Play

I was having a lengthy creative discussion with a friend the other day at a party (I seem to always attract such discussion...) and we were talking about art in two categories: the ridiculous and the serious. Without trying to draw a distinct dichotomy between the two, I do believe that art tends to be one over the other. For instance, Rachel Whiteread's sculptures brings a sombre pondering that far outweighs the inherent playfulness of her three-dimensional forms (refer to Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, House).

On the other front, a polarisation to ridiculousness exists. Controversial, light-hearted yet provocative... there is many a term to describe such art. I want to introduce a Ellen Kooi who seems to grow a Narnian frenzy out of her images. I wonder if her intention was barely a playful one, or if the images are meant to be interpreted in more the 'serious' side. In the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

Tragic

It's been a good few weeks since I went down to Christchurch to survey and document the earthquake damage. Now, to the devastation of New Zealanders, a more severe earthquake has hit the Garden City. It's icon, the great Cathedral now exists in ruins. The stability of the citizens, already shaken by the quakes of the past year, have been traumatised by the earth once more.

In the week-long trip that I conducted mid-January, the city was in recovery mode, barely into reconstruction. What a set back this is. Not only this, the tragedy comes with the loss of at least 65 lives with the death toll rising. In the September 4th quake, there were no fatalities. Today, the 22nd February has brought us a scene of primal violence, where our built civilisation crushes the lives and souls of our fellow countrymen.

Architecture for Humanity is helping the only way it can see in this acute stage - raising funds for Christchurch. Please donate. The best way to keep up with the rallying on the earthquake is Twitter - already people are offering temporary homes inside the city and out with the hastag #EQNZaccom.

I will be retweeting interesting and urban related tweets on Twitter at @BobbShen.

Constrain

The urban environment of the 21st century is not only boxed in by walls and cut up by water features. Look at what the Auckland city has turned into without freely available Wifi. People sit outside of the public library after hours, using their laptops in jandals on the grimy floor. They literally sit on a floor drain with tiny insects swirling around them.

They sit in this badly designed corridor instead of using free Wifi in the park next door, the seating in the Arts Precinct or along the pedestrian tap root of Queen Street. The technological culture in New Zealand is repressed by the lack of free Wifi around the city.

Watercolour

The Tate Gallery in Britain is having an exhibition dedicated to watercolour, the traditional and the more contemporary. Although I really want to go, I am stuck on an island called New Zealand. What an extraordinary insight it must be to visit this beautiful medium, full-fledgedly curated. The image is a photo of Karla Black's 'Opportunity for Girls'.

Pixar

Please see video at http://vimeo.com/19789693

Pixar is an enormous creative being which has exponentially grown to it's current domination in the animation industry. It was interesting to see the environment which all of this creative energy takes place.

Any creative being thrives in their personal studio environment. Sometimes, without even having a formal space for such activity, one can be formed organically to suit whatever practice they may fancy. For Pixar, it is about reuniting the real world with the virtual and really coming to terms with what improbably fantastic circumstances would be like to the 'actor' (voice and animation) so that the millions of viewers in the cinema would be able to partake in that slice of unreal brilliance.

Especially as seen in Toy Story 3, the deeper significance of the series multiplies to surpass the genre of a child's film. Barbie, the queen idol of the blonde stereotype, drops the most sagacious line in the whole movie. The boy goes to college and the ripple effect of growing up causes waves in the toy world. Pixar really have done justice to this charming animation.

Sashenka

Following an instinctive urge to read a full fledged novel, I detoured to the public library and scanned, as you do, the 'returned books' shelf. I see it as an excellent filter. There, I found my latest read, Sashenka by Simon Montefiore. A single morning later, I am a nearly a quarter way through this slab of a book.

This certainly did not happen with the Victor Hugo novel that I gave a stab at. So what is so captivating about this story, simply based on historical research and dramatised by excellent prose? Incidentally, it is about a pivotal time in Russia's timeline, starting just prior to the revolution. Although Russia is rather unfamiliar territory to me, I can draw lines to the Chinese revolution's context passed onto me by my forefathers. Reading a story full of layers of discovered/recorded context can only be done in comparison to what you already know, anchored on the culture and heritage in which you reside. Avoiding specificity, here is an example: once I was talking to a friend, who is of a completely different heritage to me, about past political movements and how we perceive foreign countries due to these 'eccentric' movements. The view of a country differed so much to her's that I immediately thought someone was misguided, or at least, misinformed.

Taking on this book, full of unfamiliar territory meant that I had to keep an open mind whilst still taking every detail into consideration to what I already know. Perhaps a detail that I had once read about in some fantasy novel is a daily affair in this story - the connection is rejuvenated and justified. In my opinion, it is useless to just read stories of your own basecamp; reading Jane Austen as an English native will hardly make you ponder the global human condition.

Gapfiller

I didn't see it myself but a good friend of mine told be about it since she went to a few of these events. Gapfiller is a movement where, in the midst of a post-disaster environment, creatives get together and fill the spaces left behind my demolished lots and the life, creating culture in the absence of urban strongholds. Great effort! That is exactly what the citizens (as opposed to the city/infrastructure/aid) need after a traumatic event - a light in the amid darkness, something to recuperate the tattered psyche of those affected by the disaster.

Quack

OK, cute thing of the week. Over-sized rubber ducky in Auckland! Unfortunately for Auckland, it seems that the only "public art" that are formed in our city are enlarged versions of common objects (eg enormous baubles, enormous rubber duckies...)

100

This is the 100th post! To be honest, this point should have been past ages ago, but alas, life and all it's speedbumps. Nevertheless, it is a time for consideration, and what better than to reassess the state of one's creativity.

Bennett

Recently I came across a collection of doodles by a handful of authors. Now, I greatly respect writing as a creative vessel - nothing has been such a intricate form of 'civilised' (for lack of a better word) expression. With words, ideas can infiltrate people's minds. With sentences, it can possess the reader with imagination and things beyond imagery.

Sylvia Plath

The curious thing was, these authors doodle in their journals and notebooks, yet no such emphasis is given to this switch in expression. For me, negotiating area which is so charged with potential seems like something to explore and through Creative Collision and all of my other 'stuff', I do hope I can engage with it.

Highrise

When I first came across this project, which in fact was a very long time ago, I was astounded by the beauty of the presentation through the browser. Just imagine the early day websurfers of, say, 1998, how they would react to this window of opportunity that the browser has become.

'Out My Window' presents itself as an interactive collection of stories and presents to us the palette of urbanity. It talks of highrises, that by face value as a piece of architecture, might be of a developer aesthetic, lifeless and banal, but with inhabitation, transforms into vessels of home, neighbourhood and survival.

Visit 'Out My Window' for a surprising twist on highrise culture.

Chopsticks

Saw this and was amazed by cleanness of this design. I have to say, I've seen more than my fair share of skewers/chopsticks/ice block stick designs in person and they all seemed so banal that I feel they need that extra polish and usability to make it work.

Also, in honour of one of my best ex-archi friends, you know who you are KR, who got into a brill product design course, this post is the first specifically about product design! Enjoy the vid, but feel free to skip to the last quarter where the action happens.

SOFA_XXXX created by yuya ushida from yuya ushida on Vimeo.

Mueck

Oh, did I tell you I saw the Ron Mueck exhibition?? AMAZING. Sculpture like I have never seen before. The detail was meticulous, the attention to detail made me catch my breathe. The exhibition closes in Christchurch tomorrow, but what a ride for New Zealand (or shaken up Christchurch, anyway) it has been.

I think part of the reason why so many people (even the non-arties) were able to connect with it was because it was so tangibly human. Art became indiscriminate. It was an exhibition full of familiarity, yet at the same time, peculiarity. Little children started to soak in the truths of human form. Adults improved on their perception of nuance. Such an exhibition, even the marketing behind it (the wild man's eye stares at you from every pamphlet booth) reminds us of how human we really are.

Stallion

Some of you might have noticed my holiday season hiatus... no posts and all there was on the front page was that ugly rendering of a scaffolding thing. My apologies!

So here's a bit of street art I picked up from Christchurch:

I was down there documenting the earthquake damage to the heritage buildings. So much loss and urban regeneration is so slow due to a dizzying array of factors (mostly bureaucracy). The saddest thing is, the citizens I talked to feel a bit stunned in their tracks; the earthquake has stolen their stability.