What if the Victorians (with their steam engine industrial aesthetic) had had access to digital technologies? What if a Victorian design sensibility had not been eclipsed by modernism and its minimalist aesthetic? What if technologies such as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage’s Analytical engine) were still with us? Steam-powered…
archaeological sensibility
design and collection
This post is in a series of commentaries on a class running at Stanford, Winter Quarter 2010 – “Transformative Design” ENGR 231 – [Link] I mentioned in a recent post about design and the everyday the little photobook “thoughtless acts” by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO – [Link] It is a collection of observations, documented…
Behind the Locked Door
An archaeology of the store rooms of the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford Don’t you often wonder about what museums keep in their store rooms, but rarely manage to display? The hidden, perhaps forgotten, treasures of “The Archive” Last year, between March 2007 and April 2008, in a small gallery off the main stair well in…
Joseph Beuys and the archaeological
Tate Modern London. I am still reading today’s Arts section of the Guardian – this time Adrian Searle’s preview of the Tate Modern’s new exhibition of Joseph Beuys [Link] Beuys wasn’t being mischievous or disingenuous when he said there was nothing to understand (in his work). He may have been wrong to believe everyone could…
Iain Sinclair and the urban imaginary
A fine piece of writing from Iain Sinclair, a bit overblown maybe, in The Guardian today about the Thames in the urban imaginary that is London – Paint me a river. Liquid prompts guide our steps towards the scintillae of the supremely visible Thames. Here begins the work of poets and painters, their argument and…
Derrida’s archaeology
I never got to finish my comment on Derrida who died in October. [BBC Link] The obituaries were largely stifled by misunderstanding, outrage, horror and incredulity – have a look at the Guradian’s lamentable list – [Link] Mark Taylor was better in the NYT – [Link] Flying back to the US today I see that…
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