This is possibly the best ‘humanization’ of a tech device that I’ve seen…perhaps wishful thinking on the part of the surely compulsive obsessive phone-owner (not to be confused with the passe and soon obsolete “homeowner”) who is undoubtedly chained to his/her PDA. It’s a design proposal for an iPhone docking station that’s designed to look like a hammock of the Philippe Starck variety (an iHammock if you will, according to its inventor).

Wonder if they’ll soon come up with custom-made designer coffins for your dead previous-generation mobile device. Then again, the death of an old technology is a death seldom mourned these days (said by the sentimental fool who still owns a rotary phone).

This just in from Shanghart, the reputed contemporary art gallery in Shanghai: through November 8th, they’ll be featuring work by artist
Pue Ji (see above illustration). The Chinese pop artist’s works are in the Sino-Lichtenstein vein and have sold for top dollar at international auction houses like Sotheby’s.

I like these oil on canvas paintings, and for some strange reason–no disrespect to the artist–they feel like they could be part of [a very progressive] jeans campaign.

Contradiction and complexity disturb people. They seem to distrust these traits, fear them, run from them. Most simple humans are more content to spend their banal lives in a world made up of predictable clones who can each be placed in their respective boxes–labeled appropriately for safe unwrapping. Why is this? The cosmic perspective speaks to variance and multiplicity. Supposedly, the Collective Unconscious contains every possible event, scenario, potential act or path? They are said to all co-exist at “the same time” in a place of no time.

In nature, opposites are supposed to come together for the sake of the survival of the species. The more dissimilar the two elements–via immune systems, etc.– the healthier the offspring. This is of course not the case with inbreeding–as we’ve witnessed in those old aristocracy paintings rife with contorted and grotesque countenances.

Yet, in this laborious physical world–especially in the United States, the concept of all possibilities or even a few co-existing is unsettling to the uniform masses. Roles are, rather, still the preferred modality, especially in American culture. No wonder Mad Men–a show that takes place in the conformist early ’60s is as popular as it is here!

In this cookie cutter world, a mother, for instance, shouldn’t be a sexual creature because by giving birth to your child she has stripped herself of all sexuality (perhaps it’s the image of that giant baby head coming out of her previously desirable feminine organ). This is of course part of the classic Madonna/Whore phenomenon. A woman is not permitted to be human and complex. She must be either an angel or a saint, or a wanton temptress–so terrifying is the concept that a woman could be both and so much more (you would then be “sleeping with the enemy” so to speak).

Men can also fall prey to a similar phenomenon, especially politicians. The public requires them to be family men because this is the only digestible “role” for a high-ranking civil servant to play. God forbid the congressman is single and enjoys night-clubbing and bar-hopping and such.

I sometimes see points of breakage in this societal disease of normalcy–especially online, where multiple personas of one’s personal brand are available and accessible to all. But it seems like we still have a long way to go before we can accept people for the unpredictable, multi-faceted, complex creatures that we are.