why not?

the origins of the world wide web

We love David Galbraith’s post about his search for EXACTLY where the World Wide Web got started. He spoke to visionary computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee who wrote the original proposal and early coding for “the global hypertext product that would allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext document”. If you enlarge the photo, above, you’ll see a tiny notation scribbled at the top of the proposal: “Vague but exciting”. That was in 1989, over twenty years ago.

It all took place in ordinary-looking surroundings at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. What’s curious and strangely charming is Berners Lee’s acute memory of the color of the linoleum on each floor of the building, which was not so ordinary after all… read more…

07.11.10 | comments | in buildings, community, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, why not? |

wrap and tie a table?

What is it that we love about this? This wrap job is a whole OTHER thing than a mover would do. The use of twine and rope, akimbo, along with the fine lines of the unseen table (which could be made out of anything), turned it into a sculpture. We’re filing that in our heads for future “transformations” we might try on a piece of furniture we’re tired of, or that need something.

via You Have Been Here Sometime

06.22.10 | comments (1) | in copy this!, furniture, materials, soft, why not? |

sidewalk wisdom: yes we can (dance…anywhere)

Russel S. Lewis

From the always-illuminating Peace, Love and Noticing the Details:

–”Okay, you can’t just break out into dance on the sidewalk.”

–”Yes, I can.”

….Sidewalk voices, one woman to another…

read more…

06.16.10 | comments (2) | in family + friends, outside, rules for living, sightings, why not? |

missing tobias wong

Tobias Wong

A couple of years ago (when ‘the improvised life’ was just an idea), we stumbled on this picture of Tobias Wong‘s file cabinet bed in Reference Library, and bookmarked it, thinking we’d write a post about it someday. It is such a great, direct idea, with many possibilities for implementing in different ways. But we didn’t think then to follow the little link below the photo, to Wong’s website, brokenoff.com where we would have seen just what a gifted designer and conceptual artist he was. We discovered this in the saddest way possible: reading in the New York Times of Wong’s recent death at thirty-five.

Wong’s work was very much about mocking the pretensions of “great design” in thoughtful, clever, often angry ways. He famously hacked – and mocked – the work of other designers – to their outrage – for his creations. He coined the word “paraconceptual” to describe his work. “When I do pull a prank, it’s my means of sending out a conceptual idea. It’s not just laughing at them.” Although he didn’t like being called a designer, all of his work had the grace and harmony of good design, while pushing you to think or experience things in a new way, like his Stoop Installation: read more…

06.14.10 | comments (5) | in art, elements, housewares, inspiration blogs + sites, people, reimagine, repurpose, why not? |

pbs’ oil spill challenge: what’s your solution?

The PBS NewsHour recently issued a challenge: post your ideas for stopping and/or cleaning up the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill on their YouTube site. They received 7,000 entries, with seriously good ideas woven through jokes about calling Macgyver and using duct tape. A few of the best are collected on the News Hours site: clever improvisational thinking by public citizens, along with homemade visuals to illustrate various strategies. Most of them didn’t pass muster by ‘expert’, Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, who explained why they wouldn’t work… all EXCEPT ONE…

Two heavily drawling guys from C.S. Roberts Contracting – one dressed in overalls – did a video-demo using kitchen utensils and stainless steel bowls to show that ordinary hay could be used to soak up the oil because oil readily sticks to hay. They figured out all sorts of aspects to the problem, from what kinds of hay to use and how to get it out to see, and what to do with the oil-soaked hay. You can hear their excitement at figuring out the problem: “This is about as green and as simple as it gets…”

We LOVE and are heartened by the folks that put their creativity and imagination and knowledge to this serious problem, and spent time figuring it out and struggling with it, then pulled together a video, and opened themselves and their idea up to criticism…

Thinking outside the box can be a really generous thing to do…

Thanks David Saltman!

05.27.10 | comments (8) | in community, family + friends, nature, outside, resources, strategies, why not? |

metal washer and attic insulation dress

Librado Romero/The New York Times

For the yearly fashion show given by Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, Isabel Cohen wired together hundreds of metal washers to make the halter top for her floor-length attic insulation skirt (inspired by jellyfish tentacles). It was her answer to the show’s challenging theme: “Create an outfit made of anything but fabric”.

The show is the mastermind of Nancy Fried, the school’s sculpture teacher, who wanted a project that would really engage her twelve students. Now in its seventh year, it has become the event-of-the-year at Fieldson, with many students – and even some teachers – taking on the challenge to create outfits out of dot-candy papers, beads, condoms, fake and real money, Legos, Tic Tacs…

Everyone should have a teacher like Fried who encourages them to go way beyond the expected…

We also love Anne Kunstler’s jelly bean outfit… read more…

05.18.10 | comments (1) | in apparel, materials, paths + processes, reclaim, why not? |

alt-soap dishes

Maria Robledo

Whenever I go my artist friends Holton Rower and Maria Robledo‘s house, I see “everyday” things turned on their ear. Like this square bar of soap placed in a too-small bowl in such a way as to shift the usual view AND be a practical way to not have soap sit in water. It reminded me of a “soap dish” Holton made for his studio’s shop years ago: a block of wood with parallel saw cuts that allows the soap to drain. read more…

05.18.10 | comments | in bath, copy this!, housewares, why not? |

canal house cooking: home cooks as indie publisher

The other day, Maria Robledo sent over some cookbooks with a note: “2 women are doing this lovely diary type home cooking book and one is CHRISTOPHER HIRSHEIMER.”

Maria and I both worked with Christopher years ago when she was the food editor of Metropolitan Home and then Saveur. Christopher is famous for having become a superb photographer, with no formal training, just…like…that! having been a highly regarded editor and writer. (How she did it is a story in itself which we’ll post later.)

Christopher, along with her friend and colleague Melissa Hamilton, has again defied the usual notions of how things work and created an ongoing series of utterly charming, absolutely usable cookbooks without a mainstream publisher. It’s called Canal House Cooking.

“We are home cooks writing about home cooking for other home cooks…Everyday we cook. Starting in the morning we tell each other what we made for dinner the night before. Midday, we stop our work, set the table simply with paper napkins, and have lunch. We cook seasonally because that’s what makes sense. So it came naturally to write down what we cook…”

The books are so compelling and such a pleasure, and so beautifully produced, that I called Christopher up to find out the story behind them (which I want to know whenever someone does something amazing, in a completely unexpected way). read more…

05.12.10 | comments (4) | in community, family + friends, food, gifts, how-to, inspiration, paths + processes, people, recipes, resources books + zines, strategies, why not? |

sawhorse table redux: art as table base

A few years ago, I clipped this image from Reference Library, the always-surprising visual blog that rarely gives explanations. It said simply:

“Michelangelo Pistoletto Struttura per parlare in piedi (Oggetti in meno) 1965-66

This is just about my most favorite thing.”

In English, Pistoletto‘s artwork is called “Structure for Talking Standing Up”, part of a series he did called Minus Objects. In one photo, a man is standing by the structure, leaning on it lightly with one foot on rung, as though he were talking to someone over a fence.

I love it as an object, and its amazing concept. I also can’t help but imagine it as a table base, in a slightly shorter scale, say 30 inches high. If I could work wood or iron, I’d copy it and lay a flat slab of something beautiful on top – wood, stone or rusting steel – to make a gorgeous table. I might even hinge the corner so the base could fold. I think “I am a barbarian for envisioning Pistoletto’s work of art as a table base” and then think, “No…

… this is an example of how art can inspire the most mundane of things.”

Michelangelo Pistoletto’s website is full of amazing ideas.

via Reference Library

05.04.10 | comments | in art, furniture, inside, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, why not? |

“why doesn’t everybody paint their own shoes?”

Johnny Shoepainter via Flickr*

The bold and many-faceted Howard Rheingold, who we blogged about yesterday, once did a little internet art piece that asked: “Why doesn’t everybody paint their own shoes?” Yeah, why doesn’t everybody? we wondered. Shoes are basically a blank palette; it would be easy enough to do. Then you could look down and see…

Rheingold has been painting his shoes since 1994:

“ I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing it. Over the years that have passed since then, it has become clear that I was preparing my travelling shoes. I’ve been around the world in them a dozen times.”

We love that he did it not knowing why, and gradually the answer was revealed. There’s a man who listens to himself and the signs around him…

Rheingold published a great How To of his technique which he learned from Jessica “the mother-goddess of the paint your shoe anarchult”. He gives the thinking behind shoe-painting, which is helpful when improvising, and also gives suggestions for How To Paint If You Can’t Draw, which we appreciate. For inspiration, check out his Gallery of Painted Shoes and his Flickr series of his painted shoes in venues all over the world…

clipped-together shelving pt. 1: wood (help needed)

We are always amazed by how we’ll have an idea and start thinking about it, trying to figure it out, and then start to stumble on echoes and iterations of it. We’ve been thinking about modular shelving that looks good and sleek and is sturdy but do-able, not too expensive…Why not stack boxes in various ways, we wondered, why not CLIP them together? In the course of a week, we came across some interesting versions of the idea, from chic http://muuto.com/##mce_temp_url#‘s architect-designed – and expensive – shelving to shelving units made with clipped-together crates, and even cardboard boxes (see pt 2). What figure we can find the box pretty easy to find or make; what we want is the clip so we do this our own way, on-the-cheap.

The problem with this great idea is that we haven’t been able to find affordable clips – or any that would work on 1/2 or 3/4-inch thick boards (two put together). So we’re calling on you to help us find them, by expertly or uniquely googling, or keeping eyes peeled in hardware stores or websites that might sell clips for a totally other use that would work here. We’re asking for HELP…

(easter) eggs as blank canvas

Anders Adermark via Flickr*

We read that the decorating of Easter eggs came about in the 13th century, when the church prohibited eating of eggs during Holy Week. They couldn’t stop chickens from laying however.

How to identify those “Holy Week” eggs after the fact? Paint em’!

Soon the eggs, which were already an ancient symbol of new life emerging, became a symbol of the Easter.

It’s not too late to decorate an egg or two. You can do it the usual way by submerging hard-boiled eggs in a bowl of vinegary colored dye. But we’re wondering why not view an egg shell as a blank canvas, and draw or paint right on it? (Be sure to hard boil the eggs first).

Here are some pictures and resources, including read more…

04.01.10 | comments (2) | in copy this!, family + friends, inspiration blogs + sites, resources, strategies, wheels, why not? |

mailbox key earrings (from Fuad’s dream)

I was walking across 125th Street in Harlem the other day and noticed a guy standing outside of a store, wearing really surprising earrings in one ear. “Wow, cool earrings” I said, “Did you make them?”

“Yeah, and they’ve got a story…” He said with a smile. He told me he dreamed them, dreamed of earrings made of mailbox keys, etched with his astrological sign, Aries. So, he took a couple of mailbox keys to a jeweler and had them etched…in silver.

He was really proud of them.

…Original and beautiful, with a backstory I never would have guessed.. read more…

02.24.10 | comments | in identity, paths + processes, people, reclaim, sightings, why not? |

lemon squeezer repair in honor of platform 21

Sally Schneider

When my trusty lemon squeezer broke, I toyed with the idea of buying a new one, but found that design collaborative Platform 21′s Repair Manifesto (blogged last summer) had lodged itself in my consciousness. “REPAIRING IS A CREATIVE CHALLENGE“…and “TO REPAIR IS TO DISCOVER” subtly resonated. There’s a way to fix this, I thought, as I wandered around my apartment looking for a sturdy piece of metal to hinge the two enameled sides together; it would have to withstand the pressure of squeezing a lemon, and not react to acidic lemon juice.

The process was a simple one, really, once I finally focused on it (the broken squeezer sat on the counter for a couple of weeks while I mulled): I’d ask myself “What if I tried THIS? and then I tried the idea out, fiddled, failed a few times: a heavy-duty paper clip couldn’t take the pressure…I had no nut to secure a screw, which I suspected would rust anyway…Wire was reactive and would keep the hinge from moving properly. I found the solution in my office. read more…

02.02.10 | comments (3) | in housewares, inspiration blogs + sites, storage, tools, why not? |

dangerous things an adult should do

stuant63/Flickr/CC

Writing the post about Gever Tulley’s Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) made us wonder about dangerous things adults SHOULD do in order to explore and learn about the world, figure out what’s what and live fully, just like Tulley thinks kids should do. And that made us think about the very notion of DANGER because, once you become an adult, dangers and fears become a really quirky personal thing: What seems dangerous and challenging to one adult might seem like a piece-of-cake to another, way beyond the obvious challenges like sky-diving or climbing Everest. It can seem dangerous to travel to a foreign country, write something, paint something, not wear make-up, live alone, go camping, learn to swim, buy a house, improvise a dish, love…

And that brings us to the idea of REAL danger versus perceived danger, and the IDEAS that stop us from doing something we want to do.

So we’ve come to think that a good thing for an adult to learn is to gently put aside a fear here and there – not try to get rid of it, but do what we fear anyway, or even just take a step toward doing something we fear. And gradually step-by-step we find ourself not being so daunted, or even feeling pretty liberated, or doing something amazing. And, just like kids, in the doing, we learn…

(This is one those one idea-leading-to-another posts that asks more questions than it answers…it is what some folks call “an inquiry”, an idea we’re mulling and exploring. We invite you to comment and add your 2-cents..)

photo via Creative Commons License

01.26.10 | comments (4) | in learn, paths + processes, projects + play, why not? |