Headline & Editorial
Last Issue: #31 The Journey
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905). This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga...Read more
The opinion
Magazine -> #18 Food for the mindI met the suggestion that I write something up on the topic of “food for the mind” with enthusiasm. Not only do I find it stimulating, but it’s also very topical. Our physiological needs, as Maslow calls them, including self-security, a sense of communal belonging and esteem, have been fairly much appeased in the West; we’ve peaked his famo...
continue..The Lord who teaches
Magazine -> #23 Emotion and SurpriseAn exercise on the rings is an amazing feat that demands perfect harmony between mind and body. But how much emotional balance do you need to make it to the top? A good level of equilibrium between mind and body is an essential factor in performing complex actions like a ring exercise. The ability to manage your emotions and your body at the same ...
continue..Man and his space. Contexts of life
Magazine -> #5 The Dictatorship of the ConsumptionArtemide and Moroso, two companies confirming the contemporary relation between man, design and habitat. Why are consumers attracted by your products, what do they base their purchasing choice on? Carlotta de Bevilacqua Gismondi: Light today is conceived as something that is fundamental to improve and personalise environmental qualities in ever...
continue..The opinion
Magazine -> #20 Home MadeWhen it comes to the business world, I am absolutely convinced that the kind of creativity that leads to real innovation can only develop “in house” – in other words the place where all the input from day-to-day relations with clients and products is received and digested. To paraphrase the Chinese saying ”Listen and forget, see and remembe...
continue..The unexpected world
Magazine -> #26 Re-Evaluate The ErrorA sketch comes into focus beneath the scrutinizing eye of a camera lens, revealing an error. Promptly corrected, a new and different figure appears, materialised and dematerialised by strong, alternate strokes of pencil and eraser flaying the surface. That’s how William Kentridge works, by fine-tuning and adjustment, dynamically, hesitantly, step...
continue..Wide angle vision
Magazine -> #17 SerendipityThe word “serendipity” was introduced in 1700 by Horace Walpole. In a letter to an acquaintance, he commented on a Persian legend in which the travellers “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. After that, the word “serendipity” was used in many fields, often with a wide ...
continue..Taking the right turn
Magazine -> #17 SerendipitySerendipity isn’t yet a very familiar concept in the cultural sphere, is it? It mightn’t be, but what it refers to is very relevant to design and innovation in any sphere of activity, not only that of culture. How do you go about trying to be innovative? And can serendipity help? The best way to go about it is to look elsewhere. The beaten t...
continue..A lot to learn
Magazine -> #21 Senti-mentallyAfter graduating in architecture from Turin Polytechnic, in 1947 Ettore Sottsass jr. (Innsbruck, 1917) began working in Milan, where he opened his first design studio. Son of an architect and an architect himself, from the start he backed up his formal education and training with practical experiences in the visual arts field, trying out his ar...
continue..Not a mechanical pump
Magazine -> #21 Senti-mentallyLet’s take a closer look at a work by Sol LeWitt, a great artist who has just left us, whose legacy to the world was the idea of art as a concept. But a concept in what sense? For example, you take a point and slide it towards the end of a given quadrangle. Another point, sliding in the opposite direction, will define a partly closed space w...
continue..The beauty of ugliness
Magazine -> #16 Beautiful and well madeLittle bodies of Siamese children joined together at the hips and huddled to form a group, arranged so as to appear to be posing: the statues of the Chapman brothers are horrific monstrosities. The statues of very young-looking but already sexually mature adolescents of the Japanese artist Tadashi Murakami are no less unsettling. His manga-looking,...
continue..The way of the brush
Magazine -> #22 KaizenTo improve one’s work by getting rid of what is unneeded through constant and repetitive exercise. This seems to be the key to a calligrapher’s success, but very often deciding what to leave is anything but easy. What has your experience as a student of calligraphy and as an artist and respectively as a writer been in this respect? Linda: As a...
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