In the exhibition al dente: Pasta & Design the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, explore, discuss and approach pasta in its myriad incarnations across a variety of cultural and creative contexts. But not in context of music. As so oft, that task falls to Radio smow....... The (hi)story of pasta is not only lost in the mists of time, but as with all that is similarly lost in those mists, much of that which is presented as fact is more probably myth and legend. And in the case of Marco Polo's place in that
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The music by Peter Scherer, and music design by Daniel Hobi, play an important role in the film E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea; play an important role in enabling Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub's film to allow us all to approach the differentiated and more probable appreciation of Eileen Gray E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea admonishes we all need must approach. But can exploring Eileen Gray via music also allow one to approach that differentiated and more
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So unwilling are we here at smow Blog to blow our own trumpet, we don't even own a trumpet. Why would we, we'd never blow it. It would just lie in the corner, unused, wastefully untooted. However, 2000 smow Blog posts is an occasion very much demanding of a fanfare. Technically 2001 smow Blog posts, the nature of these things meaning this post didn't appear as planned between Transform! Designing the Future of Energy at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and 5 New Architecture & Design
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Music was my first love, And it will be my last, Music of the future. And music of the past. confided to us all the English singer John Miles in 1976, and thereby both tending to confirm the fundamental place music has, has had, in human civilisations and societies, music as an ancient and eternal force in human civilisation and society, and also through setting the future before the past, a setting, yes, not unrelated to the requirements and provisions of the ancient laws of rhyme, most
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Our recent reflections on the La Fonda bar stool by Charles and Ray Eames, and also our recent reflections on Goethe's Donkey, Goethe's chair "just high enough that one can sit half-standing", got us very naturally thinking a lot about stools of all types, the various and varied places one meets stools, the various and varied manners via which stools interact with and contribute to our daily lives, the (hi)story and development of the stool, in particular in context of the (hi)stories and
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With spring approaching thoughts invariably turn to days spent out of doors, and, for those fortunate enough, to thoughts of leisurely days spent sat in the garden. Leisurely days spent sat in the garden, ideally, listening to music. ¿Listening to music about being sat in the garden; sat in the garden listening to songs about garden furniture......? The (hi)story of garden furniture is, inarguably, and somewhat logically, as old as the garden itself; a concept that stretches back to the
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Of all the genres of furniture which accompany global society, none, arguably, is more self-explanatory, more obvious, than the table. Yet for all the simplicity, or perhaps exactly because of all the simplicity, the table is, arguably, the most versatile of all the genres of furniture which accompany global society; the contemporary table existing as it does in a myriad forms and contexts. And not just physical forms and contexts......... The (hi)story of the table, in terms of verifiable
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After a long, challenging, year the smow Song Contest finds itself exactly where it was: Rotterdam. Not just the location, but the stage, the decoration, the costumes, even the bier en frieten exactly as they were twelve months ago. The decisive, defining, difference between the 2020 smow Song Contest and the 2021 smow Song Contest being the new understandings, the new perceptions, the new perspectives, the new vitality, the new passions, the new desires, the new old new, articulated by the
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In 1956 the Dutch electronics conglomerate Phillips asked Le Corbusier if he would be interested in designing their pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. Le Corbusier was. Albeit, "je ne ferai pas de pavillon; je ferai un Poème électronique avec la bouteille qui contiendra", "I will not create a pavilion; I will create a Poème électronique with the bottle to contain it."1 And a pavilion/bottle/Poème électronique which offers an apposite starting point to approaching a
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In the northern hemisphere* December marks not only the darkest period of the year but also that moment when light begins to return: following the Winter Solstice our days start to get a little longer, and a little brighter. And in December 2020 not just astronomically, but metaphorically. Midwinter 2020 symbolising a moment when a particularly dark year, a particularly dark period, starts to get a little brighter, a moment when a little more light will start to slowly seep into our days,
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The sense, logic or otherwise of the biannual changing of the clocks is a subject that can keep any conversation animated until the next change occurs......When it can start all over again. The biannual repositioning of the hands of time is however also an opportune moments to consider our relationship to time, for all our measurement of time, our harnessing of time, our charting of time, and of time metaphoric and time symbolic as represented by that embodiment of time tangible ... the clock.
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"At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath" wrote the Roman Stoic Seneca at some point in the first century CE, "I would excuse them straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall-furniture."1 And today? While the glossy coffee table book may be have become
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Our deliberations on Bauhaus and music very naturally led us to a whole raft of further deliberations on the associations between music and other forms of creative expression; and for all the question, given that so many of those Bauhäusler who had/could have had second careers as musicians were artists, are there designers who have/had second careers as musicians....... .......of course there are...... 6 D 030 Z by Charles & Ray Eames for Evans for Zenith Radio. We all know that designers
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Bauhaus Weimar's centenary may now be behind us, but there remains a lot of discussion, consideration and reflection ahead of us. Not least in context of the rapidly approaching Bauhaus Dessau centenary. By way of an accompaniment to those reflections, considerations and discussions, and of engendering a differing perspective on both the schools and the contexts in which they existed, a Radio smow playlist devoted to music of, from and associated with the Bauhauses. Radio smow: A Bauhaus
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In these days of uncertainty one thing is indubitable: we will all become much better acquainted with our sofa, our couch and our settee. To accompany us all, a Radio smow playlist dedicated to the sofa, couch, settee and an invitation to reflect on the symbolic, figurative and cultural role of the sofa, couch, settee... ...a triumvirate of terms which raises the very obvious question as to the difference(s) The short answer is that today there is essentially none, the term you use being a
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"Das tritt nach ...meiner Kenntnis ... ist das sofort, unverzüglich" "As far as I'm aware..... that applies .... with immediate effect, forthwith" Rarely has an almost sentence in a press conference had such consequences. With his confidently unconfident utterances on the evening of Thursday November 9th 1989, a statement concerning a relaxation on restrictions for those East Germans wanting to travel to West Germany, a statement made while distractedly flicking through papers looking for,
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On this, the longest day, a radio smow playlist devoted to that which Europe for the next 24 hours will have more of than at any other time this year. And which somehow still won't seem enough. We could do with a lot more light, a lot more illumination, in our contemporary society..................... Fire. The first man-made light....and still the most endearing and engaging form.... As the Bible reliably informs us*, the first thing God did was create the heaven and the earth. And then
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Following the #smowblogfact revelation from Vitra Work at Orgatec Cologne 2018 that the smow blog office is devoid of shelving, we were inundated with an e-mail asking why? why has the smow blog office no shelving....? A very simple question, and one which for the first time caused us to pose ourselves a much more fundamental question, why? why, has the smow blog office no shelving....? Considerations which quickly evolved and diverged to concern themselves with the more general questions of
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Slowly but surely the temperatures across Europe begin to fall, along with the leaves and the hours of daylight. Hibernation approaches. And by way of an accompaniment to the imminent long sleep, a Radio smow beds playlist. ...and so to bed! Back at the 2018 KABK Den Haag graduation festival the project Windows Without a View by Rudi van Delden investigated how you can "reclaim the missing third of your life”, i.e. when your in bed, and for all explored "the bedroom as the new office
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It's probably no exaggeration to claim that musicians have at best an ambivalent, truculent, openly confrontational relationship with the office. When not writing about being in love, not being in love, wanting to be in love, wanting to not be in love, etc, they can be found pouring scorn and ridicule on those who dutifully waste their days in offices when there is all that freedom to be enjoyed. Thus one could imagine songs about office furniture being about as rare as occasions when Caílte
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As we've oft noted in these pages, not only have designers since time immemorial had a particular fascination for chairs, but society a particular predilection. Arguably the two are related and can be traced to the long, universal, cultural, political and social relevance of the chair and the act of sitting, a state of affairs which not only makes the physical chair/seat an integral part of our lives, but the metaphorical: excitement brings us to edge of our chairs, those who are brave/foolish
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While preparing our 5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2017 post we spent a not inconsiderate amount of time contemplating the exhibition Cupboard Love at the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, in particular the fact the while it promises to explore cupboards in their metaphoric manifestations as expressed in film, literature and art, they appear to have overlooked the use of cupboards, closets and other storage units in music. We just had to rectify that....... Cupboard Love at the
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