The designery desk.

 

 

Your desk is design too.

 

Much inspired by Julia and Ellen Lupton’s manifesto which proclaims: Design is everywhere! Here is my desk. Which also fits in with their statement: design is a mess. Time to go home I think.

Masters by unconcious thesis and semi-automatic writing.

I am now reading the chapter of Design your Life entitled The Art of Procrastination, and yes, it does include blogging as procrastination. hmm. Very post modern. Anyway, the author discusses lists, what we do with our notes, thoughts, “occasional bolts of joy or genius”. She discusses the many ways people capture this data in the moment. About a week before I finished my Masters thesis, I wrote about a thousand words in my cellphone. All in the dead of the night, half unconcious. I would routinely wake up in the wee hours strongly believing I had found some amazing insight or perfectly worded phrase that would tie my argument together and transform my research. These moments of genius were always total crap, mostly just strings of buzz words and absurd connections, it wasn’t even funny, just indicative of the lame dreams I was having at the time (history of the term ‘melancholy’. woop). Ideas you have at three in the morning are not good ideas.

The perils of everyday hoarding.

I just started reading Ellen and Julia Lupton’s Design your life: the pleasures and perils of everyday life. I am already a big fan of Ellen Lupton, and this book is great because its a funny and easy to absorb collection of anecdotes from everyday life. In the first anecdote entitled Moving the furniture,  Ellen Lupton comments that those of us who never rearrange their furniture stop seeing our environment. She points out that we simply get used to walking into awkwardly placed objects and steer clear of uncomfortable chairs and broken drawers. Isn’t that just so true? (I hate it when you can’t walk around one side of the bed and are forced to scramble over someone to get out) I am currently in the process of moving, and what I notice the most is the crap that I have held on to. All the stuff that builds up and makes it harder to walk around the room. So many times I have put something down, intending it to be a temporary resting place and never moved it again. Case in point, a big plastic container, the type meant for storing  tools or something in the garage or workshop. I used mine for transporting my work to craft fairs. For some reason I don’t recall I put it in my bedroom and over a year later it is still there! It was of course a temporary measure, but then I put some books on it, and clothes on those books, and the contents of a Christmas stocking on those clothes. After a while it becomes cemented there, all the layers of objects would need to be relocated, which may require throwing out other things to make room for them. Why do we forget that we can change our environment? Why did I choose to keep all the boxes my bottles of perfume came in? Maybe everyone should write letters to themselves in 5 years explaining the desperate need to keep all the empty cotton reels (doll house furniture according to my mother) and really old makeup. As Lupton says, “moving the furniture has become a way of pulling happiness and sociability-in place of frustration and boredom- out of ordinary situations, simply by shaking them up a bit.”

(Still no car, they suspect the inhibitor is at fault, I always thought it had a lack of inhibitions…)

Going concerned.

Still reading Shaping Things and have been trying to get my head around cognitive loads and opportunity costs. Cognitive load is the brainpower we expend when engaging in, or with the objects of technoculture. Opportunity cost is the sacrifice of another part or activity in life we make to be a part of this culture. I have a theory: I read for leisure less than I used to. Before the arrival of my laptop and Nintendo Dsi I used to always read before bed, now I watch something online or play games. I still read but it takes me a lot longer to get through a book than it used to. Opportunity cost! And, instead of engaging in the act of reading, which I have spent practically my whole life doing, I am dabbling (paddling)  in sea of technology, most of which I only understand at interface value (I am recent stylus user). Cognitive load.  I have also heard that staring at screens right before going to bed can thwart your ability to sleep. straying from the point a little, but I’m fairly sold on the idea of sleeping in a Faraday mosquito net – http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html whether or not it actually does anything beneficial, it couldn’t hurt right?