April 13th, 2009
Have been visiting the Pililotti Rist exposition in Boymans van Beuningen. Pipilotti is a video artist. Her exposition is named ‘Elixer’. The exposition is called a video’organism’. Visitor are invited to participate in the organism: entering a sort of body in the semidark, lots of curtains. Plenty of rooms you are invited to lay down, you can watch the video’s projected on the ceiling, floor and/or walls. The ‘organism’ metaphor is suiting her art, which is very organic: a sort of sweet, LSD trip with flowers, trees, lots of Pipi herself and all supported with psychedelic music made by Pipilotti herself. You can get a pretty good idea watching this trailer. I liked ‘homo sapiens sapiens’ a lot, but I must say I got a little bit fed up with it aftter having seen 6 of the 9 installations. I got a little bit bored by the colourful sweetness.
But …… not half as much as I liked Saskia Olde Wolbers. The work of Pipi slightly reminded me of Wolbers work but than: Wolbers really impressed me. Actually, she was the first videoartist I ever liked. Until I have seen her work I associated video art with a boring symbolistic artist hocus pocus. Looking for hours at an empty chair or seeing a hand trying to catch mud over and over. More a symbol of the ‘unconventional anti-bourgouis’ character of the artists than a piece you might actually want to watch. Wolders work is not at all like that. It is mesmerizing. I guess it is influenced by dance and it has like Pililottes work a psychodelic, organic aspect. But the difference is: you don’t get bored. Actually, you can’t get enough of it. The reason might be that you get a lot of story in her work. It is like ‘alineating, empty story’ . But still … story. Drame, development. If you ever get the chance to see her, please do! You could watch this YouTube example, but it doesn’t do complete credit to her work
Tags: art & literature, olde wolbers, pipilotti
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March 30th, 2009
Reading Roland Barthes ‘Mythologies’ is fun to do. It brings you to look at the world through the eyes of the ‘mythologist’. Barthes is interested in finding the myths that are hidden in messages. As a structuralist he is looking for the patterns of meaning hidden in stories and in day-to-day pictures. He defines the myth as the meaning that is on a higher level. The original code is replaced by a code of higher order: the code of the story that is told indirectly and therefore so much more powerful than the official stories that scream out loud their meaning.
I found an interesting one in my daily of last Saturday (NRC). It was hidden in a diagram above an article on the economic developments. The scheme depicts the level of the Dow Jones index from the late seventies up to today. I have copied it above. This blog is not at all about the way the Dow Jones developped during the last 30 years. That is the literal meaning of the diagram. With Barthes I am interested in the meaning behind that. We see that the illustrator chose to depict the graph as a crack in the wall. A crack is a strong signal of decline. A sign on the wall so to say, signifiing that the house has not been taken care of well.
Very meaningful is the starting point of this crack in the early 80-ies, at the beginning of the recovery of the economy. As long as the Dow Jones Index is stable (but low), there is no crack. There are no devolopments. Things are therefor safe. Like a blissful poverty. You have got little, but you know what you have.
As soon as the curve starts to bend upward, the crack develops. The unspoken message here seems to be that at the root of economic prosperity there are already the seeds of decline. At the time it may have looked quite well to see the Dow Jones rise. But at hindsight we detect the beginning of the problems. This also signifies the feeling that this crisis is of a different level then the crisis between ‘ 79 and 2002. This is a fundamental one, that started in the early 80-ies, a sort of a ‘system problem’.
This represents quite a powerful theme we often see in stories about economics. I remember very well the early 2000, when the most cited economics stated that now the times had shifted towards a stable growth for ever and ever. Although the more cunning economists of course never believed this story, the feeling was very optimistic overall. Interviewing consumers however showed a strong hidden fear. Consumers were getting a little anxious because they had in mind the very strong the story of decline after prosperity. Since decline had to come, they wondered: when? Also they felt that prosperity brought us too much problems, like an egoïsm and materialistic, individualistic view on the world. Another strong theme: as prosperity growth, so do the vices associated with it (read Simon Schama’s wonderful study about the outrageous increase of wealth in 17th century Amsterdam, ‘The Embarrassment of Riches’)
The crack is growing to gigantic proportions a few years ago (2005), signifying the final fall of the economy started before we were actually aware of it . This is very much in resonance with our idea of a big fall: as in the cartoon when the character is still proceeding as he thinks he is still on the ground. But the spectator knows better. The character is already in the big void. As soon as he looks down and becomes aware of this, he falls down. And hard (being a comic, surviving the fall). The big fall of our economy is therefore placed in a time before the clash in september last year, allowing the theme of idle sense of stability to emerge.
Of course we see the opposite theme as a very strong theme now: after the healthy decline a new era will follow.
Tags: decline, economy, myths, roland barthes
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March 22nd, 2009
A few weeks ago Dave Snowden wrote a post on his blog about the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, Monderman was a visionary. He was the first to recognize that the way we try to control traffic is counter productive. The signs – like he put it – are not there to prevent accidents, they are there to prevent legal ambiguity after an accident. In Monderman’s view a road should be made in such a way that signs are not necessary. The basic paradox is that the more you lines, traffic lights, traffic signs you add the less safety you get. One of the reasons is a false sense of safity: the drivers trust the signs and take less attention to the real traffic. He introduced the concept of shared space. In stead of heavy control, separating differcnt sorts of traffic (pedestrians, cyclists, cars) the road should be shared. This creates a safe behaviour. The picture shows an example of this in Brighton (picture from Wikipedia). Monderman recieved the innovation prize for this concept in 2006.
Tom Vanderbilt with his ‘Traffic – why we drive the way we drive’ shows strong evidence that a two-way road without a line in the middle is safer than a road with a clear line: the drivers adept their behaviour, are afraid to get to the wrong side of the road and take more attention to traffic. This is in my opinion a basic metaphor: the harder you try to control whatever you want to control, the less you succeed. The superior solution is a loose sort of control. Not a ‘laissez faire’ but a careful steering of emergent actions to a desired pattern.
Monderman designed roads and crossroads with a minimum of signs, all of them showed significant less accidents. Allthough his legecy is now growing, in Holland it is officially declared that his ideas are applicable ONLY within slow traffic zones. The allmighty Dutch ANWB just started a big campaign to bring the government to add MORE striping on the so called ‘ 80 Kilometer an hour’-road. This is an effort to claim back control. It resonates very well with the classical control mechanisms, always in favour of more signs. They use research to back up this policy and claim to be able to save hundreds of lives with addes striping. This is based on a case where new striping was added. The research made a classical mistake however, because not only the striping was changed, but on top of that the police started rigorous speed control with a dedicated team. It is more than likely that so called ’striping effect’ was nil in comparison to the other measures.
Tags: control, monderman, traffic jam
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March 15th, 2009
We are working again on a few co-creation projects. In those projects we host a workshop with consumer and clients. We offer a process that enables the participants to work productive and creatively together. We do that in an inspiring environment (we have developed a co-creation room for exactly that purpose). We mingle consumer and clients in subgroups that work independently. We set up assignments that are non analytical and designed to loosen up the mind and encourage lateral thinking. The clients (those responsible for creating the product or service) directly work with consumer on whatever needs to be done. It is wonderful to see how productive it is in innovation projects to take away the wall between client and consumer. It is also great to see the level of engagement by both consumer and client. In a session we had last friday several respondents took pictures of the session because they liked participating so much. Of course these where motivated consumer and the subject was high involvement to them. But the interesting fact is that they would not have been so enthusiastic if it had been ‘just’ a research. The differentiating factor was that they new now that they where asked by the client to work together with them on new ideas.
The same effect we saw with the client. Often we see that it is hard to keep ‘discipline’ in the viewing room. Rather sooner than later discussions take away the attention from what is happening in ‘the other room’. And for viewers it often is tempting to reject the answers – especially for staff responsible for product, website, or service development. The consumer – in their eyes – doesn’t always understand the difficulties of there job. If you take away the wall, it becomes impossible to start a conversation on either the research (or on the rate of mortgage interest): you have no time for that. And directly confronted with consumer, the frustration is taken away a bit: you can’t just deny what is been said and you are able to ask questions. Now those responsible for making – in this case – a website were able to test their ideas and thoughts directly by sharing them with consumer.
As a consequence you see a level of engagement that you don’t normally see.
Inspired by the beautiful results of the co-creation workshops, I would like to talk about the methodology background of co-creation workshops. I have this urge because of the resistance I still feel with clients to the approach of workshops with consumer and clients working together on new concepts. There are a few major fears:
- will the consumer not be afraid and be intimidated by the client?
- what about objectivity? Do we get objective results?
- the consumer has no phantasy and is not able to ‘think outside the box’. We only get diluted ideas in this way
The first one is very easy. As if any client could be intimidating! As if consumers would be intimidated nowadays by any authority! I mean: doctors have to follow the exact instructions of partly illiterate consumers who have been doing web-research on their complaints. Teachers have problems with parents insisting on a special treatment for their kids. And the consumer would shy away from a marketing manager or new product developer? They won’t and they don’t. I have been doing co-creation workshops with very senior clients and it never has been a problem at all.
Now about the second one. In the old research paradigm the ‘scientific’ value is in objectivity. In order to have objective results, a wall is needed between consumer and client. The researcher is the ‘middle man’, not biased, not interested in the outcome and therefore a guarantee to an objective outcome. The client is allowed to watch trough the one way mirror. A basic assumption is that there is an objective truth that can be found if looked for in the right (that is: unbiased) way. In qualitative research this objective truth often is finding out about consumers emotions and needs. If this objective truth is delivered by the research project, you can use the results to implement. You can sort of ‘deliver’ the results (preferably in a report) to the client. Enlightened by the truth the right actions, as prescribed in the recommendations, can be taken with improved advertising, product development or websites as a consequence and Everyone Will Live Happy Thereafter.
However, in thinking about solutions in improving products, designs or services, there is not such a thing as a ‘guaranteed, objective’ to success. Objective and rational thinking is not the right attitude for innovation. Objectivity and analytical thinking is very important but it is not useful in a creation phase. Creation is more like ‘evolution’. In evolution there are no right solutions, there are many solutions. The evolutionists describe a ‘field of possibilities‘ with barriers and attractors (a fitness landscape) that is in a constant flux. It is not possible to find the right solution by reason, because you can’t control the environment (as you can in a scientific experiment where you have carefully taken away all context and test in an idealized situation that will never occur in reality. That’s why evolution is in favor of many solutions and of variations. There is not an objective and reproducible road to any solution. It is more a model of ‘trial and error’. You see it when you get there.
So as opposed to the ‘analytical mode’ – that is archetypical for a research situation – you would be interested in a ‘integration mode’. Far more important words that help you in the creation process would be ‘imagination’ and ‘involvement’. It is exactly those values that tend to get lost in an analytic approach. And it is exactly those values that are there in a well moderated co-creation workshop.
Now the last fear. Will a consumer be able to fruitfully participate in an innovation project?. Could it be unwise to ask the consumer to think together with the client over any innovation? Doesn’t the consumer stick with ‘the old rules’? Here we see the old fear as described in my ‘Alfa or beta’ blog. The consumer as destroyer of ideas. And the researcher as the facilitator of this mass idea construction. Extended experience with co-creation has learned us otherwise. The idea of the ‘stupid consumer that doesn’t understand real innovation’ is rooted in wrong questions. If you asked a consumer 30 years ago ‘are you interested in machines that dispose money after entering a 4-digit code’ you were bound the get negative answers (as the research did). But that is basically: bringing the consumer to an analytical mode. So the answer is: if you set up the workshop in the right way, the consumer is not acting as ‘innovation-destroyer’.
A bit of a long story. Sorry about that. And I haven’t been able to write half of what I wanted to touch. I would like to dive deeper into this in a paper that I intend to write.
Tags: analytical, co-creation, evolution, fitness landscape, innovation
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March 12th, 2009
Research is often despised for its ‘beta-faults’: in its worst stereotyped research is supposed to ‘kill ideas’. This is a strong theme. In a narrative research I conducted a few years ago with Marieke Smets, the theme came out loud and was cartooned as a research lab that is designed to kill ideas, the idea maker can only watch their superior ideas to be destroyed. The fear of this is so strong that every qualitative researcher has to deal with suspicious creatives or idea-owners. The suspicion is a strong influencer of the whole research process. In order to be able to ‘control’ the creatives and ‘idea-owners’ often create a negative atmosphere, commenting on all aspects of the research (lousy respondents, bad questions, bad interview). This in itself arouses a further hostile atmosphere that creates a bad environment for research on innovative ideas.
However, as bad as a beta fault can be, there is also the chance of an alpha fault. There are a few famous examples. A fairly recent one was the ‘new Coca Cola taste’. It was tested and found a major improvement. The innovation died a quick death, after consumer started a massive protest against the disappeared ‘trusted taste’. Another example is older: a few decades ago a cigarette without smoke was designed, and thoroughly tested. It had to be withdrawn in a few days. Nobody bought it.
Here the mechanism is completely different. A collective wrong focus. Together with the client, the researchers share a tunnel vision. Context is ignored, common sense replaced by a shared vision of Reality As It Could Be If Only It Was The Way We Wanted It.
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March 8th, 2009
In my early days as a researcher I studied statistics quite deep. Although I am trained as a qualitative researcher I wanted to understand the quantitative view as well. Since I had the exact variant’ in highschool, I had enough maths background to appreciate this stuff and even to like it. I recall the distinction between ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ mistakes. As I recall it, alpha mistake meant that you had rejected the hypothesis where shouldn’t have rejected it. The beta mistake was the other way round: you rejected it but you shouldn’t have. It depends on the type of hypothesis which mistake is worse. You could use the alpha and beta faults in qual as well. A beta mistake would occur for in stance if you reject an idea on basis of your qualitative findings, that would actually have worked well in reality. This is the sort of crime that research accused of by idea makers: research kills ideas.
I have been given a hilarious video about a qualitative example of a ‘beta mistake’: a focus group to find out the attitude towards a new invention (the wheel). The research method seemed to have been designed in order to ‘falsify’ the new invention. The video is a must see. It is also a very strong stereotypical story of How Research Kills New Ideas. It sort of demonetises the focus group method, showing how a researcher COULD go completely astray by encouraging the wrong kind of rationalisations. Click on the link to see it if you want to have laugh.
2_focusgroup-desktop
It could be used as an instruction video, asking students to pinpoint the Four Major Mistakes.The biggest mistake is setting up a focus group about this as an idea. Innovation can only be discussed in a focus group if it is incremental innovation as opposed to rule breaking innovation. The second mistake is the test material. If you would have rule breaking innnovation, you would need to show context and future use situations. Third is the recruitment. If you have a rule breaking innovation and you would like to discuss it in you shouldn’t invite the average consumer. You recruit either consumers who are into innovation or even ’semi-experts’. The fourth mistake is the moderation. The moderator gives plenty of room for post rationalisations. The human brain works counter intuitive. We think that our thoughts and opinions precede our choices. In reality it is reverse: we choose and than create opinions according to the choice. The reversed timing can be monitored: they occor as recurrent patterns in the brain after the choice has been made. It is therefor a big mistake to dive to deep into opinions and beliefs, especially in innovation, because there is a tendency in the human brain to dislike the new. A logo is liked more as it has been seen more often. This is referred to as the ‘mere-exposure’ effect. Since innovative stuff can never have been ’seen often’ it is disadvantaged in a test situation (and in the real situation as a matter of fact).
Tags: innovation
Posted in innovation, marketing research | 3 Comments »
March 1st, 2009
Just got back from a ski-holiday in France. As you are skiing in those steady rocks, you don’t really feel that you are actually within an area of – geological spoken – young mountains: round and about 60 million years young. In our timescale there is nothing as solid as a rock. However, for archeologists rock is all but steady. It is hard for us to really understand the timescale of geologists. I remember a ‘geographers talk’ in the Grand Canyon. He disclosed that the Grand Canyon emerged in an extremely short time period: only 17 milioen years. It is quite certain that it wil erode away in a short timescale as well: it is eroding at a pace of 16 centimetres every 1000 years, so it will have been half the depth it has now within 5 million years. In the earth timetable this is peanuts. A geologic whim.
You could argue that within the time frameof human civilisation it is as close as you can get to stability. One million years ago there might have been manlike creatures, but not the home sapiens (or homo ludens as Huizinga calls us or home narrens as Snowden does).
Yet it is a good example of how we underestimate change. It appears as if our mind is inclined to see stability in a world that is all but stable. We have the inclination to forecast the future as a straightforward function of the present. Not so long ago all science fiction literature was all about ‘the cold war in 3000 and something’. The future was – as it always is – an exaggeration of the current state. In the beginning of the 2oth century the big fear in London was that in the further future horses manure would become a major problem. Again, a forecast based upon (at that time) current reality taken to the extreme in the future (think about the mess in a city of 16 million people, half of them riding a horse!).
The funny thing is that we appear to have an extremely short memory. Once we have passed through a phase change, we forget all about the previous states we were in. Take for instance the internet and the on line possibilities. I remember quite vivid the year of 2000 when the internet bubble collapsed. There was a clear concensus in society that internet would not deliver the bright future that it had seemed to do only a short time before. The new business models were not solid enough, there was not enough added value in the internet. Funny how only a few years later Google apparently is thé example of new business models. And presented by the same media that not so long ago were absolutely certain about the internet economy as a failed concept. Funny how, hardly without noticing, our lives changed dramatically in a practical sense. I am writing this with my laptop where it should be according to its name, sitting on the bank (after watching Ajax winning from Utrecht). Checking some English words on my i-phone with the famous Van Dale (a Dutch dictionnary) installed as an applet. Before choosing to watch a movie on the TV I check the rating at www.imdb.com (above 7 you will never be disappointend). If I choose to work, I log in to my office network, finding all reports, agenda, emails that I need to look at.
The interesting thing is not that I can do all this. The interesting thing is that I hardly notice how different this is from only 4 years ago, let alone from the practice when I started to work (in 1989, at Ferro there was one stand alone computer. The idea of a network existed already, but not for small companies like Ferreo). We wrote reports by hand, these were typed out on the single computer we had). I am not living in a constant ‘wow’. It is just that I forgot about how things were a few years ago. Only if I deliberately imagine the before-internet habits I do feel: ‘wow. That is different’. You could blame our memory for this. That would be false. It is not exaclty that our memory is fault, for we do remember the past. It is just that we have accepted the new order as ‘normal’. This blog is not about bad memory, it is about superiour adaptation.
It is exactly this adaptation that creates the second important illusion: the illusion of stability.
Tags: changes, illusion, stability
Posted in Complexity theory, Philosophic | No Comments »
February 18th, 2009
It ’s a typical adolescent thing: to ask yourself ‘who am I’. The interesting thing is that the adolescent – and the adult – define themselves always as part of the group. A wonderful way to see this, is in ‘exactitudes‘: two Dutch guys, the photographers Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek, portraying people who have the same kind of ‘image’. This website is interesting for anyone exploring the meaning of individuality. You can savour the contrasts of individual vs groups. Individual is the choice of the group you want to belong to. The choice to be different – with others.
Funny how strong the illusion of ourselves as an individual is. And to see how we boil down our ‘individual selves’ to the part of us we know best: our conscious thoughts. We feel our choices to be completely free. We feel we make our own decisions in our conscience mind. The fact is however that our choices are contextual, based on influences we do not always notice. We react to our company. Our voice adapts (without us noticing) to status: the pitch raises if we meet a ‘boss’ and lowers if we feel socially above. This is all behaviour that has been measured and proved – but we are not aware of it. How much individuality is in behaviour we are not aware of?
There is a different level where the illusion of individuality is in tension with reality. In our world achievements are important (sometimes even in the circles that are achievement-aversive, competing in being more averse to achievement than others). We are highly trained in perceiving personal achievements as ‘individual’: something to be proud of as a person. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you look at any achievement under a looking glass, you will have to notice that there are no ‘purely’ individual achievements. I write this blog on a Mac Air. The software is developed by Blog Press. I lend all of the words from the English language, that – by chance – is the product of many language like Frisian (my origins are from “Fryslan”), French and many others. I learned the language at school. The thoughts I express are lend, if there is any originality in it is the blending of ideas. If there is any skill in language usage, I probably inherited it from my father (a preacher) and my mother (very good in telling stories). But we flourish on the idea of our own achievements. It has been proved that we get depressed if we do not indulge in a exaggerated idea about our own contribution to our successes. We need that ego-boost.
A third level. We are not that aware of how ‘others’ interact with and even ‘form’ our individual selves. I have been living for 23 years with my wife, 20 years of those with our eldest son and 17 with the second one. I live with these persons every day. I am working in a company I bought in 1998. Some of the employees I have been working with for almost 20 years, and I meet them at an almost daily basis. One of my best friends has become a brother in law 15 years ago. We have spend long hours disputing, exchanging ideas. Al of these persons have influenced in one way or another in the way I think, how I feel, how I take my decisions. What is the individual me? Where does it start? Where does it stop?
A fourth level in the ‘illusion of individuality’. Like me as one person. Or you as one. How different are you if you are with your three best friends or with your colleges? How different are you if you are in the company of superiors? If you talk to a beautiful male/female? If you enter a shop? Some of the ‘role changes’ are marked with different clothing. By wearing uniform. By changing attitude.
in the illusion of individuality. The illusion of myself as an invariant phenomenon. The illusion of me being the same as the person I have vivid memories of as a child. There is no single cell in my body that is the same as it was at the time of these memories. Psychology has proven that even these memories are not so much as ‘movies’ ‘proofs of the past’ but as a continuously retold story, changing through time without me noticing. If I look back carefully I see read threads through time, but also many changes. What we tend to see as a clear cut nucleus (our personality) is actually a cloud with not very defined shapes, to be interpreted in many, many ways and to change continiously.
And I do not think that this is a purely individual, philosophic fantasy. There are important implications to marketing and research. If we think that clients are ‘clear cut individuals with predictable choice patterns’ we might be wrong. If our marketing is based upon that conception, the marketing could be wrong.
Tags: art & literature, illusion, individuality, marketing
Posted in Philosophic, marketing research | No Comments »
February 14th, 2009
Illusions are interesting phenomena, because they reveal where our thinking gets wrong. An illusion reveals that we make sense of the world in a way that is consistent internal, but not necessarily consistent with the actual reality. There are classes of illusions, like the photo next (from this very interesting website dedicated to optical illusions) is revealing that our brain uses ‘tricks’ to calculate the nearness and size of objects. These tricks can be used to mislead the brain.
Optical illusions reveal ‘faults’ the way we make sense of visual stimuli. It is more difficult to reveal mistakes in the way we make sense of other data. Like the illusion that mankind is the crown of the creation. Or that language is the basis of our thinking. Or that we steer our own thinking. Five illusions that delude us quite often:
1 the illusion of individuality
2 the illusion of stability
3 the illusion of truth as a binary phenomenon (true or false, right or wrong)
4 the illusion of insight and understanding
5 the illusion of knowledge transfer as a rational phenomenon.
In my following blogs I would like to write about those illusions, culminating in the sixth: the illusion of control. I don’t think these represent a complete and systematic framework of ‘thinking illusions’. But I hope that thinking and writing about them will give me some insight in how we (I, my clients and maybe you) withhold progress in our thinking, and how we systematically deceive ourselves in order to keep alive the illusion of control.
Posted in Complexity theory, Philosophic, marketing research | 1 Comment »
February 9th, 2009
I am a big fan of Dylan Thomas ever since I heard a recording of him reciting his poem ‘do not go gentle into that good night’. I heard that 30 years ago on the radio and can still hear him almost singing this poem. I remember that it was followed by a piece of music from Stravinsky, based on this very poem. I have never ever heard it again (if anyone knows where I can get the recording of the combination of poem and music, please let me know) but I did buy the Collected poems.
The language Thomas uses, is actually too difficult for me. Some of his poems I don’t get at all, but when I am fascinated by them that doesn’t stop me from reading them over and over. But when I think about it: that happens to me with Dutch poets as well. The simple concept of meaning doesn’t apply to poetry. It is not possible to get the ‘full meaning’ by definition. Poetry is interesting because the meaning is not a fixed, simple thing. It changes every time you read the poem, it evolves during the time. The meaning grows and evolves. This characteristic applies to many more means of communication, but we do not always realise that. Come to think of it: everything apart from user manuals (and nobody but the writers understand those) shares this characteristic with poems, only less obvious.
Another interesting phenomenon about poems is the hybrid between form and meaning. You can’t separate them. The medium is the message. The words are the message. Especially with Dylan Thomas, who sort of moulds the words by reusing them throughout the poem in slightly different ways. Every time you read the word again in a new context, the meaning of the previous one is echoed, and in this way the words catch more meaning during the poem. But you would never be able to tell how. It is not an obvious meaning that you could define in a dictionary. It is more like the meaning of music. You can’t tell it, you just have to read it. As an experiment I will give you the last couplet of a poem that sort of keeps me busy the last days:
Flower, flower the peoples fusion.
Oh light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh’s vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.
Probably if you read this, you won’t be completely off the world at all, because the words have not yet been ‘moulded’ for you. You haven’t yet had the previous four times ‘flesh’ was used, or the three times of ‘ all and all’ (not to mention the other times the word ‘all’ is used single) or the opening couplet, linking ‘oil’ to both lave and ice. And this as only the linking through words. There is echo in meaning as well.
So try to read the whole poem, and see what happens!
Tags: Add new tag, art & literature, poetry, semiotic
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Have been visiting the Pililotti Rist exposition in Boymans van Beuningen. Pipilotti is a video artist. Her exposition is named ‘Elixer’. The exposition is called a video’organism’. Visitor are invited to participate in the organism: entering a sort of body in the semidark, lots of curtains. Plenty of rooms you are invited to lay down, you can watch the video’s projected on the ceiling, floor and/or walls. The ‘organism’ metaphor is suiting her art, which is very organic: a sort of sweet, LSD trip with flowers, trees, lots of Pipi herself and all supported with psychedelic music made by Pipilotti herself. You can get a pretty good idea watching this trailer. I liked ‘homo sapiens sapiens’ a lot, but I must say I got a little bit fed up with it aftter having seen 6 of the 9 installations. I got a little bit bored by the colourful sweetness.
