David Barrie

Convoluted, medieval, join-the-dot-ism

The 70s TV game show The Golden Shot had a crazy plot line.

It's worth keeping up your sleeve as a lethal weapon in the fight against the mantra of  "keep the story simple" or "people don't get strange".

At its peak, the show had a viewing audience of 16million.

As interactive media producer Anthony Lilley described it in a recent lecture to the Royal Television Society:

A viewer talks on the phone to Bob and simultaneously tells a blind-folded bloke who is operating a camera with a weapon attached to it to fire a crossbow bolt at a big target, whilst millions of other people watch it at home.

Convoluted, medieval, join-the-dot-ist narrative at its finest!

Confused of 20D

Shanghai Airlines, Flight 9548 and there's a passenger confused in seat 20D.

I think it's because he's reading a sentence from system theorist Ervin Laszlo's 'Systems View of the World':

Although the universality of subjectivity throughout the realms of organized complexity is a conclusion flowing logically from the holistic philosophy of the contemporary systems sciences, rigorous experimental evidence cannot be marshalled either for or against it.

Absolutely. And I am sure that you will agree. More nuts from the trolley?

Orange is the only fruit

The front cover of this week's Sunday Times magazine, London, with a dress designed by Giles Deacon.

Isn't the color brilliant? 

Art Porn

For slaves to the fetishism of  'urban abandonment', American artist Robert Smithson is a master.

And for those saddos - er like me - interested in the evolution and entropy of cities, Smithson's journal of his trip round Passaic, New Jersey in 1967 is pure porn.

Smithson was the Iggy Pop-like founding father of land art, best known for  Spiral Jetty, a monumental earthwork in Utah made from 6500 tons of basalt, earth and salt.

Forty years ago today, the artist took a No. 30 bus out of Port Authority bound for Passaic, New Jersey, equipped with a Kodak Instamatic and science-fiction novel.

On arrival, he went on an exploratory tour of dead industrial areas, took photographs and wrote his observations and comments down in a parody of  a travel journal that's published here.

In his journal, Smithson brilliantly captured the meta-life of cities and how some places seem to express and represent a much larger, almost mythic psychological story.

Here's one of the artist's observations:

Passaic does seem full of "holes" compared to New York City, which seems tightly packed and solid....those holes in a sense are the monumental values that define, without trying, the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures.

"The memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures" ...wow! 'Observation'? Or foreplay?

Have you prayed REALLY hard?

At a moment when algorithms control an increasing amount of our lives and the securitisation of debt doesn't appear to spread risk sufficiently to avoid a run on the bank, this old-tech logic courtesy of Boing Boing seems like a sturdy rock to lean on.

Ralph Lauren, Triumph of the Ordinary

Not since Walt Disney has one man persuaded so many to buy into his personal fantasy - so says the byline of an article in Vanity Fair on designer Ralph Lauren by Paul Goldberger.  

This is a great piece on the cultural positioning behind Lauren's $4.3bn empire.

In Goldberg's mind, a secret of Lauren's success has been his commitment to the unoriginal:

Lauren may be the first designer who has transformed the world by not doing anything new at all. He isn't interested in edge as much as he is in convincing us how wonderful the world would be if it has less edge.

And his understanding of the power of traditionalism:

Lauren based his business on the recognition that the ideal that people carry in their heads of what life is supposed to look like hasn't changed nearly as much as the world itself has changed.

Out of date thinking. Lack of originality. These are supposed to be the satanic hand maidens of cultural and corporate failure. Maybe not.

And maybe now is the time to launch a Muji-styled 'Manifesto for the Ordinary'?

Bit of a yawn I know but...

Hoard Fast Franks!

Hidden on page 87 of Lehman Brothers' heavy-duty study in to the impact of climate change on the global economy is a tantalising half-prediction:

It is possible that governments in regions subject to enormous economic change from global warming could institute rationing for basic foodstuffs. Higher energy prices are set to have some impact both on production costs and on some input costs, especially in household goods industries, as well as on certain packaging costs. If these were to become material, it could hold back, and possibly reverse, the trend towards convenience in many food and drink areas.

Advice: buy and hoard Fast Franks now. They're about to go gourmet.