June 25

Art
Been reading and studying a lot the past couple of days about Vasarely's art. As I read about his development as an artist and his influences, it keep leading me deeper and deeper into areas that I had absolutely no knowledge. So, I've been checking out Constructivism, Ernest May, Super blocks, linear cities, urban design, kinetic art, op art, socialist realism, suprematism and geometric forms. Wow! It's amazing when you take one topic and just "go deep" with it, how many new things can be uncovered.







The OSA Group (Union of Contemporary Architects) was an architectural association in the Soviet Union, which was active from 1925 to 1930 and considered the first group of constructivist architects.

"Communal House of the Textile Institute (also known simply as Nikolaev's House) is a constructivist architecture landmark located in the Donskoy District of Moscow, Russia."

The Narkomfin Building is a block of flats in Moscow, designed by Moisei Ginzburg with Ignaty Milinis in 1928, and finished in 1932.
Photos (now in bad condition)

Social capital is a social science concept used in business, economics, organizational behavior, political science, public health and sociology that refers to connections within and between social networks.

social capital is anything that facilitates individual or collective action, generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and social norms

Ernst May - Frankfurt Art & Architecture

Magnitogorsk
"According to original plans Magnitogorsk was to be inspired by Gary, Indiana and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the time the most prominent centers of steel production in the United States. It was to have followed the linear city design, with rows of similar superblock neighborhoods running parallel to the factory, with a strip of greenery - or greenbelt - separating them. Planners would align living and production spheres so as to minimize necessary travel time: workers would generally live in a sector of the residential band closest to the sector of the industrial band in which they worked." - Wiki


Communal House of the Textile Institute - Wiki

Victor Vasarely Website

Recording
Marcel Duchamp
The Creative Act (1957)
read by the author
A paper presented to the Convention of the American Federation of the Arts at Houston, Texas, 1957 (Click here to listen)

“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.”

The Medium is the Massage

Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore

Music
Bela Bartok - Solo Violin Sonata


Creative Thinking
Edward DeBono talks on lateral thinking


Tony Buzan on "mindmapping"


Live Music/Exhibition
Went to see/hear the Morgan Fisher/Pascal D'Aboyer photo exhibition/LIVE tonight at Super Deluxe in Azabu. Later, went over to What the Dickens in Ebisu and "sat-in" with Derek Short's band.