Aldous Huxley Describes the Dancing Shiva Image.

The great writer Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception, Island) describes the "Dancing Shiva" image (Nataraj) of the Hindu tradition and its immense significance and comprehensiveness. This is from an interview with Mr. Huxley which was done in 1961 in London and was recorded and distributed under the title "Speaking Personally".

The Dancing Shiva image shown here is the one on permanent display at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the huge particle accelerator/collider that recently discovered the Higgs Boson, a fundamental breakthrough in physics.

For Bruno Munari.

"Anyone working in the field of design has a hard task ahead of him: to clear his neighbor’s mind of all preconceived notions of art and artists, notions picked up at schools where they condition you to think one way for the whole of your life, without stopping to think that life changes — and today more rapidly than ever. It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest, the most up-to-date, the most likely to resolve our common aesthetic problems. Anyone who uses a properly designed object feels the presence of an artist who has worked for him, bettering his living conditions and encouraging him to develop his taste and sense of beauty...

...The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing…There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide." 
—Bruno Munari

Image: Nikki Juen

Agnes Martin.

Wendy Beckett, in her book American Masterpieces, said about Martin: "Agnes Martin often speaks of joy; she sees it as the desired condition of all life. Who would disagree with her?... No-one who has seriously spent time before an Agnes Martin, letting its peace communicate itself, receiving its inexplicable and ineffable happiness, has ever been disappointed. The work awes, not just with its delicacy, but with its vigor, and this power and visual interest is something that has to be experienced. ...Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life," Martin wrote. "The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective."

Framing sculpture with Janine Antoni.

"The experience of art is about coming back into our bodies and being embodied and so I'm interested in making an object that slows things down enough for you to become incredible aware of all your senses." —Janine Antoni

Herbert Matter.

Known as a quintessential designer's designer, Swiss born Herbert Matter is largely credited with expanding the use of photography as a design tool and bringing the semantics of fine art into the realm of applied arts. When Matter got the job to design a new logo for the New Haven Railroad he literally went through hundreds of sketches before arriving at the final logo.

Design is...

"Design is a plan for arranging elements for a specific purpose. Design is an expression of purpose — it may, if it is good enough — be deemed art. Design is without boundaries. Design is a method of action. Design is often the creation of a group. Design may be very subtle. Design addresses itself to need. Design willingly accepts constraints." -Charles Eames

A little secret.

It may surprise students to know that at the beginning any given semester I have only a very loose idea of what we will be doing, making and thinking as a class. Somewhere in the intersection of class dynamics and current cultural and social atmosphere, something vibrant always comes into focus. I relate this directly to the creative process on a personal level—patterns of intuitive expression extend out towards the realization of a class, a corporate identity, a sculpture, the composition of a song or a painting—they are actually not that different. Below is a still from the Ray + Charles Eames movie The Powers of Ten.

Now, look at the work of dutch artist Helmut Smits, below. In his work for public spaces he plays with the size of the pixel. Smits imagines the pixel viewed one kilometer from the earth's surface. From this great distance it becomes a dead void, unmeasurable by Google Earth. A pixel missing from our computer screens and PDA's.

How will you change your perspective on what you already know? How can you take concepts and ideas and make them your own or use a current language or medium to truly innovate? Are you doing that already?