Are Sweet Dreams made of This? The Sequel

Autumn seems generally a good time to have disturbing dreams, mainly because a lot of things happen in a very short period of time. Days start getting darker, school and stress kick in, the weather turns miserable, and the time shifted by one hour. No wonder my brain gets soft and I start having weird dreams. While some dreams are not worth remembering, and some are worth forgetting, the one I had lats night was extremely bizarre.

As some of you might know, there is a resistance group at our faculty, they’re anonymous, so I’ll just call them PURSE. Anyway, last week, on of the PURSE activist googled the name of their organisation and got to my blog. While I won’t repeat the whole story, let’s just say they took something without my permission and misinterpreted something I wrote. This was all fine, though I thought it rather embarrassing. Then yesterday, I wrote a piece about PURSE (which is password protected, ha)… That’s where my dreams began… (The dream sequence that follows was a DREAM, NOT REAL, I am NOT ACCUSING anyone, I am recounting the workings of my bizarre mind).

While the piece was very impartial, un-serious and uncritical toward them, I know that ‘fuck context’ attitude can also be applied to the written word. Nevertheless, the nightmare started when one of he PURSE people got hold of it, and basically started ranting on their blog (they are anonymous and have a blog) against my a-political stance and using the ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ rhetoric.

This hurt me, especially since they got hold of a nude picture of me, that they posted on that site (I haven’t any nude pictures of myself, just that you know, and btw, you could just see my face and bare shoulders.). Somehow, they managed to conclude I was twelve, and all the comments (there were lots), posted their nude childhood pictures. This was especially disturbing, because their comments carried the same tone as the article.

Then I woke up, I actually went to check the internet, if everything was OK. It was.

This is this year’s nominee for my weirdest dream award.

Peter

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Oh My God, Someone Killed my iPod! Bastards!!!

While I would have thought that things have calmed down by now, that my turbulent episodes with ‘evil corporations’ stealing my iPod were long gone, a disaster has struck. I was so keen to walk off into the sunset with my iPod, to spend our honeymoon on the tropical beaches of bad pop music, this is not likely to happen anymore.

For my iPod was killed. Well, not really. It still plays music, but I somehow managed to break the screen. Don’t ask me how, but I have my suspicions. I always leave my iPod in my jacket pocket, and during the day, I hang the coat on the nearest chair, because I move around a lot. That said, we had a round of presentations the other day (well, a couple of weeks ago). The room was full of people, going somewhere, etc… Therefore, anyone (including me), could have stepped on the jacket pocket, hanging from the chair, killing the screen.

Needless to say, if I wanted an iPod without a functioning screen, I would have bought the Shuffle. But fear not, I have a sneaking suspicion that a family member (whom I’ve told all about my iPod problem, will buy me a new one, the one for the upcoming Christmas. This is how my favorite piece of gadgetry looks now ->

So, it’s been almost two years, and I’m really sorry to see you go. But as long as machines don’t have feelings and human rights, it’s off to the recycling plant.

Peter S.

Over…

I just remembered something this Thursday, after my fingerprints were being taken. I am not a teenager anymore, I’m now in my early twenties.

For me, this means a lot. I finally go out of my awkward teenage years, and entered the slightly less awkward realm of being twenty-something (twenty at the moment actually). I remember, that my photos started to look very awkward after the age of 12 or so. And not just vacation photos, but mainly passport and official documents photos. For a long time, I was too thin, somewhat hunched, spotty, etc…

This was not a good thing. even as an 18-year-old, when I had my TU Delft picture taken (for the campus card), I looked like a mass murderer (I was quite tanned and my skin was greasy and all shiny). Recently, I had a new campus card made, because I lost the first one. There, I am smiling, looking like I always wanted to. Even my driver’s license photo sucks a bit, because I was 19 at the time.

So they took my picture and fingerprints. I am having a new passport made (what did you think?). I saw the passport picture and it was surprisingly very good. I was mucho satisfied with it. And that’s all because I ain’t a teenager no more. See, if I were 19 in that picture, I would have looked really horrible, but at this early stage, aging is actually something good.

Some people are good-looking through their entire lives, some only in their childhood. For me, I looked good as kid, but my teenage years were awful. It’s never going to be great, I’ll never look like George Clooney, but I certainly ain’t going back to that teenage nightmare. Yes…

Peter S.

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Hint-Hint?

Every time I read a horror-scope (misspelling intended), I am amazed by how well they fit with the reality. But of course, those things are kept so vague that they could apply to anyone. Yes, every single day, every one of us is either having problems with our partners, or looking for one. We have done some work well, while some work was done, well, less well. Therefore, you’ll either get on well, or less well with your colleagues at work.

And then there’s English Lit. How much analysis does can one use on someone else’s writing, or any way they express their thoughts and feelings. How deep can you dig, and twist, and search, until everything seems to fit your purpose, just like horoscopes. Can subtle hints even exist today, can they be picked up, or are all hints (apart from shameless flirting), just wishful thinking. Are we so desperate, as to twist, reinterpret and believe that what our friends, media or the government say, and they actually say it in a literal way, into something that we want to believe, into something we can believe.

What am I trying to say. It’s crystal-clear to me, but I guess I’m just hinting it to you.

Peter S.

Skin Glider: Ep 1

Another one of my creative outbursts, this time on a more humorous note. As we all know, superhero genre takes itself too seriously, as we’ve all had the chance to see in The Dark Knight. At other times, the things are rather weak, and and “Superhero Movie” despite its good intentions of parodying the genre is an artistic failure. A more subtle, biting, coherent and entertaining satire is needed. This is where we come in. I say we, because me and my brother came up with it. The ultimate superhero satire should operate on the same basis as a normal comic, it should be one coherent whole, with a simple enough storyline, that can be added to, unlike the seemingly random cameos of parody-superheroes in the Superhero movie.

I think every good comic begins with the “birth” of a superhero, that’s why our story begins the same.

Story: Our hero is an extremely obese man called Stan Superfett. One night, when going home from a movie (where he had to purchase 2 tickets, because he could not fit in one chair), he gets assaulted in one of those cases of random street violence. He is almost killed, but fortunately, he was quickly transferred to a hospital where he lies in coma for 12 months. During that time, our hero loses all his body fat, being left with vast amounts of loose skin. After he finally wakes up from coma, he is shocked by his appearance and goes to the top of the hospital tower. In desperation, he jumps off the roof, only to find out that his loose skin allows him to glide in the air, like that particular squirrel (or whatever it is). He lands on the roof of the building across the street, and tired and stressed out, he faints, the rain beating down on him…

As in any good superhero comic, there is a sidekick (Blubberbutt), the love interest (Tina Thunderthighs) and the villain (Chemical Dean) in his evil lair (the location is very secret as of now.)

The details of those merry adventures will follow soon. If only I could find someone with enough free time to draw one A4 for episode 1. I think it has potential, even though everyone else says it’s rather stupid.

Peter S.

A Self-fulfilling Prophecy (or Why we love Lady Gaga)

So I momentarily return to my celebrity musing, though this will not last too long, so bear with me (or click it away, bitch).

I can remember that this january, a friend of my was commissioned by someone to paint a picture of Lady Gaga, Carl Lagerfeld and Kanye West in a jacuzzi, with their clothes on. While the commission did not work out as planned, it did introduce me to Lady Gaga. Not really, I read about Lady Gaga in that Playboy my uncle gave to me for Christmas (as a joke, I’m giving him one this time around, the one with Marge Simpson). But still, Lady Gaga wasn’t all that huge back then, but she was being hailed as the next big thing.

I still remember when Avril was the next big thing, and it was rather disappointing. All that’s left now are a couple of old ties in girls’ wardrobes and a couple of overproduced pop-rock albums (plus that perfume-advertisement, which was atrocious). Sorry for being a culture snob, but even pop can be done well.

Now for Lady Gaga. I truly think she’s awesome. I don’t care if she’s overproduced, overmarketed, sounds like  man etc… With Lady Gaga, the conscious, the behind-the-scenes, the overproduced, the plastic and  all the hoo-hah becomes irrelevant as soon as the product is revealed. Very Warhol-esque. Following the formula Modern Ar t= I could do that + but you didn’t, Gaga (or whoever is lurking in the background) mystifies the world. No one cares about her person, only her persona. The woman becomes dematerialized in her Kermit-the-Frog costumes, her red drapes and whatever she wears. We don’t really care who she’s doing, what she’s eating or anything. We wait until Gaga throws another piece of media fodder from behind her plastic mask and we chase it rather than the perpetrator.

By creating a strange consumer product, a self-fulfilling prophecy (a song such as “Paparazzi” would have been ‘appropriate’ for someone who actually spent some time in the media’s spotlight, not on a debut album of a hopeful star), the Haus of Gaga created a myth that’s hard to bust. As soon as Lady Gaga becomes human, we’ll tear her to shreds (in the media), because that’s what we do. While Gaga’s strategy is paying off for now, it would be interesting to see how long she can keep this up, and when her current myth is all gone, she’ll have to really put in some thought on new artistic direction. Get the PR department ready.

Peter S

House Concepts Continued…

Apart from enormous pressure from all the things I have to do in my time (emails, work, school- the vicious circle), I would still like to share some things I’ve been working on. After the rather horrible sketch model, we decided it was time to make more models. I’ll only post mine, although Ceciel did a fantastic job as well, we really came up with some great things.

Double Helix House

Here I’ve taken tried to interweave two separate dwellings into a single entity. The idea didn’t really catch on, even though I insisted that the shared patio in the middle of the two houses could lead to social interaction between the two different (sets of) inhabitants. (It would also create a feeling of a very large house, simply because of the distances one would have to walk to get from point A to point B (entrance to the bedroom, for example).

Then I followed with this one…

House 1

I’m very much for roof terraces. From this view, you almost can’t see it, though its there on the left. The Spiral structure is still being maintained. We eventually agreed to work this model out, because, being the contextless thing it is, we can later impose our own limits, rather than being limited from the very start.

Then, Ceciel and I once again reshuffled the cardboard pieces to form prototype 1.01, again, with a roof terrace, though here it’s rather different and the spiral logic is somewhat warped.

Prototype 1.01

All photos by Ceciel van Rinsum.

That’s all folks!

Peter S.

Chairs

Here’s what’s been keeping me busy for the last couple of weeks. Chairs. Designing one is very tough, especially when the teachers say things like; “the best three or so chairs will be made in scale 1:1, and we will include them in the Bouwkunde chair collection (where chairs by Breuer and Rietveld are kept, for instance). This opens many doors.”

Naturally, with this in mind, and with potential real results that could be quite profitable, you can’t just design any old chair.

Here’s a sequence of designs that I’ve been working on.

The first sketch of P Chair

Later sketch of P chair and the L Chair, a 'correction' of La Chaise

La Chiase, by Charles and Ray Eames

The Modular Low-Chair, all componets are the same

Those were just a few experiments, but here’s what I’ve really been developing, the N Chair, with a (presumably polished steel) tubular base and a independently “floating” (not really, but that is what I want to suggest) seating shell (it’s a very Eames idea). However by sliding the components into each other, it could be viewed as a hybrid of the Eames’ completely independent base and the skeleton-is-all-there-really-is principle of the Heroic period (1920-1939).

Low-back N chair 1.1

High-back N Chair 1.1

High-back N Chair 1.2

N Armchair 1.0

Chaise Longue, version 1.1

Chaise longue, 1.2

N Armchair 1.2

Chaise Longue, 1.3

Zig-Zag Steel High Chair 1.0

High-back N Chair, 1.4

N Armchair, 1.4

Chaise longue, 1.4

Chaise longue 1.41

Chaise Longue 1.42

Zig-Zag Steel Armchair (same base as Chaise longue 1.4, only rotated)

There were of course more designs in between. There are so many, though, that I would spend an eternity putting them all up, and these are the really vital pieces. The higher the number, the later the stage these chairs are in. Therefore, Chaise longue 1.42 1 and 1.42 are the latest studies (using different colors). As for the colors and the exact shape of the seat, that will be researched later (but don’t let that keep you from sending suggestions).

I am quite enthusiastic about the N series. The Zig Zag series, was first tried as a joke, and surprisingly, it has a certain elegance. It is, however, a reworking of the Zig Zag motif introduced by Rietveld, so there are pretty low points on originality, even though the Zig Zag Armchair has some “fresh” elements of its own.

All of the designs are meant to convey lightness, simplicity, and the use of only two elements is keeping with this concept. I hope I can pull it off well enough. Comments, please (if you help me win this thing, you’ll get a chair from me should it ever really be made)!

Peter S.