As I waited in line at Boston Logan International Airport, I enjoyed the anonymous shadows projected from one of the escalators in the lobby. One by one, they would come down to join me in line with bag in hand. Although I knew that they were one of me, their clear context of travel was made surreal and abstract by the window shading. I appreciated this dreamy moment to preface a ten hour flight in general darkness.
Uncategorized, 6/context 
(1) Apr 8, '07
Shortly after I arrived in Milan, I ordered a green tea. By the time I was to finally leave the cafe, I realized that the little decorative display that came with my tea was functional — my mind sort of blocked it out as being a lemon slice and instead interpreted it as some kind of flower. Looking at it now, the shrouded toothpick seems to signal a kind of warning to me to “stay away”; and furthermore green tea is not normally served with lemon. There was a mixup of competing context-s for my attention, and my jetlag wasn’t helping any bit.
That’s okay as in the end, I didn’t have to mutilate the lemon slice and managed to preserve the arrangement in its original state to live forever in a photograph.
I had promised to add more desktop pattern images over winter break but my break never came. Since I was taking so long, reader/designer Bert Mahoney sent me a few desktop patterns to help me finish this task. My fonts were different so I went and did a few more thanks to Bert’s encouragement.
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Desktop pattern for a normal 4:3 aspect ratio screen (~50kb).
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Desktop pattern for a 16:9 widescreen (~50kb).
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The Third Law time expresses the importance of watching (or at least enjoying) one’s springs.
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Desktop pattern for a normal 4:3 aspect ratio screen (~50kb).
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Desktop pattern for a 16:9 widescreen (~50kb).
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As I am a fan of all forms of education, my favorite Law remains the Fourth Law learn.
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Desktop pattern for a normal 4:3 aspect ratio screen (~50kb). [hc]
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Desktop pattern for a 16:9 widescreen (~50kb). [hc]
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In the Fifth Law differences I mean to express that if there’s a yin, there’s a yang.
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Desktop pattern for a normal 4:3 aspect ratio screen (~50kb). [hc]
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Desktop pattern for a 16:9 widescreen (~50kb). [hc]
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Keep your eye off the road to become aware of the Sixth Law context, but try not to forget where you’re going.
PS Bert selected the colors for Law 3 and Law 4 for me in the examples he had sent. That certainly made it easy for me. Not having to think–that’s real simplicity. Thank you Bert!
3/ time, 4/ learn, 5/differences, 6/context, deskpat (10) Jan 13, '07
A month ago in an early morning car ride in the Bay Area, I was recovering from giving a lecture that didn’t go well. failure is something that I do well, and there’s nothing like a 4AM ride to get the ghosts in your head to come out in full force. As with all steps taken in one direction, another road magically appears. In this case it came in the form, literally, of a magician.
My driver that morning was a magician in his late 60s. A proud man with a wonderful laugh, he carried with himself an air of jest and enlightenment. I told him the story of my misfortune, to which he replied in a serious tone, “Well, did you try doing a magic trick?” He went on to saying how for every one hundred good shows you’re bound to have a bad one. His advice was to shrug it off with a simple abracadabra.
I tried to learn some of his secrets that morning but of course a good magician never tells. The one thing that I did manage to pry from him was the concept of indirection. His point was that nobody likes to be tricked; at the same time they all love to be pleasantly surprised. When their attention is focused on one place, it is then that the opportunity to pull something out of left field becomes a possibility. It was then that I realized that a magician is the master of consciously shifting their audience’s unconscious context.
This story is relevant for the fact that on a daily basis I see consumer’s rained upon with the branded promise of “simplicity” and good things that are “simple” (as on the tub of ice cream in the photo above). Perhaps the belief that the power of suggestion is good enough. But I think the magic might be wearing off, and it might be time for the emergence of the power of indirection. What if complexity were the promise, and instead simplicity were what was ultimately delivered? I think that I might start believing in magic if this became the norm.
Hong Kong-based architect Gary Chang showed this grainy picture of a “cageman” house. The structure is a low-cost unit that measures 1-meter by 2-meters where each unit is stacked vertically in a warehouse-like enclosure. There is no privacy as part of the living style of the cagemen, and naturally their belongings are pared down to only the barest of essentials a la reduce. Gary says that the inhabitants prefer living in the cages over regular living units because the spaces have the value of constant social interaction–surprisingly the cost difference to rent a cage versus a small flat is not significant.
Gary scored a bit hit with the design of his suitcase house built near the Great Wall. This building is a single story structure where when you walk in, all you see is a simple floor stretched across the entire building with no walls. The trick is that the floors fold and flip to reveal a kitchen, bath, bedroom and other components in the spirit of hide as developed in the first Law.
Describing his own tiny flat, Gary showed how he creates space on-demand by reconfiguring the elements based upon the time of day. For instance, he has a huge bed, that folds up to make space for his dining area with a kitchen that swings out, and then when finished eating he pops open his work space and then by the evening his projection TV screen unfurls with all other elements stowed away to create a personal theater. At the end of the day, everything vanishes and his bed folds out to continue the active cycling of his immediate living realm. It all looked quite simple to the audience, but by virtue of Gary’s subtle mastery of the art of context.
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