© 2006, Michael Kai, This Side Up

We see what we are expecting to see,

not what we are looking at.

Drivers checking the rear view mirror
simply don’t expect to see a two wheeled vehicle,
so they are “missed”.

It is estimated by the UK Department of Transport that this happens for around 25% of all motorcycle accidents.

Our brain filters what we see
based on our unconscious expectations
(this can also partly explain why optical illusions exist)

If most of us
are expecting to find aesthetically interesting objects only in museums and/or Art galleries,
what other beautiful things do we miss every day?

All men are designers.

All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity.

Design is composing an epic poem, executing a mural, painting a masterpiece, writing a concerto.

But design is also cleaning and reorganizing a desk drawer, pulling an impacted tooth, baking an apple pie, choosing sides for a back-lot baseball game, and educating a child.

Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order.

Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: it will always produce an infinite number of answers, some ‘righter’ and some ‘wronger’. The Brightness’ of any design solution will depend on the meaning with which we invest the arrangement.

Design must be meaningful. And ‘meaningful’ replaces the semantically loaded noise of such expressions as ‘beautiful1, ‘ugly’, ‘cool’, ‘cute’, ‘disgusting’, ‘realistic’, ‘obscure’, ‘abstract’, and ‘nice’…

- Victor Papanek,
Design for the real world

© 1992, Markus Raetz, Non Pipe

© 2011, Krystina Naylor, Open Box Series

© 2012, Marco Cianfanelli, Nelson Mandela Monument

I am not sure if I can explain why Optical Illusions are considered Art.

Perhaps,
because Optical Illusions make us to look at things from different points of view.

They help us to discover something new, unexpected and most of the time beautiful things.

So, I think that most of the Optical Illusions are considered Art because
they visually symbolize the broad meaning of -making- Art:

© 1999, Radford Simone Decker

Simply by changing the scale (larger or smaller) of an object, you can make art…

How is Art made?

© 2012, Image courtesy by Blandine Minot

We cannot know how the person next to you sees the world.

We are surrounded by endless visual stimuli.
Almost without realizing it
we (our senses + brain) arrange these images in order,
based on our experience
and
rejecting those that do not interest us.

Senses are like extensions of the brain:
sensors receptor ran by the brain.

Senses are our windows towards the world.

Some people’s job is to expand our windows,
highlighting interesting things in our everyday life,
making the world,
our lives
more interesting.

© 2012, Image by Blandine Minot from Talent Gallery, Stockholm

Have you ever tried to observe carefully the doorphones?

This what artist Blandine Minot has been investigating in her series of graphics ATTENZIONI,
inviting us to observe our daily life with curiosity,
going beyond the first impression.

“Because beauty can be anywhere, even where you least expect it.”

Exhibition in Corraini’s book shop until 08/11
121+
Via Savona 17/5
Milan

© 2006, Sam Durant “mono-block porcelain chair”

© 2008, Maarten Baas “plastic chair in wood”

Making art – sometimes – is very simple:

You can change the material of an object
or
You can change the scale (larger or smaller)
or
place the same object in a different context (“decontextualize” is how the art-cultured people called it).

It it quite funny if you think that for example children are doing this while learning from the “mistakes”.

And similar “mistakes” are called
art
by the same people who talk about decontextualization.

I’m not surprised if this makes contemporary art less attractive and enjoyable for the general public not in confidence with the art world.

© 2008, All images by Sabine Timm

The dictionary has all the words to create poems, but it doesn’t contain any.

People with more general knowledge are not necessary more creative than others. A creative person is who makes connections.

Creativity is the ability to make relationship between two (or more) things.

Combining existing things in new ways is a mere expression of creativity, and it is what most of the artists (and children) do.

If everybody could have more free time to use (and express) their creativity, our definitions of art and artists would be completely different.

© 2012, photo by: Maija Bergström, Helsinki

Beautiful things found on the streets of Helsinki.

Photos from the first “Art is Everywhere: the Workshop!”, Helsinki Summer School 2012.

Thank to all the students!

The first “Art is Everywhere Workshop” will be held at Helsinki Summer School on August 13th, 2012.
27 international students from ‘Design and the City‘ course will participate in this two-days workshop.

The theme of the workshop is still top secret, but its Manifesto is very clear.

I am very excited and thrilled about it. And I am hoping to make it into a traveling workshop.

I will keep you posted!

Thanks to ADC for the support!

© 2012, Plates by Maxime Ansiau

More assembled objects, turned into art here,
and repeated objects here.