This week sees many changes: the return of gerald, the submission of TID, the wedding of Su&Ren.
However, what stands out is a little dessert bar. Read on for:
Letter in the Email Box: like waiting to pee
2AM Dessert Lab: agency of process
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Letter in the Email Box: like waiting to pee
This week, checking the mailbox has become an event loaded with electric anticipation.
Even the no-gmail-at-work rule was violated on a daily basis with quick and naughty peeks on a discreetly small browser window.
The reason for this excitement wasn't obvious to myself at first. Only after repeated disappointments did I realize what I was expecting: a letter.
Emails have become a convenient vehicle for sharing links, images, one-liners, business drafts and spam. As a medium that replaced the letter, rarely is it used for letters- Letters in the sense of penned thoughts expressed in the careful and specific medium of words and organized in a paragraphs. Yes, it is an intimate affair, the craft of sharing.
So John, hurry up and please reply.
---------------------------------
2AM Dessert Lab: agency of process
2AM dessert bar is a small cafe that also does catering. They appeal through unique "experience desserts" and novel tastes which emerge from their laboratory.
The laboratory has an aesthetic which is like a mashup between a science lab, a lumberjack's cabin and a high-fashion store. Part of the experiments on our visit were fermenting mangosteens in various sweet and sour broths.
Jonathan, one of the creators, spoke with an articulate knowledge of the scientific processes behind each experiment. He frequently used the word "technique" and expressed an affection for the machines in the lab. The question I had on my mind was, "to what end?".
The simple answer: to the demands and whim of the client!
But I'd like to imagine a diferent answer. Picture records of their desserts betray a deeper obsession with an aesthetic that celebrates decay, lumps and informal choreographies in a concealed logic, hidden in the agency of the ingredient itself.
An example of this is a sugar wall formed from melted isomalt heaved onto a pile of icecubes. The result is a highly textured and nuanced form that recalls coral.
Another example is a chocolate cake with the pock-marked texture of teenage angst, or at a different scale, the texture of volcanic terrain.
Navin raised the question today: what comes after mass-customization?
Perhaps mass-customization is the final arc in the paradigm of component-based production, where matter is seen as something inert and thus moulded into ideal geometries.
I notice an emerging paradigm that sometimes soft and gooey. It is also sometimes effervescent and cloud-like. Like the desserts at 2AM, they are in a dynamic state of being in-formation: somewhere between destinations and never fully defined.
The information of its state is in its material agency (inherent potentia or properties) and a process that is applied to it (capacities). The meaning we assign to it gives these capacities tendencies.
One example of this is the haute couture collection of Iris van Herpen. The clothes transcend the component-based attitude of pants/shirt/sleeve/collar/pocket. Slightly awkward? Perhaps. We as humans become part of the ecology of the design: it shapes us as much as we shape it.
Another example is architect Philip Beesley, who uses chemical processes and lattice structures in his Hylozoic Series as mediums of information transfer that create non-linear performance. The
To this end, I see 3D printers as a stop-gap measure of bringing these processes from digital simulation into the real world.
On speculation then, the future may no longer be the sale and exchange of products but the sale and exchange of such processes. These might be captured in scripts or custom genes (no idea how this works) or closely-guarded recipies or a combination of these.
However, what stands out is a little dessert bar. Read on for:
Letter in the Email Box: like waiting to pee
2AM Dessert Lab: agency of process
--------------------------------
Letter in the Email Box: like waiting to pee
This week, checking the mailbox has become an event loaded with electric anticipation.
Even the no-gmail-at-work rule was violated on a daily basis with quick and naughty peeks on a discreetly small browser window.
The reason for this excitement wasn't obvious to myself at first. Only after repeated disappointments did I realize what I was expecting: a letter.
Emails have become a convenient vehicle for sharing links, images, one-liners, business drafts and spam. As a medium that replaced the letter, rarely is it used for letters- Letters in the sense of penned thoughts expressed in the careful and specific medium of words and organized in a paragraphs. Yes, it is an intimate affair, the craft of sharing.
So John, hurry up and please reply.
---------------------------------
2AM Dessert Lab: agency of process
2AM dessert bar is a small cafe that also does catering. They appeal through unique "experience desserts" and novel tastes which emerge from their laboratory.
The laboratory has an aesthetic which is like a mashup between a science lab, a lumberjack's cabin and a high-fashion store. Part of the experiments on our visit were fermenting mangosteens in various sweet and sour broths.
Jonathan, one of the creators, spoke with an articulate knowledge of the scientific processes behind each experiment. He frequently used the word "technique" and expressed an affection for the machines in the lab. The question I had on my mind was, "to what end?".
The simple answer: to the demands and whim of the client!
But I'd like to imagine a diferent answer. Picture records of their desserts betray a deeper obsession with an aesthetic that celebrates decay, lumps and informal choreographies in a concealed logic, hidden in the agency of the ingredient itself.
An example of this is a sugar wall formed from melted isomalt heaved onto a pile of icecubes. The result is a highly textured and nuanced form that recalls coral.
Another example is a chocolate cake with the pock-marked texture of teenage angst, or at a different scale, the texture of volcanic terrain.
Navin raised the question today: what comes after mass-customization?
Perhaps mass-customization is the final arc in the paradigm of component-based production, where matter is seen as something inert and thus moulded into ideal geometries.
I notice an emerging paradigm that sometimes soft and gooey. It is also sometimes effervescent and cloud-like. Like the desserts at 2AM, they are in a dynamic state of being in-formation: somewhere between destinations and never fully defined.
The information of its state is in its material agency (inherent potentia or properties) and a process that is applied to it (capacities). The meaning we assign to it gives these capacities tendencies.
One example of this is the haute couture collection of Iris van Herpen. The clothes transcend the component-based attitude of pants/shirt/sleeve/collar/pocket. Slightly awkward? Perhaps. We as humans become part of the ecology of the design: it shapes us as much as we shape it.
Another example is architect Philip Beesley, who uses chemical processes and lattice structures in his Hylozoic Series as mediums of information transfer that create non-linear performance. The
To this end, I see 3D printers as a stop-gap measure of bringing these processes from digital simulation into the real world.
On speculation then, the future may no longer be the sale and exchange of products but the sale and exchange of such processes. These might be captured in scripts or custom genes (no idea how this works) or closely-guarded recipies or a combination of these.