Sea of dreams

WEEK14 - DAY7 - Dreaming time

1. Soundtrack of the day

Baby Alpaca - Sea of dreams

2. People to meet

Anne Bronte - bio

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung 

3. Places to go

Our dreams

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

“I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes.” - Anne Brontë
Here’s a fascinating article about what happens in your mind when you sleep.

Surrealist artists Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Rene Magritte - Some of their most important works were inspired by their dreams.

Vincent van Gogh once said “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
The Science of Sleep - movie
Inception - movie

Design for Dreaming - movieWaking Life - video

Lucid dreams - design your own dreams

Stephen LaBerge -  LaBerge’s team was interested in developing ways to enter the Lucid Dreaming state. This technique is easy — you just need to practice!

1. Before bed, decide on a problem you would like to solve while in a lucid dream. Frame your problem in the form of a question. Focus on the question for a few minutes – set your intention to dream about this.

2. Try a yoga nidra meditation or some exercises to help you get into a state of deep relaxation. Yoga relaxation routine here.

4. Lay down (if you can, in a bed designed by Mathieu Lehanneur, or in the Bubble, or the Dream Downtown Hotel, or just in your own bed).

5. Fall asleep and realise you are dreaming (pinch yourself or use DreamStalker or notice the vital signs – is there a purple monster flying around? Then you are probably not awake...)

6. Once you realise you’re asleep, bring up your question again. Seek the solution.

And if you want to explore further, here are some more techniques! And here.
Stephen King used the art of “creative sleep” to stay focused on the writing process. 

“Our work is without limits, full-time. There is no schedule, day and night. I
translate my dreams into reality, whatever I do” - Piero Fornasetti, an Italian designer, artist, interior decorator, and craftsman.

And he worked in dreams indeed. He woke up at night and sketched his ideas - baroque furniture, Palladian-style architecture or a modern variation. Or look at art works on the exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. It was called “Dreams For Those Who Are Awake”. These works are also records of dreams.

Try Design by Randomness. Ideas start small so it is important to create an environment where you can nurture them and try them immediately before they disappear, where you can experiment and discover new ones. Find tools to develop the ideas from your dreams.

Dream books? They existed already in ancient Egypt and even Lord Byron wrote one. There are some other really remarkably designed dream book covers:

dream books from the 19th century, beautiful art nouveau dream books. Nowadays, you can always consult an online dream book.

In 1962, Bruno Munari, one of our favourites, published “Men on the Moon,” a special foldable book for kids with two LP records. Munari also used this motif in
“Good Design” (1963), where he portrayed the moon as an orange.

Verner Panton, the father of design. The moon inspired him to make this amazing moon lamp.

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time”, said Winnie-the-Pooh, the
wisest bear.

6.Homework:
Tonight, sleep deep and sweet! And in the morning, start recording your dreams. Use a notebook or a blog. Call the entries ‘dream whispers’. In a week, you will have 7 dreams whispering to you about things you want to do. In a month, at least 28. Quite a collection of dreams. Isn’t it nice? You can draw, design, write, paint...document you dreams in any way you please. And tomorrow, will you share with us a picture?

This Video and Letter were created by a group of Design101 students. Congratulations! A well done job!

Elastic mind

WEEK14 - DAY 6

1. Soundtrack of the day

Röyksopp "The Alcoholic" A Puppet's Tale 

2. People to meet

Paola Antonelli 

3. Places to go

New York City

The MoMa

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

“Reality can be elastic, and I want to see how elastic it can be, you know?” Yoko Ono

“Adaptability is an ancestral distinction of human intelligence, but today’s instant variations in rhythm, call for something stronger: elasticity,” Paola Antonelli.

“Designers give life and voice to objects, and along the way they manifest our visions and aspirations for the future, even those we do not yet know we have.” (Paola Antonelli)

“Elastic Mind”. The MoMA exhibition’s website. 

 TED Talk - Paola Antonelli speaks of the exhibition.

“And I don’t know what to do, now that pink has turned to blue,” -  Hüsker Dü.
The most important thing today, for all of us is to develop strong skills of elasticity, “a by-product of adaptability and acceleration... It means being able to embrace progress, understanding how to make it our own,“ -  Paola Antonelli.

“Bucky”or Buckminster Fuller  - “the best way to predict the future is to design it”!

Ryoji Ikeda and his test patterns. Here he Goes Big, Really Big.

“Flowers have been used since as far back as 50,000 years in funeral rituals. Many cultures do draw a connection between flowers and life and death, and because of their seasonal return flowers also suggest rebirth, which is the why many people place flowers upon graves...” (this was written here)

A collection of blue flowers

KEEPING THE BLUE PLANET BLUE ONE FLOWER AT A TIME

My blue flowers are made of shampoo containers plastic and bottle pet plastic. When possible I used poor materials to answer Design 101 challenges. It was a deliberate option from the beginning of the course.

Obviously we look at it and think reduce-reuse-recycle.

Here's how  I presented the different flowers on iversity platform. 
I used a little humour on this first aproach - the single blue flower.

For the blue flower series I got more serious. Are we making enough to reduce waste? Or is it just flower after flower after flower?

The flower lamp proposal - because I got carried away and created two single blue flowers - deals with equilibrium between opposite forces, darkness and light. That's the key to survival of the Earth and ourselves. 
May Sarton was a poet and she loved Nature and flowers. So I found this quote and possibly influenced by Design 101's use of quotes used her words instead of mine.

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle

The collection and the vision

WEEK14 - DAY 5

1. Soundtrack of the day

By the beautiful blue Danube

2. People to meet

Junya Ishigami - interview

Takashi Murakami

3. Places to go

Antwerp, Belgium

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration Ishigami- interview

What is the best moment of the day?

“Just before going to sleep. I can finally relax from the day, have a peace of mind.”

“I would encourage them (the young) to create things in a free way. This means without depending on past knowledge or past creations. Try to create new values within architecture and design. Challenge current values and come up with new ones.”

“I would like to regard plant life not just as a landscape element but as an element equivalent to buildings in the formation of space.”

Ishigami worked for Sanaa.

“Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.” Walt Disney

About a concept

In Junya Ishigami’s case, his workshop for students at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, his Greenhouses outside the Japanese pavilion at the 2008 International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy, his “Table” installation and his “cuboid balloon” all show an obsession with light, lightness, transparency.
But it’s mostly about creating new space: exploring scale and proportion. He creates nearly “invisible” objects and architecture letting the surroundings define its own space.(From the course letter)

Some cute artificial flowers 
Tonkin Liu’s Future Flower.Harvard researcher grows microscopic crystal flowers.
Green Azuma Makoto
A “Flower observatory” by Olafur Eliasson
Jeff Koons’ Inflatable - Balloon Flower (yellow),

6.Homework

How do you see your flowers? Today, you will make a web collection of your blue flowers, the ones you made yesterday. Show and tell us all about them!
Share your vision with us. Take a screenshot of your collection and share it with us. And also, give us the link to it!

(Next post, please!)

A series of blue flowers

WEEK 14 - DAY 4

1. Soundtrack of the day

Sun Ra - Reflections in Blue

2. People to meet

John Baldessari
Documentary about him and his work.

On Kawara

3. Places to go

USA

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration


I Got Up At... is a series of ninety postcards with printed rubber stamps On Kawara sent to his friend John Baldessari. Each card was stamped and sent from where he was at that morning and marked with the time he got out of bed.

Strange flowers
Hussein Chalayan
Philip Treacy
Dale Chihuly

Andy Warhol - “isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?”

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh

Alan Fletcher’s - his play with the colour blue: JAZZ BLUES, BLUEBLOOD, ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, BLUE STOCKING, BLUE FIT, FEEL BLUE, BLUE MURDER, BLUE PENCIL, BLUE FILM, BLUEBEARD, BLUE MOOD, BLUE FUNK, CORDON BLEU, TRUE BLUE, MOOD INDIGO...

On Kawara, in one of his earlier projects he sent telegrams to his friends saying, “I am still alive.” Nowadays, he has a twitter page that follows the same principle.It is another example of series. But in this example, the expression in the same: what changes is the person, On Kawara, as he progresses through time.

The goddess of flowers, gardens, and Spring:
Chloris seen by Botticelli.


6. Homework - Today, from your one blue flower you will make a series of blue flowers. 

Making a series of flowers from one of my previous blue flowers would be easy if I had more PET plastic. But I runned out of PET in the house, the weather was terrible to go outside, and yes, I had to move on. So I moved to a different kind of plastic. Sorry if I'm not following the rules this time. These flowers are made with my shampoo containers. Now I have the remaining shampoo in a glass! I played with the shapes. I wish I had more plastic containers!
(And please remember that I do not wish to participate in the Berlin exhibition.)

The self standing flower

WEEK14- DAY3

1.Soundtrack of the day

2. Places to go

Hong Kong

3. People to meet

Bruce Lee
Enter the dragon - video

4. Question of the day

5.Inspiration

“I like perfume and flowers.” - Donatella VersaceEdgar Degas’ Woman seated beside a vase of flowers.


Mies -  “God is in the details.”

Goethe would add nuance by saying, “God is in the details, devil is in the extremities.”
Mies Van Der Rohe’s and Lilly Reich’s Café Samt and Seide. At this exhibition for the German silk industry, Mies and Reich used the product, silk and velvet curtains of variable heights, to define the space. In this way, the materials and the display became the content of the show (or vice versa).

Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Steven Lisberger’s Tron.


6. Homework
Today, you will organize yesterday’s references and ideas to fabricate your first blue flower. Your flower should be self-standing. 

Both proposals are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that is the common plastic used for beverage containers. I am the happy owner of a new lamp and a pet! I enjoyed creating these. When I started I did not plan to make a lamp. But then the shape suggested it and I went for it. For creating these I used scissors, xacto knife and a hot glue pistol. Both flowers are selfstanding.I can remove the pebbles and the carnivorous flower still stands. But I like the multi-color pebble effect. 

I want to say that I do not wish to participate in the Berlin exhibition. So, please don't vote for these projects when needed. I did this week's task in the same spirit I did previous tasks - for the challenge, for the exploration of the materials, for learning, for the fun. I do not wish to compete with anyone.

Why blue flowers?

WEEK14 - DAY2

1. Soundtrack of the day

Madonna - True blue

2. People to meet

Novalis

3. Places to go

Toronto, Ryerson Theatre 

Café Samt and Seide, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

At the Ryerson Theatre Marcel Duchamp, John Cage with Marshall McLuhan floating from above. Playing.

Henri Matisse - “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

Italy’s national football team is known as the “Azzurri” 

Flowers are one of the main things that unite us in Design 101.
The blue flower symbolizes hope and idealism, imagination and infinity, a Romantic emblem of love and striving.

“...the blue flower. It is constantly in my mind, and I can think and compose of nothing
else. I have never been in such a mood,” said Henry in Novalis’ Henry of Ofterdingen: A
Romance.

“All Fabulous Tales are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere.” Novalis

And 10 nice flower paintings, in pictures.

6. Homework

In preparation for #blaueblumen, you will collect flowers. They can be real flowers or flower references. The important thing is that you document your research! How do all of them come together? Share some notes and images with us!

This has been a very difficult week for me. I felt overwhelmed and tired. Even irritated. I did not have many time or even patience for Design 101. Accordingly I was forced to make choices very quickly. And mainly this is all there is to tell about documentation. I decided to use a book I like very much. This way was so much faster than internet. Because the book has all information already organized. It's illustrations are great and the information is precise and diverse. After going through it I knew I had to make a carnivorous flower! 

The blue flower was found through Google search. It's a gorgeous flower. Only after I cutted the shape on pet plastic I thought about creating the lamp.

Then Rosa Montesa's shared this flower necklace on the Arena and I knew it had to be plastic. I hate plastic flowers. I think they are the ultimate expression of everything that's artificial in life. But I've been reusing materials since Design101 day one so it felt apropriate. Then I liked the challenge of working with plastic. Would I be able to create beauty from waste?

L'amour est blue

WEEK14 - DAY1

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

L'amour est blue - Vicky

2. PEOPLE TO MEET

Alan Fletcher

3. PLACES TO GO

Pergamon Museum’s Ishtar Gates

Berlin

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Bauhaus costume parties

“Everything that I love is behind those gates. We have elephants, and giraffes, and crocodiles, and every kind of tigers and lions.” (Michael Jackson)

On April 25-26, 2014, we will show our works in Berlin at “designtransfer”, the exhibition space of the Udk.

Our exhibition’s name is #blaueblumen and means “blue flowers” in German.

101 of you will be chosen to exhibit a series of blue flowers.

The selection will be made next week, during the three last days of Design 101 (Feb 3-5).

on Tuesday: you will collect flowers, either references or real ones. You will have to document your research.

on Wednesday: you will make a blue flower.

on Thursday: you will make a series of blue flowers.

on Friday: you will create an online collection of the flowers you made on Thursday.

on Saturday: you will relax and catch up!

on Sunday: we will enjoy a very special present that is now being shaped by some of you. 

The field of blue flowers we have on our exhibition’s flyer were made by Alan Fletcher and come from The Art of Looking Sideways... “The ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and

the unexpected.”

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

Goethe’s “Urpflanze”: the mother of all plants.

“There must be such a plant, after all. If allplants were not moulded on one pattern, how could I recognize that they are plants?”

From The Metamorphosis of Plants...

6. Homework