This awesome talk by Patricia Ryan added to my confusion around language:

Eventually we put “engineering” and “art” on opposite ends of a spectrum and decided design falls somewhere in the middle. Going towards the art end on that spectrum, once we are past design, things get really hard for me to grasp and apparently for Kate same is true going in the opposite direction.

I promised I would post definitions (from Webster Dictionary) of both on my blog so here they are:

ART: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects

DESIGN: the arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art

I don’t think I agree with either of these definitions but I am a lot more likely to challenge the definition of design than the definition of art.

For example the waitress at the restaurant who messes up my order 3 times, or the cab driver who doesn’t know how to get to an obvious location and takes double the time to get where you are trying to get to etc. I get annoyed and disappointed,  most of the time my gut feeling is to let it go, “it didn’t cause that much of an inconvenience to me anyways”. Especially when these people are nice enough, and their incompetence is obviously not intentional, I don’t know how to tell them it’s actually not ok that they wasted my time (and potentially my money) and left me dissatisfied.

life is hard….

Am I the only one with a box full of different sizes, shapes, colors, patterns and textures of notebooks/sketchbooks sitting somewhere waiting to be used while I am looking at other lovable ones at those lovable museum shops? When I was at the MCA last week and at the museum store I came across “Keel’s Simple Diary” which I thought was pretty cool. The idea behind this diary is that keeping a diary is a difficult thing, sometimes you don’t know where to start, what to say, it is too much work to begin with a blank page. (Well that’s my explanation, for theirs you can check out the website) For everyday, it asks you one question and gives you multiple choice answers. For example, “Your day was ()a drift, () a hot tub, () a shift”. You are supposed to pick one and explain why. For people like me who have attempted to start a diary a couple of times and never did it successfully it seems like a nice option. I am proud to say, I did not buy it because I feel bad for all the other nice little notebooks I have at home waiting to be used. If you are wondering, this is how I am coping with the desire to buy it =).

Hellmann’s – It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

Does everyone want to have their own manifesto one day or is it just me?

View Turkey – for Nasreen and Banny in a larger map

(image credit to Wilkins 5418 residents and their friends =)

I am going to be moving out of my apartment in Pittsburgh very soon. I have been thinking about how I am going to go about packing and transporting everything I have here. It’s funny thinking about how my Pittsburgh adventure started with the two suitcases full of stuff. Now if I tried to fit only the books I have acquired during the last 4 years in those two suitcases I probably would not be able to.
Books are very special to me. I frequently find myself thinking about what a certain book on my shelf might mean to me in the far future. Every time I read a book, it gets stored in my memory intertwined with whatever is going on in my life at that time. In short, they are personal to me and I like “having” them. I love the idea of libraries and I love going to libraries and spending time looking at random books but I am also a fan of book ownership.

Ex-libris (also known as bookplates) are based on the idea of book ownership. I think the first time I ever heard of their existence was when an ex-libris exhibition came to Istanbul years ago. Here is a good description of what they are:

“An Ex-libris or bookplate is a small graphic label or print, which is glued to the inside cover of a book with the purpose of identifying its owner. The Latin phrase ‘Ex libris…’, means from the books of…, and is usually followed by the name of the owner of the book, who can be an individual or an institution. In general, ex-libris are commissioned from artists by persons wishing to mark the ownership of the volumes of their library in a more decorative and elegant way than by just writing their name inside. Printed ex-libris have been used in this way for over 500 years, although earlier hand-painted ones are known and even small ceramic plates which were attached to papyrus scrolls, saying that they belonged to the library of Pharaoh Amenophis III.” from Istanbul Ex-Libris Society website.
The examples are from Philippe Masson Ex-Libris Collection.