Hasta La Ideas

An eight-foot-tall man returned from a swim on Tuesday morning in Siesta Key, Florida and was promptly detained by authorities. The 100-pound fellow, who resembles a giant Lego figurine, is made of fiberglass. The front of his green tank top reads “No Real Than You Are,” and the back is emblazoned with the number eight and “Ego Leonard,” the name of a Dutch artist whose creations have previously washed up on beaches in England and the Netherlands. “I am glad I crossed over. Although it was a hell of a swim,” wrote the artist, replying to an e-mail from a writer for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “Nice weather here and friendly people. I think I am gonna stay here for a while. A local sheriff escorted me to my new home.” According to a press release issued by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, “Mr. Leonard is being kept in a secure environment until his owner comes forward.” Lego is not amused. A spokeswoman for Legoland in Orlando told the Herald-Tribune that the Lego man is a counterfeit and not endorsed by Legoland. Meanwhile, the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau is eager to keep him in town. “We were trying to spring him out of jail,” said Erin Duggan, communications director for the tourism bureau. “We had offered to give him a home at the visitors center, where people could come and have their pictures taken with him.”

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“It seems to me that the end of the Cold War produced a very important effect: the Internet. The Internet was released and realized because of the end of the Cold War—it was declassified. The Internet brought about a kind of extreme democratization of art. Now anybody, not just artists, can make photographs and videos and put them online, offering their videos and images to global audiences….So, what distinguishes a professional artist from everyone else? Today’s professional artists are those who reflect on and respond to the economic, political, and social conditions of contemporary image production.

The reaction to this new phenomenon—the extreme democratization of art production—still has to be defined. But the politicization of art is perhaps the only feasible response to the extreme democratization of image production, which is a huge de-legitimization of the art system as such. How can you legitimize your existence as a professional artist if everyone else is doing the same thing? That is a very difficult question.”

-Philosopher, art critic, and media theorist Boris Groys, interviewed by Judy Ditner in the exhibition catalogue for “Ostalgia,” on view through September 25 at the New Museum

Pictured: An untitled work from Sergey Zarva’s “Ogonyok” series, 2001. (Courtesy the artist and the New Museum)

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Meet IDEO.org, IDEO’s socially minded kid brother. The global design consultancy announced today that it is gearing up to launch this new organization with an eye to “spreading human-centered design throughout the social sector in order to improve the lives of people in low-income communities around the world and focus on challenges related to poverty.” Slated to debut this fall with a bold identity that simultanously evokes rainbows and teamwork, IDEO.org will also partner with fellow orgs (nonprofits and foundations) that have been clamoring for innovative ways to address challenging problems and create tangible impact through design. Problem-solving and tangible impact are specialties of IDEO, which has applied its human-centered, design-based approach to projects ranging from the first laptop computer (see also: co-founder and Cooper-Hewitt President Bill Moggridge) to Ripple Effect, an initiative that improves access to safe drinking water for the world’s poorest people. To help determine which projects IDEO.org tackles, the firm has developed the following criteria:

The place or people benefitting from the project is a low-income community or group; the partner organization is a non-profit, foundation, or social enterprise; and the result of the challenge is tangible—a product, service, business, or system—that will directly benefit the community or people for which it was designed.

Intrigued? Apply here to take part in the IDEO.org fellowship program that will bring together designers from IDEO and people from the design, business, and social sectors.

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The TEDsters have generously granted us a press pass to this year’s annual ideas confab in Long Beach, California, and while we’re still processing yesterday’s brain-bending line-up—which ranged from never-before-seen photos of an elusive polar creature, a paean to doodling, and the a capella musical stylings of Bobby McFerrin—we wanted to update you on today’s inspiring talk by designer and director Julie Taymor.

Preceded onto the TED stage by a stunning video montage of her greatest hits (The Lion King, Frida, The Magic Flute), Taymor began by alluding to her ongoing “turbulent times”—as her embattled Broadway extravaganza Spider-Man is poised to set a new record for previews—and then regaled the audience with the story of a transformational experience with Indonesian villagers. In the late 1970s on the island of Bali, she surreptitiously witnessed a tribal ceremony that would inform and inspire her subsequent work.

Wearing “elaborate costumes and extraordinary headdresses,” the village elders danced in the dark while no one (save a crouching Taymor) was watching. “I realized that they were performing for God, whatever that means to you,” she said. “It didn’t matter about the publicity. There was no money involved. It wasn’t going to be written down.” This intimate ritual was followed by an all-night opera that was performed for the town’s residents on a more traditional illuminated stage. “What I gained from this incredible and seminal moment from my life as a young artist was that you must be true to what you believe as an artist, all the way through,” said Taymor. “But you also have to be aware that the audience is out there…and they need the light.”

The story resonated with the Spider-Man musical’s subtitle: Spider-Man’s subtitle: Turn Off the Dark. “It’s an incredible balance that we walk when we’re creating something that is breaking ground, that’s trying to do something that you’ve never seen before, where you actually don’t know where you’re going to end up,” she explained. “That’s the fine line on the edge of a crater that I have walked my whole life.”
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How do you pass the time when laid up with an injury? If you’re British researcher Rachel Young, you scour Google Maps for letterforms in the satellite imagery. Inspired by the Google Maps typography of Australian graphic designer Rhett Dashwood, Young searched for days to assemble map alphabets of Britain and then, New York. She created the latter set, entitled “Alphabet State,” at the suggestion of her employer. “It was more challenging since I’ve never been there,” Young told The New York Post. So next time you’re home sick, skip the daytime television in favor of the healing powers of found typography.