Week 1: Taste
Precepts & Playlists
Published: 1/10/2023
Compiled by: Andrew Neyer
Updated: 1/10/2023, 3:33 PM
What is Art?
One of my favorite things I've stolen is a useful definition of art:
"Art is a human activity. It is the creation of something new, something that might not work, something that causes a viewer to be influenced.”
Art uses context and culture to send a message. Instead of only a contribution of beauty or craft, art adds intent. The artist works to create something generous, something that will change us. Art isn't painting or canvas, or prettiness. Art is work that matters. It's entirely possible that you're an artist. Everyone can be, if we choose.
Extracted from seths.blog
art = the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.
– Merriam-Webster
Art = anything creative, passionate, and personal. It must be all three. (I also stole this checklist from Godin ッ)
Art > art.
Both definitions hinge on creativity, but a painting can be easily made just for painting's sake, especially when we attach a financial obligation to the art we create. But Godin is keen to point out that the most crucial ingredient is how much of ourselves we add. If we want our work and lives to be Art, we must devote ourselves to our passions and combine the uniqueness we bring to everything.
Rules
Sister Corita Kent, a screen-printing nun, lived out an extraordinarily creative and disciplined life. One of her legacies is a set of rules gifted to her students at Immaculate Heart College Art Department (Fig. 1):
1. Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.
2. General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher — pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined — this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities. – John Cage
Most new rules fit like pants your mom bought you.
Kent’s rules fit so well because they help us become better creative humans. We often have an initial opposition to rules because we believe they are not for us and feel we should be exempt from them. The rules we except and respect transform into guiding principles versus constraining governances. If a rule does not challenge you, there is a slim chance you will find a reward. Rules lay the groundwork for success. Make good rules, and break bad rules.
Also, wear the lame pants your mom bought you. They may be super gappy in the crotch and too tight in your butt, but they were on sale, and she loves you.
Helpful hints
• Always be around.
• Come or go to everything.
• Always go to classes.
• Read anything you can get your hands on.
• Look at movies carefully, often.
• Save everything. It might come in handy later.
• There should be new rules next week
Good Design
According to Dieter Rams, good design:
Is innovative
Makes a product useful
Is aesthetic
Makes a product understandable
Is unobtrusive
Is honest
Is long-lasting
Is thorough down to the last detail
Is environmentally friendly
Involves as little design as possible
Read more on Dieter Rams
Method
Copy.
Master.
Remix.
Publish.
Share.
Give it Time.
Rinse & Repeat ∞
Copy. Master. Remix. Publish. Share. Give it Time. Rinse & Repeat ∞
Context
Here are links to the media we covered in class. Please call me if there is anything you cannot find ッ
Just Push Play
Don't wait to start working. Just start. Record your explorations so you can revisit and review them. We only edit after we record and explore.
Opportunity likes to hide in the mundane, and abandoned mediums are some of the best places to explore. These ruins have context in culture and can be easily appropriated without needing permission. Look out for these ripe mediums and leverage them.
We Do Talk About Bruno
“When the objects we use every day and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we have achieved a balanced life.”
– Bruno Munari
Read This Book
Fig. 1
Design as Art, Bruno Munari (**required reading, pages 1-48**)
A Good Habit
Fig. 2
1. Sister Corita Kent
2. Fireworks-1975
3. Sacred Heart-1969
Fig. 3
10 Rules
Diet’ Rams
Fig. 4
10 Principles of Good Design, Dieter Rams
Hone Your Taste
Fig. 5
Interview with Ira Glass
Stay Pepped Up
Fig. 6
A Weekly Podcast Companion for Your Creative Journey
Insightful Stories & Actionable Strategies
Fig. 7
Creative Pep Talk podcast Pepisode #229
In class, we listened to the following sections:
7:00–14:18
23:48–28:00
Find Your Super Taste
Andy J. Pizza gives us an template for uncovering your SuperTaste™
Recommendations – what do people ask you for?
Psychic Abilities – what trends and details do you notice that others miss?
Wounds – what do you want to repair or restore?
Bad / Mad - what drives you bonkers?
New Link, Who Dis?
Fig. 8
QR Generator (scanning this QR will take you to our class’ homepage)
Use the link above to create your QR codes. The shortcuts open up new ways to share the Art you publish.
Assignment No.1
• Procure this book (and read it. Ideally, pg. 1–48).
• Hone Your Tastes:
1. Make a Tasty playlist ♫. (1 hr minimum)
2. Record a recipe. (formula or procedure)
3. Share them*. (with 10 people)
*How you share a work of Art is extremely important. Pay attention to the medium(s) you use. The medium is the message.
Questions You Must Answer:
– What rules do you need to make?
– What rules do you need to break?
– What is shaping your tastes?
Next Week
Here are links for next week’s class if you’d like to preview.
Case Study Houses
Fig. 1 (Class No.2)
Case Study House No.1
Fig. 2 (Class No. 2)
Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System
More Context
Here are more links to things we uncovered in class.
This section is ripe for adding more collections of links as we travel through the course. Click below to submit more Context to Class No. 1:
Arch Rivals
There was confusion over whether Eliel (father) or Eero Saarinen (son) won the design competition for the monument.
Both father and son entered the competition, and even though Eero was chosen as the winner, confused officials mistakenly told Eliel he had won. The architects and their family had already had a Champagne celebration to toast the senior Saarinen when a telegram came in to correct the error.
The secretary who sent out the telegrams informing finalists of their advancement mistakenly sent one to Eliel rather than Eero. The family celebrated with champagne, and two hours later, a competition representative called to correct the mistake. Eliel "'broke out a second bottle of champagne' to toast his son."
Caged ♫
John Cage was an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher. He is recognized as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, and he challenged what was perceived as music and the use of non-musical instruments in his compositions.
One of his most notable performances is his 1952 composition, 4'33". It is an arrangement for any instrument, performed by not playing the instrument for four minutes and 33 seconds. Instead of listening to a performance, the audience becomes the performance. The music is the ambient sounds of the room, coughing, squeeks, and other noises for the duration of the piece. Cage argued that silence is actually "the absence of deliberate sound."
+ Fig. 2
I Saw Steinberg
Saul Steinberg called himself, “a writer who draws.” Harold Rosenberg called him “a writer in pictures.”
The Line, the original a 10-meter-long drawing with 29 panels that unfold, accordion fashion, is Steinberg’s manifesto about the conceptual possibilities of the line and the artist who gives them life. His drawing hand begins and ends the sequence, as the simple horizontal line that hand creates metamorphoses into, among other things, a water line, laundry line, railroad track, sidewalk, arithmetic division line, or table edge; near the end, the curlicues etched by the iceskater’s blade remind us of the role calligraphy plays in Steinberg’s art.
The Line was designed for the Children’s Labyrinth, a spiraling, trefoil wall structure at 10th Triennial of Milan, a design and architecture fair that opened in August 1954. The drawing, photographically enlarged and incised into the wall, was one of four Steinberg conceptions used on the labyrinth.
– Nieves
Fig. 3
The Line, Saul Steinberg
+ Fig. 4
Mural of Cincinnati, Panel II, Saul Steinberg
+ Fig. 5
Braun BNE001BK (ET66 reissue), Dieter Lubs & Dieter Rams, 1987
