Creative Collision

Drama

The other day I was talking with some people about drama llamas (and how they stalk us). Then I saw Philip-Lorca diCorcia's photography. It fit.

A little while ago I went to see the joint exhibition by Kentaro Taki and Ko Nakajima at AUT's St Paul Street Gallery. They work with the digital media along with installations. I was initially looking forward to seeing Bild:Muell (2008) but upon getting to the gallery, I couldn't find it. I still wonder if it is there in the gallery somewhere but seeing that work on the promotional material reminded of me of a graphic explosion of the video culture presented in Rauschenberg's Retroactive I.

It was a strange exhibition. It felt messy, and although this may be the artist's hand at play, I couldn't help but feel it was a bit of a post-explosion zone. It even made it hard to appreciate the great moments of the exhibition. One segment (amidst shattered CRT screens and bits of banal bush) that I did like was Living in a Box (pictured) which was truly enrapturing. In the video projection, bits of body writhed around in what looked like a white bento box. In particular, the hand was creepy visually and aurally (the nails clicked on the sides of it's compartment), and even the gestures were charged with some cryptic emotion.

There was a great range of work, prints and Japanese calligraphy too, but it didn't seem to completely mesh together. Instead I found myself making trivial links between pieces and media. Upon leaving the exhibition, I caught the last act of Living in a Box, the orderly bento box being bashed to smithereens by a mallet-wielding female. Well, that says something at least.

Culinary

Watching Masterchef is one of my favourite reality TV past times since it is the competitive cut throat of any on-screen competition without the bitchy over-drama that often plagues the genre. And it is creative cooking.

Fine cuisine no less, the painstaking kitchen of the likes of Euro come to keen New Zealand eyes. It leaves me, the foodie that I am, pondering what that tiny droplet which, reportedly, was a sugar shell encasing a drop of olive oil, would taste, feel and be like. Who ever thought that up as the ultimate garnish had something creative going on. And it's always the mysteries of the world which affords curiosity.

Recently I was invited to dinner at Soul, which is possibly the closest I will be to super fine dining in the nearish future. My four ravioli (I regret not ordering six!) sat at the bottom of an interesting visual delight of salad. Prying open the forest of roasted herbs, a bed of cress was revealed. Undoubtedly, the combination of flavours was superb. What got to me was how the dish was designed, so almost unsimple about the way it was formed and given as an experience. After having wrestled with the idea since Creative Collision's conception, I decided that the culinary should take a proud spot on this blog.

Notice the new category 'Culinary' appear on the menu at Creative Collision. Foodie adventures, travels and experiences - only the deliciously creative shall make it to this blog.

Data

Corporates are fast catching onto the idea of using creative mapping and tracking techniques to essentially 'brand' their product. Nike, an innovator of the sports industry, shows us with their GRID programme that technology can act to gather data on the trivialities of life. How far did you run? How fast did you jog? How does this data even get used without seeming silly?

A while ago I tried Nokia's Sports Tracker application which was a bit half baked. Subsequently it closed down. It looks like the technology has now been applied to snowboarding, which is very cool sport in its own right. So data is being used to brand their product, or support the brand. Being able to capture the essence of kinetic energy in creative graphics is a leap in not only the technology, but the way people can read into their own actions and how that affects the way we think about them.

The same way old school branding, such as logo design, a full set of stationery and a colour scheme, can influence the way we perceive an organisation, this method of incorporating the true heartbeat of the people into the branding/campaign goes that much further.

Anime

I recently read a book that explained (in a really American cultural domination sort of way) the significance of manga in Japan. Manga, which is sort of like comics without the Western comic stereotype, serves as a form of wider social communication in Japanese society with a kick of entertainment value.

Anime, what the Japanese call cartoons, is just as large a world in all its variations. Dark, humorous, cutesy, pretty, deep and shallow... you can find it. This brilliant montage of all those different styles pokes fun at the range that mere animation has over our understanding of the world. And it's really awesome.

Constrain2

Carrying on from the themes of Constrain, here is an interesting project that tries to draw out the invisible Wifi landscape. Immaterials: light painting WiFi uses a rod of pulsating LEDs with long exposure photography to detect and map Wifi presence. This concept is obviously a mere budding technology, but imagine the practical/aesthetic based awareness-of-Wifi systems such a technology could develop into. In an age where the net is inevitably important, I can see this indicator being applied all over our urban lands in the future.

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Behind Creative Collision

Drama

Box

Culinary

Data

Anime

Constrain2