The Artist

The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist: capable, practising, skilful;
Maintains dialogue with his/her heart, meets things with her/his mind.

The true artist: draws out all things from his heart,
works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity,
works like a true Toltec, composes his/her objects, works dexterously,
arranges materials, adorns them, makes them adjust, invents.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of things,
works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.

- Toltec poem translated from the Spainish by Denise Levertov

Brain transfer

A friend designed several interesting posters in quick succession today. Another friend exclaims, “How do you think so fast! Please give me your brains.” Then she mimicked putting a straw to the former classmate’s superior brains and drinking. This led me to wonder; what if we really could transfer our ‘brains’. There would be absolute chaos.

The human brain is in the head, but the mind is intangible, and can’t be quantified. It doesn’t occupy any physical space. This must be part of god’s unique design, because otherwise we might be capturing each other and doing ‘mind’ transplant surgeries to make ourselves more intelligent. It would be the ultimate case of resource exploitation. Any kind of genius would be in high demand. Probably her/his life would even be at risk. Medical science is advancing at the speed of light, but its definitely going to take time (thankfully) to figure out brain transplants.

Quote

‘It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.’ - Rene Descartes

Looking at the Art of Looking Sideways

‘What use is a book…without pictures or conversations?’ asked Alice.

The very first page of the book questions its own existence with this question. Every time you open it you experience a different part of it, and the experience is never the same. You can dip into this mighty book at any time for inspiration, recreation, learning or relaxation.

It’s a design book without being a design book, because it’s about everything except design. There are innumerable tidbits of information, covering history, science, the human body and the animal kingdom. There are also sayings from ancient philosophers and modernists, jokes, anecdotes and visual puns.

The book has successfully broken out of the structure of a typical ‘book’ both in its content and its visual presentation, without causing total anarchy. All these varied bits of knowledge are not compartmentalized into rigid sections, but rub shoulders with each other which make browsing through this volume an enriching experience.