Book covers are a burgeoning cult online, in flickr groups (books with nice covers, Old-Timey Paperback book covers, repetitive graphic paperback book covers, etc., etc.) and dedicated websites. The obvious is perhaps not being said often enough: these are just covers, a scan of a piece of thick paper that usually says nothing about what the book contains. If the internet persisted and all printed matter eventually decayed, these colourful little mementoes would create a complex jigsaw for any future anthropologist eager to discover why some things were more important than others.

Simplistic Art. The post on the art of Madelon Vriesendorp doesn't mention that her post-coital skyscraper painting, 'Flagrant Delit, graced the cover of her then-husband Rem Koolhaas's first (major) book, Delirious New York. In fact, as the linked ArtReview article, 'Misconceptual art: The World of Madelon Vriesendorp', makes clear, she was a co-founder of OMA and sales of her paintings kept the practice afloat in its early years (a studio that now sits astride the globe, expertly attuning its output to the myriad market conditions and cultural expectations, from the 'dramatically sombre' northern European market (thanks, Dan) to the harsh shadows and ultra-light structure of renders aimed at the Middle East). Ultimately, the artist eschewed painting in favour of assemblage, bringing together landscapes of pop cultural artefacts - souvenirs, mementoes, and trinkets. As James Westcott notes in his piece, 'Vriesendorp has said that she's only interested in failed objects, and that in her global city she feels like a tourist who has been given the wrong directions, misheard them and ended up in the right place anyway'.

We don't hear much about 'failed objects' these days, especially in the rabidly circular online culture of aesthetic appreciation, where objects are there to stimulate and enthrall, but little else. The idea of an online representation of any 'thing' being said to fail is almost an oxymoron - by the very act of being photographed/scanned/digitised and uploaded, anything that is represented online has successfully ensured its survival. In the Darwinian struggle for cultural memory, it is only those poor, neglected and reviled objects that never have their own flickr set, eBay watchlist, ardent newsgroup or me-fi post that can truly be said to have failed. Pity the future anthropologist, for they will be entirely in the dark about this subculture of the unknown.

Ironically, simply by collecting and cataloging her own definition of 'failure', Vriesendorp is helping this barrage of kitsch to keep itself skimming along the surface along with all the other cultural flotsam. Currently on show at the Architectural Association, it seems like this exhibition is one of those pivotal events that tie up loose ends and associations, bringing lesser known connections into the mainstream and forging new connections with the strata of international cultural society that seem to know everyone and everything. The catalogue includes Beatriz Colomina, Douglas Coupland, Zaha Hadid, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Rem Koolhaas.

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Other things. World's Best Urban Spaces, initiated by City of Sound and Russell Davies / the rather confusing Web Trend Map 2008, hampered by those infuriating snap preview pop-ups / the odious, ironic parallels are ladled on but ultimately left unsaid in this Harper's piece on GWB's favourite painting, "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught." (via tmn).

We have a new career: roller coaster advisor / The Afterlife of Cellphones / car parks, a flickr set, and the Parking Garage and Car Parks pools / despite the existence of this, we'd never noticed this, a small example of ongoing consistency in the Pelican design language / Experiment 33, slathering over design and visual culture from decades gone by.

Graphicology, a design weblog / a weblog by Mark Boulton / 2 and fro, a photojournal of a daily commute / go on, produce a 'Ballardian home movie' and submit it to Ballardian.com. We'd have thought that most of YouTube had some kind of Ballardian dimension / Apophenia, visual things / Eightface, visual things / ID please, a flickr group / not sure how we feel about this.

Labels: design, linkage, objects, things

posted by things at 19:43