lynette design

Joshua Davis - Mentalities and Anomalies

This introduction is very inspiring, he begins saying that he doesn't know what he's doing and that there is power in confusion, mistakes and failures. It made me feel excited to remember the importance of trying new things just to see what happens, and that accidents and mistakes can be a very rich source of ideas.

He talks about testing things to the limits and seeing how far you can take it. And finding inspiration in black holes, anomalies and things that don't make sense. He makes the observation that while most people think that people have a 2 second attention span for catching attention on the web, his site draws people into participation even though (or because) they don't fully understand.

This made me think alot about what it is that makes things interesting, what makes a design catch your interst may be the things that intrigue you, or that don't explain themselves, and make you think and form associations of your own. He notes that people want to be less passive, they want to be involved and have a say, and effect how things turn out because of their involvement rather than just viewing.

His questions made me think about my experience and foundations, mentality and thinking. Its interesting to conciously be aware of the foundation that I am trying to design out of rather than just trying to produce a design. To think about what excites me, what I think about, what interests me and why. Would the things that inetest me translate into things that other people know and have experienced too. He talks about foundations as being stable but never static. If the foundations are static, they are dead. This reminds me about the way I am designing out of experience that is growing and changing, not constant.

I found this introduction extrememly inspiring, and made me want to explore Joshua Davis work and ideas further.

posted by nicole @ 2:32 pm