Functionalfate is a blog tied to a research project/museum exhibition about the ubiquitous white plastic chair. Discussion and other good links on MeFi; Seen in ThingsMagazine. Yet another example of “Yes, but is it art?”

Looks like there’s more info about the CanUX speaker list coming up in September (I’m one of said speakers; that’s why I blog this). Should be an exciting event – and a good opportunity for a vacation. Did I mention it’s been a few years?

Two films to consider:
2046 is a fascinatingly visual film (nice collage of stills here.) with an unconventional narrative flow that is unique and yet almost soothingly familiar. Topic? Uhh, storytelling, memory, love, relationships.

Me You and Everyone We Know deals with (among many other things) the beauty (or the art) in the ordinary and the everyday – finding what is beautiful and fascinating in what is ordinary, and taking simple steps to make the ordinary beautiful and fascinating.

Both are complex and rich films which I am not trying to review or summarize here. Merely recommend. Reviews of 2046 and Reviews of MYaEWK

Nice Fast Company Now piece on (according to P&G) what design requires in order to change business cultures:
. a senior management champion
. to live in the business units
. to be integrated early in the process
. a voice
. measurement of the bottom-line impact

Michael Surtees blogs I Love My Chair, a coffee table book-to-be with individually submitted images of people’s chairs and stories of those chairs. It’s a project by user research firm Sense Worldwide who like to create artifacts or events that reflect the culture they are detecting (see NoWax, their take on iPod-DJing).

Step into a world of luxury with the Herbeau Creations Dagobert Throne Toilet

. Take your bathroom back a few years with this pull chain antique style toilet that perfectly accents a clawfoot bathtub in your vintage bathroom. The toilet comes with an ashtray, candle holder, and hand painted toilet bowl and plaque.

PRODUCT FEATURES
– Solid ash throne with 3 layers of polyurethane coating
– Pull chain flush with bell, ashtray in arm, and candle included
– “Le Bon Roi Dagobert” plays when lid is raised – a song about a king who arrived at the minister’s council with his trousers on backwards
– Hand-painted toilet bowl and plaque

Base Price – $9,799.00

I think my fave is the ashtray. Just that extra touch of class.

The lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria is as you’d expect, fancy, with lots of dark wood. And how does technology integrate? Not too well. The Hilton (I guess they own the W-A) check in kiosk is stuffed in a cabinet of matching wood to somehow make it fit in. Ironically, the day we visited (no, I was not staying there) all the terminals were down.

William Gibson’s Idoru

Laney, glancing down as they passed one of the glowing loops, noticed, on the treads of the stairs, hardened trickles of something that resembled greenish amber. ‘There’s stuff on the stairs,’ he said.

‘Urine,’ Arleigh said.

‘Urine?’

‘Solidified, biologically neutral urine.’

Laney took the next few steps in silence. His calves were starting to ache. Urine?

‘The plumbing didn’t work, after the quake,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t use the toilets. People just started going, down the stairs. Pretty horrible, by all accounts, although some people actually get nostalgic about it.’

‘It’s solid?’

‘There’s a product here, a powder, looks like instant soup. Some kind of enzyme. They sell it mainly to mothers with young kids. The kid has to pee, you can’t get them to a toilet in time, they pee in a paper cup, an empty juice box. You drop in the contents of a handy, purse-sized sachet of this stuff, zap, it’s a solid. Neutral, odorless, completely hygienic. Pop it in the trash, it’s landfill.’

They passed another loop of light and Laney saw miniature stalactites suspended from the edges of a step. ‘They used that stuff…’

‘Lots of it. Constantly. Eventually they had to start sawing off the build-up…’

‘They still…?’

‘Of course not. But they kept the Grotto.’

Another flight. Another loop of ghostly undersea light.

‘What did they do about the solids?’ he asked.

‘I’d rather not know.’

And today, this – Dog Poo Spray – the spray hardens the dog stuff so its owner can dispose of it more easily. I think it’s a concept at this stage, the winner of a design contest.

Via BoingBoing

Regardless of your perspective on the NYC subway bag searches, one must admit that this is genius. Use tools that put the customization (if not the direct creation) of products into everyone’s hands and use the icon of the product itself to comment on the event. It’s more than a slogan-on-a-t-shirt/button/placard, it’s product as social action.

STANFORD Magazine

writes about Steven Skov Holt, blobjects, and the SJ Museum Blobjects exhibit/book (my previous review of the Blobjects opening night is here)

As an undergraduate at Brown University in the late 1970s, Holt was not only the picture of health, but an avid athlete and cyclist whose pals teased him about his Ôø?thunder thighs.Ôø? In 1979 at age 20, however, his life took a dramatic turn: for reasons doctors never unearthed, HoltÔø?s kidneys failed. He received a transplant. After five months in the hospital, he battled back to health and finished a degree in cognitive science.

Soon after, in 1982, Holt answered an ad for a low-level job at Manhattan-based ID Magazine, the bible of industrial design. Within a year, the intense Holt was editor of the magazine that spotted and helped shape trends, and it was a time when all sorts of new high-tech products were appearing on the landscape.