Photo taken from Empire Fulton Ferry State Park, DUMBO, Brooklyn

For the sheer variety and quality of stuff to see and do, you can’t beat New York. I live about an hour outside New York (by mass transit), but I’ve been working in Manhattan for the past 10 years in different locations and have spent much of my free time there since my teen years. SoHo, Greenwich Village, Flatiron, Union Square, and occasionally the Lower East Side are where I usually find myself browsing bookstores, enjoying parks, viewing art, listening to live music, among other random activities. It’s become a second home of sorts, and I feel like a permanent guest/visitor coming and going almost every day.

Some years ago, I’d begun making occasional trips further east, to the land of Brooklyn. Most of those trips were to visit friends or go see a friend’s band play — not really compelled by any personal interest in Brooklyn itself. I never knew what was really out there, beyond stereotypical images of art school students and assorted hipsters in Williamsburg, successful young professionals in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope, and diverse ethnic groups in Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, and other places popularized by news, TV and movies.

I couldn’t see what was so special or particularly compelling about living there, aside from the proximity to Manhattan. Friends and co-workers would rave about the (once) affordable apartments, the sense of community, and the easy access to pretty much everything from grocery stores to parks to nightlife. While I acknowledged these things somewhat grudgingly, I couldn’t find a strong personal connection to Brooklyn (I’m not terribly connected to where I am presently). I wasn’t sure I could ever call Brooklyn my home.

Recognizing my heavily subjective bias against Brooklyn, I’ve decided to balance my knowledge with more first-hand experience. Lately, I’ve been taking more frequent trips to Brooklyn, mostly to Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO. I’ve even brought family visiting from outside the U.S. to visit the Brooklyn Museum (while doing a poor job of playing tour guide in semi-unfamiliar territory). There’s plenty I have yet to see and do, so I’m hoping to devote a few summer weekends to my on-going “research.”

I want to see what makes Brooklyn so special, so “perfect” for all those die-hard Brooklynites. But would I ever actually pull the trigger and move there? Is that what it takes to know for sure? We’ll see…

I usually put more effort into coming up with titles, but this time I settled on what was nearer to hand (thanks to Edward Tufte). In a metaphorical sense, the idea of escaping flatland sums up much of what’s been on my mind lately: breaking free from the mundane “two-dimensional” aspects of daily life and experiencing the world in multiple dimensions. And by that I don’t mean the Michio Kaku sense of alternate realities, but by improving the here and now.

Flatland, to me, is marked by a largely functional existence — just getting by, day after day after day. In the context of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this applies to fulfilling the lowest 2 levels of needs: physiological and safety. I would venture a generalization that many people these days are worrying about and focusing more attention on these 2 levels than the other 3 (social needs, esteem needs, and self actualization needs).

From personal experience, work, finances, and other related matters have absorbed most of my attention for quite some time. The economic decline has caused quite a significant shift in priorities, leading to more frugality and thrift. Consequently, I’ve been visiting my local library more often, partly to curb my book-buying habit, but also to find a brief escape in works of fiction like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The same applies to listening to music, watching movies, and going to art exhibits — in bits and bites, they’re enjoyable, but momentary distractions nonetheless.

So how does one truly escape flatland — even in times like these?
(I’m still working on this, so bear with me.)

The first step for me was to identify the activities that are no longer taking place, or that ought to be part of everyday life but got pushed aside. What was missing for me were the things I enjoyed long before the “real world” took center stage: drawing, painting, playing music, cycling, travel, hiking, and many other pursuits that made life multi-dimensional (sorry if that sounds cheesy). They used to happen spontaneously, without too much thought or effort; several of those activities were once a regular part of my day. Now, many years later, I realize how important they were and seek to bring them back. While travel may have to wait a while because of cost, I’m looking into doing more art-making as well as more light hiking in nearby parks. If I can re-work my schedule to balance out all the pieces, I think it might work.

About a year ago, I attended an AIGA panel discussion spotlighting designers who create and work with data displays (I could call them information designers, but that wouldn’t be entirely true). Information design typically gets short shrift in the design community — a tip of the hat at best in annual competitions — so I was quite surprised and encouraged by this event. I was even more surprised to find the venue completely packed.

Part of the answer had to do with who was on stage. John Maeda, the moderator, had attracted plenty of attention at the time with his appointment as head of RISD. He could fill a room on name recognition alone. Two of the panelists were what I’d call hard-core data visualization experts: Steve Duenes of the New York Times Graphics Desk and Fernanda Viegas of Many Eyes. However, the third panelist, Andrew Kuo, seemed to me a bit out of place in this context. He is an artist who visualizes his thoughts and feelings in the form of multi-colored charts and graphs, some of which have been published in the New York Times. While Steve and Fernanda come from the world of objective and accurate representation of facts and quantities, Andrew’s work conversely deals in the subjective and somewhat murky expression of personal emotions. For me this was a jarring combination, as I was looking forward to a serious exchange on professionally relevant issues. The gap between Steve / Fernanda and Andrew was bridged rather poorly, if only by Maeda’s repeated quips to lighten the conversational load and keep the audience entertained. I ended up leaving the event feeling disappointed and, I hate to admit, even less fond of Andrew’s work.

Fast forward to yesterday. I’m walking down 12th Street toward 3rd Avenue when, out of the blue, my eye catches a pie chart hanging on a wall inside a gallery. I take a closer look and immediately recognize the style as Andrew Kuo’s. The execution was unexpected: acrylic paint and carbon transfer lettering on paper, instead of digital output of an Adobe Illustrator graphic. Other works including intricate cut paper pieces, figurative and abstract paintings, and sculptural data displays were interspersed throughout the space.

Overall, seeing the exhibit gave Andrew’s work new meaning for me. While I was initially turned off by the apparent inanity of his charts and graphs, I realized that there was more to it than some attempt at pseudo info design. He’s using that language to tell a story and to try to make sense of everything floating around in his mind. Sometimes it’s funny, other times it’s sad, but it’s all honest. And as I thought about my own work, I couldn’t bring myself to draw comparisons or make judgements one way or the other. This type of work is simply different by nature of what it is, not measurable by any presumed info design standards.

So I encourage everyone out there to go check out the exhibit if you’re in the NYC area. It runs through May 16 at Taxter & Spengemann, and it’s called “I’m Dyin Over Here!”

I’ve always been fascinated by prolific artists, whether they’re writers, visual artists, designers, or musicians. The ability to tap into an endless stream of ideas and readily produce them in great abundance, either rough or refined, is a rare and enviable gift. Those of us who work in the field of design can attest to the occasional blank feeling at the very start of a project, when the immediate surge of inspiration is most critical. The complete standstill of creative thought is like a rude visitor who drops by without warning and far overstays his visit. Even the most vigorous attempts to kick him out may prove futile.

Sometimes, the reverse phenomenon might happen: great scores of ideas rush to be born, only to be stopped cold by our internal censor, guarding the exit like a muscle-bound club bouncer. Only the “best” and most durable ideas are ever worthy of getting through. Then the challenge becomes making those ideas real — on paper, on screen, in three dimensions. But the ideas have to be crafted with utmost care. Design involves so many choices: which color? which size? which direction? which order? Today’s great decision might become tomorrow’s utter failure.

In an effort to combat this endless cycle of no ideas vs. no good ideas, I’ve decided to redirect my mental energy to more constructive endeavors (see previous post). As a start, I’m going to try real hard to post more on this site, most likely in short form (thanks to the WordPress iPhone app). I will also try to add more projects, even if they’re in progress as sketches or rough prototypes. It won’t be easy, but I think it’ll be worth it.

I tend to do a lot of thinking. Not a moment passes when cascades of thoughts aren’t flashing across my mind like channels flipping quickly on a television screen. I suppose it’s both a cause and a symptom of working in a creative field and constantly being attuned to all things visual and verbal (I was never one for kinesthetic activities like sports).

There are different patterns or types of thinking — linear, circular, random or non sequitur, among many others — but the kind that burns the most cerebral calories for me is recursive, or thinking about thinking (I’m sure there’s a more accurate term for this somewhere). To continue the television metaphor, it’s the mental equivalent of pointing a video camera at the television screen it is connected to, or placing two mirrors directly opposite one another. Images repeat to infinity, containing their own image, contained within their own image. Recursive thinking need not continue to infinity, as in an Escher print — just one or two degrees out or in from where you are is all it takes.

Recursive thinking is an attempt at objectivity, though not quite free of personal bias or perspective. Outside of any rigorous studies in philosophy, psychology and cognitive neuroscience, I find the best description of this phenomenon by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary:

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the way had displayed the motto “Mens conscia recti,” emblazoned his own front with the words “Men’s, women’s and children’s conscia recti.”

Some of my favorite works of art, cinema, and literature deal with nested repetition of the same reality (also called the Droste effect):

• La Reproduction Interdite (Not to Be Reproduced), René Magritte, 1937
• The film Synecdoche, New York, written and directed by Charlie Kauffman, 2008
• The graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware, 2000

And although this isn’t exactly recursive — unless you keep your own Earth-level consciousness in mind as the film’s perspective zooms out and in — The Powers of 10 by Charles and Ray Eames (1977) best captures the experience of shifting one’s perspective:

(best viewed in high quality)

So does anyone else out there have any personal insight into thinking about thinking, especially folks in the design field? I’d like to collect examples of how this is depicted visually and maybe share them in another post, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

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UPDATE, 1/30/10 – Here’s an interesting example of geographic recursion.