Movement generates perspective
Issue 91
Welcome, dear Sense of Place lovers… I hope you have a great beginning to December, wherever you are. This week you will find the ArtReview Power 100 list, Spotify Wrapped, 12 open-ended questions, The Gingerbread City, bias of AI text-to-image systems and Humility for Challenging Conventions with Jing Liu. Enjoy!
The soundtrack of the week
This week's collection
1. Artist Nan Goldin took the number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list, an annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations. Goldin is known as a pioneering photographer and campaigner against the Sackler family.
This year, for the first time, the top 10 is made up entirely of artists who use their work and platforms to intervene in the pressing social and political issues of the current moment. Also, this year we see digital artists experimenting with A.I. have been recognised, including Refik Anadol (60th) and the duo Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst (77th).
2. It’s that time of year again - yes, Spotify Wrapped. If you’ve opened your app, you’ll have seen it: a personalised experience for all Spotify users that breaks down the data of what you’ve listened to and for how long over the past 12 months. Luckily, there have been many good memes about offices, even with the “this could be an email meeting hours”. But the most sincere one comes from Woodland Trust, a conservation charity in the UK, which I love.
3. I can ask this question many times: “How do I avoid becoming a narrow specialist or a superficial generalist? Is there a third way? If so, how do I get there?”
Luckily, Ted Gioia answered this question among the other 11 open-ended questions that guide his life and work.
You are wondering about the question above, yes he starts like this:
Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno once said that a smart person can either be a pedant or a dilettante. Both results are unfortunate—and there is no in-between.
That’s a sad dilemma. I don’t want to be either.
I’ve tried to find a third way. I do immersive deep dives into new subjects—reading 40 or 50 books in a particular area. Then I move on to a different field of inquiry, and do the same thing all over again. This allows me to achieve a degree of specialization in many areas, without getting lost in any of the rabbit holes.
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4. I am sure you mostly know a gingerbread house that maybe reminds you of Hansel & Gretel. But beyond that, the tradition of gingerbread house decoration goes back to Germany in the early 1800s. And now, it is time for The Gingerbread City - which is the Museum of Architecture’s annual exhibition. The idea is to champion sustainable design ideas and put them on the traditional gingerbread house. There is a whole constructed city made from gingerbread, candy, and frosting by over 50 architects and designers, both in London and New York. This year’s city explores the theme: Water in Cities – comprised of four island zones, Urban Floodplain, Canal City, Frozen Landscape and Underwater and Floating City.
5. I am sure you have all read about the bias of AI text-to-image systems, such as Midjourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion. The Rest of World analysed 3000 images generated by AI image generators that represent different cultures and countries. And asks, “How AI reduces the world to stereotypes?”
6. Dear friends, last but not least, I would like to share this episode from my podcast - I’m sure it resonates with you, whatever you are doing in your lives as a profession.
The tender and captivating conversation I had with Jing Liu, co-founder of SO-IL, illuminates that design should and can be accessible to all and that architecture offers an open platform to nurture new forms of interaction.
We rarely do anything repetitive, which means that we have to be always humble and we try to tell our clients that we're not the one who knows all the answers but we know what would be the best process to get to the best answers throughout the collaboration. - Jing Liu
Quote of the week
You are changed by your biography, yes. At some point, you get enough of travelling and flying. It’s at that point that you give up the tightrope between Paris, Vienna and New York. Nevertheless: “It clears your mind”, as they say here, to tear yourself out of your surroundings now and then, to go somewhere else and then come back again after all to the beginning. Movement generates perspective.
— Helmut Lang
Thanks for another week
That’s it from me! Thank you for reading this week! This newsletter is my passion project, and you can treat me to a virtual coffee to show your support for Sense of Place.
If you think someone else might enjoy this, too, please spread the word and share this article. If you have any feedback, please comment below.
Until next week,
Nurgul
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