"Gumbasia" by Art Clokey - for fans of Visual Structure

http://www.archive.org/details/Gumbasia

"All rights reserved" - an obstacle in creating the Open Society

To fully realise a society based on the open principle, every individual must have the opportunity to create art and entertainment without any legal restrictions on the use and re-use of other artistic works. Thus the whole concept of intellectual property have to be questioned. In a society where it is unlawful for individuals to re-use artistic works to create new ones and freely distribute them, there is no true artistic freedom. Corporations like ASCAP and TONO claims that they are "protecting their members rights" when attacking the sharing culture and Creative Commons, which represents a legal alternative to the "all rights reserved" based system that goes back to pre-WW2 (in Norway). The systems for free sharing of artistic works in both professional and consumer quality are already here (i.e.archive.org and jamendo.com), but cannot be utilised to the full extent as long as both users and the services themselves run the risk of lawsuits due to copyright issues.

Why Oskar Hansen did not publish "Towards Open Form" with a Creative Commons license remains a mystery. Both Hansen (in his latest written works) and numerous others officially promoting the Open Society signed contracts with publishers prohibiting their works to be shared and re-used noncommercially.

A couple of years ago the norwegian architects' association (NAL) sent their members information on "copyright for architects". They did not even mention the Creative Commons option. Maybe we should all send NAL an email asking them why?



"All rights reserved" - an obstacle in creating the Open Society by Sølve N.T. Lauvås is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Norway License.

Design History: The Trademark in Nazi Germany and the Modern Logo

Design History: The Trademark in Nazi Germany and the Modern Logo from Independent Media Channel on Vimeo.

Claude Bragdon: "Architecture & Democracy" (1918)

Architecture of the human psyche

"The unconscious mind processes information on a more symbolic, metaphorical level than the conscious mind. While your conscious mind is occupied with rationally analyzing the words being listened to, it is the unconscious mind that is more concerned with their meanings"

(From: http://web.archive.org/web/20100727021329/http://www.hypnosisforyou.com/psyche.html)

Very few architects and artists takes the subconscious reactions of the viewer into account when creating their works. It also seems that people who have studied the theories and/or practises of connecting the conscious and subconscious mind easier will understand the logic of Open Form, whether it applies to art, architecture or other fields.

Research in this field includes (but not limited to):

J. B. Deregowski (1989): "Real space and represented space: Cross-cultural perspectives"

Emily Balcetis and David Dunning (2006): "See What You Want to See: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception"

Kappas, Arvid andOlk, Bettina(2008): 'The concept of visual competence as seen from the perspective of
the psychological and brain sciences', Visual Studies, 23: 2, 162 — 173

Zen Gardens

The Japanese rock gardens or "dry landscape" gardens, often called "Zen gardens" were influenced mainly by Zen Buddhism and can be found at Zen temples of meditation.

Japanese gardens are a living work of art in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature, they are constantly sculpted to maintain and enhance the overall experience; hence, a Japanese garden is never the same and never really finished. The underlying structure of a Japanese garden is determined by the architecture; that is, the framework of enduring elements such as buildings, verandas and terraces, paths, tsukiyama (artificial hills), and stone compositions. Over time, it is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of training and pruning. Part of the art is to keep the garden almost still, like a painting.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_rock_garden

http://www.kasrl.org/axiomathes.pdf

Open Form/New Open Form Music

http://www.michaelwilhelmi.de/NewOpenForm/?page_id=311&lang=en

Alan Watts - Work As Play

Alan Watts discusses viewing work as a dance, and how life is spontaneous, instead of driven by external forces. www.alanwatts.com

Art Safari - Relational Art: Is It An Ism? (2004)

http://www.ubu.com/film/relational.html

3 films by Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)

http://www.ubu.com/film/beuys.html

The Relational View - Jan Helderman

Chinese dating site spammers are not completely useless. They can lead you to sites like www.fabc.info, which may be interesting for students of visual structure. To put it short, it is about relations of forms and functions and understanding of these.
Jan Helderman also has a blog at http://janhelderman.blogspot.com/