The Blade Keeper

I visited the Boston architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch about a month ago to give a lecture with professor Kyna Leski, of RISD. When I first began to design, I recall being fascinated by the importance of having a sharp blade in addition to a fine-tip pen. The pen, of course, was absolutely un-dangerous. The blade, however, was always a source of fear because when it became dull, you would want to either replace it or snap off the tip to get a new sharp blade. This created the built-in problem of having to figure out what one does with the leftover blade bits.

Novice or generally irresponsible creatives are known to simply leave the bits lying around on tables. Although un-sharp, they're sufficiently sharp enough to puncture the skin. Ouch. This simple juice-bottle design is a classic solution to a significant problem, and it successfully adopts the sustainable theme of reuse. On the other hand, the un-sustainable aspect is embodied by the act of disposable blades. We live in an un-thinking yet thoughtful world.

Ceramics Machine

I remember seeing a Connection Machine (CM) with its guts open. You couldn't help but marvel at its internal complexity and yet, at the same time, glory in its simplicity of architecture.

Hovering over boxes and boxes of ceramic parts to go on display for a student's art installation at an upcoming RISD exhibition, I can't help but be reminded of the same feeling of peering into a CM. And yet instead of staring at millions of wires, I am looking at thousands of pieces of clay. Talented, driven humans can do the darnedest things.

Still Figure

It lies so still on the ground. I happened upon this sculpture lying in front of one of the cafeterias at RISD. Looking closer, I see that it is a small figure with a head made out of the roots of a living weed. Everyone is so busy with final projects that they seem to ignore the little figure. I stare at it and wonder why it is there. And what will be its future.

Me on the Wii

As I age every year, I find myself increasingly tired of being an early adopter. My grad students constantly embarrass me with their always exuberant energy and willingness to adopt the new. While the Nintendo Wii craze was sweeping the world, I was busy with facilitating operations at the Media Lab, and then the announcement hit that I would become the next leader of RISD ("Riz-dee"). Amidst the chaos of my life, I knew that I had to resolve two important things: 1) finally figure out Ruby on Rails, and 2) buy a Wii.

The former goal was accomplished last week (thanks to one of my brilliant grad students), and I thought getting a Wii would be easy but realized that even the late adopter can be early. I wasn't aware of the shortage of these devices. Finally getting my hands on one last night, I now understand the hype. Size, form, and feeling all meld into an experience that uses "just enough" technology to realize pure fun. Nintendo's ethos of design is set to trump Apple's, in my book.

Bigfoot Greetings

With a simple flick of the wrist and click of a button, I ordered my custom-printed cards from Apple. Not very many, really--only 50 total. A few days later, they arrived in two cardboard boxes. I opened one of the boxes, and inside there was another box. I opened that box, and found yet another box. Finally, after opening the last box, I found a bundle of cards. I felt as though I was playing with a Matryoshka doll. The sad part of it, however, was that all the layers of packaging were going to end up in the recycling bin. Did there have to be so many?

On the right is the pile of printed cards and envelopes; on the left is the pile of packaging material. I'm fearful of calculating the carbon footprint of my greeting cards ...

BGI = Before Google Images

In my recent tour of the RISD Library, I was startled to find a room with cabinets upon cabinets of labeled clusters of clippings from magazines. For any given term, there is a corresponding file of laminated individual pages from publications that span over 30 years. This is a room of visual inspiration that RISD students have been coming to for years in order to see source material connected to specific ideas and keywords.

Naturally, my first thought was, "With Google Image Search, wouldn't such a resource's popularity be waning?" The maintainer of the room explained this indeed to be the case--especially on cold or rainy days, when a visual inspiration can be only a few clicks away instead of a long walk to the library away. But the advantages of this physically based approach are quite clear: 1) the quality of images is better, as they've been hand-curated, and 2) there is the element of serendipity that comes from the messiness of it all that leads to happenstance encounters of new inspiration.

As I now approach the presidency of RISD in only a few weeks (I start June 2), I continue to be in wonderment of the many wonderful aspects of an art and design school that will certainly benefit the world of technology by providing new surprises like these.