a_marie laflamme

title

2010-07-05T15:56:00.000-04:00

Experimental Design and Label Clothing: a Conceptual and Production-based Study of Montréal Contemporary Fashion Design.

research question

2010-07-05T15:52:00.002-04:00

How does conceptual fashion design relate to commercial clothing? How can they influence and enrich each other?

Modular Pleated Lights

2010-04-11T23:11:00.005-04:00

photos: Karin Demeyer
model: Sarah Nesbitt
XSLabs, directed by Joanna Berzowska, with Marc Beaulieu and Marguerite Bromley

Modular Pleated Lights is a dress integrating animated photonic band-gap fibers and silk woven strips. The modulable pleats allow the possibility to conceal or reveal the light shining from the internal part of the dress. This cocktail dress presents a silhouette that combines organic shapes with contrasting origamic structure, referring to the natural and artificial properties of the light.

Combined to black waxed cotton and mat bamboo jersey, the photonic band-gap fiber and silk strips are creating a textured effect when light up. The leds are emitting a light that is reflected, transformed and animated through the pleats. The wearer can interact with this animation by hiding the luminous structure, concealing it inside her second skin, or revealing the luminosity by unfolding the pleats and showing, at various levels, the ongoing animation.

The volume created by the bottom right of the dress is implemented by the printed circuit board and which is controlling and empowering the system.

light bulbs

2010-03-15T22:32:00.009-04:00

Thomas Edison first light bulb (1880)

Skin Light Bulb, Izumi Hamada and Hideo Hashimotode of PD Design

Flat bulb design by Joonhuyn Kim

Pieke Bergmans, Virus light bulbs, led

Thomas Alva Edison light bulbs

Shadow bulb, Melissa Borrell

An instructable on glass etching here.

annotations for the Human Powered Illumination project

2010-03-14T23:59:00.035-04:00

Brief: For this project, I am interested in the idea of exploring the energy used in the creation of a garment. The measurement of this energy could be represented visually through light in the analyzed garment.

Tools to calculate energy
In order to to measure the energy of the making of a garment, here is an overview of some tools that are used to calculate human generated energy. The ideal would be to build one myself, and use it to measure the approximate amount of energy used in the construction of the garment. The objective is obviously not scientific, but a list of measurements of different data could be put up and displayed poetically on the garment.

heart rate monitor DIY

"A device you wear that measures and displays your heart rate while exercising. Commonly, it has a monitor strap held in place around the chest by an elastic band. The heart rate is displayed on a watch, badge, or translated into sound through earphones. Walkers, runners, bikers use heart rate monitors to achieve the intensity of workout they want. Various models have other functions such a stopwatch, time of day, pre-set workouts, calories burned." (source : about.com dictionnary).

old mechanical pedometer

pedometer DIY

Invented in 1723, the pedometer (from French Podomètre, etymologically from pied:foot) is an instrument usually in watch form that records the distance a person covers on foot by responding to the body motion at each step. For this project, the use of a pedometer could allow me to calculate the movements in the workshop during the construction.

electrostatic meter (photo: natural ressources canada)

Wikipedia: "Electrostatics involves the buildup of charge on the surface of objects due to contact with other surfaces." Electrostatic meter is a rare tool because not quite developed yet. If possible, it could be an interesting tool to insert in the material and then analyze if there is any charge happening durink the making.

Visual inspirations and ideas

Dress form trompe-l'oeil, Maison Martin Margiela, 1997

Maison Martin Margiela has been exploring the world of making fashion for more than two decades. Master of the mise en abyme, in the 90's Margiela was often designing about design, and the Maison is still creating fashion inspired by the creation of fashion itself. The world of craft and the workshop tools are presented as part of the presentation, and the trompe-l'oeil are part of the mise en scène.

source: maisonmartinmargiela.com

DYSFASHIONAL
Curated by Luca Marchetti & Emanuele Quinz, mosign.

Maison Martin Margiela, project curated by Dysfashional

PARAsite, by Bless, gallery boutique which present the work or emerging designers.

On January 20th, I have been lucky enough to assist to Emanuele Quinz's conference about Dysfashional exhibition at École supérieure de mode de Montréal. The exhibition is including the work of Maison Martin Margiela, Bless, Husein Chalayan as well as about 15 others fashion designers of labels. The interesting and unique fact about this exhibition is that, even if being about fashion, no garments are presented in the exhibition.

"Consacrée à la mode, DYSFASHIONAL n’expose pas de vêtements, mais scénarise tous ces matériaux qui font de la mode un dispositif d’exploration esthétique et identitaire. DYSFASHIONAL ne définit pas la mode, mais met en jeu la vision de créateurs et d’artistes d’horizons divers pour aborder ce domaine aussi frivole qu’essentiel. Un parcours spectaculaire et dépaysant où les protagonistes ne sont pas les objets mais les processus : la création et l’expérience."

Those projects (environments, objects, movies...) present the designer's imaginative world, and show fashion as a construction of experimental projects.

Viktor & Rolf, The Fashion Show, autumn/winter 2007/8. Centraal Museum, loan H+F Collectie.
Photo Peter Stigter, model Maryna Linchuk (DNA Models).

"In recent decades fashion and fine art have moved ever closer to one another. Fashion designers create installations and performances and in their turn inspire the art world. ‘The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions’ traces this development and seeks out the borderline between the disciplines."

For this exhibition, Viktor & Rolf, Hussein Chalayan, Walter van Beirendonck, Anna-Nicole Ziesche and Naomi Filmer have been ask to create new work under those three themes: fashion as total experience, the pattern as sculpture and the imaginary world of the fashion campaign. Being at the edge of fashion and art, those five designers are presenting work that is going beyond the limits of garments, they are presenting a whole. The environment and the presentation of the clothing is part of the creative process. This aspect should be taken explored in this project.

photo: Guide to Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller has been working on principles of energy as well as material efficiency. Thinking on a molecular scale, Bucky works on human scale, and represent his ideas through materiality. Those representations, such as the geodesic dome, become efficient design structure. Bucky's work could be an inspiration for garment's structure, as well as use of material.

source: A Fuller Explanation, by Amy C. Edmondson

The theory of critical design is presented in Design Noir. Instead of the glossy beauty of gadgets, this book is about the sometimes dark side of electronic objects, and how there is an unexpected narrative as well as unexpected interactions emanating from those. It questions the use and the design of electronic objects surrounding us in the everyday life, and how they affect the daily routine. The placebo effect of electronic objects (or presupposed electronic) is also an fascinating aspect viewed in the book.

Dunne, Anthony and Raby, Fiona. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objets. Birkhäuser Basel, 2001.

This book is a collection of essays analyzing, from an anthropological point of view, the relation of different communities with clothing. Divided in four parts, the book overviews from historical to contemporary trends. The Historical Perspectives part refers to five ethnic cases of present days. The second section, Living Tradition, explores senses and mixed cultures of nowadays. The third part, Challenging Tradition, presents the traditional culture when facing globalization and rethink authenticity. The final part, The Future, shows two cases of recent fashion trends, one extremely marginal and one related mainly to teenagers and pornographic amateurs. Surprisingly the useless part for my research. The Introduction section gives a nice overview of the whole as well as a complete resume of each chapter. Each case has its own bibliography, which makes easier the references. Seeming at first very historical and ethnic, those essays ended up giving a lot of analysis methods that can be applied to many fields. It also presents the richness of analysis potential of fashion, clothing and accessories.

JOHNSON, Donald Clay and FOSTER, Helen Bradley. Dress Sense, Emotional and Sensory Experiences of the Body and Clothes, Berg Publishers, New York, 2007, 208 pp.

The interesting use of Light in Design Objects

Lucy Harvey, Pedestal Ring - found bottle, oxidised silver, fly
Unatural History Series of 3. Objects for the body, 2007, UK

"My work explores the psychological necessity for narrative structure and how anxieties are sublimated through the mundane and extraordinary. I use craft processes as a vehicle to speak of the unknown, the uncanny and the melancholy. I manipulate the pre-existing to create enigmatic artefacts which toy with our longing to believe in the fantastic."

The Pedestal Ring from Lucy Harvey is shaped as a lighting bulb, transformed into a ring. I enjoy the reinterpretation of the object, and I think it could be an interesting avenue for my garment.

Thelermont Hupton
Tight Light, London, 2006

Thelermont Hupton is a studio of products and furniture design. They produce a series of glass lighting objects which present interesting luminosity qualities. Tight Light project has beautiful qualities of light textures that are filtered through textile.

Cloud, materials: nylon, wire and light
Jess Shaw, Imaginative and emotional lighting designs, UK

This is a beautiful installation by Jess Shaw. Simple but effective, the Cloud is using light to create an soft but bright atmosphere. It seems to be circles of nylon fabric layered over leds, then displayed as suspended bouquets.

exercice de style #2: the presentation

2010-02-15T13:09:00.008-05:00

The dress interaction will be presented through a short black and white movie created in collaboration with filmmaker Tom Fennario.

visual inspiration

Institute Benjaminta, Quay Brothers, 1995

Rough scenario:
An emply room, where a sewing machine and a pair of tailor's scissors are found on a table, inanimate. Slowly, the sounds of a busy workshop are heard. A women is sitting in front of the sewing machine. Her seat seems disproportional for the machine table. The sounds are slowly fading out. A subtle vibration is creating a wave in the dress. Zoom on the murmuring texture of the dress. The scissors are falling on the floor. Sounds of metallic tools are fading in. The women is slowly picking up the scissors. She opens widely the scissors, close to the felt, threatening. Sounds are fading out. The dress is murmuring again, softly, quivering. The women close the pair of scissors. Sounds of fabric being cut by metallic scissorsfading in. View of the empty room.

exercice de style #2

2010-02-07T14:40:00.032-05:00

I am fascinated by the process behind the creation of clothing and I enjoy revealing these making operations in garments. Draping on a mannequin, pattern making and sewing are part of a beautiful atmosphere found in clothing design but often hidden. I understand clothing as memory maps of their own stories; where they have been made, with which tools, by who, when. Each action taken to achieve a garment is imprinted in it. For Exercice de Style #2, I decided to explore the memory of a dress being constructed.

Here are some sound captures that have been made with Marjolaine Bourdua in my workshop while I was working on the first prototype for Exercice de style #2. You can hear different sewing machines, fabric being cut, ironing seam, pattern making tools, etc. Those interesting sounds are my daily environment, they are my routine and I enjoy each time I am listening to them. You can listen to them one by one or all together, creating a different atmosphere.

Listening to them afterwards, and reading about the science of sound, I liked the idea that a sound atmosphere is composed of different sound layers; we can illustrate that by talking about a sound texture. Even if material, these data are invisible to human eye. With the software Bitmaps & Waves, we can visualize those; it converts sounds to image. I presented some of those images in a previous post. It gives an idea of how they "look like". It is a long rectangular stripe of black and white dots, squares and stains. Looking at them, we feel a rhythm and progression.

visual data collected in the Bitmaps & Waves software

Having those concepts in mind, I though about communicating the memory of the dress by illustrating the different layers of sound it has been accumulating since the beginning of its creation. By a similar process than the ground is accumulating a story through sedimentation, the sound story of the dress is composed of layers of sound and textures. In the bottom of a pleat could be hidden a memory map of the sound adventure the dress has been through. This piece would be a poetic rendering of an object memory. Instead of presenting objects as continuity of memory and continuity of self (as seen in Csikszentmihalyi's Why We Need Things), this project reveals workmanship as property of the object, it reveals craft and labor as continuity of design.

terrestrial sediments records
source: Natural Resources Canada

To illustrate those layers of sound, I decided to create a three-dimensional structure with layers of fabric, inspired by the generated images from bitmaps and waves as well as from sediments images. I cut stripes of felted wool and between each of them I inserted some layers of plasticized gauze and silk. Those materials together have a sound feeling that is really interesting. It feels like if it is subtly creaking. The contrast with the wool, known for its isolating property creates an interesting opposition.

black plasticized gauze, white silk, black felted wool

When the dress prototype will be finalized and this textile memory map included, the idea is to integrate the circuit presented in the previous post in the making of the final dress. The memory map would create a sound wave activated by the silence of the environment. The silence would then be filled by the dress memories. How it will be integrated in the dress is the next challenge of the project: the circuit should be soft and be really part of the garment.

References
Canada Science and Technology Museum. What is Sound?
Dunne, Anthony and Raby, Fiona. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objets. Birkhäuser Basel, 2001.
Entrée des fournisseurs, Éditions Assouline, Maeght Éditeur, Paris, 1990.
Maison Martin Margiela
Marjolaine Bourdua
Johnson, Donald Clay and Foster, Helen Bradley. Dress Sense, Emotional and Sensory Experiences of the Body and Clothes, Berg Publishers, New York, 2007.
Xàrene. Tentative Architecture.

exercice de style #2: le circuit

2010-02-05T12:59:00.013-05:00

Working with Elio Bidinost at the Sensor Lab. The objective is to build a circuit where a microphone would capture the sound environment. When the environment would be silent, vibrating motors would be activated to create a visual and sound wave in the textile layers. Here is the first version. The challenge was first to remove all kind of noise in the circuit. Then, it was to accurate the sensitivity of the microphone; at first, it was feeling touch and blowing, but not the environment sound waves. The following visualizations have been made with the Fritzing software.

breadboard visualization

schematic visualization

Eventually, we will have to invert the microphone so silence will be the input instead of noise. We also might need to integrate a micro-controller to control the activation of the motors, so their own noise won't stop the output going on for a determinate period of time. Here are some short videos of the circuit while working (the vibrating motors are replaced with a LED for debugging reasons) and of the use of the oscilloscope to adjust the potentiometer.

pretty switches

2010-01-27T17:58:00.004-05:00

mercury tilt switches

magnetic switch

post industrial folk wear

2010-01-24T16:59:00.005-05:00

Mau (Marian Schoettle) designed this collection of simple coats and accessories made from Tyvek. She has an interesting view on her process and on materiality:
"The garments are essentially built: with all detail emerging from construction decisions. The material is featherweight tyvek(R): a high performance non woven taken from construction and graphic trades and adapted and manipulated here for personal use. Along with excellent performance properties, I was drawn to the material because it looks fragile and perishable like paper but is in fact a tough and resistant modern material. (Partially recycled and is recyclable)

I am not interested in making hard or perfect futuristic clothing, smart clothing, or high design. I am trying to coax the genie that is so commonly found in folk wear to appear in work that is of our time. [...] The work is designed in my studio in the Hudson Valley, sewn in the NYC Garment District under the auspices of the Garment Industry Development Corporation. The material is made in the USA, surplus materials are gathered from the local computer, snowboard and automotive industries, and design studio scraps are recycled."

wendy legro

2010-01-21T12:56:00.007-05:00

Student in the Man and Well-being program at the renown Design Academy of Eindhoven, Wendy Legro created this coat:

White LEDs are embedded in the folds of this classic looking jacket. Pleats really are one of my favorite textile structure to integrate all kind of movement or implemented material, as electronic. It is a way of creating some hidden space, some volumes or some modularity that give infinite possibilities. Unfortunately, there is no information about the inspiration, the process or the interaction of this jacket on the artist's website. But while I was searching for it, I found this other project of Legro, Morning Glory, which is better explained and is quite lovely:

"The sun is our natural light source. Our homes are filled with artificial light replacing it, undeliberately disrupting our biological clock.

This product works autonomously with a light sensor. During the day, mechanical flowers are closed enabling sunlight to come in. When sun sets, the flowers open and start to emit light. In this way, awareness for a beautiful phenomenon will be brought back."

A stop motion video of the project can be seen on the website.

Merci à Julie L.

Tentative Architecture

2010-01-19T22:54:00.007-05:00

By Xárene:
"This architecture allows for ventilation by mimicking the breathing of its wearer.
One version uses galvanic skin response sensors and shape memory alloys which respond to the wearer's mood and ambient temperature changes. A second version is powered by a bio-kinetic hand-fan."
In collaboration with Joshua Hernandez, PhD student, Math UCLA
Materials: Hand knitted and felted wool, shape memory alloy (Dynalloy Muscle Wire), Arduino Lilypad

The way this garment is moving, "living", "breathing", is making me very uncomfortable. I am shivering when I look at it; its organic motion gives me the feeling that it is alive, that it really has a breathe impregnated inside of it. The structure of the garment in itself is not so impressive; it is basically a felted piece of knitted wool that is crinkled. There is no garment shape in it, it is just placed over the model for the outside picture. Xárene being a conceptual architect, I guess she has no formation in pattern making of any kind. But the potential in this piece being transformed in a garment is quite promising.

Tentative Architecture of Other Earth from Xárene on Vimeo.

the fat map

2010-01-19T22:24:00.006-05:00

UK designer Shelley Fox and Sir Peter Mansfield, who won a Nobel prize in 2003 for his contributions to medicine centered on his work with medical resonance imaging (MRI), collaborated in 2008 to create this series of garments.

"The Fat Map collection explores how the patterns of clothing change as garments are altered for different bodies. Shelley has monitored changes in the internal and external body fat of six volunteers who undertook a controlled exercise and dietary regime. Using an MRI scanner, the volunteers have been scanned before; during and after the regime and their “fat maps” form the basis of the collection.

Shelley questions both technical and conceptual conventions in a bid to redefine how clothes are worn. Her use of unorthodox pattern cuts and materials such as scorched felted wool, using Braille markings and Morse code, have earned her a string of illustrious prizes. Motivated by an interest in humanity and social interactions, her distinctive style results from a training in both fashion and textiles."

I think this is a nice way to integrate sciences in the experimental design field. It doesn't just inspire: it also addresses questions to users or viewers about weight, physiognomy and their relation with fashion. I think this methodology of collaboration between designer and scientist in the process of creation could be applied to a vast variety of thematics, which could be more poetic and subversive.

Found via Fashioning Technology.

maison martin margiela: atelier artisanal

2010-01-19T20:45:00.004-05:00

image tirée de l'exposition dysfashional.

une brève visite dans l'atelier -habituellement si secret- de la maison margiela.

Maison Martin Margiela : Atelier Artisanal from Materialiste Paris on Vimeo.

trikoton

2010-01-19T14:23:00.007-05:00

This Berlin based label has created a smart system that allows buyers to take part in the design of nice design products. They hacked a knitting machine from the 70's which had a speech recognition device to create this interactive process:
“the frequency band of a spoken message is converted into a binary code for knitting patterns. [...] this online based process makes it possible to transfer a personal and unique spoken message into a fashion piece.”

You visit their website and first you choose a design and a color. They you create a knitting pattern: you the website accessing your computer's microphone and register a message, or sound. For the example below, it is the music that was playing in my workshop that has been recorded. Almost instantly, a binary code is generated of the record and show you the created pattern.

They are selling quality products, with a nice color chart and an intersting collection of basic garments. But I think that the most interesting aspect of the project is the fact that the interaction is so personal. You can record a message that only you will feel and remember when you will wear the knitted piece. It is an intimate souvenir, something that you want to carry with you without necessarily sharing it. I enjoy this idea of the secret coded message, carried around with you and taken care of on a daily basis.

impermanent realities

2010-01-19T12:44:00.006-05:00

By Julie Legault, master's student at The RCA:
" 'Interconnecting atmospheric pieces reveal glimpses of inner identities' ...to transform a piece into a moment.

Lighting up according to the wearer's movement, each piece contains a single light, battery unit and magnet. The battery lifespan being voluntarily ephemeral, as is the hooded garment itself, the pieces must awaken attachment in the wearer before time/power runs out, in order to sustain their value and significance, while revealing layers of identity and the impermanence of realities."

Those delicate and organic handmade jewelry objects are creating a soft and soothing atmosphere. I would just want to fall asleep holding this project, replacing the traditional lullaby an night light. Julie, who is my close friend, chose as a starting point for her project a piece of my Tactile Hoodies series. Here she explains why:

"Her hoodie, from the Tactile Hoodies collection made at Concordia University, revisits 'Impressions and sensations' that come about wearing and experiencing a familiar garment in not-so-familiar materials.

I chose the 'Kodell Hoodie' because of its dreaminess, its seemingly purity as well as the sharp contrast between its look and actual feel (not at all soft and cushy and cloud-like.) The hoodie embodies contrast and seems to be made of magic and stormy winter nights.

The hoodie is classified in the 'adorning' category by Anne-Marie for her upcoming book project, which is perfectly perfect for my project.

This idea of collaboration, of taking an 'overcoat' from a known source is very important to me, as product attachment, the idea of memory, stories and symbolism do play a part in my work."

veasyble

2010-01-19T12:18:00.005-05:00

By collective GAIA ( Gloria Pizzilli, Arianna Petrakis, Ilaria Pacini, and Adele Bacc):
"The project is based on three keywords: isolation, intimacy and ornament. It consists of a set of wearable objects that can be converted into means of isolation, to create a personal intimacy in any environment. The idea derives from a reflection on the change in our relationship with the domestic environment, due to the effects of our increasing mobility, and how this has affected our concept of intimacy, creating new demands. This led to the design of four accessories, screen for four different parts of the body: eyes, ears, face and upper body, expressing, through their shape and color, our desire for intimacy at any time, any place, on various levels.
An ornament that can be worn.
A gesture to transform it.
A secret place for personal intimacy.
A reminder of our exterior aspect.
A strong, dominant exterior that conceals a fragile, personal interior.
Every accessory is shaped according to a pattern that is the same for all. The difference arises in the scale of production, which depends on our demand of intimacy."

This beautiful and poetic project raises interesting questions about intimacy and sharing personal space. It reminds me of a toy I had as a kid, which consisted in a long foldable tunnel where I was laying and hiding. This shell was making me invisible and was giving a calm break from my brothers. Veasyble could be my adult version of it, where I could take breaks from my colleagues, classmates, and only share my space with wanted ones.

Made out of paper bonded to polyethylene and fabric, all in white, the project is inspired (again) by traditional origamic folds. It reminds me strongly this interactive project on which I worked from Ying Gao, the dress 2 of Walking City.

squaring the square

2010-01-19T11:32:00.006-05:00

By Lisa Shanio, Moscow:
"Collection is called Squaring the Square because each of the six models is based on a similar division principle – as in the title problem. The whole collection is based on rectangular pieces of various length and width ranging from rectangles to squares sewn together and bonded in different order (there are only two models where several curved lines have been used).The scanning of shoes construction also represents a rectangle cut out from PVC, overturned in a certain order and fixed in accordance with the foot shape."

Even if the general look of the collection is far from my own aesthetic, I appreciate this dress for its integration of simple mathematical patterns and the its integration in a 3D shape; the body. The origamic effect, as usual, has a strong attraction on me. I enjoy the way she let some "traces" of the folds, like a paper material would have done. The dress seems to be woven with giant ribbons, creating an interesting space for the arms.

I also found these process pictures that are quite interesting on her flicker:
Found via fashioning technology.

why I need things

2010-01-16T11:20:00.017-05:00

This is a representation of one of my favorite piece of clothing, the Melting Dress from Eve Gravel. This dress makes me feel incredibly good when I wear it. It has some masculine attributes, inspired by tuxedo: the black cotton twill material and the Gladstone inspired collar lined in black satin. I admit those make me feel stronger. The way I received it was quite magic, and it makes me feel proud to wear a local designer's piece.

This is an illustration of the book of 20, The Exhibition of Martin Margiela at the MOMU, Antwerp. It is the catalog of this retrospective of his work.
Martin Margiela being one of my favorite designer, this book is a constant inspirational source. Non-available in North America, my friend Catherine brought it back from Europe for me a year ago. I feel lucky of having it in my bookcase.

This is a toy reproduction of a sewing machine that a good friend of mine gave me.
Colorful and playful (you can crank it and it imitates sewing!), this little toy reminds me that I always have to find pleasure in work. I identify strongly to it, as the sewing machine is one of my work tool.

why we need things

2010-01-11T19:57:00.014-05:00

History from Things: Essays on material Culture
Edited by S. Lubar & W.D. Kingery, 1993
Why We Need Things, pp.20-29
Mihali Csikszentmihalyi

This chapter examines the reasons why we are so dependent to objects. Furniture, books, clothing, decorative objects are filling our houses without us thinking about the impacts they have on our self-construction and identity. Why are we so attached to souvenirs, to pictures or to old objects?

The amount of garbage created by our consuming society is unbelievable. Some of those objects that are filling the dumps are definitely dangerous, containing chemicals and being harmful for living organisms. Why then are we still over consuming them? Csikszentmihalyi has an interesting theory about the evolution of objects. They explain that objects are reproducing themselves, similarly to animal species, from one generation of objects to another one. For instance, if you look at cell phones, they are all very similar in shape, construction, and size than their previous models.

Mobile Evolution, 2009, Kyle Bean

This idea is closely linked to Dunne and Raby’s theory of Affirmative design and Critical design discussed in their Design Noir and Hertzian Tales books. Designers who stop looking at previous designs as starting point but really think about news ways of living with objects, embodying a critical view on existing values and ideologies are practicing critical design. An important personality of the 20th century, Buckminster Fuller, is a great example of critical design. His Dymaxion’s houses and cars are a demonstration of how you can turnaround the progression of a manmade object and have a second thought about their utility, materiality and embodied values. Critical design can definitely change the fundamentals of a life style.

Csikszentmihalyi recalls the importance of understanding our relation with objects.

“Most of the things we make these days do not make feel better in any material sense but instead serve to stabilize and order the mind.” (p. 22)

They explain that an external order is creating for human beings a mental stability, that it organizes our life experience.

“It is difficult to understand our psychological dependence on objects as long as we hold to the belief that human beings are naturally in control of what happens in their minds.” (p. 22)

Thinking that we control what is happening in our minds might be false, but this “cozy anthropocentric illusion” is still helping us to have an organized life. But this control stays fragile, and when man has nothing concrete to do and occupy his mind, his mental starts deteriorating. Objects keep grounded on the present, they help you remember the past and plan the future: “without external props even our personal identity fades and go out of focus: the self is a fragile construction of the mind”. (p.22)

Csikszentmihalyi says that there is three major ways that the objects help constructing the self. First, the objects of power can be related to a demonstration of financial power, of gender based strength, of good taste, etc. Second, the objects of continuity of the self are the one that help you constructing your memory, your unique personality. Third and last, the objects of relationships are the one that link you to your social network.

design unisexe

2009-10-04T17:21:00.008-04:00

COMPLEXGEOMETRY

One size:

Tailles, de extra small large:

AMERICAN APPAREL

Suggestion lors de l'achat:

La tendance unisexe commence se répandre. Parfois pour les basics du streetwear, comme chez American Apparel par exemple, ou chez les créateurs indépendants comme complexgeometry. Des lignes filiformes qui s'attendent à ce que le corps soit androgyne ou des volumes créatifs qui ignorent les formes naturelles? Tout dépend. Parfois, le modèle est tout simplement passe-partout et classique, s'adaptant à la plupart des silhouettes.

Chez complexgeometry, l'ampleur est au service du designer. Les volumes, le oversized et l'utilisation de cordes rendent les vêtements faciles à adapter aux corps des femmes ainsi qu'à ceux des hommes. Reconnu pour ses vêtements portables de mille et une façons, les styles unisexes se portent souvent d'une façon différente chez l'homme de la femme. Les matières sont aussi propices à une utilisation unisexe: on retrouve principalement du jersey et du fleece dans les tons de blancs et noirs. Le style edgy des vêtements et difficilement accessible et le label rejoint une clientèle bien précise.

Du côté d'american apparel, c'est plutôt les classiques basics qui plaisent tant à l'homme qu'à la femme qui ont été standardisés. Au l'instar de présenter un même style dans deux systèmes de taille différents (féminin et masculin), les modèles ont été neutralisés et sont offerts au deux sexes. Il est noté sur le site web lors de l'achat que les femmes devraient opter pour une taille plus petite qu'à l'habitude. Il est intéressant de voirque les modèles femmes portent volontairement des tailles plus amples alors que les hommes portent les vêtements très ajustés. On voit non plus une androgénie, mais bien un renversement des caractéristiques des genres.

atelier b. and milk

2009-09-23T15:48:00.002-04:00

photo: Guillaume Pelletier
model: Julie Brunet
clothes by atelier b.
ceramic milk carton by urban outfitters

Can We Rely on Organic Food and Clothing?

2009-09-21T12:48:00.001-04:00

Have organic labels and the food and clothing products that exhibit them lost their reliability?

By Bob Folkart, LiveLifeOrganics.com Posted Jul 27, 2009
http://www.eartheasy.com/blog/2009/07/can-we-rely-on-organic-food-and-clothing/

Organic food and clothing display their organic labels in boutiques, supermarkets and upscale department stores throughout the world. To each of us who purchase organic products, these labels and the products that wear them, represent peace of mind, good health and a clean environment. But does the organic label guarantee anything more than an organic product? Does it even standby the word “organic” anymore? Have organic labels and the food and clothing products that exhibit them lost their reliability? Let’s take a closer look at the organic label and see what we might find in the products beneath it.

The demand for organic products has spread rapidly across the globe. Consumers seek the word “organic” stamped on all kinds of merchandise including toys, bedding, beauty products, food and clothing. Organic food and clothing are the leading products sought by eco-oriented consumers. Eating or wearing organic is especially trendy around Earth Day but it makes good sense as well.

The health and safety benefits of these products can be traced back to their origins in organic agriculture. It is here that we find the brick and mortar foundation for the organic apparel and food industries. But does the mortar have a few cracks?

Organic farming includes the production of organic fruits and vegetables. It also produces organic fish and other organically grown food animals. It provides organic beef, lamb and poultry for our dinner table. It grows organic fiber for the clothing industry destined to become the latest eco-fashion styles sold throughout the world.

Organic agriculture is an ecological system that promotes natural chemical and biological cycles. It improves fertility and maintains a balanced and productive farming system. There are no harmful synthetic pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics, radiation or genetically altered seeds in organic farming. Feeding plant crops must employ natural fertilizers while feeding livestock must employ 100% organic food. Besides natural fertilizers, enhancing crop production must rely on traditional methodologies such as crop rotation and composting. Pest protection must utilize creative natural approaches such as insect pheromone traps or the use of natural predators such as lady bugs and wasps.

It’s reassuring to know that all the beneficial components of organic farming described above are enforced by strict federal regulations. However, do benefits equate to reliability?

Based on the well known benefits of organic agriculture, organic food sales have grown about 20% per year. Organic fiber sales have increased at about 15% per year. The advantages of the pesticide-free organic label are apparent if you consider that in the US alone, one billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are released into the environment each year. It requires about 1/3 lb. of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to make a single conventional tee shirt (www.ota.com).

How reliable is the organic label? First, consider the organic salmon you may have eaten for dinner last week. According to Consumer’s Reports (December, 2008), “…the National Organic Standards Board recommended in November, organically grown fish may be fed non-organic fishmeal”( “which may be contaminated with mercury and PCBs”). Their recommendation would permit organic fish farming with“…open net cages which can flush pollution, disease, and parasites directly into the ocean”.

This type of recommendation could result in a two edged sword slicing consumer confidence in the organic label and slashing the stability of marine ecosystems. The pollution from fish excrement and uneaten fish meal can destroy many fish and plant populations thus affecting essential aquatic food chains.

The death of fish and other marine species along with dying plants and algae (first stimulated by nitrogen waste) results in depletion of dissolved oxygen by bacterial decomposers leading to further environmental degradation. Nutrient pollution, especially nitrogen wastes, has been identified as the principle cause of marine water deprivation. In British Columbia, the “49,600 tons of farmed salmon produced in the year 2000 contributed as much nitrogen as the untreated sewage of 682,000 people” (www.davidsuzuki.org).

Second, consider the organic cotton tee shirt you purchased online to wear on Earth Day. Does the organic label on it guarantee an organic product? If you carefully read the organic label it might read “Live Life Organics 100% certified organic cotton”. Here we do have a guaranteed organic product. However, according to the Live Life Organics’ Vice President, the production of organic clothing can include the use of toxic dyes and inks containing other pollutants, such as PVC, endangering the health of our air, water and food supply (“Planet Friendly Products”, Baltimore Sun, April 2008).

Essentially, even if the cotton fibers in the t-shirt are organic, the harmful potential of toxic chemicals for printing and coloring still exists. Besides environment impact, residues of these chemicals can irritate sensitive or allergic skin. Finally, the shirt could have been shipped without recyclable packaging and the clothing tags could be synthetic or attached with synthetic fibers.

Even federal regulations, such as those provided in the Organic Foods Production Act, are not “carved in stone”. The organic food and clothing industries are economically dependent on organic agriculture. Increased farming costs or reduced crop yields can have a negative economic impact on organic farming. The financial fallout can land on organic food and clothing companies and eventually the consumer.

Economic strategies employed by these industries to compromise expensive safety standards or even change them by lobbying Congress can potentially deface the integrity of the organic label. But what can we state about its current level of integrity? We can take the organic label for its face value and nothing more. Although there are rare exceptions like organic fish farms, if it’s an organic label, it’s an organic product. Its reliability is still intact!

In addition to many federal standards, both the organic food and apparel industries can follow guidelines provided by nonprofit consumer organizations like Green America (www.coopamerica.org). Green America seeks voluntary compliance with their screening procedures and can provide organic companies with their “Seal of Approval”. This seal serves to identify a “socially and environmentally responsible green business”. The National Green Pages can help the vigilant consumer relieve any concerns in regard to a specific organic company or product. Furthermore, the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) has also created their own certification requirements and has certified organic restaurants for almost twenty years (www.dinegreen.com).

Generally, the organic label can be just as comforting and safe as you would like it to be. Let’s dig even deeper beneath it. What we find might restore that “piece of mind” feeling to most of us.

In the case of the organic salmon, Consumer Reports also indicated that only organic fishwww.davidsuzuki.org). may be fed non-organic nutrients. The requirement of a complete organic diet for all other organic food animals continues in effect from beef to poultry. Finally, development of Closed System Aquaculture using barrier technologies, instead of open net cage farms, are making improvements in terms of pollution and destruction of fish and marine plant species. (

Likewise, let’s reconsider the organic cotton tee shirt. New developments are on the rise in the organic clothing industry in terms of make a safer and perhaps a less expensive product.

Color-grown, organic cotton “on the stem” is currently in development. Cotton is now being grown in a variety of different earth tones without the use of dyes. Color grown cotton is 20-40% less expensive than its chemically-dyed counterpart. It provides “soft to the touch” organic clothing and actually results in a color enhanced product, after washing, rather than a faded tee shirt or blouse (www.eartheasy.com).

If more expensive dyeing (“off the stem”) is used, many Green America retailers such as Live Life Organics, EcoGanik and Emperor’s Clothes, use non-toxic or low-impact inks and dyes to protect consumers and the environment. Many corporations, organic or not, now use recyclable packaging. One particular company has achieved success using their “trademark combination” of positives messages, low impact dyes, and hemp-tied hangtags that can be planted to recycle into wildflowers.

Organic labels and the products that display them are still reliable. Exceptions seem far and few between. Selecting the nonorganic alternative means potential toxic residues of carcinogens, hormones, antibiotics etc. on the food we eat or the clothes we wear.

The decision to choose the organic label is really based on how much we value the benefits behind it rather than worry about the product beneath it!

Article by Bob Folkart, an experienced author on environmental and social issues. He is Vice President of Live Life Organics (www.livelifeorganics.com), a company featuring organic clothing with positive messages of hope, courage and compassion supporting the environment and our fellow man.

La dernière Cène

2009-09-21T12:38:00.004-04:00

Léonard de Vinci, 1498
Marithé et François Girbaud, 2005
Pastiche de cette fameuse scène religieuse, la publicité de Marithé et François Girbaud a beaucoup fait couler d'encre. Remplaçant les apôtres par des femmes et changeant l'esthétisme de la scène, la maison a été poursuivie en cour.

On peut lire sur Wikipédia:
Le juge qualifie cette affiche d'« injure » faite aux chrétiens, injure, d'après lui, « au surplus renforcée (...) par l'incongruité de la position du seul personnage masculin, présenté dans une pose équivoque ». Il ordonne que l'affiche soit retirée immédiatement. L’avocate des créateurs, M^e Laurence Garnier, a dénoncé une procédure visant à « interdire la liberté d'expression». Le tribunal a assorti « cette condamnation d'une astreinte de 100 000 euros par jour de retard, à compter du 3^e jour suivant la signification » de cette ordonnance aux parties, qui ajoute que « l'injure ainsi faite aux catholiques apparaît disproportionnée au but mercantile recherché ». La société se défend d'avoir voulu offenser : « Jamais il n’a été dans l’intention de la maison d’offenser qui que soit. » Les avocats de l'association catholique, M^e Thierry Massis et M^e Jean-Louis Thieriot, reproche aux créateurs « d’utiliser une scène sacrée à des fins mercantiles », et une publicité avec des poses « lascives et des plus suggestives ». La Ligue des Droits de l'Homme s'est porté partie civile pour « défendre la liberté d'expression ». Le 14 novembre 2006, la Cour de cassation a annulé l'arrêt de la cour d'appel de Paris du 8 avril 2005 et, statuant sur le fond du litige, a débouté l'association Croyances et libertés.

Il est intéressant de constater que le personnage masculin est critiqué, alors que sur l'original de Da Vinci, le personnage féminin (souvent oublié) est dans une position bien semblable... Aussi, il est intéressant de voir le choix des aliments qui figurent sur la tables des deux oeuvres. Sur celle de Da Vinci, on retrouve du pain exclusivement, alors que dans la publicité de Marithé et François Girbaud, on retrouve quelques pains, mais aussi des poires.

Food and dernier cri

2009-09-20T22:50:00.003-04:00

Food And Fashion Are More Compatible Than You Think

October 21, 2008

http://www.style.com/stylefile/2008/10/free-speech-food-and-fashion-are-more-compatible-than-you-think-says-hadley-freeman/

Most people, quite understandably, think fashion folk have little interest in food (beyond avoiding it, that is). Please! Food is colorful, it’s potentially expensive, and you can be a total snob about it—OF COURSE the fashionable are obsessed with it. Treating it in the only way they know how, they make it not about nutrition or health, but trends. Just as some styles are suddenly in and some are suddenly verboten, so you find with food. In order to find out what the current sitch is, forget about looking to Martha Stewart; instead, turn to the fashion PRs, these now being the only people on the planet who seem to be able to afford to give out whatever overpriced morsels are the dernier cri.

For a while, neon-hued Ladurée macaroons were the seemingly unstoppable fashion party fuel, as essential and as ubiquitous as Spanx. But they were supplanted by a new hors d’oeuvre: miniature fast food in the form of dollhouse-sized portions of fish and chips, cheeseburgers so small even Mary-Kate Olsen would have complained, fingernail-sized slivers of pizza, etc. It’s, like, ironic, you see, and also a clever way to allow guests to get a mini carb fix without developing a bloat that would play havoc with their Balenciaga LBD. But really, these were just the briefest of flickers, because there is one food trend that is truly all-dominating and all-encompassing in the fashion world and anyone who has been invited out to lunch by a fashion PR or journalist knows what it is: Japanese food.

I cannot overstate this: The fashion industry is completely obsessed with eating Japanese. I literally cannot remember the last lunch invitation I received from a PR that did not involve the verbal lure, “They do really great sashimi there.” Seeing as I do not eat fish, this has given me the perfect excuse to never go out for lunch with any PR, ever. Nobu is partly to blame for this Japanese hysteria, as it has given sushi a pleasing sheen of Hollywood cool. But I think we all know the real reason for fashion’s love of this particular cuisine, which is that it provides a legitimate cover for an attitude towards one’s waistline that is best described as neurotic. Miso soup for breakfast, a tub of salty beans for lunch, and a slice of raw fish for dinner— now that’s what I call a hearty day’s eating. If you’re a half-starved 15-year-old model, perhaps. Personally, I struggle with the thought of starting my day with, say, salty broth instead of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. Frankly, it’s enough to make you look back at the macaroons as the good ol’ days.

—Hadley Freeman

Food as Fashion

2009-09-20T22:47:00.000-04:00

Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective
– By Robin Fox

Food as Fashion

http://www.sirc.org/publik/food_and_eating_6.html

The myth of nutrition is shown up by rapid changes in food fashions. Availability is of course important. As waves of different foods hit Europe, eating habits changed. At first these "foreign" foods, particularly spices, like foreign fashions were a privilege of the rich, but they soon percolated down. Giinter Grass wrote a novel (The Flounder) in which each section is based on a food that changed eating habits in Eastern Europe; turnips, pepper, and potatoes loom large.

But once foods become plentiful and varied, fashion takes over, and the lure of novelty - the trendy - is often disguised as concern for nutrition. Thus vegetarian diets and nouvelle cuisine, high fiber diets and cuisine minceur, all masquerade as "healthy." In fact, they all are nutritionally suspicious, but are used like any other fashion: to show how with-it we are. Just as clothes indicate our trendiness, so does food. When grande cuisine French cooking was in, it too was extolled as "healthy." Now sushi is a fad, raw fish is praised as a "high-protein, low-fat" source, ignoring the high rates of stomach cancer in Japan. When cheeseburgers were shown to produce enzymes that might inhibit cancer, a whole generation of food faddists was thrown into turmoil since the cheeseburger was decidedly out. Food snobbism has now become as refined as wine snobbism. Not knowing about kiwi fruit tart or fresh coriander or how to prepare a ristafel or couscous in the authentic fashion, marks one as a social failure. One has not kept up with the latest in food fashion. As with all fashion industries, food fashion thrives on change; it demands it. The vast industry can only survive if people’s tastes are constantly induced to change. The tremendous bombardment of food books and food programs leads educated and literate middle-class readers to feel guilty if they don’t "keep up."

This is a considerable change from the days of servants, when how to get the best cook or chef was the issue. The upper and upper-middle classes did not do their own cooking, and at the very top even any knowledge of it was unthinkable. The middle-class housewife would have to know about it, but was not likely to practice it. She would most likely go by Mrs. Beeton and simply give instructions on menus to the cook. Since servants have almost disappeared, and madame (and monsieur) has moved into the kitchen, the snobbery of preparing something trendy and exotic with relative ease has moved with them.

Along with this has gone a reverse snobbery - a deliberate cultivation of proletarian tastes as long as they are romantic: chili con carne, huevos rancheros, pancakes - all cowboy foods and heavy with the romanticization of the Old West. Or take the tremendous popularity of Cajun cooking - essentially a peasant cuisine but "Louisiana French," and hence romantic. Tex-Mex is another peasant style that has taken. All this goes along with the "rediscovery" of ethnic roots after several generations of denying them, and the lure of the "regional" and quaint. But very little of this would be so organized and spread so quickly if it were not for the demands of the food- fashion industry to find novelty. "New American" cuisine is a way simply to take the homely and make it seem exotic so as to generate yet another "new" food trend. The food-writing industry dominates magazines and the "living" sections of newspapers, and it succeeds because it is available to everyone. We may not all be able to be with-it by buying into the latest ludicrously expensive fashion trends, but we can all whip up a ratatouille, or a green chili stew, or a spinach quiche, or stir-fried shrimp, or blackened redfish, serve it with a trendy "blush" wine, and feel right up there with the new wave. One remarkable feature of the "proletarian chic" style of cooking is the wide popularity of the "cookout" or "barbecue," using rich spicy sauces to baste large cuts of meat. ("Barbe et queue"? The OED says it’s from the Haitian "barbacoa" - a crate on posts. Do we believe that?) This is, in the USA, another appropriation of cowboy cooking by the middle class - which has spread beyond America (the Australians will invite you to "put another shrimp on the barbie," if the ads are to be believed). Why, we might ask, does the man have to do the cooking outdoors and the woman indoors? Because the myths have it that cooking with fire is dangerous and should be left to the men. Again, this is probably a hangover from the romanticization of the cowboy and a way for men to feel macho while wearing aprons and preparing food.

This may explain why the working class, which usually lags in the food fad business, is right on top of the cookout. Usually the workers have neither the time nor the means to be faddists. Quantity and "tastiness" (smoked or pickled) continue to dominate their diets. The quantity is not necessary and is even positively harmful. Other workers - Chinese peasants, for example - eat sparingly. It reflects a late trickle-down effect: The conspicuous consumption of large quantities of food used to be an upper-class privilege, as did obesity. This is now reversed. The upper classes consume expensive and exotic food, but in relatively small quantities. Stoutness, once a striking advertisement for one’s well-fed status, is no longer socially acceptable. Joe Alsop, in his charming autobiography I’ve Seen the Best of It (New York: Norton, 1992) records what is probably the turning point here in his account of "dining out" in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s. Following delightedly the gargantuan eating customs of the capital, he achieved, through assiduous dining and scorn of exercise, a weight of over 200 lbs. and a threatening heart condition. The connection was by then obvious, and he was one of the first patients at the famous Johns Hopkins clinic of Dr. John Eager Howard, the genius who invented calorie counting combined with exercise, and thus the "Johns Hopkins Diet" - the granddaddy of them all. (The exercises were based on those used for polio victims.) When I knew the older and wiser Joe in the 1970s he was the thin and dapper dandy of his later famous years. But his book soulfully reflects his nostalgia for those great days of conspicuous calorie consumption (especially the terrapin stew, which smelled like feet but tasted like heaven).

Marcel Dzama

2009-06-25T15:48:00.000-04:00

2009-03-24T21:54:00.000-04:00

Williamsburg

2009-02-07T19:18:00.002-05:00

Basel

2009-01-15T08:18:00.002-05:00

atelier b. en vente!

2009-01-02T15:43:00.004-05:00

www.mtldesigners.com
www.mtldesigners.com
www.mtldesigners.com

Digital T-shirt Project

2008-12-11T11:46:00.002-05:00

Jalousie totale.

«The Digital T-shirt Project, by Mashallah Design and Linda Kostowski, is an interesting integration of fashion and technology. Using the data from three scanned human bodies, a digital pattern is created. The pattern is then laser cut into multiple pieces and then sewn together to create the final garment. The result is a origami-esque sculptural wearable.»

Merci à Julie L

try again.

2008-11-24T09:12:00.002-05:00

2008-11-18T08:52:00.000-05:00

b o n n e f ê t e c h a o l i n a

2008-11-15T16:58:00.009-05:00

montréal et moi on s'ennuie de toi.

2008-11-11T00:21:00.002-05:00

Jacob Hashimoto

2008-11-04T23:05:00.003-05:00

Ernesto Neto

2008-11-04T23:04:00.002-05:00

à l'école

2008-11-04T16:22:00.001-05:00

10by11plus3.blogspot.com

gris lundi

2008-11-03T09:30:00.001-05:00

Martha Rich

2008-11-02T23:55:00.003-05:00

freedomwig.com

découvert via my love for you is a stampede of horses

OF MONTREAL

2008-10-30T01:00:00.003-04:00

Review pour Catherine:
c c c c crazy
On a pu voir sur scène: des ninjas, un marin, un cochon, un coq et une girafe, de la crème fouettée et des plumes, un tournoi de cartes, des pieds et des mains géants, des carabines, un suicide, une pendaison, des moines dorés, des monstres, de la peinture rouge, une tombe, un centaure, beaucoup de peau, du Nirvana, et quoi encore. C'était l'été et je me sentais comme Fraisinette sur l'acide. Un Spectacle? Oui oui.

2008-10-28T00:56:00.002-04:00

l o w - t e c h

2008-10-27T17:47:00.000-04:00

organ mood

2008-10-26T21:24:00.003-04:00

Découverts en première partie de We are Wolves jeudi dernier.
Projection d'acétates barbouillées, ludiques, géométriques... aimé aimé. À entendre aussi.

www.myspace.com/organmood

e x t r a c t

2008-10-23T19:06:00.004-04:00

prismes

2008-10-20T23:28:00.002-04:00

copy left

2008-10-19T11:44:00.003-04:00

RIP remix manifesto par Brett Gaylor

Un film actuel et nécessaire, à voir absolument.
Présenté sur le web en open source, chaque séquence peut être remixée, du contenu peut être ajouté par quiconque souhaite faire partie du débat.
opensourcecinema.org

2008-10-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

rats de ville

2008-10-07T11:38:00.003-04:00

«le webzine de la diversité en arts visuels»
rats de ville

HVASS&HANNIBAL

2008-09-25T20:36:00.001-04:00

«Hvass&Hannibal is a design and art studio based in Copenhagen, established in 2006 by Sofie Hannibal and Nan Na Hvass. We work with art and design - basically everything from album covers to music videos, graphic art, silkscreening, art direction, illustration, installation and lots more...»
http://www.hvasshannibal.dk/

Lundi

2008-09-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

western spaghetti

2008-09-23T10:05:00.001-04:00

Différent de celui que cath a fait hier, mais sûrement tout aussi bon.

PES

Polanoid

2008-09-22T15:57:00.003-04:00

Ci-haut, les shot of the day des trois derniers jours.

«POLANOID was invented because the magic of Polaroid pictures, the thrilling Edwin Land story and the charme and touch of Polaroid cameras hit us like a sledge hammer.

Hungry for real analog, good smelling pictures in a digital world, we decided to swim against the stream and to reset our focus and start the biggest, best and most instant online photo community ever. Stuffed with millions of Polaroids, collected and uploaded by Polaroid addicts all over the planet.

It was a long way before we finally write this lines, just a few days before the official launch of POLANOID.NET.

It all started at the lomographic headquaters back in June 2004 with this first Polaroid that we aber made, using a holga with colored flash and a Polaroid back. Even if this picture will never make it to any art-gallery it opened our eyes and heart for the unique advantages of real analog photography.»

www.polanoid.net.

Hannan Waldron

2008-09-12T11:22:00.004-04:00

www.hannahwaldron.co.uk

samuel françois

2008-09-08T18:30:00.008-04:00

«De l’espace urbain à la galerie, en se perdant par les bois, laissez vous prendre au jeu de la couleur.» www.samuelfrancois.com

Découvert par le biais de It's Nice That.

inspiration

2008-09-08T13:16:00.004-04:00

forts

2008-09-06T15:14:00.004-04:00

Comment je me sens? Bah... j'ai envie de me construire une cabane en coussins de divan et m'y cacher avec des livres pour la nuit.

«The Fort series consist of collaborative forts created with male friends in their home. Each fort was built in under two hours. All materials for the forts were found on location and no aspect of the fort was preplanned.» hybridheart.com

Death by Drone

2008-08-25T21:32:00.006-04:00

Ça y'est, je tombe. Je voudrais être un de leurs dessins, surtout une de leurs robes... Un mélange de vieux et de neuf, de trash, de nostalgie, de mots.
www.deathbydrone.com

2008-08-18T11:14:00.000-04:00

un autre blog

2008-08-13T08:41:00.003-04:00

La découverte de la journée. À lire: les deux derniers articles qui traitent des hipsters.
almostascoolasfighting.blogspot.com

L.L. Romeo

2008-07-26T18:20:00.002-04:00

we are wolves

2008-07-25T15:04:00.003-04:00

Broadcast Posters

Galerie sur papier, exposition qui va à la rencontre du public sous la forme de posters à conserver et collectionner.
Pour chaque numéro, deux artistes sont invités à concevoir une face du poster.

image: Poster by Flag

mercredi

2008-07-23T23:43:00.000-04:00

2008-07-19T18:10:00.000-04:00

Tendresse

2008-07-11T22:30:00.003-04:00

Who's next blog

2008-07-11T12:27:00.003-04:00

Mon profil ici.

Jeunes pour toujours

2008-07-08T08:46:00.003-04:00

2008-05-16T12:33:00.002-04:00

Pas d'image, que du texte.

2008-05-13T00:42:00.002-04:00

Art numérique versus artisanat...
Tiré du blog de Peter Gabor Design et Typo pour leMonde.fr

Matrix vs Macramé | Le monde rugueux d’Anna Genard

«Attention texte chiant réservé aux masoxistes et maoistes millésime 68 au minimum… j’rigole :-)»

Oui je sais, et je sais que vous savez que je sais, le macramé n’est pas très fashion de nos jours dans l’Art Contemporain. On lui préfère des installations électro-acoustiques et les murs sensitifs programmés sur des consoles bi-processor Intel DuoCore. Et quand bien même j’aurais raison de vous faire partager ma fascination pour les créations d’Anna Genard, elles resteront un épiphénomène insignifiant bien que plein de sens dans le paysage artistique binaire et numérique de l’Art Urbain de 2008. Mais voilà, si de montrer une œuvre rugueuse faite de ficelles, de nœuds et d’accessoires les plus hétéroclites, permet d’ouvrir une brèche dans la réflexion sur l’Art, c’est déjà une raison suffisante pour tenter la bête, entendez votre serviteur.

J’avais déjà entamé cette démarche en vous parlant du branding de Nespresso, où la marque George Cloonesque a fait œuvre d’effacement de tout ce qui peut rappeler le travail manuel et la cueillette du café sur les flancs de montagne du Brésil, Nespresso a remplacé la représentation artisanale par une image lisse où la marque fait rêver ses clients au travers des images vidéo et numériques.

C’est le prix à payer pour ne pas dire la rançon à l’évolution d’une société où le réel s’efface peu à peu pour être remplacé par le virtuel. Et c’est précisément là où se mesure la démesure d’Anna Genard qui embrasse son travail tel un artisan du fil ou un sculpteur de l’argile. Les mains s’activent avec les matériaux, les entremêlent, les nouent et les relient tout aussi efficacement que nos algorithmes qui mesurent les réseaux sociaux et l’entrelacement des données graphiques virtuels.

Sauf, qu’Anna Genard doit forcément souffrir de ses phalanges pour nouer-dénouer la corde qui relie ses figures égyptiennes ou japonaises. Qu’elle doit sans doute se mesurer au temps de la patience qu’il faut pour teindre ses tissus elle-même et coudre à main levée ses accessoires sur ses créations, tel le geste du calligraphe (ou du semeur) qui ne peut s’interrompre durant l’auguste mouvement. Le temps d’Anna est celui de la fabrication, de l’homo-faber qui façonne les formes et organise sa scénographie enlisé jusqu’au tréfonds de son être dans la matérialité des ingrédients que nécessite sa composition. On peut zapper son œuvre, on peut considérer qu’elle travaille à coté, en dehors du temps d’aujourd’hui.

Mais je suis confronté comme vous à cette contradiction majeure…travailler avec tous les moyens technologiques les plus modernes, double-écran d’ordi, applications les plus variées pour le graphisme, les photos, les sites internets, habitué à surfer entre toutes les applis et même de regarder parfois un débat politique sur i-télé sur l’écran de gauche tout en détourant un visage ou un objet sur celui de droite. Je travaille dans l’ubiquité des moyens sans autres limites que celles imposées par mes clients et mon savoir-faire. Et d’avoir presque oublié de savoir nouer mes lacets… En tous cas, incapable de me dépanner question plomberie :-)

Si tous les écrans s’éteignaient sur la Planète…

On peut zapper l’œuvre d’Anna Genard mais on est obligé d’y reconnaître la trace de ce que fut le geste de l’artiste avant le déferlement des écrans dans notre vie quotidienne. D’y reconnaître ce que pourrait redevenir notre monde si privé de pétrole et d’énergie tous les écrans s’éteignaient sur la planète entière. Et du coup son œuvre devient signal et prend du sens. La main de l’homme prolongé par l’ordinateur comme le disait Michel Serres, redeviendrait main de l’homme qui se remet à fabriquer, cultiver et se tordre de douleur au contact réel des éléments de la vie. Le monde rugueux d’Anna Genard serait-il juste une ethno-attitude ou bien prémonitoire? voilà une question dont je vous laisse débattre.

Laura Fayer

2008-05-06T10:50:00.004-04:00

Son site ici.

S P R I N G

2008-05-05T23:42:00.005-04:00

The Clapping Song

2008-05-02T11:06:00.003-04:00

Maintenant qu'on connaît les paroles par cœur, à nous la chorégraphie!

À quand la fin de la session?

2008-04-15T00:25:00.003-04:00

Communiqué de presse

2008-04-10T22:38:00.002-04:00

Le 17 avril prochain

Défilé « La mode ne s'expose pas, elle se porte » des finissantes en design de mode de l’UQAM

Montréal, le 8 avril 2008 - Six finissantes en design de mode de l'École supérieure de mode de Montréal (ÉSMM) présenteront leurs collections lors du défilé « La mode ne s'expose pas, elle se porte ». Les collections originales, fruits du projet de fin d'études des futures designers, seront présentées le 17 avril 2008 à 18 heures. L'événement se tiendra à la Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, située au 4200, rue Ontario Est. Les billets, au coût de 10 $, seront en vente à la porte.

Pour lire le reste du communiqué de presse : http://www.uqam.ca/nouvelles/2008/08-017.htm

Photos et illustrations téléchargeables : http://www.uqam.ca/nouvelles/2008/mode-2008/photos/galerie-mode-2008.htm

-30-

Source : Jenny Desrochers
Division des relations avec la presse et événements spéciaux
Service des communications
Université du Québec à Montréal
Téléphone : 514 987-3000, poste 7730
Courriel : desrochers.jennifer@uqam.ca

A_001 en photos

2008-04-10T22:21:00.004-04:00

Photographe: Guillaume Pelletier
Mannequins: Jessica Corneau et Julie Brunet

Invitation

2008-04-02T09:56:00.003-04:00

Le 17 avril prochain, à la Maison de la culture Maisonneuve. Cocktail dès 17:30, défilé à 18 heures. Billets en vente au coût de 10$.

impermanence

2008-03-26T00:18:00.001-04:00

Caribou + Fuck Buttons

2008-03-24T11:40:00.004-04:00

Hier soir au La Tulipe, une soirée de qualité.

En première partie, un duo du Royaume-Uni. À écouter ici. Une belle énergie bien au point.

Et puis les populaires Caribou, accompagnés de leur back-drop blanc où les éclairages psychédéliques se tortillaient. Super musiciens, avec un sens du spectacle bien aiguisé.

joie

2008-03-22T18:47:00.000-04:00

Michael Dean

2008-03-17T10:32:00.005-04:00

Le plus beau site visité depuis plusieurs mois: Micheal Dean. Le genre d'univers dans lequel j'ai envie de me perdre. C'est organique, mathématique, silencieux, vieux mais nouveau.

En jouant assez longtemps sur son site pour être en retard, j'y ai découvert son blog, system of touch is micheal dean.

Mercredi

2008-03-12T19:32:00.003-04:00

A_001 en cours de conception. Plus à venir.

Capturer le processus

2008-03-10T23:08:00.005-04:00

conseil du jour

2008-03-05T11:27:00.001-05:00

Blancs

2008-03-02T16:36:00.005-05:00

Par la fenêtre

2008-02-27T11:39:00.002-05:00

grids are good

2008-02-21T10:41:00.005-05:00

Disparition du monde réel

2008-02-17T19:51:00.004-05:00

ou l'absence du monde

Jean Baudrillard nous parle de la photographie et de son travail artistique.
«Comme la mort, la photographie fixe la fin du réel, et l'objet renaît avec une identité totalement nouvelle et autonome.»
Arte, 2006.
Durée: 6:44 min.

Daniel Everett

2008-02-17T17:55:00.004-05:00

Surtout des photos de non-lieux, plutôt froides et graphiques. Son site ici.

abc123

2008-02-16T16:20:00.004-05:00

Samsam

2008-02-16T16:06:00.001-05:00

Navet Confit
Produit par La Confiserie
Réalisé par Joël Nadeau

Besoin de couleur en février?

2008-02-13T20:59:00.005-05:00

géométrie

2008-02-12T19:32:00.002-05:00

V comme dans

2008-02-12T01:12:00.001-05:00

Volksfaden

2008-02-10T22:26:00.000-05:00

Cette compagnie berlinoise a une jolie façon de présenter ses textiles... À voir ici.

La mode se porte

2008-02-08T21:19:00.001-05:00

Le site web du défilé des finissantes en design de mode de l'UQÀM est enfin en ligne!
Faut aller jeter un œil, on y voit un aperçu du travail de chaque finissante, des nouvelles et toutes les infos sur le défilé.
defile.uqam.ca.

X

2008-02-07T22:58:00.001-05:00

2008-02-05T13:10:00.001-05:00

Mercredi

2008-02-02T18:40:00.000-05:00

Bla bla bla

2008-01-13T23:51:00.001-05:00

a_marie laflamme

title

research question

Modular Pleated Lights

light bulbs

annotations for the Human Powered Illumination project

exercice de style #2: the presentation

exercice de style #2

exercice de style #2: le circuit

pretty switches

post industrial folk wear

wendy legro

Tentative Architecture

the fat map

maison martin margiela: atelier artisanal

trikoton

impermanent realities

veasyble

squaring the square

why I need things

why we need things

design unisexe

atelier b. and milk

Can We Rely on Organic Food and Clothing?

Have organic labels and the food and clothing products that exhibit them lost their reliability?

La dernière Cène

Food and dernier cri

Food And Fashion Are More Compatible Than You Think

Food as Fashion

Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective– By Robin Fox

Food as Fashion

Marcel Dzama

Williamsburg

Basel

atelier b. en vente!

Digital T-shirt Project

try again.

b o n n e f ê t e c h a o l i n a

Jacob Hashimoto

Ernesto Neto

à l'école

gris lundi

Martha Rich

OF MONTREAL

l o w - t e c h

organ mood

e x t r a c t

prismes

copy left

rats de ville

HVASS&HANNIBAL

Lundi

western spaghetti

Polanoid

Hannan Waldron

samuel françois

inspiration

forts

Death by Drone

un autre blog

L.L. Romeo

mercredi

Tendresse

Who's next blog

Jeunes pour toujours

Pas d'image, que du texte.

Laura Fayer

S P R I N G

The Clapping Song

À quand la fin de la session?

Communiqué de presse

Le 17 avril prochain

Défilé « La mode ne s'expose pas, elle se porte » des finissantes en design de mode de l’UQAM

A_001 en photos

Invitation

impermanence

Caribou + Fuck Buttons

joie

Michael Dean

Mercredi

Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective
– By Robin Fox