As  a result of his experiences he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school.

That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hands could get you anything-from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

He also talks about how we can reach real rhetoric thinking- without imitation- brick by brick- breaking something down (a building in his example) to its constituite pieces and thinking individually about them, and gradually ‘zooming’ out (starting with the top left brick and working along).

I feel a contradiction here- by mimicking or using this method of thinking surely there is a level of imitation?

“When a politician does something even slightly scandalous, journalists are up in arms for weeks, but before a peep is heard from the press about a faulty product it has to go as far as severely injuring people […] The lack of criticism is understandable given that horrible designs are far less interesting and far more abundant than corrupt politicians”

Regarding Bruce and Stephanie Tharps list of the number of specialised methods a designer can choose from:

“The absence of a philosophical unity int he way we go about making things is a symptom of our technologically driven, globalised culture”

Regarding an earlier point that we know more, and have studied, analysed, categorised etc. more about the natural world than we have our own man made environment- e.g. there are ‘products’ in land-fill that no one knows about.

“It’s ironic that we are trashing the natural world, which we cherish, admire and study, for products that we don’t care enough about to document”

Interesting point regarding the study of products- I feel it is a good test of what we really care about- though there are obviously plenty of products that are studied and analysed etc.

Little quote from Zen:

“In a car you are always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is over-whelming.”

Several from the other two- thought I haven’t had time to write them up yet… this week.

Film a week number twelve

Footage taken in France…

I became frustrated that I couldn’t watch the view as I was driving, and had to actually concentrate on driving; I setup the camera so I could watch it later.

I’m not sure that it belongs on the internet- perhaps it should be a projection, running in the background that can be dipped into and out of, but for know it lives here.

Music: Do make say think

Film a week number eleven.

This is some footage I made with Jamie when we were in Spain- we sat around talking about art, design, cars, bikes etc for a couple of hours, I filmed a lot, and it has been a huge pain to edit, hence why I haven’t made a film for (over) two weeks.

Film a week number 9. Jamie was sick of the arty stuff in my film-a-weeks and told me I needed some more ‘punk’- so this is my attempt at a less refined ‘punk’ aesthetic, also due to the fact that i edited it in no more than 10 minutes.

Some friends of mine in France dig this trail and kindly gave me the key yesterday to go ride- while everyone else was either nursing hangovers or injuries I had a nice little session in the woods by myself followed by a swim in the river. I decided to do some solo filming, with a prettyshady inspired gaffer-tape-helmet-cam.

This is Nigel- I lived with him for a week on his farm, helping out, and made a little film with him just before I left…

Film a week number 7- long boarding in France with Jamie and Ander

There are some swear words in this. I tried not to.

Why are we not getting better at the bad stuff?

We invented the plane and have streamlined systems to fly people all over the world, but cannot get them home when there is ash in the sky.

Leaves stop trains.

We create power from uranium, but have no great plan for it when it’s spent but still highly dangerous.

And when 5000 barrels of oil a day flood onto the oceans it will take another 90 days to drill another well into the oil field to release the gas to stop the flow. So by the time they stop it between 1-5 million barrels will have leaked into a fragile ocean.

And this is the third time in 5 years BP have fucked up like this.  Why should shareholders and the company benefit when the world has paid the price?

Governments, business, people need to make the companies that are making big big money from high risk stuff prove that they are prepared for the big fuck up’s before they start.

Really prove it.

They must stand up in front of a huge room of children who will come up with all those madcap ideas that may happen. And if they can prove they are prepared, the next question from the kids will be “why”?

And if after all this they fuck up, then the company management is  sacked after they have gone out and cleaned up their mess.

When it’s big stuff like this, companies have got to be good at the bad stuff.

The worst part of it is, these companies are asking designers everyday to make them look a certain way (BP especially)- to give the impressions of care, alluding to ‘greeness’; and the designers say YES!

“In the nineteen eighties, people stopped wanting to know how much fun it was. They wanted to know how much money we made, an they were shocked and dismayed to learn that we didn’t make any money. We made a living. We paid our bills, paid our artists, and eventually paid off our note. We had a place to live, food to eat, work we liked doing together, and no “spare time.” Had I been more candid, I would have confessed that we were totally disinterested in making money. That was what my professors at the University did. They “made money” working in a vicious bureaucracy, so that they could spend it in their “spare time” doing exactly what they liked [..]. thus I have always associated the desire to make money with a profound lack of confidence in one ablity to make a living, to make one’s way in the world through wit and wile.”
p.106

Interesting comparison between making a living, which I see as ‘doing’, and making money which involves some sort of life split, with no real ‘doing’- both split lives seem to lack profound meaning in so far that “making money” simply supports another activity- its sole purpose is to enable another life- and the other lifes purpose is to act out what is earned in the other life.

And on art and money:

“…art and money are very much alike,  in both embodiment and conception. To put simply: Art and money are cultural fictions with no intrinsic value. They acquire exchange value through the fiduciary investment of complex constituencies–through overt demonstrations of trust and (or acts of faith, if you will) of the sort we all perform when we accept paper currency for goods or services.”

Lovely- daily act of faith in determining value- the objects only work due to a worldwide understanding/belief in them.

Though I somewhat disagree- here art’s value is due to popularity, as opposed to just doing- it becomes about telling people about it- an example is this: On Thursday I met a man whom had cycled from Germany down to Donostia- the purpose of his trip was a pilgrimage- he was delivering a stone for his deceased Grandmother, he didn’t write a blog, and didn’t broadcast his mission, unlike the bourgious bicycle caravan where it seems the ‘work’ or act of doing only becomes validated by the documentation- arty pictures, drawings, blogs etc. I still think it is a lovely thing to do, but I wonder how it is different if it were to ‘just happen’ instead of be broadcast. So is the mans trip from Germany art, or does it not qualify simply because nobody knows about it- whereas the bourgious bicycle caravan is art due to its documentation, and widespread knowledge of it?