Yo. It’s, erm, 2008. Back at school, trying to wrap it all up and get it out the fucking door — “it” being the entirety of my graduate education, of course. You can sort of see what it looks like here; at the moment, there are a billion little unraveling minutiae to be dealt with: bureaucratic, social, financial, emotional, physiological… and of course my struggle to contend with all of them is wonderfully enriched by the overbearing fact that the genesis of each of these dumb little things, originally, was a fuck-up or oversight on my part. Like forgetting to fill out a super-important form, or sleeping through my alarm when I had an important meeting… Blech. It sucks. The whole mess simply will not die quietly, much like a zombie, or the Cloverfield monster. It’s been a rough two months or so.

See why I’ve been keeping my blog-mouth shut?? So. Anyway I will spare you the worst of the retarded gripes. But so, what I have for you is this: last night, I had to do a bunch of writing excercises, and to distract myself late at night, I concocted the following design-music-cosmology system. I’ll dish up more stuff soon, now that classes have started again and I am therefore less droolingly antisocial. Fuck yes.

…

So. LET:

architecture = 80’s pop-rock,
graphic design = hip hop,

THEN:

type design = turntablism,
interior architecture = late 80’s alt-rock,
(… e.g. Atelier van Lieshout = The Pixies)
book design = the Wu-Tang Clan,
poster design = Tupac,
news/editorial design = Biggie,
web design = 50 Cent,
info design = the Ultramagnetic MC’s,
letterpress poster art = Snoop Dogg,

THEREFORE:

Design*Sponge = Russell Simmons.

AND:

urban design and urban planning = 90’s crybaby alt-rock,
contemporary art = American Idol,
furniture design = jazz,
textile design = The cross-genre continuum consisting of everyone ever cited or otherwise referenced by LCD Soundsystem, Mr. Murphy et al and his close associates, and all those who will come after them and rip them off,
apparel design = electroclash.

SO THEN:

package design = the Fugees,
contemporary calligraphy = the Digable Planets,
Felice Varini = Autechre,
exhibit design = Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys,

BUT THEN, LET:

structural engineers = rock drummers,
(… e.g. Cecil Balmond = Lars Ulrich, etc)
CAD = MIDI,
O-CAD = MAX/MSP,
BIM and parametric systems = Ableton Live,

THEREFORE:

Frank Gehry = the Postal Service,

AND:

Hektor = Atom and his Package.

FURTHERMORE:

critical theory = reggae,

THEN:

digital ethnography = Shaggy,
contemporary video art = Buju (or maybe Anthony B),
net.art (quote-unquote) = Bob Marley,
architectural theory = Rusted Root (or Dave Matthews, or maybe even 311, or some shit like that),
media theory = Hootie and the Blowfish,
Fluxus = the T-Connection (circa the reign of Kool Herc).

AND THEN:

motion graphics = the Black-Eyed Peas,
just video and film editing = just Fergie,
database design = the Game,
web-nerd non-design stuff = the rest of G-Unit in general,

THUS IT FOLLOWS:

industrial design = delta blues,
magazine design = Octagon-era Kool Keith,
contemporary painting = Will Smith,
contemporary sculpture = Eminem,
Bio-art = Rihanna.

IN CONCLUSION:

DADA = Run-DMC,
surrealism = Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys,
Andy Warhol = Robert Smith,
Marcel Duchamp = Kraftwerk,
Le Corbusier = Paul McCartney,
Robert Moses = John Lennon,
Jane Jacobs = Yoko Ono,
Robert Irwin = Sun-Ra,
Robert Venturi = Led Zeppelin,
Tibor Kalman = Sean Combs,
Benjamin Franklin = Elvis Presley.

Hi! Back at my mom’s house. The semester almost killed me, it had be against the wall and my energy bar was down to a mere 3%, but I have returned and I am roughly ten thousand times more powerful as a result. Ditto all my friends; it was true trial by fire for reals.

But anyway yeah, I got some sleep at my mom’s and whatnot; I’m headed to New York for the requisite New Years’ nonsense. I keep meaning to synopsize it all meaningfully here, writing little summaries in my head while I walk around here getting coffee and feeding the cats, etcetera, but I can’t remember any of it. So until I get my shit together, here’s my rework of “losing my edge” from like a year and a half ago, and now it’s dedicated to all those entering Doug Scott’s “History of Graphic Design” class this spring. Fuck yes. Happy chanukkah, motherfuckers!

-fish

yeah I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
the kids
are coming up from behind

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to the kids
from yale
and from sciarch

but I was there

I was there in 1898
I was there at the first punchcutting of aksidenz-grotesk

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to the kids
whose footsteps I hear
when they pin up their work

I’m losing my edge
to the internet seekers
who can tell me
every draftsman
from every good firm
from 1962 to 1978

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to all the kids
in tokyo and berlin
to the art school brooklynites
with little moleskines
and borrowed nostalgia for unbuilt saint petersburg

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge

but I was there

I was there
I was there

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge

I can hear the footsteps
every night at the computer

but I was there
I was there in 1975 at the first publication of the push pin graphic
I was working on the kerning, with much patience
I was there when martin venezky started up his first firm
I said “don’t do it that way, you’ll never make a dime”
I was there
I was the first guy showing lot/ek
to the deconstructivists
I showed ‘em at cooper union
everybody thought it was crazy
we all know, I was there

I was there

I’ve never been wrong
I used to work at phaidon
I saw everything before everyone
I was there at weimar with johannes itten
I was there at the GSD during great debate between christopher alexander and peter eisenman
I woke up face on the keyboard after final GSAPP crits in 1997

but I’m losing my edge
to bettter looking people
with better ideas
and more talent
who are actually really really nice

I’m losing my edge

I heard you have a bookshelf with every good book
every great poster by tschischold
all the modernist hits
all of the archigram maquettes
I heard you have a test print of every mike cina poster on epson semimatte
I heard you have an autographed copy of every koolhaas book from 75, 89, 98
I heard you have an online scan archive of every good art nouveau lithograph
and another flat file from de stijl

I hear you are buying a drafting table
and a bone folder
and throwing your computer out the window
because you want to make something real
you want to make a gehry coffetable book

I hear that you and your firm have sold your CAD workstations and bought powerbooks
I hear that you and your firm have sold your powerbooks and bought CAD workstations

I hear that everybody that you know is more relevant that everybody that I know

max bill, griffo, jenson, OMA, louis sullivan, HHR, milt glaiser, cecil balmond and arup, SOM, kusama, bonnard, gordon matta-clark, widen and kennedy, superbad, didot, ogilvy, paul rand, richard neutra, agfa monotype, josef albers, herzog and demuron, skolos/wedell, bucky fuller, taki 183, jeremy bernstien, john maeda, banksy, bodoni, richard meier, jessica helfland, designers republic, dave eggers, moholy-nagy, mies van der rohe (LESS IS MORE!), rafael vinoly, sanford kwinter, fontshop, LARS MUELLER PUBLISHERS!! gregor schneider, mutabor, mariko mori, die gestalen verlag
font bureau
art deco
karel martens
karel martens
karel martens
karel martens

we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want

what is that?

I am so easy, when it comes to dance music. Alls I need is a good mix done by someone who knows how to use a low-pass filter. It’s that easy. It can be anything: house, Warp, 80’s, norwegian black metal, Sufjan Motherfucking Stevens, I don’t care*. As long as you can avoid jarringly crashing the songs together (not easy; such cacophony is SOP for some) and you sweep the mids, you have me at hello.

Not that I’ve been dancing much (with a handful of notable exceptions; most notably the drunken CAVE danceathon depicted above, which maybe I will tell you about sometime) but dance music == work music, and the nights have been quite late here. The writing has been haphazard, but I did get an article out the door for a magazine my dear friends back in RISD architecture are doing. It’s called Public Relations, and when I know more about this publication and its whereabouts, so will you.

Anyway. Also, a few weeks ago I went and got some new pants in new york. I usually get pants from Diesel, but I wanted to mix things up a bit, so I went to the “G-Star RAW” store across from Stackhouse, despite their entirely stupid name. While the pants I got there are nice, the people who work there are retards. Furthermore, they managed to reinforce my conviction that ASSHOLES and RETARDS are the new fundamental dichotomy that defines all of humanity:

Figure 1. Assholes versus retards. As originally referenced herein.

… and so here’s why: when you go to Diesel, the people who work there are snotty, overdressed pieces of hipster trash who don’t condescend to give you the time of day (née “assholes”). When you come out of the dressing room in your putative new pants, they look you up and down and sort of snort derisively. I am not precisely sure why, but this whole routine makes them sell more pants. Like you’ve somehow earned them by dealing with their shit.

But so the “G-Star RAW” people are sycophantic douchebags (née “retards”). First off, the pants guy actively helped me find some pants. That was their first mistake. I do not want nice pants people; I want to be brutally put in my place for my naïve fashion sense and rampant consumerism. Furthermore, he tried waaay too hard to please. I came out of the dressing room in some pants, and one of his pants cohorts looked at me and immediately said “those look nice!” … I went over to the mirror and saw that he was a lying sack of shit. The pants were horrendous, and I in fact sent them back. Plus, all the “G-Star RAW” employees were not dressed in the over-the-top absurd manner I have come to expect from top pantsmen. The whole experience left me baffled, and I can’t say I’ll be doing much business with them in the future.

Anyway yeah. This whole entry was a procrastination scheme, so I’m going to call it over and do some real work. Fuck yes!

-fish

Yo. Still no progress on writing that galleryfuck essay (as I previously bitched about) but I did see Jenny Holzer talk last week, which was nice because of course she does exactly that type of shit, notably up in the guggenheim, which (the guggenhiem) seems to provde for the best object lessons in galleryfucking. So. Erm. One “bullet point” on that essay down, of many many. Fuck yes.

Anyway so yeah, I purloined all her slides with a digital camera, which if you have any info about these pieces, you should lend me a helping hand and put it in there in the flickr comments, cuz I don’t rightly know all about ‘em. Yet! Because I also taped the whole lecture. I say “taped”, but in fact I used an olympus-brand “dictaphone” which contains no tape, only flash RAM, but there is no convenient verb for “to record audio using a tapeless dictaphone”, really… “Dictaphoned” sounds like you are trying to say you fucked a telephone, so no. But yeah I haven’t transcribed that shit yet so I dunno.

I have been all about the “reportage” these days, cuz of my independant study. Did I not tell you about that?!? Haha, it appears not. The deal is I am sitting in on crits in all the other departments at RISD: glass, architecture, textiles, digital media, et cetera, one new department a week, and taping them, as well as taking pictures and acquiring any other ancillary info I can. Then I transcribe the crits and typeset them all up, and look for all-new, all-singing all-dancing bullshit patterns… it’s pretty awesome so far, except for the fact that transcribing all that shit is kind of painful. But the information to be had is truly eye-poppingly fantastic. I am still in shock that all the faculty I tell about this are into it. Not only are they permissive but encouraging. It’s kind of hillarious.

But so yeah I’m doing that under the tutelage of David Sokol, who is awesome. I made a poster for his panel discussion here last week, see?:

Figure one: 24x36 on bright-white toothy inkjet paper

Figure two: newsprint version, inkjetted directly onto the new york times

… which is the first thing I did this semester I am at all proud of, really, yeah. It cost me too much sleep last week, tho, so now I am in a rather shitty mode. Also I am broke. So send me food. Fuck yes! Food! OK.

-fish

good:

• rebuilding merce cunningham’s internal database
• frying hot dogs in butter (the only worthwile thing I got from the book “dry” by augusten burroughs, you axed me)
• the similarity of mcgorlick park with washington square park, not just in design (that sort of radial french-garden plan thing) but also in the way that each lane in the park seems to self-segregate into a micro-region based on foot traffic (e.g. in washington square, southwest corner = chess players, west middle corridor = nyu students going to class, center area = tourists watching breakdancers, etc… in mcgorlick park the distinctions are a mite more subtle, like polish dog walkers vs. new moms with bugaboos, but they’re still there).
• maybe maybe maybe selling a book, knock on wood, yes yes
• interviewing people and having them blab about design and language on tape for hours
• cupcakes from billy’s
• dancing with girls, all night long
• riding a bike from greenpoint to redhook with your friend on a summer day … normally I enjoy deriding “bike people” as hillarious fanatics, but I can sort of see where they’re coming from with that. weaving in and out of the little niches between cars at high speed gives you this total man-over-machine type buzz, and plus if you’re doing this in new york, your perspectival POV of the city is very similar to how the video game Grand Theft Auto looks, which is entertaining. the whole thing is further enhanced by stopping at grimaldi’s and/or swimming in a redhook swimming pool, indeed.
• doing laundry … just now in my laundry, I unexpectedly found an almost-new deerhoof shirt that I know is not mine, but is in my laundry and is my size. this never happens, but karmatically it makes sense considering the staggering quantities of my own clothing that has disappeared without warning or explaination into washing machines and dryers throughout my 27+ years of garbed existence
• cutting video again
• shakespeare in the park

bad:

• the G train
• hangovers
• when someone you love very much is in a bad way, such that it makes them seem mean and nasty when really they’re just tired and scared, so you have to repress your emotion when interfacing with them, which is not easy because you love them and seeing someone you love in pain makes you kind of emotional
• the total wasteland of despair that is typographic control in CSS
• dumping liquid into your new laptop, destroying the keyboard
• talking before thinking
• drinking too much
• forgetting recipes
• transcribing interview tapes where both parties are hyped on coffee and talking 400wpm or thereabouts
• money
• not being able to sleep because of hideous anxiety attacks concerning life decisions and whatnot

ugly:

• old polish men peering in your window at night and catching you dancing to really stupid shit
• thinking proudly to yourself, “wow, I haven’t seen a single cockroach in my apartment all summer”, because as soon as you have thought that, you have of course irrevocably jinxed yourself and you basically see a huge one crawling up the wall as soon as you’ve finished the thought
• rats that have been smooshed by cars
• the hipsters who have formed a kickball league (replete with un-funny ironic team t-shirts) and play relentlessly in mackerren park
• the blackouts currently plaguing brooklyn and the subway in general
• leaving a cabinet open, forgetting you have done so, and then smashing your temple on it when abruptly standing up

… basically, yeah.

wow I’m tired. been up for a looooong time. made two 11x17 books, which maybe I will post pictures of if I can remember to charge my camera, which is generally something I hate doing because it reminds me that the camera in question is an utter piece of shit and that I am simply stuck with it because I stand completely terrified before the hideously impenitrable wall of nonsense, jargon, and model numbers that is the photographic equipment industry, the fact of which is doubly befowling cuz I am usually quite at home with technology-oriented bullshit, but in this particular instance the whole thing makes me want to hide under my bed and not even think about taking pictures ever.

anyway yeah. so. made two books. in a few hours they will go to entirely separate and distinct teachers. I was going to silkscreen their respective titles onto their covers but I forgot to by diazo activator last time I was at the fucking art store, which was stupid. but so they’re identical, coverwise, which I think I like better (but of course I’ll never know cuz I have no real empirical data/experience to compare that shit to, riiiight? right.)

yeah. in leu of pics, you can d/l the mammoth pdfs if you are so inclined here and here, respectively. these are probably about as interesting as “jack shit” to you, cuz they are just the book fillings, w/o the actual book casings, which are the good bit as far as I can ascertain. the pdfs, therefore, are like the oreo filling w/o the actual oreo, which although it sometimes seems like a good idea, you don’t see nabisco selling that shit in tubes, do you? no. so no.

I am sorry, I’m tired. anyway yeah. my house is a mess but I’m too lamely exahusted to deal with it now. so: rest, then clean, then turn in the books maybe after photographing them happily together. then… who knows?? maybe someone will offer to buy me beers and be my friend. we shall see.

yeah!

-fish

I just imported my old movabletype archive, with all types of posts spanning a large chunk of my life, going back to august 2000, across multiple CMS architectures and several continents. it’s mostly drivel and all the links are busted, but at least it’s vaguely organized into three eras: the eatshit.diaryland.com era, the secret-floating-textbox hand-rolled-XML-format-based-CMS super minimalist era, and the looks-just-like-this-version but-coded-with-html-tables-not-CSS also-slightly-more-orange and-with-movable-type-2.66666 era.

I do not know why I did this but there you go. someday, I’ll read through it all, but not today, cuz I have school shit. all the images and most of the links are busted; that will be fixed, I am sure, at some point in time that most likely resides firmly in the future.

yes!

-fish

… first read this:

http://www.mkgraphic.com/semiotics.html

… and then this:

http://www.designwritingresearch.org/essays/rock.html

… and finally, this:

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/000723.html

if you are the kind of person that found that sequence of shit even vaguely amusing, and you have an appetite for downloading 10mb pdf files, then this is clearly for you. or just stop by the RISD graphic design gallery any time this week after this monday, for the same thing, only analog. yes!

-fish