Fairgrounds

And their significance

Carousel in "Strangers on a Train"

Three fairgrounds in three important films of the 20th century:

- Fernand Leger's erratic rides in his 1924 "Le Ballet Mecanique" where man and machine fuse as one, even during man's most abandoned and playful moments.

- The 1920 German Expressionist film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" directed by Robert Wien, in which the protagonist, Dr. Caligari, uses a carnival to introduce his somnambulist Cesare.

- Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 "Strangers on a Train" has both a murder and the identification of a murderer occur at a fairground.

Leger uses fairgrounds to wax poetic about machines. Robert Wien makes the expressionist fairground into some kind of unearthly place full of macabre fantasies.

Hitchcock's carousel juxtaposes the horrors of the crime committed by the deranged criminal full of his internal fantasies, with the speed and distorted figures of the wooden horses, to finally evict the murderer through the centrifugal force of the mechanical carousel onto stable ground, where he can be identified and convicted.

Hitchcock took a little of each of the two previous films to make his approachable, human film where man is separated from machine and fantasy, and made to pay for his sins.

I'm always surprised at how moralistic Hitchcock is. After all, his films for the most part are about murder and crime. But, I think he really separates man from other things - nature, machine, psychosis (which is an inferior version of rational, sensible man.) Hitchcock has trust in man, despite his ambiguities and insecurities.

Unlike the other two filmmakers, whose protagonists are outside of the human (machine or fantasy), Hitchcock stays grounded in his portrayals of his fellow being.

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Good Things

Come in threes

Here are three new things I learned about the craft and design world in the past few days:

1. Charles Voysey is my favorite fabric designer (he worked with tapestries, carpets, fabric and also wallpaper design.) I especially love the way he hides birds in his designs, making them blend in with the foliage and other surroundings.

Voysey Birds:
Left for textile design ca. 1916 (how many birds are in the foliage?)
Right: For a greeting card ca. 1901

But I didn't know that he was also an accomplished architect. He had a distinctive style of low roofs and horizontal windows.

His homes have the same simplicity and harmony that his designs do, but their wholeness and beauty is further accentuated by their austerity.

The Orchard (1899)
One of Voysey's low-roofed house with horizontal windows. The Orchard was his home.

2. Felt is not just for hats. It is making a comeback in textile design. I think part of the attraction is that you don't need especially complicated equipment to make your own felt, and it is a very malleable and versatile material.

But, I didn't know this, and it makes sense, that it is one of the oldest fabrics, and that it is still in use, mainly in central Asia. Here are some current attempts at making felt today.

Left: Laser-cut felt rugs
Middle: Scarves using various felting techniques
Right: Penny Rug from early American and Canadian crafts

3. Rosenthal Porcelain from Germany is world-renowned, and considered one of the best both for its porcelain and for its design.

"Le Jardin de Versace"

A Rosenthal/Versace collaboration.

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When National Symbols Are Lacking

We'll grab onto anything

I've always said that if there is no concerted effort at keeping national symbols alive and well, something else will come along and take up the space.

This is just what happened with the Canadian Summer Olympics team uniform, under the direction of the Hudson's Bay Company Suzanne Timmins.

One of the designers, Tu Ly, apparently designed the "award winning" uniform for the Canadian team at the 2006 Winter Olympics. I tried finding Tu Ly's other works online, including his supposed knitwear for Saks Fifth Avenue, but came up with nothing. Same thing for his co-designer Vivienne Lu.

Tu Ly's 2006 work was commissioned by Roots Canada, and I get the feeling that he was under strict directions by Roots to follow their austere "everyman" designs and probably didn't have too much creative leeway.

Well, now that he does, here's what he, and his design team, has come up with.

Here are some of the design elements of the Canadian Olympics team uniform:

Font: Bamboo
Font direction: Up to down to mimicking Chinese script
Main background color: China Red
Style: Hip-hop camouflage
Inspiration behind the designs:
- Chinese tattoos
- Chinese astrology elements: Fire, Wood, Water, Earth Metal
- Chinese lucky number eight
- "Organic" maple leaf

I thought Olympics, as friendly as they are, are about giving strength to your own team, with dynamic home-grown symbols and designs.

What the designers have come up with is not Team Canada, but a subversive act to make Canadians into pseudo-Chinese.

At a CBC interview, critic Stig Larsson, a designer and owner of sports store Level Six and himself a national athlete, was concerned that designs makes the clothing too prominent, diminishing the athletes. I agree with him, and upon viewing his company's products, it is a real surprise that he wasn't part of (if not leading) the Olympics design team.

One last thing, 80% of the clothing were made in China, which given the direction of the design should come as no surprise.


Left: Chinese tattoo prints with "organic" maple leaf
Right: The number 8 as an emblem

Left: The Village-wear print with China red background
Middle: Close-up of print with mixture of Chinese and Canadian symbols
Right: "Organic" maple leaf, looking like a marijuana leaf


Left: The five Chinese astrological signs
Right: Bamboo font text from top to bottom (instead of left to right)

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Update on Good Shape

More like "good form"

Here's a revealing comment by Christopher Alexander:

[F]orms must arise that come from the technology and economics and social circumstances of that era. So that if one sets out a program where you're essentially sort of copying old forms in any version, you're liable to be in a hell of a lot of trouble...But [people] don't know what to do about it...And I think that it is necessary to spend time - I would say major amounts of time - thinking only about form and geometry. Thinking about the language of form that is appropriate now.

This puts a lot of things into perspective, which I had only subconsciously understood until now.

Almost all of my colleagues, professors and acquaintances in the art and design fields seem to be stuck on this search for "the language of form that is appropriate now."

Hence:
- The name "experimental" for the avant-garde group of current filmmakers, of which I was a member for a few years. There was (is) great emphasis on finding new techniques, and even branching into non-film media such as digital and computerized manipulations. Thus calling themselves "experimental."

- A recent bizarre project by fellow board-member (at a post I had at Trinity Square Video), whom I posted about here, who uses jello to simulate water in a fountain. In trying to find a new way to design fountains, she tried to redesign the water instead!

- A textile "artist" who has been experimenting with the very ugly, thick - in all aspects - fiber felt to try and come up with sculptural elements. The problem is that felt is not solid, unless stuffed. Trying to find this intrinsic sculptural element in a non-sculptural material hinders the real emphasis. Which should be representing the object itself.

- Textile designer Looolo makes biodegradable, organic and toxin-free home accessories. The simple pillows range from a steep $100-$150. The price is for the dubious material. Design not included. Also, biodegradable fabric! Isn't the idea that it last as long as possible, and not get tossed in the green bin when a little worn? And aren't cotton, silk and wool naturally biodegradable?

What's going wrong here?

As film theorist Siegfried Kracauer quotes avant-garde filmmaker Jacques Brunius: "The cinema [of the avant-garde] is the least realistic of arts."

This holds true for the three examples I've given above. In the single-minded effort to find "the language of form that is appropriate now", these designers, artists and filmmakers have given up on reality!

It's as simple as that.

There is something noble in this experimental, almost scientific, attempt at finding the right form. But, I think where they are made their fundamental error is in their disengagement with reality. Form comes from the real world. Trying to find form without the real will only give us deflating sculptures and giant jello for water.

Left: Chung-Im Kim's undecipherable object (worm, horn, shell, ice cream cone?)
made with sewn pieces of felt with a hollow inside.
One clutch and the object is flattened

Right: Gwen Macgregor's "Pool." Water made from jello as part of an "installation"
project with wading pools. Even the project is misdirected, looking at the pools
instead of the structures. The kids don't look too much like they're enjoying themselves.

Looolo pillows:
Left, "Fly" at $140; Center, "Janthur" at $190; Right, "Windows" at $140

The Fly and Janthur pillows defy leaning back on their irregular surface. Isn't that what pillows are for? And design is wanting in the Windows series.

Ten second preview of Bruce Elder's experimental film "The Young Prince"

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Good Shape

Why it matters in design

I am in the middle of reading architect Christopher Alexander's epic four volume work entitled: The Nature of Order describing how recent (he actually dates this from 400 years ago) man-made environments have alienated man from himself, from his surroundings and from nature.

We only have to look at the atrocious modern architecture (and designs) to realize it. Here is my favorite worst:
The new ROM extension - again. (It will never go away)

The book is really a treatise for all designers and artists, and not just architects.

Basically, a good shape is composed of simple, elementary shapes. He cites the following that he has discovered to be building blocks to a good shape:

Square, line segment, arrowhead, hook, triangle, row of dots, circle, rosette, diamond, s-shape, half circle, stars, steps, cross, waves, spiral, tree, octagon.

Here's an example of a bad shape:


With its amorphous, unsimplistic and undefined elemental shapes:


And how a design of a flower can actually be composed of elementary squares, triangles, diamonds, making the overall shape into a good one.


The two bad shapes feel like they have no balance. It feels like the chair would topple you off as soon as you sit on it, and the ROM extension will collapse on you as soon as you pass under it.

Here's Alexander's wonder at a simple, sturdy, and as he calls it beautiful good shape of a simple Japanese teapot stand:

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