Waste, Transport via Art, Imagination, Color, Sudan Archives
The Waste Age
Justin McGuirk | edited by Sally Davies | Aeon | No paywall
Why waste is the defining material of our time, considering the role of designers in a throwaway economy, and mining our own trash.
Seeing planned obsolescence and the “anti-lifetime guarantee” as necessary features of a healthy economy. And the consequences.
“Growth is entirely dependent on the relentless and ruthlessly efficient generation of waste.”
When art transports us, where do we actually go?
Harri Mäcklin | edited by Sam Dresser | Psyche | No paywall
The immersive experience of art and finding ourselves in the liminal space between our mental and physical reality.
“By altering the basic experiential structures that sustain our sense of the everyday world, immersive artworks can show us that there are more possibilities of thinking, feeling and imagining than we usually realise. Immersion mobilises the mind, and makes its gears run in a new fashion. Though immersive experiences might not teach us anything in terms of ‘X is Y’, we do not necessarily return from immersion unchanged.”
What to read when imagining the natural world
Sherry Rind | The Rumpus | January 14, 2022 | No paywall
Escaping our man-made environments by employing our imagination and feelings of kinship with nature. A brilliant list of stimulating books that explore the connection between humans and the natural world. (1,965 words)
How does one communicate with colors?
Basile Baudez | Princeton University Press | December 20, 2021 | No paywall
Architecture is a profession “that has always been torn between the world of painters and that of engineers, between art and craft, between aesthetics and science.”
When color was introduced to architectural renderings, what it conveyed banished ambiguity and ultimately transformed the profession. (1,202 words)
🎧 For listening: Sudan Archives
NPR on Sudan Archives | 2019:
Brittney Parks, the 25-year-old artist who records as Sudan Archives, speaks the way her music sounds — meandering passages that flutter and unravel, threading darkness and humor, creating novel avenues to fundamental truths. The truth she's landed on here — that a lack of change might literally kill her — is evident in her work, which never sits still.
Listen on Spotify.