repeating repetition.

The American Concrete Building. Mickelberry is lucky enough to work on the top floor.

My other boy Eric over at intern[life] recently highlighted his obsession with his new iphone app, Shakeitphoto. Anyone who is familiar with my personal flickr page is fully aware of own obsession with this app, and reasonably so. It's amazing. Sam was quick to point out its ubiquitousness, which I cannot deny. Still, I find these photo apps to be tremendously useful, if not reliably entertaining tools, for no other reason that they allow the user to take daily moments and elevate them to something more artistic.

The absolute best part about the iphone camera is it provides for what I feel to be the most crucial element of photography - spontaneity. I came to this conclusion tonight as I was looking through my photos since I moved to LA back in January. While I would prefer to say that my best photos were captured with a professional lens, they were in fact taken by my iphone, simply because a moment presented itself and I did not allow it to pass.

While the iphone app has little to do with spontaneity, on a superficial level the user has created something highly stylized and interesting. Ubiquitous art does necessarily diminish its relevancy. I think Ikea sufficiently disproves that theory.

Variety.

Here's an amalgamate of older songs, an arbitrary commemoration of my last day at wHY Architecture. Saying goodbye was more bittersweet than I had anticipated, and I predictably turned to my music to piece myself back together. As you'll see, I'm trying very hard to relive my adolescence through my music.

Ride _ Dreams Burn Down
Their grunge/britpop sound is too grandiose to convey any sense of slacker indifference. If Muse were around in the early 90's, were a bit more shoegaze-y, and didn't suck they might sound something like this.

The Walkmen _ Stop Talking
It's mostly their patented shimmery atmosphere, which I've begun to realize is a common theme through a lot of the music that I'm drawn to these days.

Yo La Tengo _ Autumn Sweater
One of my favorite songs of all time.

The Thermals _ Now We Can See
Because I miss Portland, and it's catchy as hell.

Nine Inch Nails _ Heresy
I remember my dad bringing me into his office when I was in 5th grade, and I was innocently doodling on some scrap paper in one of his coworker's offices when I saw his stack of cds and this was the first album I saw. I vividly remember being fascinated by compact discs because I didn't own a cd player, so I put the disc into his discman and slipped on the headphones, completely unaware what I was about to subject myself to. All I remember was being scared senseless, and feeling like I was listening to Halloween. Today it is one of my favorite albums, , probably in large part due to this single experience.

The Vaselines _ Sex Sux (Amen)
Their sound is synonymous with Sub Pop, and makes me feel like a slacker teenager again.

Silver Jews _ People
Lyrics and sound that is straightforward, well-crafted and honest.

Portishead _ Undenied
Another of my favorite songs ever. Sealing it's place in my heart was listening to this album over and over while walking home from studio at night back in college. There is no comparison to this experience, especially when you're delirious from sleep deprivation.

Wasted.

Now that my CD's exam is out of the way I took some time today to finally begin William McDonough's Cradle to Cradle. Given that it's generally assumed to be required reading for anyone in the construction/architecture/urban design world, I'm embarrassed that it has remained ignored for so many years.

About midway through the book McDonough talks about reducing the negative side effects of industrial manufacturing, and does so by using examining the cycles of growth, decay and purification that occur within nature. More specifically, he suggests that designers ought to consider the side effects of manufacturing with the same amount of deliberation and rigor that they pay to the final product:

Just about every process has side effects. But they can be deliberate and sustaining instead of unintended and pernicious. We can be humbled by the complexity and intelligence of nature's activity, and we can also be inspired by it to design some positive effects to our own enterprises instead of focusing exclusively on a single end.

This simple idea of deliberate side effects has stuck with me since I read this passage. By highlighting this reality of waste McDonough proposes a bold artistic and ethical challenge to designers of all trades and scales: How conscious do you choose to be? The questions immediately become endless:

Is this not a challenge - consider the easily overlooked circumstances - that all designers should enthusiastically embrace?
Intuitive (artistic) design is often considered separate from formal, systematic, and procedural-based design, but why is this so and why does it have to be this way?
What are you willing to ignore or set aside in order to realize your own artistic or professional endeavors?
If design is about control, is it not imperative for us to intentionally construct all conceivable outcomes?
If the by-products of a presumably "safe" or "well-designed" object/building/product are harmful or even deliberately ignored, is its value fundamentally altered?
If the objective of the design process triggers harmful outcomes, and what we build and design is an extension of our society and a representation of our values, what does this indicate as our true value set?