"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."
19 June 2011
The camera is an actor
......and the world is a stage!
15 June 2011
The niche is everything!
Paul Virilio says in his book The Information Bomb:
A great joy for this e-space lab worker is the invitation to join the Through the Looking Glass project of Asli Kiyak Ingin. Asli is an architect and designer from Istanbul. She has engaged in the struggle to save the district of Istanbul called Sulukule, a place that nestled up to the walls of ancient Constantinople and for 550 years was the home of a Romany community that provided an alternative economy in entertainment venues with casinos, music and food, creating a vibrant urban culture until it was swept away by so-called city "laws and regulations" and "gentrification". Gentrification is now a Turkish word, with the same contradictory connotations the word has when used all over the planet. Asli is connecting us in this project to the ‘Made in Şişhane’ project.
It is the ‘Made in Şişhane’ project that prompts the quotation at the head of this post of a paragraph from The Information Bomb by Paul Virilio (Virilio 2000). Şişhane is located in the area of Istanbul known as Beyoğlu, and is the most active art, entertainment and night life close to the centre of Istanbul. The reason for these two views, one from the late19th century and the other from the recent 21st century, and that show on the horizon Beyoğlu's southernmost landmark Galata Tower, is that these images show where the area of Şişhane falls to the Golden Horn over a period of over a hundred years or so. However things are now changing in the area. Property values are rising as the potential for "gentrification" is gradually realized. Meanwhile, for this same period of over a hundred years Şişhane has been known for its lighting and retail industry.
One evening walking in the area in the early spring of 2009 I took these photos.
This densely populated area was quiet, but the urban fabric was at once transformed by light and electricity where retail premises resembled small caskets of intense delight, whilst stairwells and offices glowed with changing colour.
The many retail premises are the visible aspect of a much larger and complex organization of manufacture, a network of businesses and workshops that creates the possibility of the creation of products that are highly specialized, and a personal access to these products that is as social and as interactive as the social and technical connections that produce them. As the ‘Made in Şişhane’ website says pre-capitalist and capitalist cultures mix in Şişhane in a very particular and interesting way.
The DQE Design Quartier Ehrenfeld Halle exhibition space occupies a space within the old factory zone of the Helios factory that produced electric lighting products in the industrial age.
Today, in our so-called post-industrial age, the symbolic structure of the only inland Lighthouse is a reminder of the industrial heritage of Ehrenfeld's Helios factory and a spooky connection to Şişhane, in that, even though there are multiple workshops and retail premises in Şişhane, the combined capacity of these operations is equivalent to a large factory.
When Paul Virilio says that "the transformation which extraverts localness – all localness – and which does not now deport persons, or entire populations, as in the past, but deports their living space, the place where they subsist economically", then this post connects this extraverting of localness with the situations this project echoes. In one case, the pressure upon the population amongst the workshops and retail businesses of Şişhane that comes from an influx of cheap imports from China, and in the other case, the question of the "brown field" sites that appear in the city, part of the aftermath of the "global de-localization which affects the very nature not merely of ‘national’, but of ‘social’ identity", thereby "throwing into question not so much the nation-state, but the city", the city itself as a nodal entity and 'the' shaping tool of "the geopolitics of nations".
Something else is now shaping geopolitics and geo-economics;
the niche and the long tail!
The long tail and bespoke design
The Long Tail was popularized by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine in an October 2004 article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying a strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.
The long tail is the name for a long-known feature of some statistical distributions. In "long-tailed" distributions a high-amplitude population is followed by a low-amplitude population, which gradually "tails off" asymptotically.
The tail becomes bigger and longer in new markets (depicted in red). In other words, whereas traditional retailers have focused on the area to the left of the chart, online bookstores derive more sales from the area to the right.
bespoke
The use of the word bespoke comes from the English verb to bespeak, to "speak for something", and has the current usage of meaning to give an order for something to be made. The term historically was applied only to tailored clothing, involving measurement and fitting. The buyer's total control over the fabric used, the features and fit, and the way the garment should be made provides a model for a high degree of customization, and involvement of the end-user in the production of the goods.
In the Through the Looking Glass project, the people associated with the places where small businesses operate, possess the skills to provide for their clientele. Above all, they are able to listen to the customer, end user or consumer, and then act with the capacity to understand and interpret the consumer’s needs. This is what small businesses do best, as do designers, if given half a chance to engage with the genius of the local rather than the global.
Going down to Körnerstraße
Modern and post-modern consumer/producer relations are complex. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan quoting James Joyce, it turns out that consumers have become the producers (see footnote). In this age where the skills of listening and understanding are linked to the skills of making, or “tailoring”, the long tail allows the needs of the few to be acknowledged, and occasionally fulfilled.
In the digital sphere the internet links the searcher to the searched for, if it is out there already. This digital space also allows for the continuous editing, negotiation and adjustment in the fabrication of digital objects, sounds and images, communications and conversations.
Meanwhile, as long as craftspeople are allowed an economic life there is the possibility of new things being made. In the Made in Shishane project in Istanbul, architects and designers have worked with the fabricators in the workshops of Shishane to produce unique lighting designs, but this possibility is put at risk by the importation of low cost products from China, that undercut the economic viability of craft based production.
The Made in Shishane project response is to create both an awareness and a re-valuing of the ability of the workshops to respond to the challenge of a period now where these practices might be lost. This would be tragic just when the notion of customization is developing new roots in a culture that is increasingly critically aware of the environmental impact of the industrial processes that mass production and mass consumption instigates.
Footnote
He caun ne'er be bothered but maun e'er be waked. If there is a future in every past that is present Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui quae quot at Quinnigan's Quake! Stump! His producers are they not his consumers? Your exagmination round his factification for incamination of a warping process. Declaim!
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce (496.34 - 497.3)
“There lies the great globalitarian transformation, the transformation which extraverts localness – all localness – and which does not now deport persons, or entire populations, as in the past, but deports their living space, the place where they subsist economically. A global de-localization which affects the very nature not merely of ‘national’, but of ‘social’ identity, throwing into question not so much the nation-state, but the city, the geopolitics of nations.” (Virilio 2000 p.10)This post is primarily a location for sharing a number of thoughts for the upcoming Through the Looking Glass project that opens at the Design Quartier Ehrenfeld, DQE, in Ehrenfeld, Cologne, Germany on 18/06/2011. This project has been instigated by Petra Johnson, very clearly connected to the 2010 KIOSK project. This project linked a kiosk in Ehrenfeld with a kiosk in Shanghai, using video streaming, and a kiosk based art project in Weimar. There was also a link to Liverpool on several occasions, a city linked to both Cologne and Shanghai. George McKane of The Yellow House, and co-instigator of the Liverpool-Cologne cultural exchange project "Eight Days a Week", joined e-space lab to connect to the launch of the project linking Cologne and Shanghai based kiosks using skype and livestream. The KIOSK blog has many fascinating posts, including information about the many projects that, by invitation, used an "open platform" outside the German Pavilion and in the hubub of the evening crowds moving between pavilions at the Shanghai World Expo. Peter Hagerty and Philip Courtenay of e-space lab were able to participate in this process on two occasions from the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool, with a link from the Performance Space and link from the Bluecoat "Hub".
A great joy for this e-space lab worker is the invitation to join the Through the Looking Glass project of Asli Kiyak Ingin. Asli is an architect and designer from Istanbul. She has engaged in the struggle to save the district of Istanbul called Sulukule, a place that nestled up to the walls of ancient Constantinople and for 550 years was the home of a Romany community that provided an alternative economy in entertainment venues with casinos, music and food, creating a vibrant urban culture until it was swept away by so-called city "laws and regulations" and "gentrification". Gentrification is now a Turkish word, with the same contradictory connotations the word has when used all over the planet. Asli is connecting us in this project to the ‘Made in Şişhane’ project.
 |
| This is a recent panoramic view of the Galata Bridge, the mouth of the Golden Horn and the Galata Tower in Shishane |
 |
| View of the Galata Bridge spanning the Golden Horn, with the Galata Tower in the background, ca. 1892-1893. The area of Shishane surrounds the Galata Tower and that falls towards the Golden Horn. |
It is the ‘Made in Şişhane’ project that prompts the quotation at the head of this post of a paragraph from The Information Bomb by Paul Virilio (Virilio 2000). Şişhane is located in the area of Istanbul known as Beyoğlu, and is the most active art, entertainment and night life close to the centre of Istanbul. The reason for these two views, one from the late19th century and the other from the recent 21st century, and that show on the horizon Beyoğlu's southernmost landmark Galata Tower, is that these images show where the area of Şişhane falls to the Golden Horn over a period of over a hundred years or so. However things are now changing in the area. Property values are rising as the potential for "gentrification" is gradually realized. Meanwhile, for this same period of over a hundred years Şişhane has been known for its lighting and retail industry.
One evening walking in the area in the early spring of 2009 I took these photos.
The DQE Design Quartier Ehrenfeld Halle exhibition space occupies a space within the old factory zone of the Helios factory that produced electric lighting products in the industrial age.
 |
| View from the Helios Factory Lighthouse circa 1900 |
 |
| Helios Factory Ehrenfeld circa 1900 |
When Paul Virilio says that "the transformation which extraverts localness – all localness – and which does not now deport persons, or entire populations, as in the past, but deports their living space, the place where they subsist economically", then this post connects this extraverting of localness with the situations this project echoes. In one case, the pressure upon the population amongst the workshops and retail businesses of Şişhane that comes from an influx of cheap imports from China, and in the other case, the question of the "brown field" sites that appear in the city, part of the aftermath of the "global de-localization which affects the very nature not merely of ‘national’, but of ‘social’ identity", thereby "throwing into question not so much the nation-state, but the city", the city itself as a nodal entity and 'the' shaping tool of "the geopolitics of nations".
Something else is now shaping geopolitics and geo-economics;
the niche and the long tail!
The long tail and bespoke design
The Long Tail was popularized by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine in an October 2004 article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying a strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.
The long tail is the name for a long-known feature of some statistical distributions. In "long-tailed" distributions a high-amplitude population is followed by a low-amplitude population, which gradually "tails off" asymptotically.
bespoke
The use of the word bespoke comes from the English verb to bespeak, to "speak for something", and has the current usage of meaning to give an order for something to be made. The term historically was applied only to tailored clothing, involving measurement and fitting. The buyer's total control over the fabric used, the features and fit, and the way the garment should be made provides a model for a high degree of customization, and involvement of the end-user in the production of the goods.
In the Through the Looking Glass project, the people associated with the places where small businesses operate, possess the skills to provide for their clientele. Above all, they are able to listen to the customer, end user or consumer, and then act with the capacity to understand and interpret the consumer’s needs. This is what small businesses do best, as do designers, if given half a chance to engage with the genius of the local rather than the global.
Going down to Körnerstraße
Modern and post-modern consumer/producer relations are complex. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan quoting James Joyce, it turns out that consumers have become the producers (see footnote). In this age where the skills of listening and understanding are linked to the skills of making, or “tailoring”, the long tail allows the needs of the few to be acknowledged, and occasionally fulfilled.
In the digital sphere the internet links the searcher to the searched for, if it is out there already. This digital space also allows for the continuous editing, negotiation and adjustment in the fabrication of digital objects, sounds and images, communications and conversations.
Meanwhile, as long as craftspeople are allowed an economic life there is the possibility of new things being made. In the Made in Shishane project in Istanbul, architects and designers have worked with the fabricators in the workshops of Shishane to produce unique lighting designs, but this possibility is put at risk by the importation of low cost products from China, that undercut the economic viability of craft based production.
The Made in Shishane project response is to create both an awareness and a re-valuing of the ability of the workshops to respond to the challenge of a period now where these practices might be lost. This would be tragic just when the notion of customization is developing new roots in a culture that is increasingly critically aware of the environmental impact of the industrial processes that mass production and mass consumption instigates.
Footnote
He caun ne'er be bothered but maun e'er be waked. If there is a future in every past that is present Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui quae quot at Quinnigan's Quake! Stump! His producers are they not his consumers? Your exagmination round his factification for incamination of a warping process. Declaim!
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce (496.34 - 497.3)
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