I posted a rebuttal to my recent piece on ffffound, over at Scintillating Bullshit, my personal blog. I thought I’d point it out here, as it has engendered a rather interesting discussion of the popular sites’ dark side.

Also, happy belated new year to all!

-fish

This piece will appear, in more or less this form, in the forthcoming magazine Public Relations from the RISD architecture department. Many thanks to Dana Ganssle, and her crew, for the edits. Yes!

People often think that bullshitting is the same as lying. This can’t be the case, though… at your last critique, was that long-winded rant you received about “interstitial dualities” or “recontextualization” a lie? Not necessarily. If you got out a dictionary and dutifully parsed out all the branching convoluted sentences, you might find that the nonsense people concoct at these things is actually factually correct. The strain of bullshit that percolates in schools like ours is more about confusion than it is about outright deception.

You can, of course, use bullshit to obfuscate a lie. When James Frey, the now-infamous Oprah-anointed memoirist, was recently found to have fabricated his shady past to make himself seem more interesting, that was a lie. But when called on by Larry King, he said things like “95 percent of my book is true” and “all memoirs are subjective”, citing numerous examples. These things were arguably true, but they were also total bullshit.

I started systematically studying bullshit at RISD shortly after I arrived in the graduate graphic design program. I would be at a crit, and someone would say “Yes, I’m fascinated and inspired by the notion of interconnected linear elements.” Why couldn’t they just say “I like lines” and be done with it? And moreover, how could a rational (and most likely talented) human being say such a thing with a straight face?

My first project was to compile all the bullshit words and phrases I could find into a bullshit dictionary. This was easy and fun; by including commentary, I could finally say what I really thought about such vapid terms like “innovation” or “emergent behavior”. The book is shaping up to be a decent field guide to navigating some of the nonsense we’re exposed to daily in art and design circles.

It became clear, however, that the bullshit goes far deeper than mere words and phrases. There are more complex patterns of obfuscating nonsense at work, and they vary greatly between departments and subjects. For example, one of the first things the RISD graphic design curriculum beats out of its new members is the use of most subjective descriptive terms, like “beautiful” or “disgusting.” So you end up with GD students making bizarrely pseudoscientific proclamations like “This generates a fantastic visceral response.”

That’s just in GD, though. I wouldn’t suggest trotting out such speech-pattern chestnuts over in the BEB. In architecture, you’ll want to talk of systematized spatial logic, of mutant typologies, and of sympathetic abstraction, with maybe a few Italian vocab words like pallazo thrown in to seal the deal. And both of these bullshit methods are entirely different from your average discussion in textiles, where the use of the word “beautiful” is not only permitted but pervasive.

It’s a bloody mess. But it’s our mess, indeed, and I want to help. I’m gathering data like this by visiting critiques in as many departments as I can. I record these critiques on tape, and then transcribe them, allowing the patterns of speech to emerge on paper. The book I end up with from this material will provide a direct window into the bizarro-world of linguistic alchemy that we seem to be brewing.

What separates Moss consumers from the masses is that they are paying for more than just ownership of designer housewares. They are paying for the right to experience them.

‘Please Do Not Touch.’ That’s the slogan Murray Moss has adopted for his chic SoHo design store, Moss. In style points, Murray wins. Moss has been at the cutting edge of household hip since its inception in 1994. Over the years Murray and his enterprise have gained international renown for their discerning selection and presentation of highly designed ‘everyday’ objects and furnishings. Amidst a stark white backdrop of lacquered platforms and polished glass cases, designer household products are elevated to the level of art in Murray’s museum-like setting.

Printed signs stating, ‘Please Do Not Touch,’ are affixed to each display and continue the age-old museum tradition of disallowing physical contact with the work. The omnipresence of smartly-suited salespeople wards off the wandering hand, in case the metal guardrails don’t do the job for them. Whereas museums discourage touching to prevent the degradation of delicate artworks, Murray Moss has imposed this system of separation in a retail store for household furnishings, products that in their essence are meant to be purchased and used. While over time, touching might degrade that Noguchi sofa, or leave smudges on a Jacobsen teapot, the real impetus behind the ‘Please Do Not Touch’ campaign resides in the depths of the human psyche.

The purpose behind separating people from objects is to nurture the desire that Murray Moss sees inherent in all of us. In denying the basic human instinct to reach out and grab that which is visually appealing, Murray and his team promote an inner tug-of-war of longing and frustration, thereby increasing the value of the unattainable. Lacking a tactile perception of the object, we are left in a mental and emotional frenzy to wonder about its experiential aspects. Enter Murray as our counselor and personal guide.

As Moss shows, inaccessibility does wonders for social value. By emulating the standards and practices of the modern museum, the Moss ethos blends culture and shopping while unabashedly cultivating desire, the hook that keeps design professionals, celebrities, students, and even tourists at its door. What separates Moss consumers from the masses is that they are paying for more than just ownership of designer housewares. They are paying for the right to experience them.

On a warm Saturday in spring, I wandered down to SoHo to check out the scene. Moss had just opened its new arm, Moss Gallery, one year ago in order to provide a dedicated arena for highly curated collections of limited editions and prototypes. In only a year, the distinction between the gallery and the store is becoming thinner and thinner. Michael, a salesperson of six years, informed me that these days, both sides of the business are based on themed exhibitions curated by Murray Moss. Objects that have been displayed in the gallery may certainly later appear in the store, with their retained exhibition history as added social value.

Within the store I was dazzled by case after case of pristine cutlery and kitchenware, as the lingering aroma of leather upholstery tantalized my senses. While walking through this designed wonderland, I began to wonder if indeed these objects retained the chronicle of their past lives as art, once removed from the glass vitrine and taken from the context of Moss. Moss was sleek. It was sexy. And amidst its minted spectacle I felt slightly intimidated. I left without touching anything, and the allure of Moss persisted.

At home I turned to the Moss website, and that’s where I discovered the ‘Gifts Under $100’ corner. In the store I had completely dismissed the idea that affordability could even exist in the presence of $17,000 seating. It seemed almost indecent. But according to the Moss website, it was possible to enter Moss and witness for instance, ‘a Hella Jongerius embroidered ceramic pot next to a stainless steel Fisher space pen next to an Edra pink leather Flap sofa.’ It was in this sentence that I laid my best hopes. That was no ordinary pen. It was a highly covetable Chrome Bullet Fisher Space Pen, advertised in the under $100 section of the Moss website as being able to, ‘write upside down, under water, over grease, in freezing cold, boiling heat, and in outer space.’ I imagined it sitting pretty behind the glass case at Moss, surrounded by other more expensive but equally enticing wares. From there, I might not ever know if the space pen could indeed live up to its lofty advertising. In the vitrine it existed as no more than a desirable shiny object, but the fact that both NASA and Murray Moss had endorsed it made its polished chrome-plated brass seem all that much shinier.

One week and $50 later, a drab gray-brown cardboard box landed on my doorstep. Measuring in at 10” x 12” x 8,” the box had endured a significant amount of abuse in the exchange between couriers and handlers. I maneuvered my way through layers of tape to reveal an endless shroud of brown craft paper. Nestled within its folds lay my treasure, neatly encased in a candy-bar sized plastic snap-box and surrounded by a thin cardboard sheath. With $50 I had acquired more than just a fancy new pen, I had partaken in the aura of Moss.

The casing was smooth, adorned with the glossy image of an astronaut standing beside his roving moon-lander while a brightly colored American flag floats proudly in the gravity-free vacuum of space. From our vantage point on the moon, we see a glowing blue Earth in the background beyond the craters. Sliding the case from its packaging revealed the simple black and white Moss decal self-consciously branded to the cardboard’s interior. Only now, it was mine, and I could do whatever I wanted with it. A small printed leaflet offered a guarantee of the space pen’s abilities and 1960’s advertising information about the merits of its sealed-pressurized ink cartridge. Words like ‘precision’, ‘thixotropic’, and ‘tungsten-carbide,’ wrenched the space pen from its stature as art object and immediately thrust it into the realm of science and use. My gut reaction was to tear the pen from its felted plastic crater bed and lick it before running rampant around the city, terrorizing every bathroom wall and bus window in sight with bad poetry.

Once in my hands, the first thing I noticed was a giant smear on the space pen’s formerly flawless casing where my fingers had touched it. My heart sank a little, the way it does when spaghetti sauce falls on a new shirt. Perhaps Murray Moss had it right. And like that the myth was shattered.

There is an inherent disappointment that comes with purchasing at Moss. While there is an initial elation of having received a shiny new object, this momentary euphoria can never compete with the imminent descent of an object from art, to the levels of human use and abuse. The space pen writes like a dream, and I imagine the Verner Panton cradles the human figure just as well. After subjecting the pen to the cold depths of my freezer, and a pot of boiling hot water, it still wrote (even upside down). Without venturing into space, I was satisfied with the Fisher Space Pen’s ability to withstand the most extreme environmental conditions I could fabricate. At the conclusion of my testing, the chrome-plated casing had lost its luster, and was scratched from the ill-effects of capping the lid to the back of the pen. Even so, at one point the space pen was the very object of my desire from where it sat under Murray’s guidance at Moss. Through shifting the balance between function and style Murray Moss once again holds a captive audience in wait of the next best thing to appear on his horizon.

hey, have you guys seen this piece?

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/architectural-criticism.html

“As it is, one critic writes for approval by another critic, who writes for another critic, who writes for some editor somewhere, or for the head of a department, and no one wants to step out of line. You want to talk about a videogame, or a Tim Burton film, or castles as described in the books of J.K. Rowling – but nope: it’s all Zaha, all the time.”

… makes me feel a bit chummpish for going on about a starchitect, even a very nice one, but I do share the author’s general opinion about the state of things in architectural criticism.

-fish

If You can Make it Here…Then why make it anywhere else?
A new design annual portrays local prejudices at work.

They say that in New York, the world is at your fingertips. Drink your morning coffee from a Greek paper cup, buy dazzling chinoiserie and knock-offs in Chinatown, and eat an unforgettable meal at one of Second Avenue’s indistinguishable Indian restaurants: Walking through this city, I see a miniature version of the entire planet, a planet situated at the center of the universe.

Approximating my everyday experience is Typography 26, The 26th Annual of the Type Directors Club, released this month. The publication’s design is a tour of New York’s tribal artifacts: The cover features a posterized silk-screened image of a daily Chinese calendar, with pages torn off to reveal the 26th of the month. Endsheets include tightly cropped scans of ornate Indian and Chinese food packaging. Section dividers are close-ups of printed ephemera and food packaging in Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Ethiopic, Greek, and Laotian, picked up from convenience stores and specialty shops. The exotic characters and dazzling printing remind me how fortunate I am to be living in such an international city, looking at a book with such an international view of typography, from such an internationally minded organization.

But the design also reveals something about the jury selections: A smorgasbord of New York ethnicities does not a worldwide cross-section of typography make. Indeed, the majority of the book’s entries come from New York—nearly double Germany’s 30-odd entries; German typographers double the wins from the United Kingdom and Japan. The remainder of Europe (sans Germany) and Asia tally 16 entries each. Australia and New Zealand garner three entries each. Africa has one, and both of South America’s come from Sao Paulo.

Could it just be that New York City is the center of the typographic universe, too? The overly tidy numbers suggest otherwise. Typography 26 was an exercise in filling quotas.

As much as annual competitions encourage achievement within the discipline, their sponsoring organizations depend on them for income. Submissions cost about $40 per entry; winners pay another $40 or so to appear in the book, and then that sum once more to have work hung in the accompanying exhibition. In addition, each entry form usually includes an area to join or renew yearly membership: $100, give or take.

Every organization has a budget goal in mind, and with it, a minimum number of winners its competition must name. Judges fill their quota of winners (hopefully with a meritocracy in mind). The chosen entries must maintain core membership while simultaneously encouraging entries from non-members. Striking this balance is of the highest importance. If the existing membership base feels marginalized, there will be fewer membership renewals and fewer entries next year, jeopardizing the future of the organization. Acknowledging international entrants is an easy way for an organization to expand its earning potential without alienating existing members.

As an aside, here’s how not to grow revenue: I remember one competition where, assisting in tallying scores, I was instructed to round up marks to hit target dollars. (The judges thought it unscrupulous. Perhaps not coincidently, the organization’s Executive Director has since been charged with grand larceny, to the tune of $150,000.)

The Type Directors Club does not suffer from a tarnished reputation. In fact, even though their number of winners increases annually, they receive complaints that their judges are too selective; unlike other competitions, judges are not allowed to enter work; and Carol Wahler, Executive Director of the TDC, informed me that more than half of next year’s Typography 27 winners are from outside the U.S., and that “there aren’t that many winners from New York.” While this is seemingly a step towards internationalism, I am more skeptical. The numbers tell a different story depending on point of view: Looking outward, this year’s winners were evenly split between the United States and abroad. Looking inward, they mostly came from New York.

Typography 26, is particularly unique, because it also reprints the first Type Directors Club catalog. In a time before annual budgets clouded judgment, it was okay for New Yorkers to claim all the winning entries. The contest pushed forward the discipline, and geographic identity just happened to be a telling coincidence.

As a designer living in New York, it’s easy to confuse diversity and internationalism. But Chinatown is not China: New York could not be what it is without the rest of the world. To celebrate the finest typography, the TDC’s jurors should have been instructed to possess a truly global vision—or better yet, a blind eye. In Typography 26, their suspiciously methodical attempt to de-emphasize local talent accomplished just the opposite.