelick Tower
    Keeling House
    Golden Lane Estate
    Barbican Estate



  5. Bill Murray

    September 16, 2008


    Just watched the ghostbuster series. Far less exciting than when i was kid but still nice wiht a certain retro charm; i really like the car with that steampunk feel.

    Later I googled for one of the actor, Bill Murray (Peter Venkman) and found out about this behaviour that reminded me of Richad Stallman’s web to email:

    Being very detached from the Hollywood scene, Murray does not have an agent or manager and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently. This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him from taking parts that he had auditioned for and was interested in, such as that of Sulley in Monsters, Inc, Bernard Berkman in The Squid and the Whale, Frank Ginsburg in Little Miss Sunshine and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

    * Bill Murray - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    ** Richard Stallman’s web to email: it is also linked to the electronic presence concept
    .



  6. London TLK TLK

    August 29, 2008

    tlktlk.meeting_icons.gif

    We launched a new website: Tlk Tlk - this is a project in which we would like to share the events we are attending, to promote nice things we come across in real life where friends are organising, or just giving a hand, or sometimes events organised by complete stranger but we like what they do…

    The idea is a continuous curration of things we are interrested in, a littl ebit like R-Echos but for cultural events.

    talktalk1.jpg



  7. R-Echos issue 1 - Coming Closer

    July 22, 2008

    * in fact it is out ‘already’: R-Echos issue 1

    NONE_output-test-AMP001-r-echos1.jpg