A quick glance of these paired photos on Emma’s blog made us unconsciously splice the two ideas together: ‘salvaged wood bedside or sofa side table’, we thought…fine idea. There is so much great salvaged wood around these days, that can be easily cut and stacked askew to great effect…
Related posts: Blog Find: Daniel Hales ‘Serendipity Rising’
One of our favorite early posts was about Andre Michelle’s visual music synthesizer, ToneMatrix which allows you to instantly improvise your own music by selecting any of the small boxes on the grid on his website. We have turned to it many times when we wanted a diversion to shift our mood or view, or to take our focus off an irritating noise. Now, we’re smitten with Michelle’s newest iteration on his make-your-own-music theme: Pulsate.
Click the black square in two are more places to generate pulsating circles and sound. Just four or five clicks make for a relaxing, meditative riff…click lots of circles within circles for elaborate (and energetic) composition.
Part of its beauty is how ephemeral it is; it’s music for the moment.
Whatever you do will be a surprise, and a shift.
via Kottke
Related post: Make Your Own Music
Lately, we’ve been seeing planks and bits of salvaged wood being used in bold geometric patterns to enclose bathtubs, and kitchen islands, make headboards and floors… Pieced together like a puzzle, with a good eye, “rustic” changes curiously to modern. read more…
Knowing we have a serious thing for concrete, Lydia Wills sent us this picture of a light fixture designed in 1960 by Le Corbusier for the Chandigarth Zoo in India. It’s massive – about a yard across, a yard high and 22 inches deep – yet wonderfully graceful. We’d buy it if had $36,000 to spare (what it went for recently at auction) and could move it. But we’re happy just to have seen it: our view expanded about the possibilities of cast concrete (as Marcel Breuer did once with concrete block).
Like so many things that come our way, the photo of Le Corbusier’s extraordinary light fixture sent us following one idea after another…we started learning about cast concrete, wondering if we could do it ourselves…envisioning not just a Tobias Wong-inspired door stop made by using an Aalto
We’re totally addicted to the History Channel’s “American Pickers” for many reasons but mostly because it taps into our primal need to hunt, hoard, share, trade, wander, and tell stories.
Antiques don’t magically appear in your local antique store or flea market. They are foraged and found and repaired by people like business partners Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, the shows unlikely stars. Mike is the thin buttoned-down Bud Abbott character while Frank is more Lou Costello with his day-old beard.
Together they wander the back roads of America in a white panel van in search of what most people see as “dumps”: broken down houses and garages you speed past on the way to the beach or the lake, that appear to be filled with junk. When Mike and Frank find one of these places, they’ll pull over and introduce themselves to the owner – older men, widows, daughters – who might be willing to let them forage through their stuff, hoping they’ll come across some treasures to buy, if not some compelling stories.
The result is great television full of improvisation. read more…
The sentiment around Mother’s Day is a nice one but we’ve never been crazy about all the marketing of flowers, cards, candy that can go with it; they often seem in contradiction to the gist – of honoring and thanking your mother – by blending in the desperate shelling out of $$ to buy a token, fueled by guilt and/or obligation (We’re talking about grown-up kids, here; the little ones seem to delight in making breakfast-in-bed and homemade cards and gifts…)
We were delighted to see The Robin Hood Foundation‘s great idea for an alt-Mother’s Day gift that is easy-to-send, personal, and speaks volumes: a beautiful card telling your mama that you’ve given a donation in her name to a charity. read more…
This weekend, Sally talks about improvising with miso, the versatile Japanese seasoning, on The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s terrific food show on public radio. She’ll cover the basics of miso, and give ideas for using this essential refrigerator staple. Click here to stream the show or find out when it will be aired in your neighborhood. You’ll also find one of Sally’s favorite recipes – Grilled Miso-Glazed Fish Filets and Steaks – an easy way to achieve succulent, deliciously lacquered fish.
Miso is most well-known for being the base of the miso soup served in Japanese restaurants (although it is also fabulous transformer of fatty fish…One day, I decided to try taking making a miso soup using a classic flavor mix of western cooking: caramelized shallots, Madeira and dried porcini mushrooms. The result was a rich broth that seemed more like a veal or beef broth than miso.
It makes a wonderful brothy base for impromptu composed soups. Simply heat the broth and float in any precooked ingredients you like, pastas like ravioli or tortellini; cooked dried beans; or roasted or steamed root vegetables, with some shredded pork or chicken. In Spring, steamed baby turnips, carrots, beets, potatoes and parsnips are particularly lovely along with a few tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, like flat-leaf parsley, chives, or chervil.
(I”ll be talking about ways to improvise with Miso this weekend on national public radio’s The Splendid Table. We’ll send an update about how to listen to the show later today.) read more…
Blu Dot is offering a surprisingly compelling clock widget you can download to your computer. It is a one inch square that sits anywhere on your screen you like; with each new minute, a new number image appears. The effect is constant surprise and little jostles to your mind about change and possibilities. For free!
Thanks, Pamela!
The other day we got lost in a website that is so useful and inspiring, it has become a sort of role model. “THAT’s some of what we’d like ‘the improvised life’ to do for people”, we thought, and put it in the file of bits and pieces that mirror what we imagine for its future.. Kevin Kelly, who has had his finger in a million visionary pies, has eleven websites under KK.org; one of our favorites is Cool Tools.
“Cool tools is a web site which recommends the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are broadly defined as anything that can be useful…”
We love it because we’re always looking for ways to DO the ideas that our in our head, and we need tools to do that. There are 37 or so categories of tools that you can delve into depending on your interest or need, like Materials, Design, Homestead, Learning, Consumtivity, Vehicles, Craft, Dwelling, Living on the Road, Life on Earth, Play, Big Systems…
We found – and learned about – all sorts of stuff, like Oblique Strategies, One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas, a boxed set of cards created by Brian Eno read more…
Andrew Sullivan of theatlantic.com is the huge-traffic blogger of The Daily Dish; its often fierce content ranges from politics, to heart-breaking illicit tweets from Iran’s recent election protests, to grim pictures of torture. For a couple of years now he’s broken up the intensity of his writing and opinion with an ongoing post category called A View from Your Window, a simple photo inserted into the midst of the day’s many posts with a caption indicating time and place, that one of his readers around the world sent in. It is just that: what one person sees when he/she looks out the window.
These photos have a curious effect: of giving instantly a different point of view, and a reminder of the very similar and very different dailyness of lives around the world. They are somehow both refreshing and heartening.
But what is really interesting is the book Sullivan made them into. read more…
Why not send Valentine’s type messages any day of the year?
We love Kate Spade’s e-cards, designed by some wonderful artists…(free and instant) read more…
We were hoping that Constance Old would guest curate for ‘the improvised life’…here is her first (great) post:
“Emily Campbell works as Director of Design for a British think tank called “RSA” (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) which is committed to research and projects devoted to social progress. (http://www.thersa.org/home)
She wrote a terrific essay on her blog Design and Society; it’s called “You know more than you think you do.” The gist is that professional design has alienated the individual, and designers actually have an obligation to design better access for the user into their work: then the user could fix the thing themselves without a degree…Kind of a call to simplify things and empower the individual even in highly designed objects.”
Campbell also designed this poster with Anthony Burrill which should be on everyone’s wall (and in our heads).
Thanks for the photo, Pamela!
Related post: Creative Reuse: Constance Old’s Hooked Rugs
Ten years after it was built, my kitchen still looked great EXCEPT for the counter tops. The speckled black-white-and-gray granite that seemed so right at the time looked dated, and its pattern was too busy to use as a surface for the food photography we did in my space. My friend Holton, who is an amazing artist, designer, and gifted improvisor said “Why don’t you make a top to fit over the one you have?…Make a form out of plywood that will fit over the granite, and cover it with a soft-ish metal that can wrap around the form…”
I remembered the old burnished zinc bars and cafe tables I’d seen in France, and thought that zinc’s soft luster would be make a beautiful surface to photograph food on. So I looked up ZINC FABRICATORS in the Yellow Pages, and found a guy in Brooklyn who would make me what I wanted. All I had to do was send him a plan… read more…
Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment
Paper Softwall, lightweight, freestanding honeycombed paperwalls that can be arranged in almost any shape to make instant room dividers and walls…(imagine an instant “clear” space for meditating, or just plain thinking… read more…
