perception

Collapse of civilization tango

the-long-descent.jpg
They say that the last days of Rome were culturally rich – and the same seems to be the case in our own times.
Choreographer Valerie Green and Dance Entropy, a New York City-based experimental dance troupe, will shortly premier a new work, Rise and Fall, [continue …]

2022-10-04T10:29:39+00:00March 20th, 2011|perception|

Bangkok Cable Ways

afb9bd1c14.jpg
On of the reasons we underestimate the sheer physical mass of our power and information networks is that they’re hidden from view. But not in Bangkok. The German photographer Thomas Kalak has spent ten years decade capturing images like these.They feature in an [continue …]

2022-10-04T10:29:56+00:00February 13th, 2011|perception|

Ultra Modern

full_12961591251300-346-459.jpg
I dislike the word ‘glocal’. It’s an ugly word used by high altitude thinkers to add zest to another word – local – that they find tedious on its own.
I also dislike the word ‘creative’. It tends to be used by uncreative people to describe [continue …]

2022-10-04T10:29:58+00:00February 9th, 2011|perception|

Polish Art in Beirut

nicolas_grospierre_zory_2007_fotomontaggio_400.jpg
An underground exhibition of Polish art in Beirut looks like a specialised event, even for me – only it features the work of the Polish photographer Nicolas Grospierre which makes it definitely worth a visit. Grospierre’s modified architectural photographs were a highlight for me [continue …]

2010-03-04T09:05:22+00:00March 4th, 2010|perception|

It’s Saturday, we’re busy here…

…so I’m simply going to post this chart, which I’ve been sitting on for ages, without further explanation or analysis. Why don’t *you* tell *me* what it means, or what global dilemma it may help resolve? Refer to global warming, the financial crisis, peak indium, or any other grim peak [continue …]

2009-03-21T09:13:32+00:00March 21st, 2009|perception|

Be heard, call a fjell!

telemegaphonedale.jpg
Is this the next-generation telephony solution I’ve been looking for as an alternative to physical travel? Its creators, Unsworn Industries (Magnus Torstensson and Erik Sandelin) have created a sublime piece of communications landscape art, or something along those lines. Saturday 2 August is the grand [continue …]

2008-07-29T11:19:45+00:00July 29th, 2008|perception|

Michel Waisvisz

michel_waisvisz.jpg
Very sad news reaches us that Michel Waisvisz has died peacefully in his home after fighting the mean cells in his body for the last eight months. Michel was known around the world as a musician, visionary and the source of an enormous energy [continue …]

2023-04-21T16:37:49+00:00July 28th, 2008|perception|

The point of it all

belsayhall1.jpg
This is a big week for Dott. The Picture House exhibition at Belsay Hall Mansion opens with a Digital Dinner on Thursday. The exhibition features three projects curated for Dott by Juha Huuskonen / Pixelache: a new work from Golan Levin; Adam Somlai-Fischer & [continue …]

2007-05-02T07:54:11+00:00May 2nd, 2007|perception|

Digital dinner at Belsay

So you think you know what an English country house feels like? Well think again. Judith King for English Heritage and Dott 07 (with Juha Huuskonen) have invited experimental film directors, artists and designers to transform Belsay Hall in Northumberland with a series of cutting edge art and new media [continue …]

2007-04-03T19:08:09+00:00April 3rd, 2007|perception|

Comment unfree

In response to spam attacks we’ve had to turn off the comment function here. Apologies for that: If you’ve had a comment blocked, please send it to desk at doorsofperception dot com com and we’ll post it manually.

2007-03-14T07:52:52+00:00March 14th, 2007|perception|

Jeremijenko in Glasgow

A rare opportunity to meet Natalie Jeremijenko in Glsagow. Voted as one of the Top 100 young innovators by the MIT Technology Review, Natalie is a design engineer and techno-artist who creates large-scale participative experiments in public spaces. She produces multimedia installations that use robotics, genetic and digital engineering, electromechanics [continue …]

2006-12-04T18:20:15+00:00December 4th, 2006|perception|

Weakness in numbers?

Paul Hawken reckons that over 1 million organizations, populated by over 100 million people, are engaged in positive activity designed to address climate and other environmental issues. “Collectively this constitutes the single biggest movement on earth, but but it flies under the radar” he writes. Paul’s new project, a book [continue …]

2006-10-23T09:51:41+00:00October 23rd, 2006|perception|

So now you know

Random.org run by Mads Haahr, offers true random numbers to anyone on the internet. Their most important use is the generation of cryptographic keys. For example, one Danish TV station runs an online backgammon server which generates more than 300,000 dice rolls per day. A dice roll is [continue …]

2006-10-04T07:52:01+00:00October 4th, 2006|perception|

Cough, splutter, choke…..

Every time I open my computer these days another monstrosity makes me choke on my cocopops. On Monday it was reading the loony-tunes head of Saatchi and Saatchi talk about “war as a brand” (see below). Today I started to read Wally Olins – another eminence of design and communications [continue …]

2022-10-07T19:18:59+00:00August 25th, 2006|perception|

War as a brand

I found it weird (in the story below) that brand marketing should be proposed as an appropriate response to climate change. Now I read in Mute that Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, last year advised the US Department of Defence on rebranding war. In a [continue …]

2012-04-03T16:40:51+00:00August 22nd, 2006|perception|

Seven 9/11s a year in Europe

Apropos the security situation in London: “Loss of life might have surpassed the 2,700 killed in the attack on the twin towers in New York five years ago. “This was our 9/11,” a British security source said.
It’s a good thing that a lot of people were not blown up [continue …]

2006-08-11T06:48:51+00:00August 11th, 2006|perception|

Why Englishmen do it with their socks on

Did you know this? “In the old days, women exposed their adulterous husbands by marking their left and right socks”. I never heard this before. But this makes me a minority among Englishmen, I now realise, because they (we) have been ridiculed for decades for making love with our socks [continue …]

2022-10-07T19:24:34+00:00July 20th, 2006|perception|

Sonic allotments

The avant garde of music and sound art is a good early indicator of social change; sound is a fluid and rapidly changing medium. That’s why this year’s Futuresonic looks well worth a visit. In three days of talks, demos and chat, an international crowd will explore how [continue …]

2006-07-15T06:18:38+00:00July 15th, 2006|perception|

Aspen Design Summit (international conference, Aspen, 2006 )

AIGA, the US professional association for design, and IDCA, the International Design Conference at Aspen, invited John Thackara to chair the Aspen Design Summit.

Conceived as “a new type of gathering for a new century”, this celebrated event brought design-minded leaders from around the world to Aspen, Colorado to make positive, [continue …]

2023-04-21T17:02:09+00:00May 21st, 2006|perception|

Green design goes A-List

Did we say that green design needs to be less sad and more glamorous?

Brad Pitt, who has few reasons to be sad that we’re aware of, narrates a six-part television series on ecologically friendly architecture, called Design-e², which launches in June on PBS in the US.

The series challenges [continue …]

2023-04-21T17:01:49+00:00April 11th, 2006|perception|

In search of fuzzy time

The Guardian is flogging an absurdly over-the-top watch on its website. Because the watch is radio-controlled, accuracy is guaranteed to “within one second in a million years”. The watch also boasts five daily alarms, a 1/100 second stopwatch, and world time. The Guardian promises that “you should never be [continue …]

2006-02-23T06:53:34+00:00February 23rd, 2006|perception|

Out of order?

Many of you probably know about Michael Darnell’s website Bad Designs – but it’s always growing, and always worth a re-visit. If there are other bad design collections out there, please let us know: we want to organise a Worst Design In The World Oscars. Meanwhile, because this [continue …]

2023-04-21T17:01:12+00:00February 22nd, 2006|perception|

Risk assessment as a design issue

I’ve been called priggish for insisting that some issues deserve more design attention than others. The trouble is that we are not good at judging risk – especially long-term ones – as a society, and when big issues get overlooked at the expense of insignificant ones, we end up [continue …]

2022-10-21T12:11:13+00:00January 22nd, 2006|perception|

BT’s tinpot dictator

“Enjoy the future” raves British Telecom, in its Technology Timeline for 2006-2050. BT spoils the effect by warning of wildcards, that “may happen at any time”, that include “international financial collapse” and “the possible rise of a machine dictator”. I’m sanguine about the second of these problems: [continue …]

2006-01-16T17:19:04+00:00January 16th, 2006|perception|

In praise of poetry

Thanks to Europe’s most horrible company, Wanadon’t, our internet connection has again been down for days. So we have had to access our email by telephone. Your warmly-meant illustrated seasons greetings have taken literally hours to download. Next year, maybe think about sending us a poem?

2005-12-29T13:23:26+00:00December 29th, 2005|perception|

Shops as museums

A typically excellent piece by Karrie Jacobs in next month’s Metropolis discusses “how hard it is to mount a really innovative contemporary industrial-design show these days. The problem–and it’s not specific to MoMA–is that the products one can find on the shelves of almost any store are likely to [continue …]

2005-12-19T10:32:13+00:00December 19th, 2005|perception|
Go to Top