I was fortunate several years ago to work with designer (Alexander) Gelman, an extraordinary thinker and creator with immense rigor. His practice involves mercilessly eschewing the extraneous, in order to distill the essential. Among other books, Gelman is editor of the Subtraction compilation which illustrates this idea very articulately. Gelman’s vocabulary helped clarify my ideas […]

Worth clipping, here’s a quick re-posting of Yo-Yo Ma’s “Four Challenges for Future Learners”, via John Maeda. (Maeda’s full retelling is here, at his RISD blog.) Make all communications memorable. Realize passion-driven education. Form disciplined imaginations. Foster empathy for all.

In the eighth footnote for Sanford Kwinter’s essay “Flying the Bullet,” which accompanies the slim volume “Conversations with Students” by Rem Koolhaas, is a brief enumeration of different names for Samadhi-like states in which an interactant “becomes one” with an interactive system. I quote: “Class four behavior” in Stephen Wolfram; “poised systems” and “edge of […]

I thought I’d share the following, a favorite quote from an article by Gabriella Hima: The inmost aspiration of the author is the reader’s response. Electronic writing should be an appeal to the reader to take part in the creative process, to co-write the literary composition – the work. If once literature turns from an […]