‘The Sabre’ 08/17/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Aviation, Design, Editorial.Tags: F-86, Fighter Jets, Korean War, Sabre Jet
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I DON’T KNOW if I hold any more romantic a view of a machine than that which I hold for the F-86, especially given my considerably pronounced romanticizing of war-birds. There was just something about its placement in the annals’ intersection between the modern jet-age fighters of now and the propeller-driven battlers of yesteryear, that makes it stand apart. Being one of the first of the American jets to see heavy air combat before the advent of modern weapons systems, it still remains pure in the mind for me, and still just so much of what a little boy — where much of the inertia behind military aircrafts’ popular culture presence resides — would seem to think a jet would look like; on top of everything else that it brought: From being a versatile combat workhorse to its survivability and maneuverability.
And mind you, this was a design made far before the later iterations of the fighter jet genetic line of my youth and (now) adulthood, which had me first absorbing the signatures of the F-14, F-15, F-16 and now and for sometime into the future the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter (J.S.F.) — as ugly and as troubled as the J.S.F. is — into my concept of “The ideal of the Fighter Plane.” The F-86 was also one of the first and final stick-and-rudder jet fighters. It came along before computers took over the cockpit and made for a different experience altogether: higher, faster, more acrobatic; but not as much pilot versus pilot.
The pilots had to fly this completely, which was more challenging in the jet age, because of the speed creating smaller margins of error; there were none of the fancy systems of now to keep it stable or to enhance its abilities against the pull of the laws’ of gravity and rules of physics. It was from a time when the jet was still primarily an extension of the pilot and his skills, and not an extension of vaster power imbalances between nations in regards to technology, wealth and research and development, as it has become today.
Photo Credit: Gizmodo
And in a way, all of those late ’60s and early ’70s designed aircraft of my youth, which went operational in the 1980s all looked the same — with their sleekly pointed noses envisaging a predatory beak and utilizing hyper-aerodynamic, weather-beaten, sand-dune looking silhouettes — particularly for the epochs and technological generations they inhabit. North American’s F-86 was not that. It was not an aircraft representative of its respective time. It is in retrospect the jet version of another beloved, classic air foil of mine, the P-51 Mustang (photo above), produced by the same manufacturer. The P-51 was a World War II leap in propeller fighter technology, which went head-to-head against Nazi ME-262s, the first jet planes, and won many if not most, of those battles.
The F-86 “Sabre,” as it had become to be known, was a sleek first generation 1950′s comic-book drawing of a jet aircraft come-to-life, a plane which earned its respect in battles against an opponent falsely rumored to be its superior, the Russian MiG-15. But it is its style more than its storied operational successes, while in service with many N.A.T.O. countries, that grabs me. Style is something odd which we project onto it now as aviation enthusiasts, but it was obviously an afterthought. Plainly, the thing had to fly and fly well, and aesthetics mattered not a bit, as it was designed to be the protagonist in a struggle against Russia and became a figure in some of the most intriguing and brutal dog-fighting in history.
And so its beauty comes from the pitch-perfect execution of its more utilitarian concerns. It was a silver bullet with wings and a bubble canopy, perfect for a pilot engaged in an ever-expanding, three-dimensional chess match at 580 mph, tens and thousands of feet over the land.
A part of me wants to say that it was more along the lines of something from Buck Rogers, and another part of me wants to say that it was of Disney’s Tommorowland. It just wholly spoke to a kind of 1950′s pop-culture futurism evident in the culture. It was simply one of the smoothest plane designs ever encountered; like some beautiful Bang & Olufsen-meets-late-’90s-and-early-21st-Century Apple creation, an industrial design that could’ve been mistaken for art.
In fact, there was a comic book All American Men of War panel (the first illustration above) dedicated to the plane, which was later adapted by Roy Lichtenstein in “Whaam!!” (directly above, panel 2), to avoid the accusation of plagiarism, and which was ironically made to depict a P-51, the Sabre’s cousin from the propeller age, in a piece that seemed to capture this spirit of the Sabre, in the pop-mind.
It was a reputation that the F-86 famously earned by burning its foes in the skies over Korea, where it dueled both North Korean MiGs and (secretly) Soviet piloted ones, who were used as an auxiliary force, in the infamous “MiG Alley.” During this process it became something greater than a mere beautiful assemblage of parts, but an absolute affirmation of America’s dominance in the skies, against any and all communist air power.
Kanye West ‘Power’ Scarf 06/20/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Design, Fashion, Global, Hip-Hop.Tags: Kanye West
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Photo Credit: MOOD
Available at M/M Paris [Here]
Fiona Banner’s Harrier 03/22/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Aviation, Defense, Design, Global.add a comment
Photo Credit: Fiona Banner
EVEN hung by the tail, the Harrier is a symbol of power. But, like the assassinated Mussolini strung up by his feet, it also shows that power is mutable. I couldn’t resist lying underneath, nose-to-nose, sensing the weight and mass and power of it above me, like a stilled pendulum. From this position all I could see was the circular nose cone, filling my vision like a football about to belt a goalie in the face. I am less certain that Fiona Banner needed to draw feathers on the bodywork and wings of the jet, even though she’s done it discreetly; the Harrier is in any case named after a bird of prey. Maybe she wanted us to think of vermin strung up on a gamekeeper’s gibbet, or a game bird hung in Tate Britain’s neo-classical larder. Banner probably also wants to remind us of earlier drawings she has made, using fighter-plane wings as her canvas or paper. Previously she has written moment-by-moment descriptions of war movies – including Apocalypse Now and Black Hawk Down – and of the experience of drawing from a live model. Now she gives us the real thing.
“Fiona Banner’s Toys for Boys Are a Turn-on at Tate Britain,” The Guardian
[...]
‘WE all hate war but these objects inspire a strange enthusiasm in us. When you reflect on their beauty it’s a strange thing, people say surely they are designed with an aesthetic in mind and, of course, they’re not. They are absolutely designed to function and that function is to kill, and that says something questionable about our aesthetic judgement and makes us ask questions about our moral position.’
Visit Fiona Banner’s site [Here]
Read “Fiona Banner’s Toys for Boys are a Turn-on at Tate Britain” [Here]
Read “Tate Britain: Fiona Banner Exhibition” [Here]
Read more about Fiona Banner’s exhibit prep [Here]
Interviews With George Lois, ‘Provocateur’ 03/03/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Design, Fashion, Marketing, Media.add a comment
Photo Credit: The Design Shift
GEORGE LOIS, at this point, needs absolutely no introduction for those who have even remotely followed graphic design or advertising, or watched 2009′s Art&Copy. It’d be like saying “Babe Ruth” in a baseball circle. The guy literally re-invented advertising and simultaneously fought for social justice through his art, and oddly enough, he did it from within “the system.”
Perhaps more notably regarded for his iconic, socially-challenging, freelance work for Esquire magazine, as our nation stood on the nexus of social revolution and the maintenance of a staid, old-guard, status-quo, orthodoxy; Lois’s work is made even more powerful when placed into the context of the America of then; rolling over and upon itself like a viscous lava, attempting to at times hold-on to the past and also destroy it and re-fashion a new order and way to understand itself and each other. And his work from the period was among the best accounts to conjure reflections for study, from that decade.
Lois managed to accomplish this, and fought for change through the very same shock tactics that make for great musicians and art now, and he did so when times were far too bucolic for his sensibilities. And he often shocked a nation into thinking and discussing, multiple times, impacting the consciousness and telling long, tortured stories in mere pictures and graphics, about what was going on within the soul of a country, from Muhammad Ali taking slings and arrows and suffering the loss of his title belt, for his qualms with his conscription (“I ain’t got no problem with them Viet Cong”), to the four faces “rifle-sight” — Lois’s own words — of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Fidel Castro and John Kennedy, in the “4 of the 28 who count most with college rebels” Esquire piece, meant to reflect who the magazine believed to be the new heroes of the counter-cultural youth of the day in 1965.
Lois was one of the most visible examples of art’s collision with commerce, working to great effect. While he worked on the social good, most notably on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for president (and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s liberation) and messages on race relations, he also made money for “the man” as the cliché terminology goes; pushing the conventional boundaries of advertising far past the industry’s horizon. Lois also branded everything from the AFL-CIO, M.T.V., Nickelodeon to Ralph Lauren.
George Lois’s Web site [Here]
George Lois at New York Magazine [Here]
George Lois at Vice Magazine [Here]
A Look at Bugatti’s ‘Two-Mil Thrill’ 10/04/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Design, Editorial, Global, Technology.comments closed
By now, the Veyron’s stats are legendary: 1,001 horsepower from a mid-mounted, 8.0-liter, 16-cylinder engine that gets air stuffed down its ravenous gullet by four massive turbochargers. All-wheel drive. A seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission that switches gears faster than a state staffer ducking questions about the Appalachian Trail. Depending on how you define “production car,” it is the fastest in the world. In the quickest Lamborghini ever produced, the Murcielago LP640, you can hit 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. In the Grand Sport it takes a hair under 2.5. How does it feel to command that pace? Godlike.
-“Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport,” Wired
I happen to believe that cars are the ultimate status symbol, aside form the less accessible private jet, or I guess, the private submarine. (Come on, a sub? That’s status! There’s not even a real pronounced market for them.) For one, cars are sexy and imply freedom, they’re also a prop for a person’s persona. And who doesn’t remember any one of their list of particularly intriguing characters with which they identify, and the automobile they owned? Here’s just a short run-down: Batman? The Batmobile. Inspector Gadget? The Gadgetmobile. Speed Racer? The Mach One. Agent 007? Any number of finely-tuned Euro whips. (And for young girls:) Barbie? That hideously pink Corvette. The list can go on. And for us all cars are like relationships, they have to be maintained; memories are tied to them in ways other inanimate objects really aren’t, and they — like relationships — cost us money.
Which is why cars, though they have no true value other than getting one from point A to point B, can still fetch robust sums from suckers or those with money to burn, despite bloated pricing for their “luxury,” when it needn’t be that serious. Because the truth is, like any major consumer good, we like what cars say about us, how they make us feel, and they are actually part and parcel to the current marketing world’s “new and improved” sales pitch. It was the car, after all, that began to be updated yearly for no reason whatsoever, and that truly made consumers feel inadequate; made them feel a need for something they already owned and wrapped a sense of self-worth into something that shouldn’t apply to one’s value.
Thus, I’m ambivalent to the hyper-engineered $2,000,000 USD, Bugatti Veyron, Grand Sport. While I love cars, especially those of the high-performance variety, like any male brainwashed into thinking manhood had some oblique link to the performance of a machine, this Bugatti Veyron is the essence of overkill. Still knee deep in a global economic recession — or “The Great Recession” — and a world having a hard time reconciling how much should be given to those with so little to thwart the darker side of capitalism: creating unquestionable winners and absolute, destitute losers, all pulling from the same pie; there is this piece of machinery that drives the point home, quite literally. It is however beautiful, stunningly sleek, a joy to look at, and is as sexy as Rachel Bilson, without having to go overboard aggressive, like Megan Fox. Despite its price tag, the Grand Sport is somewhat subtle in its design, not looking like a $2,00,000 dollar ride, but more like its affordable cousin the Audi roadster model, the “TT,” from the side, and it sports no ostentatious badging and design elements that say more than they already do or need to.
The Veyron Grand Sport is as claimed in WIRED, “the greatest gasoline-powered vehicle that has ever been, or will ever be, built. Seriously.” And that may be so, it is also, as the same article points out: demanding a hefty sum of money to pay for a car, regardless of its “get laid” magnitude, and this car’s measure of “get laid” factor, an indices scientifically formulated on my own, I might add, has to be 1,000 x infinity, to the tenth power, cubed. Still, WIRED makes the point that in this continuing down-turned economy the 2.1 million dollars to be exact, that a billionaire would dump on such a superfluous purchase, could be used for good or in the case of many billionaires, evil, by giving that same amount of money to the political machine and becoming a “one-man special interest group.”
The speed performance specs on the Veyron are equivalent to a leading American military attack helicopter, the Hughes AH-64 Apache, though minus the forward-looking infrared, laser-target painting, strategically accurate G.P.S. satellite and real-time computer link to the American forces’ database, it really isn’t as interesting. Its top speed is as fast however, clocking-in at 253 miles per hour. Though in convertible mode, its top-speed is only 217 miles per hour, so you know, it’s slow. (Best to leave the top on I guess, since you never know when you may have to go up against Racer X while on the 101.)
The first Veyron is an engineering marvel. That’s the one with the massively reinforced roof that helped keep the rest of the body from deforming into an amoebic tangle of graphite composite and exotic metal under the joint stresses of lateral acceleration, horsepower and wind. It stands as one of the greatest achievements of the petroleum age. It required the intellectual might of one of the largest and arguably smartest car companies in the world to birth a car that was not only faster than anything on the road, but easy enough to pilot that anyone could drive it. (“It killed my husband” is not the kind of country-club buzz that sells cars.) To make the Grand Sport, Bugatti’s engineers had to do the same thing, only with a giant hole in the middle. It was like designing a picture frame to break rocks.
And this is the second Veyron. The first was also a tour de force, but it didn’t have the much desired convertible feature that the Grand Sport provides. (It turns out, when you pay that much money for something that fast, you’d actually like to feel the wind in your hair and sun beating on your head.) By reinforcing its doors, B pillars — the point where the back edges of the windows rest — and floors with copious carbon fiber, and turning the frontside air scoops into structural supports for potential rollovers; Bugatti has said to have made the most-rigid convertible in the world, structurally, which is good to know since the car is going to be driven fast.
Read more about the Veyron Grand Sport at Wired [Here]
Information Aesthetics; ‘An Eye for an Eye’ 09/23/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Design, Media.comments closed
Photo Credit: Flowing Data
WE live in an increasingly visual culture that is saturated with avatars, both official and unofficial. Our smartphones denote an extension of this in a special kind of technophile, one who is well-connected and who organizes their experience in icons, transporting an entire life within a pocket-sized corpus of plastic, metal and wire. And while that archetype itself is a part of a universe constructed by visual cues, it goes deeper. Assumptions gleaned from the shorthand of social experience — a less insidious stereotyping begins — that can be ventured when in congress with other signs: that person is possibly high-powered, needing to constantly stay abreast of their niche in a hyper-dynamic world, or at least, there is that illusion.
We all respond to these multiple visual cues, now, more than ever. Where once it was just road signs, the written word and branding, we are now more acclimatized to a manufactured shorthand symbology that was further taught to us by Graphic User Interface operating systems and our multilayered, icon-organized video games; all teaching us just how to operate in the real world as if it were the virtual space and vice versa.
* Infographic Example: GOOD‘s “Girl Power“
The visual cue is powerful. Perhaps that is why short-form bloggers on the popular platform known as Tumblr will interestingly find out that photos of themselves, or of unspecific-but-interesting slices of time, celebrities or works of art tends to provide bumps in their popularity within the platform’s internal community, a rating known as “Tumblarity.” And maybe underneath all of this visual cueing, that is why there seems to be an increasing love in the media for infographics? It is likely that something within the culture has changed us, and adapted the way we now choose to interpret information.
Years ago, the joke about the daily news periodical, U.S.A. Today, was that it is for those not particularly interested in news. The saying was: “U.S.A. Today has great pie charts,” a comment that implied that it was for the dimmer set of news consumers. (Like pop-up books for adults.) But within the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that the effete publications, and especially blogs specializing in social or political data, have begun to employ more of the visual tell to augment their texts’ message.
From Information Aesthetics to FiveThirtyEight, GOOD‘s “Transparency” series to inserts in the world-affairs and travel-luxury mag, Monocle, and many posts on the middlebrow-academic blog, Sociological Images, all are employing bright splashes of color with number values in blocks, oftentimes, along with supplemental imagery to primary text, in order to tell the story that mere words would take a greater effort to tell, and perhaps struggle to do so. And it’s not only easier to editorially employ infographics, it’s most likely more effective when coupled with clear and concise writing; providing a reader a lucid sense of the thrust of data figures, and the holistic picture behind a story.
Recently, Information Aesthetics blogged what is another growing section of the multimedia story-telling industry: the animated-infographic. The animated-infographic has often been used in the political realms of late, to convey the tense emotions underlying a “hot” issue, along with corresponding raw data and explications. At times, the animated-infographic will bring in other varying elements, but that is their recent generic formula; coupled with clean, clear, simple illustrations. All, of course, animated. What Information Aesthetics recently pointed its readers’ attentions to was an interesting look at the last eight years in America and the world post-9/11.
The infographic’s title, “An Eye for an Eye,” is extracted from a line familiar to most as part and parcel to Mahatma Gandhi and his nonviolent resistance of the British colonial occupation of India. It is a truncation of Ghandi’s famous idiom, which plays on a Biblical passage (Exodus: 21-23:27) that declares proportional retaliation in law: “An eye for an eye,” amending it to: “An eye for an eye, soon leaves the whole world blind.” The animated-infographic strikingly traces the beginning of the “Global War on Terror” / “Overseas Counterinsurgency” and the events that have led America to two wars, thousands of lives lost on both sides, a drain on treasure, terrible global ripple effects and what, to some, may have been a questionable response altogether.
‘Flat to Curved’; A Look at Shaping Brick 08/30/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Design, Global, Technology, Web.comments closed
RECENTLY A Daily Dose of Architecture posted the ninth installment in their “Architectural Element” series, this time: a look at undulating bricks as a design trope. The fact that the words “brick” and “undulating” go about as seamlessly together as “rubenesque” and “anorexic” is not lost on them, however. There is this movement, nonetheless: of taking the rigid unit of masonry, the brick, and creating not cubist-type structures, but visually dynamic ones with smooth surfaces that ebb and flow. Since architects, even the most mediocre of them are ruled by inspiration, many motivated to go into the discipline by their avant-garde heroes: Fuller, Pei, Wright, Gherry and Tange; the elevated idea of taking the rectangular, seemingly unmalleable, polygonal brick and producing curved structures from them is a moment which their imagination and lofty aspirations meet the quixotic idealism of their respective giants, in some small sense.
The blog item points attention to the works of Uruguaryan engineer and architect Eladio Dieste, and his method of reinforcing bricks as highly influential in the creation of these rolling structures. Dieste became known for that dynamism as the result of his reinforced masonry technique that allowed for such imaginative, inspired and daring structures. As A Daily Dose reports in the post’s item supplement on Eladio Dieste titled “The Hyperbolic Brick of Eladio Dieste“:
Innovations in construction were necessary and integral to his engineering insights. He built prodigiously, mostly humble structures for storing and making. Yet even these humble works were raised to higher levels; the sheer daring of great spans was part of this, but only part.
In all but the most elemental of these structures other qualities emerge: the proportions of the whole; the economy and elegance of the materials; the detail of the parts; and above all, the knowing use of light as it plays on and especially as it is admitted into these buildings. These are the qualities of a building created by a fine architect. Given only a few (all too rare) special opportunities, Dieste was nonetheless undeniably an architect.
Dieste’s ways were brandished in his first architectural work: Church of Christ the Worker, a house of worship situated in a small town populated with manual laborers. Church Christ the Worker, constructed in 1952, features hour-glass shaped conical walls that meet with terminating arcs at their apex, meeting along a level planed roof. The walls of the building are thin and self-stabilizing featuring what is characterized in “The Hyperbolic Brick of Eldio Dieste” as double-curvatures. (Below: Eladio Dieste’s Church of Christ the Worker in Atlantida, Uruguay.)
Visit A Daily Dose of Architecture’s: Architecture Elements series [Here]
Read an exceprt from Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art [Here]
The Mysterious, Sharpie Gallardo 08/26/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Design, Editorial, Technology.comments closed
DEPENDING on your level of artistic inclination and exposure to the beloved permanent marker known as the Sharpie, you may posses a heavily bonded relationship (through your youth) with the marker, where backpacks were decorated and bus’ seats and bus’ walls were branded with your own personal alias’s “handstyle.” Or, perhaps, more mundanely, desks and notebooks of yours were doodled upon ad infinitum, with the beloved pen. Sharpie may have even helped you to remember injured teammates on your equipment or commemorated the moment a friend fell asleep in a drunken stupor, and became the vehicle for the kind of “human art” that is necessitated by such moments.
One thing is for sure, if your youth is connected to anything remotely similar to a “Sharpie moment,” where the marker became the expressive device for you and your friends, then a mysterious Lamborghini Gallardo decorated by what must have been 200 Sharpies (and most likely twice that number in man hours of work), that was then clear-coated to protect a yet identified artist’s handiwork, will impress you to no end.
There is not much information available on the inked-out “Lambo” that recently appeared on the Complex Magazine blog and the symbolism (if any) of the work that adorns its body, other than it is connected to Prestige Imports. What is more than likely a conversation piece for some discerning auto collector looking for an even more unique touch, or a demo item for Prestige, is now tops on my list of unnecessarily expensive cool items.
The artwork, on one of the world’s most sought after supercar models, Lamborghini’s most produced model to date, is representative of a cultural aesthetic seen in the body art movement that has diffused to the larger realm of graphic design. Its stark, contrasting monochromatic imagery melange is evocative of Nike lasered shoes from 2003-present, that were first seen on artist series projects and later the Jordan XX.
For more of the Sharpie decorated Gallardo [Here]
Ecological Skyscrapers and Urban Farming 04/03/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Design, Global.comments closed
MAXIMIZING space in urban areas is priority number one. As a green perspective has increasingly come to dominate urban planning and architecture proposals, and the world’s population is becoming more urban, both realities must find a way to be incorporated into building design: The need for maximized space and buildings built with a green perspective.
In 2050 most of the world’s population will live in cities, which makes the need for the production of vegetables and fruits on rural and semi-rural farms less desirable, as urban sprawl takes over and limits space for such enterprises, and the demand for fresher goods would require — at least, in part — the ability to produce them in locations within or very-near the city.
The answer to the problem could be the urban farm. Housing farms in skyscrapers which are able to produce food for hundreds of thousands people per tower may be a global saving grace. The inspired concept mock-ups of these five architects/firms could revolutionize agriculture.
To see the proposals [Here]
What They Don't Teach at Design School 01/08/2008
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YOU started out wide-eyed and full of hope: You were going to slap the world in the face with your talent, leaving an undeniable imprint across her countenance. You were told at your various schools: “you’re special,” “you’re awesome,” “you’re the embodiment of the future.” Then you graduate and join the workforce tagged, “Worker Bee # 7, 355, 009″ and realized that, no, you are not exactly special and that there are any number of people as smart and talented who work harder or have better connections. If you grew up participating in any kind of sport, you kind of already knew this.
Maybe someone always had cleaner no-complies or shot better in-game, or got more time because they knew the coach or even worse — it was their pops — or they could always recognize and hit that breaking curve that always left you tagging air. (The inherent problem of competition is that it’s supposedly based on talent, when it’s really based on work ethic.)
And so the realization sets in: “This is it. I’m in the game, regardless. ” And then, you have to dig your heels in and compete, go crazy, or just resign to being mediocre. And if you, like most, choose to be something, then, that’s some level of fight. That is a thing they do not teach you in school: tenacity. Schools, even the best of the “sink or swims,” kind of hold your hand. Yeah you’re penalized for not working hard, but you’re still special. They chose you out of all the applicants after all, right?
Those schools teach you only to do awesome, inspired work; everything is highfalutin. It is not like high school or elementary school where there is a rote aspect to it. (“Do your multiplication tables’ ten times tonight, kids.”) This grinding of gears, as practice. No, in the real world being in any industry — creative or not — means you have to do a lot of other stuff, before you get to the fun. It is always 80% prep and labor and 20% inspirational work. Those numbers may even be off. Maybe it is 90% to 10%?
Design Observer knows this, and their piece by New York architect, Michael McDonough, should prove to be good advice for anyone in a creative field or any field for that matter. Titled “Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School,” it should be necessary reading for those of us, myself included, who thought setting the world on fire was going to be easy. Excerpt:
1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.
