Blog-Backlog_Day Six_A

FREE DAY

Started the day with coffee and little Skype sesh.with the parents.

This free day was not as productive as I would have liked, however, I did cover a good amount of my popular culture basis, including a visit to Paddington Station (the subject of one of my sister favorite books when she was about 6, which, had minor sub-plot about immigration in Britain). I also was twisted and turned about on the underground because of planned (however, unplanned by me...) rail work over the weekend. Which gave me plenty of reading time which I finished up Design and Democracy by Gui Bonsiepe. (More on that below...)


little park sketching at
Postman's Park

Alice Ayres pop culture moment from
the 2004 movie Closer

Wandering around the tube to
Paddington Station

For me there's no better way to spend an afternoon than reading up on some idea floating about contemporary thought (it was from Bedford Press 2010) on two of my favorite things : ...design and democracy. This, I found to be highly relevant to what I've been thinking about "form and function" which Bonsiepe considers a dead argument. What I found particularly interesting, was that he brought up capitalism and creating a market for products and the social responsibilities of these designers. He writes about how design, aesthetics and consumption inter relate, almost inseparably, and how to make this system work efficiently, to be (eco)logical.

I can feel this working perfectly into with The System Of Objects, which was not in the (work cited page). The System is about objects (thus far ... midway thru chapter 2) influencing personal space, Design & Democracy is about objects influencing social space (and thusly defacto political space) I would some how like to link this into my final paper for this class, mostly because I bought and read the book during the duration of the trip, but he referenced Benjamin (Illuminations : which I plan on starting shortly after returning home from break), and Barths.

Naturally, I feel like this will fit in snugly to any bibliography I will end up writing on post modern aesthetics.