I finally got around to seeing this incredible film tonight at the ICA. It’s essentially a documentary, made up of hundreds of clips of films that reference in some way Los Angeles, accompanied by the dour and ironic voiceover of its creator, Thom Andersen. He loves and is very protective of his city, and that viewpoint makes at least the first half (it’s about two and half hours long) mesmerising. Oh, and the clips are brilliantly chosen too.
Don’t know quite why I’ve been thinking about this but isn’t the biohazard symbol the most over-designed warning symbol there is?
The radiation one is pretty restrained – nice and simple. But it looks like the designers of biohazard one, perhaps because of the beyond-comprehension fearful things it represents, really went to town.
The closest I’ve seen any form of videogames getting to art so far is in interactive fiction. Yep, those old fashioned text adventure games with the text descriptions and clunky GET KEY commands. Most people assume that they are long dead. But there are small but active communities that are still creating games even now, and I reckon they’re offering experiences that are in some ways far more interesting than those had in the glossy 3D worlds generated by Xboxes, PS2s and Gamecubes.
icon 009 This was my first profile piece for icon. I was crapping myself somewhat before the interview, terrified that I didn’t know enough about Heatherwick, or I wouldn’t be able to cross-examine him and all that sort of thing. It was only the second interview I’d done: the first was Alan Bennett for my journalism course in 2002. But it didn’t really matter because Heatherwick is such a lovely man, much as the interview doesn’t exactly strike at the core of who he is.
In a recent issue of icon we published our totally undefinitive list of who and what we think are the most influential in design right now. It was always meant to provoke reaction but I’m pretty sure we still haven’t received a single letter or direct email about it. I suppose it proves that our readership just isn’t a letterwriting one.
It was only when we posted it on our website (well, I did because I do the website) that we started getting a fair bit of reaction. Most blog references to it have been around the “this is quite interesting, look they’ve listed Ikea as number one, oh and blogs are there too” mark.
Kottke recently felt his Nokia phone had been techno-trounced by Motorola’s RAZR. RAZR is a phone that wows on first impressions because it’s so - oh, I’m getting all clammy handed at the memory of my first experience of it…
Motorola was so sure of its new phone’s “Design” credentials that it launched it first to a load of design journalists in Copenhagen, including me. It really looked special back then; so shiny and thin, like (weak metaphor coming) a supermodel. But actually getting one (let’s take that metaphor to its straining limit) revealed the blemishes that Photoshop and make-up on models usually cover up.
I had my first lesson in just how amazingly compelling the Nintendo DS is last weekend when I stayed at my parents’ house with my brother and girlfriend. My brother instantly loved it, playing Mario 64 minigames all the way to Suffolk on the train. He liked it so much that he actually bought one the very next day - his first ever console purchase (having long-term borrowed mine for years).
Following the Guardian’s games blog’s list of 10 unmissable examples of new games journalism there’s been a lot about it on the net (check the Videogames Ombundsman’s and Game Girl Advance’s reactions to the satirical backlash here).
The latest addition to the fray is Gamer’s Quarter, an online magazine whose manifesto is based around being a “collaborative project between dedicated gamers who do not just play games, but experience them”.
Wow. I must confess that I hadn’t considered that there was much of a difference. And I still don’t. I guess it’s a stab at doing the New Games Journalism thing, but attempts to draw distinctions like that between experiencing games and merely playing them can only weaken what could develop into a really interesting and important movement. Experiential writing at its best is involving and inclusive - this suggestion that the writers of Gamer’s Quarter are the only ones that can really tell us about the games that we can all play - no, sorry, experience - is a false elevation of something that should be more down-to-earth.
icon 007 My first attempt to write a piece of architectural criticism. And I think it’s pretty good. I felt that there was a good story - the way the building seemed to reflect the character of its owner, Ron Dennis. I thought I was a little cheeky about him, actually, yet oddly enough it ended up with McLaren’s official magazine, Racing Line, commissioning me to interview Dennis and Norman Foster (the building’s by Foster and Partners).
Rick Poynor’s experiences of writing for Blueprint and other design magazines early in his career seem to mirror mine very closely. I too hold a distinct discomfort for writing about architecture. I’ve consciously avoided doing so, unless there has been a sure story there to reflect the building against.
I’m still not entirely sure why. Poynor says that for him it was partly because architects generally come across so self-important and grandiloquent. A lot of people say this sort of thing about architecture, including myself now and again. But I wonder whether this is a little unfair, and not entirely constructive.