so now the evening spreads before me (sort of). i have to be in a town thirty kilometres south of here with my son for a hockey tournament by eight o'clock tomorrow morning.
tonight though the evening is mine.
i'm thinking that a big mug of coffee must also be mine before long and so perhaps this product would come in handy. in the realm of gotta musta really need this products, this is one that hovers precariously between - you must be kidding and holy cow, what next! the handpresso has been out for a while now and i’ll admit to never having used one, but i can think of times when i’ve been in the woods - like recently when i was cross-country skiing when i might, just maybe, have wanted to have this with me just so i could flip everyone around me out by banging out an espresso in the middle of nowhere.
here’s the handpresso home page.
here’s a video how-to guide. if you can get past the meaningful glances between the couple as they co-create the teeny tiny little thimble of java, you’ll see a product that is actually cool and clever (but probably unnecessary!)
the coffee got me thinking - about how i'd love love love to be heading off to a crazy wickedgood luxury hotel where everything was done for me that i wished and that i knew deep deep down in my crazy heart that there was nothing really ugly or difficult or frustrating or unpleasant waiting for me in the very near future! hedonism. escapism. irresponsibility. it has many names! it's lurking oh so close to the surface in me!!!
and then there's guy's like designer karim rashid who take care of richer people than me and who can say things like, "hotels today make you feel like you're living in the previous century. that's the last thing I want to do.". ya know karim, i'm right there with you, but for the aformentioned cash issue!
karim's words are brave words. harsh words even for hoteliers. yet for anyone who has spent any amount of time in a hotel, words that are borne out by the bitter and crushing experience of staying in the formless, aesthetically hollow sleeping accomodations we experience as hotels. buildings that are nominally purpose built to temporarily house people on their travels and yet which through their institutional design and organization effectively crush the human spirit in their celebration and enforcement of anonimity.
karim rashid born in cairo, egypt, 1960. lives and works in new york city. karim rashid loves colour and form. really he’s an artist, but an artist who has a very big canvas. an artist whose work is multi-faceted, highly complex, stunning, and visually breathtaking.
let’s begin here with this installation piece entitled “plob” that characterizes the thinking behind much of rashid’s work.
plob is an enclosed environment created out of hundreds of identical plastic translucent modules. each module has a light and single different sound that are activated from movement.
in rashid’s words: “a plastic blob is a plob - a plob is the state between liquid plastic and solid material object.
a plob is a noun, but is also a verb.
i plob in a state of endlessness.
plob is a metaphor for a continuous world, a neutral landscape, and an undulating surface that is reconfigurable and sizable ad infinitum.”
the plastic moldings are rearrangeable abstractions that are an outgrowth from the floor, walls, and ceiling - an extension of some of the qualities of the natural landscape to the artificial landscape. there is an integrated quality to rashid’s work that at one and the same time alludes to the world of technology, to comfort, to the pleasure one takes in following the curve of a form, or the surprise you experience when observing an object that typically occupies something of the visual background but which in rashid’s visions acquires a prominent place in the visual landscape through his judicious use of colour and form.
let’s ramp up the scale to which this thinking is applied. the semiramis hotel in athens is a typical rashid project. semiramis, is rashid’s first hotel project. mr. dakis joannou, an eminent collector, patron of modern art and qualified architect, commissioned rashid to create a hotel that would offer more than mere bed space in athens.
i’m sure you’ll agree that the end result is an amazing confluence of colour and light and shape. more like art than architecture and yet obviously not compromising the beauty and form of the structure itself.
the semiramis focuses on positive energy, heightened experiences, culture, art, and design. located in the affluent and leafy suburb of kifissia, semiramis is in the heart of athens, surrounded by high-end boutiques, restaurants, and cafes.
to see more of rashid’s work visit karim rashid’s website.
where rashid's work makes sense to me visually sometimes there are experiences that make sense to me visually but which leave me with questions. usually - how did that happen? what was going on? and with the availability of relatively high-end computer processing ability comes the question - was that real?
a very long time ago i posted some videos of the effect of sound waves on liquids. by introducing sonic vibrations into the surface of a liquid, lovely symmetries were created.
the symmetrical organization of the liquids in those images has nothing on what you will see here.
this posting shows the effect of computer processing on the organization of ferrofluids or fluids which contain high levels of iron rendering them susceptible to magnetic fields.
as is so often the case, an artist, in this case tokyo-based sachiko kodama has explored the aesthetic potential of a subject close to the cutting edge of scientific research.
kodama’s home page contains a large collection of images and some movies of her work.
in this film, kodama details her fascination with the material as well as revealing the nature of some of her creative projects incorporating ferrofluids.
here is an example of her work entitled “morpho towers two standing spirals”.
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