Defiant Imagination

December 4, 2011

Inspiring links Nov. 28 – Dec.4

Here’s a list of inspiring links featured on the Facebook page and Twitter feeds this past week:

The pleasure and power of ruins

http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5764

Could our twisted fascination for the signs of Detroit’s downfall – its ruins, abandoned buildings and empty lots – actually act as a catalyst for change? This editorial says yes.

Something something, something Detroit – lazy journalists love pictures of abandoned stuff

http://www.vice.com/read/something-something-something-detroit-994-v16n8

The antithesis to the previous article. A photographer’s dream shot is a Detroit resident’s nightmare.

The Rio Book

http://theriobook.com/

David Alan Harvey, a Magnum photographer, is currently in Rio to shoot the latest chapter of his upcoming book. Harvey charges $1.99 to give access to his blog, where he posts several updates a day containing some of his shots and written observations. Interesting business model…

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit on Urban Development and City Design

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/11/filmmaker-gary-hustwit-on-urban-development-and-city-design/248600/#.TtVWYN8cPAE.twitter

Gary Hustwit talks about cities and his latest documentary film, Urbanized, in this interview published in the Atlantic.

Media, Urbanism and architecture

November 29, 2011

Ruin porn: what’s beneath our fascination for Detroit’s decay

This morning I posted a link to this editorial from The Architect’s Newspaper, which presents a positive view of ruin porn (or Detroitism,) a recent tendency to photograph the ruins of Detroit’s and marvel at their sombre beauty (see examples here, here and here). This article got me thinking: why are we fascinated with signs of urban decay? Why has the plight of Detroit become the object of so much attention? The ruins of Detroit symbolize much more than than the end of the industrial age. They remind us that even the greatest cities eventually die, that no matter how grand humanity can be, it cannot escape a tragic fate. Detroit’s photographs are morbidly beautiful, and we can’t stop watching.

But ruin porn is just part of a general tendency to underline how much Detroit has come to suck. Yes, Detroit sucks, and we revel in remembering and detailing how much it sucks as often as we can. Back when I was living in Seattle, the Stranger (one of the city’s alternative weeklies) published a 3000-word feature titled “Things I Remember About Detroit.” Apparently all there was to remember was violence, prostitution, drug deals, dirt and ruins. I read all 3000 words with vicious pleasure. I also viewed countless photo essays about Detroit’s abandoned buildings, and I even started sharing on this blog my own opinion about what Detroit needs in order to survive.

When I stumbled upon this article this morning I decided to make a quick search about what is said about ruin porn online, and it turns out a lot of good stuff has been written, pro and against the trend. But eventually, I found a feature piece from Vice magazine dating two years back, which eventually gave me an entirely different perspective on the issue.

Will Simple fix the personal banking system?

The global financial crisis is one thing, but discontentment about personal banking has been growing for a while. Service fees, late fees, transaction fees, confusing terms of service, and general unhelpfullness of bank employees is something we all experience once in a while. Banks are supposed to help us manage money, but they’re clearly not.

The good news is, some alternatives are coming. We already know Mint, the personal budgeting application, which features useful planning tools and the ability to track expenses. Here comes Simple, an online banking service. Simple registers your expenses, categorizes them, and takes into account your future automatized payments (e.g. rent) as well as saving goals when displaying your balance. That way, you know exactly how much you can spend, and whether you can afford that $4 latte or $20 concert ticket. Its iPhone app also simplifies transactions; you can cash a check, reimburse a friend, split a restaurant bill, etc., without fees.

Simple partners with local and community banks, and offers personlized customer service – you get to talk to someone right away instead of navigating the automated voice system, and even speak with the same representative when you call back next time.

And it looks great (I mean, the app’s font is Gotham!)

Simple is so far only available by invitation, and to U.S. customers. But there’s no doubt the potential is huge. It’s good to know someone’s got our back…

More info here and here.

Photo credit: Fasctodesign.com.

Weekly digest

November 27, 2011

Inspiring links from Nov. 21-27

Here’s a list of inspiring links featured on the Facebook page and Twitter feeds this past week:

Occupy Wall St – The Revolution Is Love

A touching short film about the link between Occupy Wall Street and our search for meaning and connection in our lives.

Pepper Spraying Cop

http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/

This is remix culture at work! This hilarious tumbleblog showcases mashups of the now infamous pepper-spraying cop and iconic images.

No Turkeys Here

http://nyti.ms/vASEk5

This opinion column from last Sunday’s New York Times details 25 reasons to have faith in the future of the food system in North America, from smart supermarkets to thoughtful books and community initiatives. Exciting!

Elements of Style as Occupy Movement Evolves

http://nyti.ms/vLKvBY

Alice Rawsthorn analyses the symbols of the Occupy Wall Street movement, from its catchy, customisable name to its unconventional structure and iconography.

Striking Posters From Occupy Wall Street

http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/posters_from_occupy_wall_street.html

Examples of gorgeous and powerful poster design for Occupy Wall Street. I’m fascinated by all the creativity that’s coming out of this movement!

The African story, told the African way

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/africainvestigates/2011/11/2011111683134191559.html

I’m also very enthusiastic about this new program by Al Jazeera, which features stories about the continent told by African reporters.

Happy reading/vewing!

Business and Economics

November 22, 2011

Europe’s other brain drain

To each financial crisis its own population exodus.

While tough economical times led millions of Italians, Irish, Greeks and others to emigrate massively to North America in the first half of the 20th century, Europe saw the trend turn around during times of prosperity with the arrival of families coming mainly from Africa and the Middle East. While this latest trend still exist, a new phenomenon should not be ignored – young Europeans are escaping bleak work prospects and living conditions to venture abroad. But this latest migration wave is slightly different from previous ones. This time, college-educated workers are the ones who choose to leave.

In Spain, where the unemployment rate is about 45% for young workers, many of those who do manage to find employment have to make do with a low salary (they’re called “mileuristas” because of their 1000 Euros monthly wage.) Those who decide to move abroad in order to finally get hired look at Europe first: Germany and the UK mainly, where the economy is still relatively healthy. But some go further. Dubaï, Brazil, the U.S. are some of the examples I found during my research. As a result, it is estimated that Spain will lose about 500,000 of its residents over the next decade, and there are already more people who leave the country than who enter it. Although these numbers don’t compare to the immigration waves of the 60′s (1.5 million Spaniards left for greener pastures,) they are not insignificant either.

Greece has obviously been affected as well. Young and not-so-young graduates leave the country in search for a better work situation. Some leave Athens to move back with their families in the countryside. In Greece, maybe more than in any other place, the future looks sombre, at best blurry.

Occupy love

I just stumbled upon this great film featuring Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, in which he summarizes the motivation and organization behind Occupy Wall Street. It’s not about fighting the 1% he says. There’s no opponent. We’re all in this together. I found the following words particularly touching:

The loss of community, the loss of connection, the loss of intimacy, the loss of meaning. Everybody wants to live of life of meaning.

These words might sound overly theoretical or philosophical to some, but in recent years I’ve become more aware of the tangible effects of the lack of connection we all feel in our lives. When I went to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the Olympics, the social workers and community leaders who had to deal first-hand with the effects of addiction had this to say: the treatment of addiction is not all. What matters is the cause, and the cause of addiction can be found directly in the lack of sense of belonging, of community, of connection that is prevalent in western societies. The Downtown Eastside shows the darkest side of this sens of disconnect, but we all experience it at some kind of level. We should pay attention to signs such as widespread addiction issues, instead of treating them as collateral damage. And look for meaning, humanity, and connection in our lives.

Occupy Love has a website: http://occupylove.org/ where you can watch more videos about the OWS movement.

Odds and ends

November 20, 2011

Defiant Imagination now has a Facebook page

Click here to subscribe, don’t miss a single update.

There’s also a mobile version for smartphones! And don’t forget the Twitter link, where I also post links and commentary that don’t get featured in the blog.

Business and Economics, Design

October 7, 2011

Remembering Steve Jobs

The reactions to Steve Jobs’s death around the world have been quite extraordinary, and reveal how much his work has had an impact on the world of technology, business and design. Jobs actually changed the lives of millions of people by bringing computers into their daily routines, now followed by iPods, iPhones and tablets. It’s hard to think a businessman could be so influential.

Jobs was an odd character, a sort of charismatic leader who had devoted followers, led religious-like presentations to launch new products, cultivated a powerful and impeccable brand image, and nurtured secrecy. His rigid leadership, combined to an innate sense of innovation, led him to helm one of the most powerful and successful companies ever.

The aspects of Steve Jobs’s work I wish to celebrate, because I think they are relevant to Defiant Imagination’s mission, are his incredible perseverance in trusting what I think was his gut feeling and believing in his ideas, his belief that excellent design was an essential part of the product’s usability and his insistence in delivering good design to the masses. I think Jobs ultimately respected his customers and believed they deserved no less than the best. I don’t agree with all of Apple’s positions, but this is not the point. I’ve been a user of Apple products for many years and I just wished to celebrate Steve Jobs for being responsible for the tools I use to work and entertain myself everyday.

I found this interesting infographics today (click to enlarge):

Urbanism and architecture

August 26, 2011

The new ghost town is… brand new.

Ghost towns… We used to think about them as icons of the Wild West, traces of an ancient civilization (Petra) or as the unfortunate consequences of an accident (Prypiat, abandonned after the Chernobyl catastrophe.)

Financial speculation has since created another kind of ghost town, one created by the laws of modern banking and the rules of real estate. In the U.S., these towns are the foreclosed neighbourhoods of California or Florida, bought for a fortune and sold for nothing.

I’ve recently learned that the U.S. were not the only country dealing with a real estate bubble, far from it. Spain has been plagued with a problem of unfinished developments and unsold housing lots, well documented in these articles from the New York Times and the Guardian. In the meantime, its youth can’t afford to buy property, unless they sign 50-year mortgages.

What surprised me the most was the situation in China, whose housing bubble is taking gigantic proportions. The New South China Mall, the biggest mall in the world, has been sitting empty for years. Nearby, towns built for millions of people have a 25% occupancy rate, while residents in Beijing can’t afford to buy decent property.

Africa’s got talent

Three ways to stay in touch with Africa’s brightest talent:

Business
The Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship celebrate the work of business owners. The competition is open until August 24th, and the winner will be declared during a Gala in Nairobi on December 8th.

Arts
African Digital Art is an amazing online platform showcasing the work of visual artists, designers, filmmakers and more throughout Africa. Its weekly inspiration post is a delight!

What’s Up Africa, a video blog about “what’s hip, hot, eye-catching.”